DIY, September 2016 by DIY Magazine

Deap Vally Against Me! The Wytches set music free free / issue 55 / SEPTEMBER 2016 diymag.com

AlunaGeorge

two door cinema club b a cTWO k DOOR fro m t h e b rin k CINEMA CLUB HIT RESTART 1

STAND FOR SOMETHING TOUR UK 2016 FIRST HEADLINERS ANNOUNCED

15TH OCT // LIVERPOOL // THE SCANDI CHURCH

29TH OCT // BIRMINGHAM // THE RAINBOW COURTYARD

12TH NOV // NEWCASTLE // THE CLUNY

LONDON ACT TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON. BE THE FIRST TO KNOW. SIGN UP AT DRMARTENS.COM/STANDFORSOMETHINGTOUR TICKETS ON SALE NOW WWW.TICKETWEB.CO.UK

#SFSTOUR16 2

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Lauren Mayberry’s Pro Skater: coming to consoles soon.

GOOD VS EVIL WHAT’S ON THE DIY TEAM’S R ADAR?

Emma Swann Founding Editor GOOD Witnessing Deap Vally’s bemused introduction to a British classic, the ’99 ice cream. EVIL Hot weather. Autumn can’t come soon enough for this pasty-faced amateur goth. .............................. tom connick Online Editor GOOD Harambe. EVIL Cincinnati Zoo. .............................. El hunt Features Editor GOOD Jehnny Beth crowdsurfing over my head and screaming a line of ‘Hit Me’ in my face. If you’re reading this, Savages, I can play tambourine. Please let me join your band?

EVIL Losing my voice thanks to screaming along to The 1975 for a solid hour. .............................. Jamie MILTon Neu Editor GOOD Finally getting ‘closure’ about Frank Ocean building a staircase, falling in love with ‘Endless’ & ‘Blonde’. EVIL Live streams that span three weeks. .............................. Louise Mason Art Director GOOD Telling Matt from Preoccupations that we wouldn’t use the picture of him cuddling a pot plant. EVIL Nearly having my first ever photopass taken away for downing a pint in the photo pit.

EDITOR’S LET TER When Two Door Cinema Club were forced to cancel their headline appearance at Latitude back in 2014, it really was a shame. Having spent so long working their way to the top of bills across the world, it felt like they were more than ready to take the next step. Life, however, decided to get in the way. Now, after two dark years apart - as explained in our candid but brilliant cover interview - the trio are back and they’re feeling more confident than ever. Plus, they’ve got an ace new album up their sleeves too. Everything’s finally coming up Two Door! Elsewhere in this month’s issue, Deap Vally offer up their latest creative explosion, AlunaGeorge talk new album ‘I Remember’ and Toronto’s Preoccupations re-introduce themselves to the world. Plus, we’ve brought you all of the goss from Reading & Leeds 2016! Sarah Jamieson, Managing Editor GOOD 2016 marks exactly ten years since I first went to Reading & Leeds! And this year’s edition of the fest was just as ridiculous and fun. EVIL Less evil and more heartbreaking, the passing of Architects’ Tom Searle was such sad news. Our thoughts are with his family, friends and band.

LISTENING POST What’s on the DIY stereo this month?

Sleigh Bells • Jessica Rabbit

The firebomb duo are back, and their fourth record is a comic book cacophony fit to send the year out with one hell of a bang.

Kero Kero Bonito • Generation Bonito It’s finally here - packed to the rafters with teeth-rotting pop brilliance, Kero Kero’s ‘Graduation’ is one that’s straight A’s all round.

C O N T E N T S

NEWS

NEU

2 4 E AT FA S T 2 6 T H E B AY R AY S 28 KELSEY LU

FEATURES

32 TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB 40 ALUNAGEORGE 4 4 P R EO C C U PAT I O N S 48 AGAINST ME! 52 THE WYTCHES 5 6 D E A P VA L LY

REVIEWS 60 ALBUMS 76 LIVE

He’s a fire-carter! Frank Carter owns Reading.

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6 READING & LEEDS 1 4 S TAN D FO R SOMETHING TOUR 1 6 P O P S TAR P O S T BAG 1 9 D I Y H A L L O F FA M E 2 0 F E S T I VA L S

Founding Editor Emma Swann Managing Editor Sarah Jamieson Features Editor El Hunt Neu Editor Jamie Milton Online Editor Tom Connick Art Direction & Design Louise Mason Marketing & Events Jack Clothier, Rhi Lee Contributors Alex Cabré, Alex Taylor, Ali Shutler, Alim Kheraj, Amelia Maher, Anastasia Connor, Cady Siregar, Craig Jones, Emma Snook, Eugenie Johnson, Heather McDaid, Henry Boon, Jessica Goodman, Joe Goggins, Liam Konemann, Liam McNeilly, Matthew Davies, Nina Keen, Rachel Michaella Finn, Ross Jones, Sean Kerwick, Sophie Thompson, Tanyel Gumushan, Tom Hancock, Will Richards. Photographers Andrew Benge, Carolina Faruolo, Duncan Elliott, Freddie Payne, James Kelly, Jenna Foxton, Leah Henson, Mike Massaro, Phil Smithies, Robin Pope, Sinéad Grainger. For DIY editorial info@diymag.com For DIY sales rupert@sonicdigital.co.uk lawrence@sonicdigital.co.uk tel: +44 (0)20 3632 3456 For DIY stockist enquiries stockists@diymag.com DIY is published by Sonic Media Group. All material copyright (c). All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form, in whole or in part, without the express written permission of DIY. 25p where sold. Disclaimer: While every effort is made to ensure the information in this magazine is correct, changes can occur which affect the accuracy of copy, for which Sonic Media Group holds no responsibility. The opinions of the contributors do not necessarily bear a relation to those of DIY or its staff and we disclaim liability for those impressions. Distributed nationally. Cover photo: Emma Swann

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foals

PLAY A SET FOR THE AGES

here’s been a spectre hanging over Foals for years, and as they take to their headline slot at Reading 2016, there’s an unusual sense of nerves on stage. Quieter than their usual bolshy, amped up selves, even firebrand frontman Yannis Philippakis seems reflective. There’s a crowd of tens of thousands in front of him, watching him close what was once his local festival. You’d have to forgive him. From rackety opener ‘Snake Oil’ to the thudding, four-tothe-floor bass of ‘My Number, past the fidgety ending of

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‘Mountain At My Gates’; it’s all executed so flawlessly. The addition of pyro cannons through ‘What Went Down’’s spiky call to arms, further bolsters that already fine-tuned stage show, lasers and all. There’s even time to bring out breakthrough hit ‘Cassius’ (the reaction is every bit as explosive as you’d expect). This is every bit the defining moment it was set out to be from the start, taking the notion that we don’t breed future festival headliners and burying it in the dirt kicked up by the ravenous hordes at the front. And that spectre? It’s over.

WS Chvrches talk their favourite… err, crisps?!

laying the main stage comes with its own set of perks, of course, and Chvrches proudly gesture towards various items around their dressing room – potted plants, sofas, and the blessing of an electric fan – as they sit down for a pre-show natter. “We were pretty sensible,” admits Lauren, nodding in the direction of the band’s rider. “I think people think of riders as being full with ridiculous demands, but this is the food we need to survive,” she says. “So we have some vegetables, water, some beers…”

“...and cashew nuts!” exclaims Martin Doherty, beaming the beam of a very delighted man. “The most exciting thing today is that they’ve given us a packet of Skips,” he adds. “I haven’t had Skips in years!”

BOY BETTER KNOW RANSACK THE MAIN STAGE

he amount of people in front of the main stage for Boy Better OFF TO A RAUCOUS START Know would make even the most t takes just thirty seconds for seasoned headliner wince. There’s SWMRS to cause the first mosh pit not a sign on any of the collective’s of the festival to erupt. The Pit stage faces that they’re feeling the pressure is a hive of activity today, and the though, as they plough straight into Californians well and truly break it in. a set that feels like it could define ‘Uncool’, from last year’s ‘Drive North’ the festival for years to come. ‘Shut LP, sees any remaining cobwebs Down’ predictably erupts, and blown away, and the band are clearly Solo 45’s ‘Feed Em To The Lions’ taken aback by the reaction, and it’s is every bit as vicious as its title justified, even so early on the first day. warrants, mosh pits opening up and subsequently crumbling as far back as the eye can see. To count BBK out of headlining in years to come is LAY WASTE TO THE PIT fucking madness. They’re ready to reeper have had a monstrous take the slot right this second. 2016. From their second ever show for DIY at London’s Old Blue Last on, every set has felt like a real moment. Unsurprisingly, then, today BRING MORE THAN BANGERS Reading hosts them as champions. angers might be Disclosure’s Frontman Will Gould strides out onto forte, but taking to the main the stage to be greeted by a huge stage for the first time, Guy and Creeper flag held aloft from a sway Howard Lawrence show they’ve of bodies that doesn’t stop during got far more up their sleeves. their half-hour set. It’s frightening to Unrecognisable from their buttonthink where they could be in twelve bashing, knob-twiddling beginnings, months. Main stage, anyone? the brothers have evolved faster than a Bulbasaur on light-power Poké-fuel – for one, Howard’s developed a bass BRING THEIR SCUZZY GLORY face to rival Este Haim. eing a newcomer at a festival It’s a stage they’ve been waiting to with a line-up as vast as this is play for a long time now: between always going to be a challenge, but their strip-lit booth contraptions as Eat Fast make their debut, they alone, they’re racking up quite the take it in their stride. Appearing on electricity bill. Though there’s plenty the BBC Introducing Stage in the of room given to the likes of bloopheight of Friday afternoon’s heat, a-thon ‘White Noise,’ and ‘F For You’ their brand of gritty, scuzzed-up – naturally – this is a set that also punk matches the weather perfectly. explores the pair’s other side; with All scorched guitars and distortionlengthy forays into clubbier climes. drenched vocals, the likes of ‘Fenham Ending with just enough time to fling Dreadlock’ and ‘Byker Drone’ already open the door on ‘Latch’, Disclosure sound like fully-fledged, rough and wind up their turn on the main stage ready anthems. in a blooping, glittering finale.

SWMRS GET READING

creeper

DISCLOSURE

EAT FAST

CHVRCHES

OFFER UP a THUMPING SET

eading & Leeds forms the last two UK shows on Chvrches’ tour for ‘Every Open Eye’, and they send the album off with thunder tonight. Their transition to huge slots this summer has been seamless, and they look completely at home on the biggest of stages. ‘Clearest Blue’ and ‘The Mother We Share’ close, and it’s the perfect send-off for ‘Every Open Eye’. When Chvrches return, a few places higher here - and world domination - look a certainty.

STORMZY DRAWS A MASSIVE, MANIC CROWD

tepping in at the last minute to fill Travis Scott’s cancellation, Stormzy takes to Reading 2016 already a king. Declaring last year “one of the best fuckin’ shows of my life”, his return ups the ante at every opportunity. This tent has surely seen nothing like it. It’s a crowd that must be pushing ten thousand, spilling out of the stage’s confines as far as the eye can see. Mosh pits are everywhere, and they’re bigger than any the rest of the weekend has offered up. It’s pure pandemonium long before one particularly excited punter clambers up the pillar holding the tent up – by the time he leaps back down, it’s pure carnage.

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Stormzy doesn’t need to pray for a future headliner spot.

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INHEAVEN SEIZE THE DAY

or many bands on the road to a debut album, Reading & Leeds feels like a milestone moment. For Inheaven, who’ve spent consecutive years thrashing about and necking lukewarm cider in front of this very stage, that’s certainly the case. From the off, it’s an occasion they’re clearly set on grabbing hold of with both hands; a task a surging crowd more than happily assist with. New single ‘Drift’ – just a few days old – prompts the opening of a pit, and bassist Chloe Little sings it right at the crowd, clearly beaming, bowled over by the miniature frenzy they’ve prompted. Here for the first time, this is a band who’ve already outgrown their early afternoon billing. Odds are firmly on the London band returning again next year – as Daft Punk might say – harder, better, faster, and stronger.

SLAVES

SLOT RIGHT IN AMONGST THE METAL

aturday’s main stage is ruled by riffs - from the stoner rock sludge of Clutch, to the chuggery of metalcore titans Parkway Drive, it’s a distortion lover’s dream. When Slaves rock up, they might seem an outlier. It doesn’t take long for them to bed themselves into the carnage though. “What the fuck happened?” asks Isaac Holman from behind his kit after ‘White

Knuckle Ride’ lives up to its name. “Never did I think I’d be saying these words on this stage, but we’re Slaves and we’re from Kent”. It’s chaos from then on they’re every bit as heavy as anything else today, all guttural screams. They’re sweethearts, really, but as mosh pits erupt and one particularly over-excited punter attempts to crowdsurf inside a paddling pool (to adequate success), it’s bratty, bolshy and a little bit bonkers.

RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS

DELIVER

ou couldn’t walk for ten steps around the site earlier today without seeing a Red Hot Chili Peppers t-shirt, or someone dressed as - literally - a chilli pepper. This clear devotion sees the biggest crowd of the weekend so far gathered for the now-veterans. The band’s 2007 headline performance went down in history as one of the worst the festival has seen, and as a result, tonight is absurdly front-loaded. ‘Can’t Stop’ crashes into ‘Dani California’, then into ‘Scar Tissue’ - they reek of a band with a point to prove. Though 80% of what Red Hot Chili Peppers play tonight is instantly recognisable with the crowd inevitably drowning out the band with drunken renditions - it’s when a deep cut is aired that gaps begin to show in their expertise.

in on The Pit. Over twelve months since their last live gig proper, fans spend the first two tracks trying to cram themselves further inside the already-packed tent. The reaction is electric from the off. Appearances from ‘Room To Breathe’ and ’Loverboy’ ensure that huge singalongs are the order of the day, while new number ‘Night People’ sounds suitably massive, even in the small tent.

SPRING KING

BRING ‘THE SUMMER’

his time last year, Spring King took to the Festival Republic in the immediate aftermath of Zane Lowe, y’know, casually kickstarting Beats 1 with ‘City’. Word was just beginning to spread, and turning a modest crowd into a miniature riot, Tarek Musa

even did a little sick onstage and everything. A year on, the band are back playing the mammoth BBC Radio 1 stage, and it’s packed to the rafters with fans. Striding out from behind the kit during the fairly ominous ‘They’re Coming After You,’ chanting along with the crowd, Tarek’s more than just Spring King’s own Phil Collins these days; though his drumming’s as heroic as ever. The torrential rain water pouring off the side of the big blue tent might beg to differ, but it’s no match for ‘The Summer,’ and the whole place transforms into beachy paradise. Predictably, it’s with breakthrough moment ‘City’ that Spring King hit their peak, nailing their return to Reading in a single fell swoop.

TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB UP THE EUPHORIA LEVELS

aking one of their first UK festival appearances since 2013, the three-piece look incredibly happy to be back on stage together and unsurprisingly, it’s mirrored in the crowd. After a fairly tumultuous time apart over the past two years (see p32), there’s a brilliant energy to the trio; a real sense of euphoria fills the tent for the duration of their set. While ‘Do You Want It All?’ and ‘Something Good Can Work’ whip up enormous singalongs, the new songs scattered through the set sound right at home too - and for anyone doubting Alex Trimble’s high notes on the funk-laden ‘Bad Decisions’, he hits the mark perfectly. But their set’s not so much about debuting new material so much as celebrating the old, and this Reading set is the perfect place to do it.

YOU ME AT SIX

SUUUURPRISE!

DECIDE TO TURN UP

n 2014, it was Green Day that decided to make a last minute appearance at Reading. Last year, Foals took up the gauntlet. This year, the secret set responsibility was passed to You Me At Six, who took on the challenge and ran with it, whipping up a frenzy by scheduling themselves

The trio look ahead to their “biggest moment yet” Waiting backstage for their headline set in the Radio 1 tent on Saturday night, the band are reflecting on a big summer. “I think this is our fourth time playing here,” Alex Trimble says, “and because it’s at the end of the summer, we see our work over the summer pay off.”

SUNDARA KARMA SHINE

LOCAL HEROES

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Fall Out Boy talk new project ‘Bloom’

peaking to us ahead of their set, Pete Wentz reveals that their co-headline set wasn’t exactly something they saw coming. “I mean, it’s crazy,” he says. ”Honestly, we weren’t even gonna do anything this summer, so [being invited to co-headline] was clearly a big deal because it

got us over here to play. We’ve created a new show, basically for the festival, which we’ve never done before. “The idea is that it’s a companion piece for a short film - some of which we’ll play before our set. It’s all about how sometimes you have to crack a pavement before you can bloom, and that the hard shit doesn’t have to break you, it can make you a stronger person. It all kinda fits together, if it all runs smoothly!”

FALL OUT BOY LIGHT IT UP

lot can happen in a decade, and tonight, Fall Out Boy are living proof. Ten years on from the infamous bottle fight that took place during their 2006 Reading set, the Chicago four-piece have risen through the ranks to finally take a punt at the headliner slot. Just one song in, they go ahead and own it. ‘Sugar, We’re Goin Down’ whips up a real frenzy early on, while more poignant moments come in the form of the firework-filled ‘Alone Together’ and stripped back, David Bowie-dedicated ‘Save Rock and Roll’. The newer songs sound huge - ‘Uma Thurman’ is positively infectious while ‘The Kids Aren’t Alright’ is full of catharsis while ‘Dance, Dance’ and ‘Thnks Fr Th Mmrs’ are still anthemic. Fall Out Boy are no strangers when it comes to massive shows but tonight, there’s something special in the air. A big-hitter stage show and enough fireworks to put Guy Fawkes to shame, their set is a triumph in every sense. Here’s to the next decade.

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triding out onto the main stage, Sundara Karma are in their element in more ways than one this morning. “This is very strange for us,” admits frontman Oscar Lulu, gesturing to the road behind him. “We live ten minutes away, and drive down that road every day to get to practice.” While they’ve been ticking along on a series of promising tracks to date, it’s new album ‘Youth is Only Ever Fun In Retrospect’ that looks set to see them realise that potential. New song ‘Olympia’ is the peak - a Springsteenindebted sense of adventure flowing throughout - but it’s most recent single ‘She Said’ and its tale of romantic debauchery that elicits huge cheers, just days after its release. The singalongs that flow the front rows are proof there’s so much more to hometown hero status buoying Sundara Karma’s main stage debut - they’re bound to climb the ranks of this platform at rapid speed.

THE MAGIC GANG

GO ABOVE AND BEYOND

t takes less than a minute of The Magic Gang’s first song for people to rise onto friends’ shoulders and a huge melee of bodies to crash together. ‘All That I Want Is You’ and ‘Feeling Better’ get some of the biggest reactions of the whole weekend so far, and the band take every next step in their stride. Even bigger stages await The Magic Gang - there’s no doubt - and today shows they’re absolutely ready.

BIFFY CLYRO GIVE A MASTERCLASS IN CLOSING

hree years ago, Biffy Clyro headlined here for the first time. That night was a supreme set, but one that came with obvious jitters. Two songs in tonight, and Simon Neil is interjecting the chaotic finale of ‘Living Is A Problem Because Everything Dies’ with the ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ riff - the nerves are gone. Biffy Clyro know how to do this now. Simon and Johnston brothers Ben and James all play with the crowd between songs, the light show is stunning, and the setlist perfect. ‘57’ harks back to the band’s first Reading & Leeds performance at the turn of the millennium, while ‘Puzzle’ cuts ‘Machines’ and ‘9/15ths’ go down as well as most from ‘Only Revolutions’ and ‘Opposites’. Nights like tonight will become common-place for Biffy Clyro from now on, the supreme confidence they exhibit taking their live show to yet bigger heights.

THE 1975 STAKE THEIR HEADLINER CLAIM

creams like nothing else on this planet fill the Radio 1 tent to the brim twenty minutes before kick-off. By the time The 1975 stride out onto a pastel-drenched stage, tiny Playmobil figures in front of choppy pink blocks, it’s impossible to gather a single coherent thought. It figures, really. Having made a giant, lightyear leap up from distinctly average beginnings, to this – the ridiculously titled ‘I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it,’ in all it’s bass-facey, gurny panache, – The 1975 take their big Reading moment, seize it by the scruff of its neck and out-run almost everyone else in the process. Closing with a euphoric ‘The Sound’, quickly followed by debut cut ‘Sex’, the band go out on a bang. “I don’t know what the future holds, but I can promise you two things,” Matty announces. “One: we’re gonna go away and make another record. Two: we’re gonna come back and we’re gonna fucking headline Reading, I fucking promise you.”

SAVAGES TAKE ON THE CHALLENGE

p against The Vaccines on the main stage, Savages find themselves playing to a sparse Sunday afternoon crowd. If this confronted most bands out there, it’d be an environment ripe for a total washout. Savages are not most bands. Focusing every last drop of her attention on the front few rows, nonchalantly ignoring the rest of the tent, Jehnny Beth plays the daring game, and wins.

Every day is Halloween, if you ask Simon Neil.

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On top form, joking away from a perch on people’s shoulders, singing directly to individual audience members, and pitting the two sides of a small but devoted crowd against one another, Savages prove it for the millionth time; they’re the most formidable live band around. DIY

NEW RELEASES FROM SUB POP CLIPPING Splendor & Misery CD/LP/CASS MORGAN DELT Phase Zero CD/LP/CASS THE GOTOBEDS Blood//Sugar//Secs//Traffic CD/LP/CASS ARBOR LABOR UNION I Hear You CD/2xLP/CASS KRISTIN KONTROL X-Communicate CD/LP/CASS LVL UP Return to Love CD/LP/CASS OUT SEPT 23rd

WHAT DO YOU STAND FOR, PAIGEY CAKEY?

I stand for myself, for one, but I wanna be the voice of the young people. I want to stand for the youth; I want to stand for something that means something. I feel like the youth of today need role models to look up to, so I want to stand for them.

G N I H T E M O S R O F D STAN TOUR 2016 Y HACK NE Y MC PA IGE ST CA KE Y, NO RT H EA D RO CK ER S VA NT AN LL ING KE YB OA RD -P UM ME AR E TW INS FO RM AT ION TS AC TH E FIR ST TH RE E IS CO NF IRM ED FO R TH E YE AR â&#x20AC;&#x2122;S FO UR -DAT . NATIO NW IDE TO UR

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his autumn, Dr. Martens and DIY are once again teaming up for the latest incarnation of the Stand For Something Tour. Over the past four years, it’s hosted the likes of Twin Atlantic, Young Guns, Eagulls and Spector, who have taken to some of the UK’s tiniest stages. This year, however, things are stepping up. This year’s tour will take place in four cities across the country hitting up Liverpool, Birmingham and Newcastle before things wrap up with an incredible show in the capital. That’s not all: this year’s tour will come with a special added element – from pit parties to the great outdoors, the shows are set to be unforgettable. “I just love to see the crowd’s reactions and I just love to feed off people’s energy,” says Paigey Cakey. The Hackney-based MC will be heading to The Rainbow Courtyard in Birmingham next month to give fans a taste of latest release ‘RED’. “If you give me energy, I’m gonna give you more energy. I just love to be on stage and to see supporters that have come out, and people that don’t even know me. I just love entertaining people.” In Newcastle, the chaos-inducing quartet VANT will be getting right in the thick of it, when they play an inthe-round pit party up at The Cluny. “It should be great,” says frontman Mattie Vant. “It sold out on the day last time. So I reckon people might need to be fairly swift about tickets. The Cluny is such an awesome venue when it’s packed out.” The show should be a particularly poignant one for the band, since Mattie himself hails from Seaham, just down the road. Finally, the brilliant Formation complete with cowbell - will be taking on Liverpool, when they play at The Scandi Church. “There’s a great moment at some shows when the songs are hitting home and the audience is going wild,” the band tell us. “There’s an intense connection being made and it feels like the room is on fire! That’s why we put ourselves out there on stage and we wouldn’t have it any other way.” Tickets for these first shows are on sale now – head to drmartens.com/ standforsomethingtour to get involved in this year’s action. And don’t worry, there’s still one more headliner to be announced. Stay tuned...

WHAT DO YOU STAND FOR, FORMATION? Formation means people coming together to express or celebrate something great. So we stand for a lot of things but ultimately it’s about standing together.

WHAT DO YOU STAND FOR, VANT? We stand for equality, awareness of the environmental concerns of this planet, and a better education for all of our children.

THE DATES 15.10.16 FORMATION The Scandi Church, Liverpool

29.10.16 PAIGEY CAKEY The Rainbow Courtyard, Birmingham

12.11.16 VANT The Cluny, Newcastle

26.11.16 TBA London

Popstar Postbag creeper

We know what you’re like, dear readers. We know you’re just as nosy as we are when it comes to our favourite pop stars: that’s why we’re putting the power back into your hands. Every month, we’re going to ask you to pull out your best questions and aim them at those unsuspecting artists. You don’t even need to pay for postage! This month, Creeper frontman Will Gould is taking on your Qs. Do you listen to Marilyn Manson? If so, what’s your favourite year/album and why? Kitti, via email I am a big Marilyn Manson fan. I think his best work is probably the ‘Antichrist Superstar’ / ‘Mechanical Animals’ / ’Holy Wood’ trilogy, when I was a kid those were important records for me. Why did you name the band Creeper? Callum, via email We wanted a name that wouldn’t force us into one genre, something that could be the name of a punk band, an indie band or a metal band or anything. We chose Creeper in particular because it sounded like a Stephen King novel, like some kind of adventure. How is Sean’s foot healing? Lily, via email OK, so in case you don’t know, at the end of our last US run the guys at U-Haul (the trailer hire place) dropped the entire trailer on Sean’s [Scott, bassist] foot and broke some of his toes! I believe he is now up to full strength or close to it again. He is a tough dude. Where do you guys draw your style from? @AndrewWolens Our playing style comes from hardcore. Ian [Miles, guitar] and I met in that scene and we’ve exported some of that into what we do now. Our visual style comes from an interest in art and performance, I think probably dating back to being interested partly in glam rock as a kid for me and horror movies for Ian. We’re always taking cues from a man named Jim Steinman too, check him out! What is the weirdest thing a fan has asked you to sign? Ellie, via email We get asked to sign all kinds of weird things these days, the weirdest is always body parts. We’ve had all sorts though - dominoes, guitars, plush toys, Disneyland tickets, iPhones etc.

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What was the scariest part of your first US tour? @iwillownthemoon Ollie [Burdett, guitar] isn’t a big fan of flying so we held hands as our plane took off. He was super brave though, and then we spent $70 on in-flight beer. Who writes the lyrics, and what is the process? Melody first, lyrics second; vice versa; or some back-and-forth combination of the two? Jenny, via email I write the lyrics, Ian writes the vast majority of the music. Songs always start with melody first, Ian strumming something and us moving chords to help fit whatever vocal melody I come up with better. Often I’ll write something on piano and we’ll use it for a chorus or something too. We tend to just lock ourselves away. What will be the moment that’ll make you think ‘We’ve exceeded all our expectations’? Or has this already happened? Megan, via email I actually think that happened a long time ago for us, we thought we’d be a band who’d play a couple times locally and now we’re touring the world. I don’t know how we’ve ended up being so lucky, but we’re more grateful each day for the lives we’re getting to lead. What was your goal when you guys created the band? @TraffordPhoto98 I think our goal at first was just to put out a record that would be a little different to what was going on at the time, something a little more flamboyant but still dark. We wanted to focus on things like artwork and design a lot more than we had in past projects.

NEXT MONTH: SPRING KING Want to send a question to DIY’s Popstar Postbag? Tweet us at @diymagazine with the hashtag #postbag, or drop us an email at popstarpostbag@diymag.com. Easy!

Bon Iver’s been sleeping in a stable, mate.

HAVE HEARD? y∞u

Bon Iver - 22 (Over S∞∞N)

The first new Bon Iver song in five years is set against a theme of expiration. A lyric video for ‘22 (OVER S∞∞N)’ - sorry, ‘22 (OVER S∞∞N) [Bob Moose Extended Cab Version]’ to be precise - shows a photograph of Justin Vernon’s face set alight. The trick is in how a lit flame never gets the better of him. This photo doesn’t turn to dust within seconds. Instead, destruction’s put on hold. And this matches the mood of the track itself. “It might be over soon,” Vernon sings, putting all the emphasis on potential rather than inevitability. In turn, a jagged, looped synth line fidgets in the background and feels like it could stop at any second - but it doesn’t. (Jamie Milton)

The Magic Gang – All This Way The Magic Gang don’t just know how to write a decent pop number; by now they’re seasoned veterans when it comes to bottling pure sunshine. Peppered with joyous backing vocals, and skipping light-touches of spare guitar, ‘All This Way’ is by no means a matching-jumpers-ahoy peppy barbershop ditty, instead investing most energy into The Magic Gang’s usual staple – a belting chorus. “All I really wanna know, is how I got all this way on my own,” ponders Jack Kaye again and again, concluding “I’m sorry that we fell in love.” Welcome to The Magic Gang’s fantasy pop league, ‘All This Way’. They’ve written yet another slice of gold. (El Hunt)

have been waged and xenophobia has gained headway, but it’s not like Kate Tempest doesn’t have anything to write about. Alongside an apocalyptic tale (“The people will flock to the garages… Tinned fish and bandages”), Kate delivers lines atop severe, ominous instrumentation. Skizzing electronicst clatter in the background, and empty space arrives when it’s least expected. It’s the most claustrophobic her music has ever sounded. (Jamie Milton)

into that one person you did something regretful with in first year, the track ushers in the next generation of KKB - it looks set to be quite a journey from here. (Will Richards)

Sad13 – Get A Yes

It’s a shitty state of affairs indeed, but all too often, sex in music is far too focused on those (cue massive sigh and eyeroll) ‘Blurred Lines’. There’s also little space left for the most important thing of all - what the other silent party actually wants. It’s a Kero Kero Bonito – Graduation pervasive issue that goes far deeper than a few dodgy lyrics, and it fuels an entire The singles Kero Kero Bonito have culture that neglects education around released from their debut album ‘Bonito Generation’ have all pointed at extremely consent. And consent is a topic that Sadie Dupuis pointedly flings open the door on exciting things from the record.‘Lipslap’ - and celebrates with a beaming grin - in is the pumping hit, all tongue-in-cheek Kate Tempest – Don’t Fall In humour, while ‘Picture This’ is as catchy as her first solo pop outing as Sad13. GlitterBeing a direct political commentator is they’ve ever been. ‘Graduation’, live staple soaked, and diving headfirst into pure pop hard work. Especially if you’re a songwriter for over a year now, joins the party, and is climes, ‘Get A Yes’ is empowering, vital, who, say, doesn’t release a full-length the band’s big step up. With all the joy and and positive when it comes to dialogue for a couple of years. The landscape is around consent. More songs like this, celebration of said ceremonies, but with unrecognisable compared to two years please. (El Hunt) none of the awkwardness of bumping ago. Governments have toppled, wars 17

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“I would encourage people to not think too much. Playing in different countries shouldn’t be any problem! We are all people who enjoy music. Just play. Places are places and people are people wherever you go, and it’s beautiful.”

A EUROPEAN EXCHANGE

Appearing at festivals can be a hugely important experience for upcoming artists, and the European Talent Exchange Programme are hoping to help more artists get the opportunity.

hen you’re a new artist, getting your name out there is one hell of a challenge. Securing opportunities to play at festivals across Europe? That’s an even tougher job. That’s where ETEP comes into play. The European Talent Exchange Programme – which was set up by the people behind The Netherlands’ showcase festival Eurosonic Noorderslag - aims to highlight upcoming European talent, by providing them with the tools to get onto festival bills across the continent.

the ‘Conqueror’ singer says. “It’s amazing when communities like ETEP help musicians get heard. There are so many great musicians out there who only need a bit of help to be seen by the world.

One act who’s been a huge success within ETEP is Norwegian singer Aurora, who has spent the past twelve months on the road in support of her debut album ‘All My Demons Greeting Me As A Friend’.

Aurora’s not the only artist to have experienced success with ETEP – Mura Masa, Nothing But Thieves, Blossoms and Stormzy are all part of the scheme too.

“As a musician you need all kind of support that you can get!” 22

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“Playing live shows at festivals is one of the best ways to be discovered, for me at least,” she admits. “Many people see me for the first time almost by accident on festivals around in Europe. It means a lot to get a chance to play them all.”

For more information and to find out how to get involved, head to etep.nl. DIY

SAT 22/10/16 SUN 23/10/16 MON 24/10/16 WED 26/10/16 THU 27/10/16

BRISTOL, COLSTON HALL EDINBURGH, QUEENâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S HALL MANCHESTER, ALBERT HALL LIVERPOOL, THE DOME LONDON, ROUNDHOUSE

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eat fast

Meet the Geordie quartet with an appetite for noise. Words: Sarah Jamieson.

diymag.com

fter one listen to the scuzzed-up chaos captured within ‘Stammer’, it’s hard to imagine that Eat Fast’s journey could ever have begun with an abandoned PhD in contemporary poetry. Yet, for the North East quartet, that’s exactly what kickstarted it all. “I moved back down from Edinburgh, where I was studying for my PhD, but it didn’t really work out,” begins the band’s Adam Pearson, whose move back home from the University of St. Andrews provided the catalyst for Eat Fast’s birth. “After I finished my first chapter, I realised I just wanted to start writing new songs again.” Originally just a way to scratch Pearson’s creative itch, it was only when he met bassist Mark Brown and drummer James King that things came to life. “I just wanted to keep it as a recording project,” he explains, “but then I met Brownie and Kingy - because I wanted to record the songs properly - and they persuaded me to try it as a live thing. It’s totally grown from there.” For a sound that’s so visceral and bursting with adrenaline, the idea of it remaining as a solo recording project borders on irresponsible. “That’s what we thought,” chips in Mark, gesturing to his bandmate. “That’s why we sort of forced you to do it!” With the line-up completed by guitarist John Edgar, who also moved back from Edinburgh, there were now no excuses. “Yeah, there was a full commitment from everyone,” confirms Adam, “and I think that’s what made us think we could give it a proper go.”

BAPTISM OF FIRE

First live shows are, as they come, pretty bloody terrifying, even when things don’t go too wrong. When it came to Eat Fast’s debut – a DIY Presents show at London’s Old Blue Last back in May –however, it sounds like things couldn’t have really got more disastrous...

“E

verything that could go wrong at a gig, went wrong,” Mark explains. “Oh yeah, god, aye!” remembers Adam. “That was bad. The first song, there were just sparks all over the stage.” “The bass amp stopped,” Mark continues, “then the pedal board had sparks flying out of it. The sound guy didn’t put Adam’s microphone on. It was our first gig and there was a lot building up to it. When that happened though, we realised that was probably gonna be the most daunting gig we were gonna play, so when everything went wrong, we knew it couldn’t really get any worse than that. That made us feel quite relaxed for the rest of the shows. After that, The Great Escape shows were mint!” Glass always half full, eh!

It’s not just their music that the quartet have found themselves committing to so strongly: the area they come from is sewn into the fabric of their songs. With track titles like ‘Byker Drone’ and ‘Fenham Dreadlock’, Eat Fast are more than prepared to fly the colours for their home. “Yeah, I missed it so much when I was away,” admits Adam, agreeing that there’s something about growing up in the North East that always draws you home. “Before I moved away, I lived in Byker for four or five years, and a lot of the songs are about then and me looking back to then.” As for the songs themselves, the four they released as part of May’s ‘Fenham Dread(lock)’ EP aren’t the only weapons in their arsenal. There’s already a sixteentrack LP prepped, and – unsurprisingly – they’re writing even more. “All the songs have been demoed, because I did them all in my bedroom, but now we’re starting to think that maybe we should re-record,” Adam says, his mind ticking through the possibilities. “But, yeah, all of those tracks for the first LP are done, and the second one is kinda half done as well...” If any band have an insatiable appetite right now, it’s Eat Fast. DIY Eat Fast are playing the DIY All Dayer on 2nd October at Boston Music Room, London. For more details, head to diymag.com/alldayer2016.

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“All our songs definitely come from real life,” states The Bay Rays frontman Harry Nicoll, one-third of these tight-knit, tightly-wound thrashers from Tunbridge Wells. And as it turns out, Harry has enough real-life tales to fill angry, frustrated bursts of noise for decades.

‘New Home’, one of their head-turning early tracks, is about the time a pub landlord kicked him out and he had no place to live. There’s all “the pressures that you face,” he says, “just trying to make rent every month, people forcing you out.” Plenty of bands write about bleak real-life dramas with cutting brutality. The difference with The Bay Rays is in how they flip grim detail upside down. ‘New Home’ is playful, in-your-face, pretty much celebratory. As Harry chants “this new home is all I need!”, you’d be mistaken for thinking he’d moved into a mansion. Completed by bassist Maxwell Oakley and drummer Anthus Davis - a rhythm section who’ve been playing in bands since they were sixteen - The Bay Rays already have everything

figured out. Living outside of a London “bubble”, they’ve taken their time in refining their chaotic, blues-steeped sound. Tunbridge Wells’ “thriving scene”, as they describe it, has been the perfect place for a local band to learn their chops. Their history with the town goes way back. Maxwell produced local heroes Slaves’ first ever demos. “Next thing you know, they’re doing pretty good.” Together, they unite in writing about “social anxieties, pressures and disillusionment” and how “our generation don’t know where the future lies.” Harry explains: “It all stems from that. It’s very hard to buy anywhere. Where’s the prospects? Everyone expects you to go to university, come out and get a job, meet a girl and start a family. That’s your life. I’d say as a generation we’re a lot more ambitious than that.” Life might be a cruel, ambitious prick most of the time, but The Bay Rays are channeling it into something exciting. DIY The Bay Rays head out on a DIY Presents tour with Estrons, starting 28th September at Bristol Louisiana. Head to diymag.com/presents for details.

These previously broke, disillusioned thrashers are getting ready to take over. Words: Jamie Milton. Photo: Phil Smithies.

THE BAY RAYS

diymag.com

WATSKY

NORMA JEAN MARTINE

UK TOUR

SEPTEMBER 2016

SEP 21 OSLO LONDON

GROUPLOVE

BRONCHO

BLOOD YOUTH

SEP 26 MANCHESTER ACADEMY 3 SEP 27 LONDON ELECTRIC BALLROOM

UK TOUR

GOLD CLASS

SAMM HENSHAW

SKIES

UK TOUR

OCTOBER 2016

OCT 10 VILLAGE UNDERGROUND LONDON

OCT 19 THE CAMDEN ASSEMBLY LONDON

RIVER TIBER

SUNSET SONS

LOCAL NATIVES

UK TOUR

LUCKY CHOPS

JACK GARRATT

KANDACE SPRINGS

UK TOUR

NOV 12 RICH MIX LONDON

NOAH GUTHRIE

OCT 25 CORSICA STUDIOS LONDON

NOVEMBER 2016

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2016

OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016

NOVEMBER 2016

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2016

NOVEMBER 2016

THE BEST IN NEW LIVE MUSIC

@LNSOURCE LIVENATION.CO.UK 27

For most, leaving behind everything you’ve ever known to start a new life would be a monumental, even impossible, feat. For singer and cellist Kelsey Lu, it was something she simply had to do. Kelsey grew up Jehovah’s Witness but, on reaching her teens, “started questioning life and my place in it.” The aspiring musician then decided to take the plunge. “I left everything at the age of 18, and snuck off to my audition for North Carolina School of the Arts.”

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KELSEY LU

Kelsey grew up in a creative household. Her mum played piano, her dad was in a jazz-funk band in the 60s and 70s, and her older sister studied violin. Wanting to emulate her sibling, Kelsey also took up the instrument, which led to a definitive encounter. “I went to one of my violin lessons and my teacher had this cello leaning up against the window outside of its case,” she says. “It wasn’t like I’d never seen a cello before, but in that moment it was calling my name.” For Kelsey, it was the feeling of intimacy that proved irresistible. “I loved the idea of playing something that was on your body,” she explains. “It was the contact that I got. It rested against my chest and the sound I got was so full, it filled my body.” The rest, as they say, is history. Now 26, Kelsey’s artistry has seen her support Florence + the Machine, collaborate with Blood Orange and perform alongside Kelela. Even more evidence of her unbridled talent can be found on debut EP, ‘Church.’ It is, as Kelsey describes it, “Lutherial.” Recorded entirely live in a Brooklyn church (“a perfect space for voice and cello”) and co-produced by Chairlift’s Patrick Wimberly, Kelsey’s vocals and luscious waves of cello are the sole components, accompanied only by cavernous silence, and the scrapes of bow against string. This minimal approach means there’s an achingly raw sense of closeness. Despite singing on ‘Time’ that “Everybody knows / The feelings that you feel / Aren’t real,” it’s clear she speaks directly from the heart. Her songs are “written very much in the moment of whatever feeling I was having at that time.” Indeed, many of them have an improvisational quality. “There’s not a whole lot of planning,” she confirms. Closer ‘Liar’ wasn’t even originally intended to be on the EP. “I was listening to a lot of Alice Coltrane and that one just came out of nowhere, maybe a couple elsey has a number of of days before recording,” high-profile fans, and she laughs. “It came from one was apparently jamming on my emotions, quite keen to become her my feelings. I’m really into roadie - André 3000 was all capturing that moment of too happy to help Kelsey pure feeling.” carry her cello, but it nearly all ended in tears. “He was But Kelsey has been carrying my case to the car but following her heart for years; holding my cello the wrong she’s found beauty in the way and still being cool about improvisational nature of it,” Kelsey explains. “We were life, which feeds into her walking down this hallway work. “The things we feel the and he was running into the most or remember are those wall,” she recalls, which nearly things that are unexpected, led to André breaking her that we don’t plan on instrument. Perhaps it’s not happening,” she says. such a good idea “They just do.” DIY to shake a cello like a Polaroid picture…

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The Brooklyn-based singer and cellist

may have abandoned a deeply religious

upbringing to pursue her dreams, but debut EP ‘Church’ is still divine. Words: Eugenie Johnson.

Photos: James Kelly

LIVE

report

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Bruising + Doe The DIY Presents gig sees two of Britain’s brightest hopes raising the hype.

ondon’s Doe and Bruising from Leeds are two of the UK DIY scene’s most promising hopes, so what better place to bring them together than South London’s new, radical, co-operative venue DIY Space for London?

Doe - now settled with new guitarist Dean Smithers - are releasing their debut album ‘Some Things Last Longer Than You’ this month, and the time taken to reach this point shows; the band are impeccably tight. Older songs ‘Late Bloomer’ and ‘Julia Survived’ are amped up even further and rolled out with supreme confidence, but it’s tracks from that upcoming LP that prove the most exciting. Bruising aren’t nearly as brutal, but their charm more than makes up for it. It’s vocalist Naomi Baguley’s birthday, and DIY Space For London proves the perfect setting for a party. Last seen in the capital as a stripped-back two-piece supporting Mitski at Birthdays, tonight’s Bruising is a playful, fuzzy, fun one. Last year’s ‘Emo Friends’/’Honey’ 7” was a shy but fun introduction, and tonight’s airing of new tracks shows that more of the same looks set to come. Both Doe and Bruising are pelting towards their debut albums, and on tonight’s showing, the releases could see them emerge as two of the UK’s best new guitar bands. (Will Richards)

GIG GUIDE The must-see new music gigs taking place this month. Buzzy first steps DRONES CLUB London, Kamio, 23rd September Megaphones, old-school DJ decks, blaring sirens - your average Drones Club gig has it all. Their headline show at Kamio is the month’s must-see gig. On tour GIRLI 22nd-30th September Hitting the road with best bud Oscar, Girli is bringing her uncompromising, brilliantly fun pop to cities across the country. The dates end with a night at London’s Tufnell Park Dome. Racking up the air miles SLØTFACE 28th-29th September Norway’s finest are back in the UK this month, playing shows at London haunts The Finsbury and The Lock Tavern. You won’t escape either venue without crowdsurfing.

S e r pe n t withfeet A Perfume Genius-worshipped star in the making.

“How are more people not freaking the fuck out?” tweeted Perfume Genius when he first heard Serpentwithfeet. He wasn’t the first and he won’t be the last to lose their shit about this Brooklyn artist. Every so often a piece of music jumps out from the dark and sounds like nothing else on this planet. ‘Blisters’, Josiah Wise’s latest track, is a crazed hybrid of future-leaning R&B, earnest balladry and twisted, haunting stabs of noise (thanks in part to production from the Haxan Cloak). Both a blitzing cinematic score and refined, spacious pop song, it’s a chasm of ideas worthy of worship. Listen: The ‘Blisters’ EP is out now via Tri Angle. Similar to: Aliens reinterpreting noughties pop.

Haz e l E ngli s h

The chart-ready twist beach-pop has been crying out for. Just when all routes to the coast look to have been exhausted, out steps Hazel English. The California newcomer makes straight-up beach pop. Heard it all before? Possibly. She shares plenty of traits with her producer, Jackson Phillips (aka Day Wave), and the early work of DIIV and Beach Fossils. What makes Hazel stand out is her ability to apply dreamy escapism to sharp pop hooks. Instead of an airy tribute to crashing waves, she writes melodies that could even make songwriting guru Max Martin jealous. Listen: Debut EP ‘Never Going Home’ is out 7th October on House Anxiety / Marathon Artists. Similar to: An it’ll-never-happen Beach Fossils and Taylor Swift collab.

BABE H E AVE N

You won’t be ‘Moving On’ from this London group anytime soon. Back in January, Babeheaven played a hyped, hushed gig in London for DIY’s ‘Hello 2016’ nights. The West London group seemed to bring the winter fog inside, swarming everything in a smoky cool. One thing stood out, even in those early days - their ability to flick a switch from smooth atmospherics into something substantial. New single ‘Moving On’ is another thing altogether; the kind of track capable of sending any band skywards. Listen: ‘Moving On’ is out 7th October via Handsome Dad / BS3CI. Catch them live at Mirrors London (29th October). Similar to: Massive Attack giving blog-pop a lease of life.

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Recommended

Noname

Creator of the year’s best mixtape? Don’t rule it out. Three years separate Noname’s guest verse on a Chance the Rapper track and the present day. Right now, she’s being credited with releasing 2016’s best mixtape. ‘Telefone’ aptly calls in a few favours - a collaboration with Raury on ‘Diddy Pop’ is a highlight - but it stands out for being able to tell Fatimah Warner’s story. On Chance’s ‘Lost’, she rapped about loneliness, depression and a psychiatrist’s advice that she should “pill pop” to seek happiness. Here, she documents everything - love, faith, a tragic abortion - in perfect detail. Listen: ‘Telefone’ is a free download. Do not miss out. Similar to: The rich storytelling of Frank Ocean.

DUA DATE

The most inevitable future superstar in pop, Dua Lipa, has announced her debut album.

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All the buzziest new music happenings, in one place.

You’ve a while to wait, though. Her self-titled first work will come out on 10th February via Warner Bros Records. Exciting stuff, eh? The newcomer took this year by storm with her GIANT single ‘Hotter Than Hell,’ and last month made her telly debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. It’s all happening.

AT THE ALTAR Blaenavon are upping the ante with new single ‘Let’s Pray’, another glimpse of their debut album.

Led by a morbid, Ben Gregory-penned “let’s pray for death!” mantra, this is the second track to be lifted from a Jim Abbiss-produced first work, linking up with ‘I Will Be the World’. Get ready for something massive in early 2017. Speaking to DIY last month, Ben described the record as “more honest,” containing “lyrics people could easily relate to - no unnecessary nuances.” He added: “If this was all I achieved in my whole life - to make an album as proud as I am of as this one - then I’d be pretty happy to die. I keep thinking it’ll be really fun to get round to a second record but still, this won’t come out for a while. I’m still living with it and I keep getting more and more proud of what we’ve done.” Blaenavon headline London Scala on 14th October - it’s a DIY Presents gig, too. So you’ve no excuse not to come. Listen to ‘Let’s Pray’ on diymag.com.

CR U READY?

The Strokes’ Nick Valensi has started a new band of his own, called CRX. Until now, Nick was the only member of the band not to have started a solo or side project. He was once quoted as saying: “I’m of the opinion that you’re in a band and that’s what you do. If there’s leftover material and time, then sure, by all means. But if you’re playing material that you haven’t even shown to your main band and you’re just sort of keeping it for yourself, I’m not a big fan of that.” Err, this is awkward. The guitarist is joined by drummer Ralph Alexander, Richie James Follin, Darian Zahedi and Jon Safley. CRX have yet to share any music, but they already possess an ace logo and are touring in support of Beck, so nothing could possibly go wrong. 31

GAME

diymag.com

‘Hiatus’ is a convenient word to use for when bands fancy a break. But for Two Door Cinema Club, they were literally forced to put everything on hold. Hospitalisation, alcoholism and depression cut short all plans and any momentum they’d built in a whirlwind five years. Suddenly, these future headliners had to rethink everything. Now they’re speaking out, addressing creative differences, mental health and how they

OVER rediscovered themselves after hitting self-destruct.

Words: Jamie Milton. Photos: Carolina Faruolo.

eing in a successful band is like sitting in a merry-go-round that never stops. With each chance to sit back and take stock, out steps another opportunity. With increasing demand comes more reasons to book another tour and make a new record. A bigger audience is always out there somewhere. Accolades like the BRITs, Grammys and the Mercury Prize remain unclaimed, so why not strive for all three at once?

Some people are cut out for becoming superstars, capable of maintaining sanity thousands of miles away from home, able to deal with demand from fans and industry alike, press intrusiveness, working with a body clock that’s always out of sync. Others believe they’re dealing with it just fine, but then the cogs and gears begin to tumble. In June 2014, Two Door Cinema Club were on the brink of headlining their first big UK festival. But their Latitude spot coincided with the band’s breaking point. Frontman Alex Trimble, already in the depths of a nervous breakdown, developed stomach ulcers. He was physically incapable of boarding a plane to go home, and found himself stranded in a Seattle hospital. This came after months of tension within the group. Alex, guitarist Sam Halliday and bassist Kevin Baird weren’t on good terms. Barely speaking, they bottled up disagreements and bit their tongue with the belief that all this hard work would eventually pay off.

“People say to us all the time, ‘Just concentrate on the music’. we’d say, ‘Fuck you’.” Kevin Baird

They’ve since patched up disagreements, rediscovered friendships and their reasons for being in a band in the first place. But rarely has a group been so willing to inspect their own wounds. The trio are currently in Valencia, Spain, a few hours before a disorienting 1am festival set. “It all came down to ‘momentum’,” says Kevin. “How could we capitalise on all this success that came out of nowhere? We ‘needed to do a new record’, we ‘needed to do this and that’. It’s all about achievement. That new thing where the fee is higher, the slot is bigger, we could bring in more production. It became about status.” Weeks before their cancelled Latitude slot, Kevin was saying very different things. “Headlining a great festival like Latitude is obviously quite a big deal for us but we also feel like it is the next natural step,” he told the BBC. Everything Two Door said at the time, in fact, referred to being “bigger”, aiming for territory they’d yet to conquer. It’s almost as if they had this sense of achievement wired into their collective mainframe.

he trio first went on tour at the age of seventeen, still at school, with university places waiting. “But that was just a way to convince people around us that there was a back-up, if this didn’t work out,” jokes Alex. “At the beginning, there’s a sense that one day you might ‘make it’,” he says, listing off how the tour led to a record deal, a debut album and, eventually, a stint in hospital. “When that day comes - when you ‘make it’ - you can relax. You can take a break. You can go out and do the things you wanna do. I don’t think I know anyone who really thinks they’ve achieved that feeling of having made it. Although we were always in control, there were very convincing arguments made by labels and managers that made offers impossible to say no to. On that first album, when

34 diymag.com

we were touring, we were about to finish. And we were invited over to the MTV Awards in Texas. We ended up winning a Best New Band award and all of a sudden, the label said, ‘Hey, America wants you back!’ We thought, ‘It’d be silly not to, right?’ And we ended up touring for another year, year-anda-half, right after we’d intended to stop. That’s just how it happens. That time goes in the blink of an eye.” “You’re telling yourself - ‘We’ll put the work in now, at the start. And that means in five years time, we’ll be this really big band and we’ll get to do the things we want,’” Kevin quips. “You imagine playing fewer shows, having more time at home. There’s this mystery point where everything’s fine and you can say yes or no, on a whim, to what you’d like to do. Life on the road, you’re not enjoying the things around you, thinking each show is a step on the ladder to somewhere else. It becomes less meaningful. Life at home is this little gap in time that’s prolonging the work you’re gonna have to do to get to that point. The more time we spend at home, the less time we’re away slogging it to reach that festival headline slot.”

t must be tempting to focus on the present day. Right now, Two Door Cinema Club are in a healthy state. New album ‘Gameshow’ ditches any “safe” tropes that second full-length ‘Beacon’ relied on. They meddle with funk, disco and shameless guitar solos - at one point, they even sound like the Scissor Sisters. And together they’re the picture of health, beaming about how they’re eating well, sleeping, doing things they’ve always wanted to. But it took time and trauma to get this far, and it’s surprising they’re so willing to discuss what went wrong. “There’s a lot of recovery involved,” admits Alex. After time in hospital, he went back home to Ireland to live with his mum. “I essentially had her look after me. It was very nice!” he smiles, “but obviously it’s not something you wanna be doing when you’re twenty-five years old.” After the fall-out, Kevin and Sam kept in touch, but neither spoke to the frontman for six months. He found himself the “most physically affected” of the three, and back at home, happy, became almost a teenager again. “I didn’t have to concentrate on the fundamentals of looking after myself. I didn’t have to think about food or sleep, going out and doing things, having a job. So I was able to focus on other things, like nurturing my being, I guess. I was reading, discovering things about life. It comes down to just figuring out what you’re interested in, what you stand for, what’s important to you in life. I don’t think there was any real breakthrough moment, but a couple of months in I realised this was going somewhere. This might have been just what I needed all along, just to take time for myself.” For Sam and Kevin, their rehabilitation process wasn’t so straightforward. The band was in a “state of flux.” Did they think that was it? “Nobody really knew what was going to happen. Alex was taken sick, and we didn’t know if this was

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“In the past, we just kept it bottled up. And it ends in the most horrible way possible.” Alex Trimble

what we’d be doing in the future, whether there was a point of doing it anymore,” Sam says. “It wasn’t initially as good as it sounds on paper - having a year off. It took us a few months to get back to reality. I was figuring out, ‘What else do I have in my life? What else do I enjoy?’ And then you settle into your own life. You enjoy doing things. Life moves on. And things started to flow once we got back in touch and realised that we did wanna do this.”

When all three eventually began hanging out again, music wasn’t on the agenda. Their previous tour had been defined by hostility, and a few words remained unsaid. “We had some pretty frank conversations,” admits Kevin, with a knowing look to his bandmates. “And we realised we could still be in a band together. We started hanging out, going to the pub, WE WERE swapping music and swapping books. I ON A BREAK! guess we didn’t really discuss the band In their time apart, Two Door at all, for quite a while. We talked about pursued very different pastimes. what had happened in each other’s lives over that time.” Alex took up photography. His Mustang Margaritas exhibition - in “You realise your life isn’t just this,” Alex collaboration with Jamie William claims. “We’ve realised that we’re more - was the result of a U.S. road trip. important - our own health and wellThis followed a torrid few months of being is more important - than being in alcohol and drug addiction. He quit the band.” being a vegetarian, too. t’s not like they’ve cleaned their Sam seemingly tried every culinary slate, however. They’re still playing dish in the world (if his Instagram’s post-midnight sets, booking trips anything to go by). He also settled to Asia and jetting off for a North down, got married and continued American tour that takes them through to enhance his appetite. to November. What’s changed, exactly? Isn’t this another recipe for disaster? Kevin got engaged, went fishing Sam points out the difference: “Before, and got seriously invested in it would be like, ‘You’re going to Asia, so hosting BBQs. it’s only another ten hours to Australia, so you might as well go while you’re over there. It’s another ten days, but it saves days in the long run.’”

“And did you know the flight from Australia is shorter if you go to South America from there?” Alex laughs. “It’s a vicious cycle. It’s important that we get back, see our families and hold on to that life we built for ourselves when we were back home. None of us drink or party as heavily as we once might

“When you’re in that bad place, you believe that absolutely nobody in the world has even gone through what you’re going through.” alex trimble

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have. That definitely helps a lot. I had a pretty severe drinking problem towards the end of the last run. That just made every day difficult, as anyone could imagine.” Something’s also shifted in a public-facing sense. ‘Gameshow’’s wild genre-meshing hybrid is one thing. They’ve also learnt how to nip problems in the bud (“It’s better to blow off steam there and then, have a bit of an argument and get on with your day,” says Alex). They’re not holding back. Not least online. A quick scour of the band’s Twitter page finds them calling ticket touts “fucking twats” and declaring the Trump Tower a “spec of hate in a city of love”. After the Brexit vote, Kevin’s tweeted, “Never felt more Irish than I do today”. Sam was even more forthright. “This is an absolute disgrace. We shouldn’t have been allowed to make this decision,” he said. In their time away, did they read up on philosophical thinker Noam Chomsky and develop a political streak? Or has it always been there? “In the past, we maybe would have avoided it,” Kevin admits. “You get worried about offending people. I looked at the criticism of Father John Misty after his ‘meltdown’ of a speech about Donald Trump. People were telling him to get on with it and play the songs. But isn’t that what everyone wants from a musician? Some sort of personality? Maybe we don’t have as much of a personality - we’re not these big, effervescent pop stars. But we’re real people and we have opinions. That’s what influences us when we’re writing songs in the first place. People say to us all the time, ‘Just concentrate on the music’. To them we’d say, ‘Fuck you.’” Alex is slightly cautious when broaching social media. ‘Gameshow’ itself wrestles with “generation information,” infinite distractions and an always-on mentality that makes him feel “very uneasy”. It’s not an original perspective, but there’s a paranoia running through the record that makes it convincing. “The Internet is dangerous - it’s volatile and unpredictable. It scares the shit out of me, for the reason that it’s all happening so fast,” he says. “It’s changing a lot of people. It’s changing the way an entire generation views the world. You go out to dinner with people and everyone’s got their phone out. You can’t maintain conversations with people in the same way, because they’re about to catch a fucking Pokémon. I feel over

LET TH E

G AMES B EG IN

When they were ready to record, the trio kept things simple by returning to LA to record with Jacknife Lee. “He’d do things you might think twice about doing, or might be a bit afraid of. It was nice, this time.” They made ‘Beacon’ in the same studio, but Alex says they were in a very different place at the time. “I think our relationship at the time, with each other, made us do the least offensive thing to everyone. With this record, we left it a bit more up to chance… Jacknife wouldn’t let us stand still. He’d mention if something sounded too much like a song we’d done before.”

the years I’ve lost something in that human connection.” At that exact moment, Kevin’s phone starts ringing. He promptly turns it off.

efore and after their time apart, Alex and Kevin struggled with depression. Alex found himself under “various kinds of mental health care,” living between the UK, Ireland and the States. In America, professionals “tend to just want to sell you drugs,” he claims. “That’s where they make their money. There’s no interest in helping you as a person. Ultimately, you’re not going to get through anything solely by covering it up with some pills. That can help a lot of people along, but you’ve got to talk it out. You’ve got to figure out what’s going on in your mind.” Kevin, whose fiancé is a therapist, says in America “you could sit down in the pub with your mates and it would be totally normal to mention seeing your therapist. There’s obviously a massive problem in terms of their health system and how you go about paying for this - that’s another side to the problem. But in terms of the stigma, it’s far more open and ahead than the UK.” Beyond anything, the band say it’s crucial depression is treated like the illness that it is. “It’s hard to admit there’s something wrong with your brain, to admit there’s something fundamentally wrong with you as a person. Or flawed, or fractured, unlikeable or unknowable,” Alex lists. “Everyone has a different experience. Anyone who knows someone else that’s been through it, there’s certain levels you can connect on. But nobody can ever know what someone else is going through. Again - that’s what makes it so difficult. On tour, you don’t get the time to consider those emotions. I think I was probably depressed for years before I realised I actually was. Which is scary, because I simply don’t think I had the time to be depressed, in a real sense. Because things were just going so fast, and I was going along with it. It wasn’t until we took time off when I thought ‘Hey, maybe I don’t feel as great as I could’. You know, I just wasn’t enjoying things as much as I remember I once used to. It’s a difficult thing to bring up with people. But if you’ve got people that love you and support you, you can get whatever kind of help you need. It’s not the end of the world, that’s the thing. We all figured that out the hard way.” The band’s story isn’t strictly one of salvation. There wasn’t one trigger moment that heroically saved their careers and lives. Instead, a prolonged break found them reconfiguring their own priorities, and the reasons for Two Door Cinema Club’s existence. Within the band, they tackled problems head on and in turn found a means of reinventing a tired sound. But most importantly, they worked out how to be a band without getting caught up in sorry ambition. “Each of us lacked our own voice,” claims Alex. “We’re a lot less selfish now. We’re a little more conscientious. We notice everyone around us and how everyone’s doing. There’s an emotional and social connection that didn’t exist in such a big way before. We don’t fight, but we’re not afraid to say something that might be controversial or hurtful. In the past, we just kept it bottled up. And it ends in the most horrible way possible. It ends up in a forced hiatus, in hospitalisation, alcoholism and depression. But the break we’ve just taken has given us something back. It’s given us a little bit of that wonder.” Two Door Cinema Club’s new album ‘Gameshow’ is out 14th October via Parlophone. DIY

It may be three years since AlunaGeorge released their debut, but with ‘I Remember’, they’re feeling stronger and more confident than ever. words: Alim kher aj. photos: Emma swann.

S U M

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E L C

luna Francis is rummaging through the kitchen drawers in her rented Airbnb, looking for a knife to cut up some kiwi and an apricot. “Do you want some?” she offers, before taking a seat on an expansive sofa the size of most people’s beds. It doesn’t feel like that long since DIY last spoke to the frontwoman – it was only back in March, after all - when, it seemed, AlunaGeorge were raring to go with their muchdelayed second album ‘I Remember’.

“There was the thing of, ‘Gotta get another album out before everyone forgets you’,” Aluna explains. “But then we were like, ‘Do you know what? Don’t worry about it. You can forget about us if you want, but we’re still here’.”

OR Y

The duo’s – Aluna and behind-the-scenes production whizz George Reid - reluctance to put a record out wasn’t down to some sort of second album syndrome cliché. Since the release of debut ‘Body Talk’ back in 2013, the pair had written over 90 songs, but found themselves facing dissatisfaction with the material. Huge hits with Disclosure and the surprise smash of a DJ Snake remix of ‘You Know You Like It’ had led them down a dance music path, and that was something that, Aluna feels, they weren’t great at. “We kinda carried on experimenting with it, and then the tide

started to change,” she says, popping a piece of apricot into her mouth. “Where ‘You Know You Like It’ wasn’t four-to-thefloor, we started to realise that maybe what we did best, and what we enjoy doing, is fine. So we went back to the drawing board and wrote from that perspective.” While things may have seemed ready to go earlier this year with the dancehall-infused bop ‘I’m In Control’, the album’s release date remained unclear. “You really do have to resist the rush. People will always insist that you put your album out as soon as you can and don’t believe that there could be anything wrong with that,” Aluna says matter-of-factly.

Similarly, an attempt to delve deeper into the lyrical content of ‘I Remember’’s atmospheric album opener, ‘Full Swing’, results in more than just an analysis of why technology works as a metaphor. Instead, the discussion diverts towards, er, societal deconstruction. As you do. “We don’t notice how strange our lives are,” she says, sitting forward, her arms animated. “Outside of the West, people’s lives contain a large amount of outdoor interaction. In comparison, we can spend days, or lifetimes, indoors. Living amongst technology in the way that we do isn’t normal. We adapt to it because we’re adaptable, but it doesn’t adapt to us.”

peaking to Aluna, there’s a sense that she’s wise and weathered when it comes to music industry politicking. There’s awareness that streaming has left traditional “You can release schedules muddled (“It about us can be a lot of ideas but then having no anchorage”) and that, in order for a label to truly want, but understand an artist’s vision, you need to get savvy when it comes to the bigwigs.

forget if you

we’re s till here .” - Aluna Fr ancis

“Being on someone else’s track doesn’t give them an idea of what to do with you,” she says, bluntly. “So through performing and doing some singles and getting to know the label we got to a point where the roll-out made more sense.” That’s another thing about the frontwoman. While others may pander to label and press attention, trying to mould themselves into something they’re not in order to get the interview, album or video done, Aluna sits back, munching on kiwi, with an almost confrontational ‘fuck ‘em all’ attitude; she’s not going to suck up to anyone. “I’m not very friendly,” she says. “I’m not a good catch-y-up-y type person. I’d be that guy who’d bring up a dodgy break up in a public social setting.” When asked if restarting the writing process for the second album was any more difficult, she acknowledges “writing music is always intense. We don’t come to the studio with any contrived ideas or preconceived ideas. We’re always developing our skills, but that’s just something we take for granted.”

“Nature can adapt to the interaction with other things, but technology doesn’t,” she continues. “Well, algorithms do, I guess, but as we can see algorithms really upset us because they can’t replicate how human behaviour works.” Like on Instagram. “Exactly. People are like, ‘I can’t stand the algorithm on Instagram’ and then they see that they’re losing engagement so they steal something from Snapchat.”

Of course, she’s referring to the social media app’s recently launched Stories function, which allows for quick snapshots into the daily lives of your followers. This is something that Aluna isn’t too au fait with. “All these things are so temporary,” she says. “The fascination with people’s breakfasts has reached its peak. In fact, it drives people away.” Why, then, does she still find Instagram an engaging platform? Why not delete her account? “For me, it’s changed into a place where I can get a combination of political viewpoints, unusual creativity, up and coming designers and social commentary. “For example,” she continues, “Instagram is solely responsible for me learning about, and embracing, my natural hair through people like Amandla Stenberg and Willow

Where’s George?

You may be wondering where the other half of AlunaGeorge - the enigmatic George Reid – is. Well, as Aluna explains, it all began when he no longer fancied playing as part of the live show. “So much of the press would happen at festivals and he wasn’t there. It confused matters to have him in some things and not others,” she says. So, how is he? “He’s good.” Good. George is very good at hide and seek, obviously, but Aluna’s still getting the hang of it.

42 diymag.com

Smith. Similarly, the whole sexual revolution that we’re going through, there are lot of people who are seamlessly using different personal pronouns and I relate to that.” This affinity for Instagram isn’t just limited to who she follows, rather its rigidity as a platform. Its reliance on images is much more like writing poetry or lyrics; you have to feed your idea through a process – in this case, photography - for it to become part of the medium. Lyrics and poetry are a collection of thoughts and emotions squeezed through a linguistic process in order to be called lyrics. “[Lyrics] are a legitimising of something that I get accused of everyday,” she explains, “which is of overthinking things. You can’t overthink lyrics because the more attention you give to them the better they should be.”

istening to ‘I Remember’, songs like the title track, the Sade-tinged ‘Mediator’ and ‘My Blood’ are, lyrically, more complex than those on the group’s debut. Strong motifs and metaphors create a record brimming with descriptive language, that when paired with the cocooning and luscious production, equates to a listening experience that’s rich, often surprising and completely immersive. “It’s not like I didn’t want to do that with [‘Body Music’],” Aluna

explains, “but everyone has to start somewhere.” This growth in confidence has also allowed AlunaGeorge to open themselves up to collaborators - there are five features on the album, while tracks have been co-produced by the likes of Zhu and Flume. “We don’t feel as threatened by other people around us,” Aluna says, drawing to a close. “Before, we hadn’t established ourselves as artists and we needed to do that. We thought that having other people involved [with the first album] would have changed that. Regardless,” she continues, self assurance glittering in her eye, “we’re at a stage where if George and I are in a room, it’s going to sound the way it sounds.” AlunaGeorge’s new album ‘I Remember’ is out 16th September via Island. DIY

44 diymag.com

eas don’t come much stormier than those Preoccupations set sail into aboard their debut album. In the middle of a touring schedule that’d push lesser groups to collapse, the Canadians’ firebrand post-punk succumbed to the seemingly impossible – it was near drowned out by the noise surrounding it. Months on, a weary Matt Flegel is glad to see the tail end of a year that saw not only his band’s former moniker – Viet Cong – subject to constant scrutiny and protest, but also became increasingly plagued by relationship breakdowns and near-constant uprooting. “It’s kinda hard to keep relationships solid when you’re gone all the time,” the frontman and bassist shrugs. Lifting their name from Western troops’ nickname for the National Liberation Front during the Vietnam War was always going to ruffle feathers, but the band are insistent that it was never something they felt precious over. As shows started being cancelled, and protesters began picketing those that weren’t, the pressure gauge reached its peak. “Being called a racist is never gonna be cool,” laughs drummer Matt Wallace awkwardly, the stress of 2015 finally behind him. In the end, the only way through it was to stick to what they knew best – staring straight ahead. “There’d be fifty people outside and twelve-hundred inside, of all different races,

A new moniker but the same ‘hit the ground running’ mindset – Preoccupations are shaking off a rocky year and continuing their top-speed upwards trajectory. Words: Tom Connick. Photos: Jenna Fox ton. 45

coming together and having a great time,” Wallace smiles. It’s a spectre that haunts them, though – “It still says ‘FKA Viet Cong’ on every single show poster,” Flegel winces. He concedes that that pressure might have leaked into Preoccupations’ upcoming album too. “I was writing the whole time. Not necessarily for specific songs, but I just keep a notebook… I say notebook, it was on an iPhone,” he admits to peels of laughter

Creature from the black bag lagoon Preoccupations returned to the “rural-ish” barn that birthed their first album for part of LP2’s recording. It prompted an explorer’s instinct from certain members of the group… Monty Munro: Danny went to swim in this crazy pond – he went to get the Frisbee and made this crazy suit out of all these garbage bags because we weren’t sure what the status of the water was. I was really impressed. Matt Flegel: [to Danny] Sometimes you really impress us.

46 diymag.com

from his bandmates.

Flegel smirks. “We’ve definitely done that on a lot of the tours.“

“Ooh, Oscar Wilde here!” quips guitarist Danny Christiansen.

It’s a tightening of screws that’s reflected in the record itself, too, the jarring, probing nature of ‘Viet Cong’ trimmed back and fashioned into an imposing, impenetrable new shape. From “shitty, 3am, drunken voice memos” through to that caustic noise of the final product, it was a process that saw the road-tested instinct of that first album cast aside. Squeezing writing and recording sessions into any studio they could get their hands on in the cracks of a near-non-stop world tour, they threw everything they could at the record whenever they had the opportunity.

s they approach ‘Preoccupations’, the four-piece’s gang mentality is in clearer focus than ever before. Finishing each other’s sentences and endlessly ribbing one another, there’s a chemistry that can only be borne of months in confined spaces. Even though they find themselves spread across Canada in their rare moments of downtime – Flegel in Montreal, Wallace in Calgary, Danny in Victoria and multi-instrumentalist Scott ‘Monty’ Munro in Calgary – there’s a constant magnetic attraction between the four of them. “It’s like three-quarters of the year in a van and one quarter of the year… in the studio!” laughs Monty. “And then there’s one day where you’re in your house.”

“Although we’ve done that before,” Flegel picks up, “where we end a tour and then…” Wallace interjects “Just go and hang out with each other?” – to yet more group-wide laughter.

“We had to be as optimistic as possible,” Danny admits, “and that was one of the main themes – that it was kind of reinventing, in a way.” Flegel agrees: “It’s a clean slate.”

“‘You guys wanna go camping? Let’s go camping!’”

“A lot of this, the first session we did, we got a little ridiculous with the overdubs. We had nineteen synths on certain things,” Flegel admits with a snigger. “We had to step back and be like, ‘OK, we need to re-imagine stuff.’ Strip it down – it doesn’t need to be twelve minutes, it can be a three-minute thing! Take away three of the nineteen synth tracks and I think we’ll be okay…” While Flegel insists that he was “definitely leaning a little more towards pop music”, there’s little danger of ‘Preoccupations’ giving Bieber a run for his money. “It’s funny – sometimes we’ll scrap something that’s poppy, and I’ll show it to someone and they’re like, ‘Yeah… that’s not pop music, man… that’s noise’,” he continues with a laugh. “‘That makes me wanna kill myself.’ No, it’s pop!”

he frontman soon admits it’s “full steam ahead” from here on out, and while ‘Preoccupations’ might be a record of metamorphosis, there’s a reassuring familiarity to their willingness to continue with the hard graft - they’re already demoing for album three while they rev the engines for their second’s no-doubt punishing touring schedule. Following a similar thread, but dressed in new fabrics, Preoccupations are relishing the rarity of their situation: the opportunity for rebirth, just two albums in.

Preoccupations’ new, self-titled album is out September 9th via Jagjaguwar.

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aura Jane Grace is a romantic at heart. The Against Me! frontwoman may have a voice that could set the sky on fire and the style to match but underneath it all, she’s gentle and open-hearted. Her band’s seventh album, ‘Shape Shift With Me’, proves as much; it’s an exploration of love and lust, inspired by The Streets’ ‘A Grand Don’t Come for Free’, The Rolling Stones’ ‘Exile on Main Street’, and Liz Phair’s ‘Exile in Guyville’. And while these are her holy trinity of love albums, for Laura there’s a catch: they’re all written for the cisgendered - people whose gender matches the sex they were assigned at birth.

“It is a dysphoric experience, dating.” Laura Jane Grace As a transgender woman, Laura’s found there aren’t many records that reflect romance the way it applies to her. ‘Shape Shift With Me’ is an attempt to shift the balance, tracks like ‘Delicate, Petite & Other Things I Will Never Be’ hinting at the dull ache of gender dysphoria that can make trans people struggle to feel worthy of love. But Against Me! are nothing if not defiant, and this new album rails against the darkness as much as it is consumed. As Laura explains, it’s about transition not only of gender, but also of relationships and geography. “This is a record written while touring, and coming to understand myself over those two years,” she says, from the other end of a crackling transatlantic phone line. “All while going through a heartbreaking divorce, and trying to move on. To me, the record is a document. I can look at every one of those songs and I can tell you about where it was,

anarchist. Love may be one of the most universal inspirations in all of music but, for Against Me!’s new album ‘Shape Shift With Me’, Laura Jane Grace is looking at it from a whole new perspective. Words: Liam Konemann 49

and it’s set out that way too.” ‘Provision L3’, the album’s opener, is the name of an airport body scanner - which, on several occasions, has caused security staff to publicly ‘out’ trans passengers after they’ve discovered ‘physical anomalies’ during the scan. “You’re starting out on your trip. You’re a little disoriented, you don’t know where you’re going, but here we go on an adventure. And the last song is the ride home.”

s she wrote, Laura found herself grappling with the romantic implications of her transition, and the impact sexuality and traditional gender roles have on relationships. Her track ‘Boyfriend’, written alongside The Blood Brothers’ Cody Votolato, is a particularly stark example. The pain of being viewed as male is apparent as she sings “you treated me like a boyfriend / like some dumb fucking boyfriend.” Because of this kind of misconception, she’s now hyper-aware of the way she’s perceived, she says. “You meet people, and you question ‘what is it that you’re attracted to in me? Is it the fading masculinity that you see in me, or is it the emerging femininity?” This introspection can be painful. There’s a fine line between figuring out where you stand and inflaming your insecurities, and Laura has found that her curiosity can lead to more personal, hurtful questions. “It is a dysphoric experience, dating,” she admits. “For me, at least. There are certain things – whether it’s small things like doors being opened, or whatever - you’re recognising the instilled gender roles that people play with each other, and the power dynamics in relationships. You’re wondering what emotions you’re having when experiencing a relationship or divorce are strengthened by testosterone or estrogen; are certain emotions more ‘male’,

Laura knows that there is power in representation, and that conviction comes through in her work. In her experience, the perspective a song is written from can make all the difference. “There was a funny coincidence with our song ‘Boyfriend’, where Tegan and Sara released a song recently called ‘Boyfriend,” she says. “And I heard it, and I was like ‘Oh my god.’ I immediately reached out to Tegan and I was like ‘we’re subconsciously connected right now, in like a psychic way’, because we both have this song that is basically expressing the same thing from a different standpoint. As a listener, how you take in Tegan or Sara singing the words “you treated me like a boyfriend” as a queer woman [is different to] a trans woman saying that, based on even the way the voice sounds. How would society take that coming from us? Because really, when it comes down to it, I’m interested in that as a gender anarchist.”

hile the new record may focus on loving and being loved as a transperson, there has always been a political aspect to Against Me!. Recently, Laura’s found herself in a position to speak out against transphobia, protesting policy issues that affect her community on a daily basis. The North Carolina ‘bathroom bill’ - formally known as HB2 - is no exception. The statewide law says, among other things, that people must use the public toilet that corresponds with the sex printed on their birth certificate. The ‘bathroom bill’ has upset many transgender people, who fear they will be the victims of harassment or violence if they are discovered in the ‘wrong’ place. As high-profile acts like Bruce Springsteen cancelled North Carolina dates in protest, Laura felt it was her job to show up. “That, to me, felt like the act of an ally. Springsteen was drawing attention to what

“You should be able to be

Empowered by your sexuality as a transperson.” Laura Jane Grace or more ‘female’?” Unravelling gender roles can be a difficult process, as trans people begin to learn how to navigate relationships from outside the boundaries of tradition. Lust, and by extension sex - and the dysphoria that can come with it - can further complicate things. Acceptance from the mainstream could make the process easier, she explains. “I think that because most of mainstream culture’s consciousness of trans people is as a fetish or a sexual object - and a shameful sexual object - then, when it comes to trans people being accepted in the mainstream media, what really needs to be demonstrated is that it’s OK for trans people to express their sexuality too. To express that trans people actually like to fuck in a healthy way too. As opposed to a transperson expressing their sexuality and it being viewed as something pornographic. You should be able to be empowered by your sexuality as a transperson.”

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was happening in North Carolina, which was great. We don’t draw as much as Bruce Springsteen by any means, so the act of us cancelling would not have that same impact or drawn that same media attention. By going there, by talking about it, and by inviting community organisations to come down and table the event, we can talk about how to defeat HB2. The people who live in North Carolina who are queer or trans or however they want to identify, who are affected by this… they don’t have the option to boycott. That’s their reality, that’s my reality. I’m not going to not go to North Carolina just because of some assholes.” While Laura Jane may be shape-shifting on Against Me!’s new record, when it comes to her community, she’s standing her ground. Against Me!’s new album ‘Shape Shift With Me’ is out 16th September via Xtra Mile Recordings.

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Burn

Wytch The

The W y tches are using second album ‘All Your Happy Life’ as a springboard to a future full of (even) weirder things. Words: Will Richards. Photos: Phil Smithies.

ristian Bell is recalling a quote he heard once from Henry Rollins. “Someone asked him about why he started doing spoken word, and he said that when he was playing in Black Flag, and shouting so much that you couldn’t hear specifics, it was like when a dog comes over to you, and you don’t know what they’re trying to say exactly, but you get the gist of it.” The story’s one that’s particularly relevant for The Wytches, and new album ‘All Your Happy Life’. “I think there’s a power in seeing someone really aggressively singing on stage, and just taking in the way that they’re expressing themselves, then that being enough to gain some understanding from the lyrics.” Despite this, the frontman has found himself being more blunt on ‘All Your Happy Life’, the abstract storytelling that made up debut album ‘Annabel Dream Reader’s lyrical content proving something that could wear thin. Candour, on the other hand, will never do the same for him - “it’ll help me not get sick of [the lyrics], because they’re so honest.”

he Wytches - Kristian, drummer Gianni Honey, bassist Dan Rumsey and newly-reinstated guitarist/ keyboardist Mark Breed - may cast a gloomy shadow onstage, but the band feel it’s important fans are able to see that the darkness isn’t allencompassing. “I think we’ve expressed our love for slapstick humour and ridiculous comedy,” Kristian says, the day before they film a new clip for single ‘C-Side’, set to involve “David Attenborough-style animatronics”, and a creature whose neck can extend nearly ten metres. “People who know us know that we don’t take ourselves too seriously, and I’d like everyone to take it all with a pinch of salt. I’d love to be able to partake in the whole stage banter thing, and chatting like a rock star between songs, but I just end up getting lost in it all,” he says. “Maybe in a few albums’ time I’ll be a complete pro, but for now our on-stage personalities are very separate from how we are day-to-day.” As Rollins said, a band’s attitudes and personalities come across through more than simply their lyrics.

As such, just ahead of the announcement of ‘All Your Happy Life’, the band released a cassetteonly EP of home recordings just for the hell of it. The more spontaneous way of releasing feels refreshing to Kristian, and is something he wants the band to delve into more in the future. “The album had already been finished when we wrote those songs,” he explains, excited to realise that nothing the band do is tied to a certain schedule or format - “we did this one on cassette, and next I wanna see a release of ours on a crappy, plastic-cased CD. “Some of my favourite releases by bands I love have been B-side and rarities compilations, and while we’re obviously very proud of our full-length albums, so many interesting songs can hide in other places. From now on, I want to try and release at least a few EPs, or compilations, or whatever, before our next album.”

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“We’d run out into the smoking area of venues

yell at watch us.” -

thirty seconds before we play and

peoplE to Kristian Bell

come in and

his twisting of dynamics hasn’t stopped The Wytches from already thinking about album three, with “five or six songs” already demoed and waiting. Speaking from Peterborough, where three-quarters of the band have relocated back to from Brighton, Kristian is clearly relishing the position they find themselves in, no longer having to “run out into the smoking area of venues thirty seconds before we play and yell at people to come in and watch us”. A headline gig at London’s Electric Ballroom is even waiting for them after almost a year away from heavy touring. “We’re always going to go into every show with the aim of impressing, and would never take anything for granted, but it’s so nice that people liked the first album enough that they’re interested in this one,” he comments. A ferocious live band, who made their name on weekend tours before and around the release of ‘Annabel Dream Reader’, Kristian says The Wytches are thinking of scaling back their touring plans after the release of ‘All Your Happy Life’ to concentrate on those new, unusual ways of releasing their music. “It’s important for us now to just keep releasing music, and really work hard on refining the new material we have that we really like a lot,” he concludes. “And we even have quality control now!” The Wytches’ new album ‘All Your Happy Life’ is out 30th September via Heavenly Recordings. DIY

DEAP

r OLLING IN ThE

Taking the vital, bolshy essence of their debut and cranking it up to a . whole new level, ‘Femejism’ is Deap Vally’s creative explosion. . Words: El Hunt. Photos: Emma Swann.

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“T

his record is our ‘Femejism’” declares Deap Vally’s Lindsey Troy, proudly. ”It’s our creative explosion; very pure and undiluted,” she drawls, pausing for thought. “It’s our creative seed!” the frontwoman revises with a smirk, before suddenly mimicking a fast-erupting geyser with her hands and scaring a couple of nearby tourists in the process. “Bam!”

Deap Vally – originally named God’s Cuntry, way back when – have never shied away from wordplay, nor bold statements. 2013 debut ‘Sistrionix’ (another beloved portmanteau) was both a lone search result on Google and a bolshy, bullshit-busting first outing. With its successor ‘Femejism’ mashing together ‘feminism’ and ‘jizz’ into a fuzzy-felt covered, grit-soaked bundle of roughed-up, blues-nodding rock, this Los Angeles duo are turning things up endless notches for album number two.

“It’s just a word that popped into my head, and I never really attached any particular meaning,” drummer Julie explains, sipping lemonade on a leafy London rooftop ahead of the duo’s live return to the capital this evening. “When I looked up what ‘feme’ meant, it’s actually a Latin legal term from back when women were first allowed to continue to be property owners after they’d divorced their husbands,” she adds. “It’s called a ‘feme sole’. It goes back to ‘gonna make my own money, gonna buy my own land’,” Julie points out, name-checking the pair’s debut stand-out track about binning off husbands and thriving alone. “It fitted.”

n many ways, ‘Femejism’ is a continuation of where Deap Vally left off. Many of the debut’s central themes – gender inequality, misogyny and the pressures on women to adhere to a ‘perfect’ image – remain central here, largely because they’re equally pressing issues three years on. The band made their return with the snarling tirade ‘Smile More’, taking square aim at men on the street requesting women walk around with permanentlycemented grins. “Stranger in the bar tells me to smile more,” snarls a highly pissed off Lindsey in reply, “... I am happily unhappy, man, and no, I don’t wanna shake your hand.” It’s an unpleasant but everyday encounter that every woman listening to ‘Femejism’ will recognise in a lightning-flash instant.

TIGHT-KNIT

Lindsey Troy and Julie Edwards met in slightly unconventional circumstances; at a crochet workshop, to be exact. Years on, the music has taken over, but they’ve still got a soft spot for all things woollen. What are the most impressive things you’ve ever knitted? Lindsey: Julie’s really good at free-form crochet. I’m better at following a pattern. The way you can spatially map something out and create it is really impressive to me. Julie: I’m really rusty now. The thing that pops out is the miniature sweater I knitted for a doll, that I free-formed. It had a really flattering shape for the doll. It was a really awesome 80s sweater. L: A flattering shape for the doll! A flattering figure! J: To be fair, it was an art doll! A collaborative art doll with a face painted by the artist Kime Buzzelli, and clothing – other than my sweater – made by Nina Lucas. L: I made stuff for my nephew. A really cool baby blanket that I crocheted. Then I made him dungarees from a 1970s pattern that I found at a knitting shop in London called Prick Your Finger.

“I started writing [‘Smile More’] at a downtown rehearsal studio,” remembers Lindsey, laughing, “and we were going to meet to flesh it out. I got in big trouble, you remember?” she asks, as Julie responds with a comedy frown. “You got super mad at me! I slept through my alarm clock when I was supposed to meet you and Nick [Zinner, producer and Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarman] in the studio one night, and I totally never woke up,” she continues. “You were like, ‘I’m really not in the mood to go to the studio, so you go to the space, and you work on that song’. So I went and played your drum kit for an hour,” she tells Julie, “and then I was all zenned out, and I banged those lyrics out real quick. It was one of those euphoric writing experiences where it’s really effortless, and it just comes out,” she says. These ended up being a frequent occurrence on ‘Femejism’ - in part thanks to Nick. Manning the production desk alongside the band – who produced a chunk of the record alone, too – he pushed them to retain their potent essence, and concentrate it tenfold. The result is an album so sonically giant, it seizes you by the scruff of the neck, before dropkicking you into a bottomless tangle of abrasive squalls, technicoloured guitar pedals, and dirty, nasty riffs. “It’s really valuable for a two piece to have a third input,” Julie says today. “It can break a tie, or settle a war. Also, he’s just

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sonically so with it, he has such great taste for guitar tone,” she adds. “The three of us really went for it. We went deep, we got in the mud. We wrestled some things out, and he was very much a part of the process in terms of how the record sounds. We felt really comfortable together, which is extremely important. You feel like you can tell each other to fuck off, or tell each other it’s great, or whatever. You can get to the heart of what you’re recording.”

ounging around today during a rare London heatwave, Deap Vally are observing a recent fad as it takes hold on the general public; a certain game named Pokémon Go. Though only a few aspiring Ash Ketchums cross their path today, it has apparently been wreaking havoc back in their native LA. “My boyfriend was sub-letting this really groovy property in Silverlake,” Lindsey starts, spinning the yarn. “It’s kind of like a commune. An ex-wife and husband live there with their current spouses, and there are several houses, trailers, chickens, and an outside shower,” she grins. “His roommate was obsessed with Pokémon Go, and so he went to find a Pikachu or whatever, and it was on the property. He was searching around, and he followed it to the outdoor shower. He stumbles upon this woman and her boyfriend totally fucking!” she exclaims. “All parties were mortified.” “It’s such a metaphor for life, you know?” deadpans Julie. “Searching for something that isn’t really there… that you can’t really find. I’d rather keep trailing after the ever-elusive music career,” she smiles, “than Pokémon.”

Deap Vally aren’t just moving off on technology-related tangents for nothing. ‘Femejism’ is a record that embraces all walks of messy modern life; our obsession with selfies and water vapour-emitting pipes included. One minute they’re wryly complaining about a shortage of ‘likes,’ and the next – on ‘Teenage Queen’ – Lindsey rebrands that age-old cliche, ‘sex, drugs and rock n’ roll’. Except here it’s ‘Snapchat, sex and cigarettes’. “It should be e-cigs, really,” laughs Julie, delighted by the parallel. “Or vapes. But ‘Snapchat, sex, and vapes’ doesn’t sound as good,” she shrugs. “That stuff is reality, though, let’s not kid ourselves. When the aliens come in the future, and they find our buried civilisation, these songs can help give them a flavour of 2016.” Deap Vally’s new album ‘Femejism’ is out on 16th September via Cooking Vinyl. DIY

Do knit mess with these two.

“ I ’ d r at h e r k e e p t r ai l i n g af t e r . t h e e v e r - e l u s i v e m u s i c car e e r . t h an P o k é m o n . ” . J u l i e E dwar d s . 59

REVI eeee

FRANK OCEAN Blonde (BOYS DON’T CRY)

Few records need to be unpacked as

hen music and meaning don’t fully click together like a neat stack of Lego bricks, ambiguity steps in. If a record is billed as being ‘open to interpretation’, that’s often code for ‘there’s not a great deal to see here, guys’. That’s not the case for Frank Ocean’s ‘Blonde’, an album that will be poked and prodded at for years to come, and for good reason. Searching for ‘Blonde’’s true meaning is like fishing for treasure in the Great Barrier Reef. There’s bound to be something down there somewhere, but you’ve got to get

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past the infinite, beautiful distractions. In truth, the followup to ‘Channel Orange’ thrives in its own uncertainty. Its best moments play out like a lucid dream. There are funny contradictions everywhere, like how an anti-drugs speech from Frank’s aunt (‘Be Yourself’) is immediately followed by ‘Solo’’s opening line, “Hand me a towel I’m dirty dancing by myself / Gone off tabs of that acid.” Right up to the record’s title - it can be called ‘Blonde’ or ‘Blond’ - there’s no certainty. But there’s something refreshing in not knowing, especially in 2016, when one opinion can be gospel while everything else is void, when you’re told to be aware of everything while barely

EWS slowly as this one.

The never-ending story

anyone knows the real answers.

Before ‘Blonde’ finally emerged, Frank Ocean released ‘Endless’, a visual album that completed his three-week (!) course on ‘How to Build a Staircase Mysteriously, For Dummies’.

It’s been a year of sudden-releases and snap judgements. But few records need to be unpacked as slowly as ‘Blonde’. It will take months for the dust to fully settle on 2016’s most longawaited album. For ‘Channel Orange’ purists, the record’s more outward-thinking moments will understandably frustrate - Frank’s rich sense of storytelling is still here, it’s just fragmented. But once ‘Blonde’’s ambiguity begins to piece together, it becomes something remarkable. (Jamie Milton) LISTEN: ‘Ivy’, ‘Pink + White’, ‘Nights’, ‘Seigfried’

In a roundabout, it-didn’t-have-to-take-three-weeks-mate way, ‘Endless’ makes a very simple point: his music takes time. Tinkering and refining can be an infinite experience. Sometimes the music feels like wading inside Frank’s head, trying to pick out smidgens of sense in a murky pool. But once gold strikes - like on the opening seconds of ‘U-N-I-T-Y’, the playful drum machine beat of ‘Commes des Garçons’, the breathless one-two of ‘Rushes’ and ‘Rushes To’ - ‘Endless’ is up there with Frank’s finest moments. 61

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BASTILLE wild world (Virgin EMI)

With a title as expansive as ‘Wild World’, it’d be easy to assume that Bastille’s second album is simply a reflection of life over the past few years for the band. But, there’s more to it than that: where debut ‘Bad Blood’ was built upon foundations of myth and legend, ‘Wild World’ sets itself in the present day, dwelling in human interaction and emotion. Opener ‘Good Grief’ sets the tone brilliantly, its pomp and grandeur juxtaposed perfectly with Dan Smith’s dark-tinged tale of coping with life after death. ‘The Currents’ is a poignant declaration of our political climate and disbelief at the world we live in, while ‘Warmth’ counts the places we seek comfort, when the everyday horrors of modern life seem too close. Musically, the band sound bolder and more ambitious, yet their core songwriting talents remain at the heart of each song. While ‘Power’ begins with an infectious groove, it explodes into life before ‘Two Evils’, a stark but gorgeous number, which brings a real cinematic feel to the mid-point of the record. After the tremendous success of debut ‘Bad Blood’, it’s getting harder to deny that Bastille are anything but stadiumbothering superstars. But with this second album, they’re still offering an exciting, engaging alternative to pure chart pop, and they do it so bloody well. (Sarah Jamieson) LISTEN: ‘The Currents’, ‘Two Evils’, ‘Snakes’

“What is this, a city for ants?!”

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A QUICKFIRE GUIDE TO ‘WILD WORLD’ Bastille’s Dan Smith has always been known as quite the storyteller - here, he reveals exactly what some of ‘Wild World’s stand-out tracks are all about. ‘BLAME’ “It’s about an intimate moment, pre-death, in a gangster situation. It’s intimate yet completely overblown at the same time.” ‘THE CURRENTS’ “A song like ‘The Currents’ alludes to hearing people expressing opinions that you just can’t comprehend. It head-on tackles how shocking we find some people’s opinions.” ‘SNAKES’ “It’s about that ‘Fuck it, it’s Friday’ feeling. It’s a tried and tested human reaction to go and get off your head to forget about things - this is acknowledging that it’s maybe not the right thing, but it’s something to do.

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WILCO

Schmilco (dBpm) Last year, Wilco released ninth album ‘Star Wars’ as a surprise free download. It came as a shock, especially from a band who had stuck to routine impeccably for their two decades in existence, and with a fanbase that largely wouldn’t have anticipated such a move. Only a year later, and they’re back with another LP, brilliantly titled ‘Schmilco’. Despite proving themselves as a forwardthinking band, open to change, Jeff Tweedy starts the album looking back - thinking of times “before I could drive, before I could vote”. Who can complain about a lack of refinement from a band on their tenth LP and in their 23rd year as an act? With ‘Schmilco’, Wilco are getting funnier, more surprising and more interesting, two decades after forming. It’s a delight. (Will Richards) LISTEN: ‘Someone to Lose’

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BEACH BABY No Mind No Money (ISLAND)

‘No Mind No Money’ is an assured debut, striking a balance between the haziness of Beach Baby’s earlier material with an air of confidence. This foursome flourish when they’re at their most carefree. ‘U R’ has all the makings of a classic pop song, and lands full marks in the re-recording game, diced into a neat mid-album nugget that’s guaranteed to turn the stiffest of frowns. ‘Ladybird’ also gets a brush up for the record, albeit a less severe one; it’s punchier than the original but retains that delicate simplicity – not streets away from Bon Iver, from whom this act get their name. From a band tipped for big things over the course of 2016, this isn’t a debut destined to smash the charts or catapult Beach Baby to headliner status. But as a good, clean indie pop record, it’s a solid foot in the door. (Alex Cabré) LISTEN: ‘No Mind No Money, ‘UR’

Q&A Life isn’t a beach

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WARPAINT Heads Up (Rough Trade)

‘Heads Up’ is fixated on fun. Pushing their luck at times - wonderfully so - Warpaint even manage to make “you got the moves, bang bang baby” (a so-dreadful-it’s-kind-of-genius lyric that wouldn’t sound out of place in a Pitbull club banger) sound entirely palatable. No mean feat. This third record is, at its heart, a sum of all the vital ingredients that cook up to make the magic of the LA band. Since the early days of their ‘Exquisite Corpse’ EP, they’ve built their trade on fluid reinvention, osmosing from the velvety mud of ‘The Fool’ into the stratospheric, misted drift of ‘Warpaint’ without batting a single eyelid between them. Re-energised by a whole bunch of side projects and collaborations – from Jenny Lee Lindberg’s voice-finding solo record, to Stella Mozgawa’s ability to be behind every drum kit in music ever – ‘Heads Up’ sees them finding yet more ways to cut loose and innovate. This time, the fiery furnace powering the record comes from slashing open every membrane; letting ideas wildly collide like supercharged, excitable atoms. Brushstrokes and processes are all over it. The echo of a dusty old piano in Emily Kokal’s house abruptly switches gears, into a jittery, restless piece of almost surf-pop; like an incredibly stoned Beach Boys attempting to cover Kraftwerk. ‘The Stall’ scuffs into life with muffled studio chatter - “cool, let’s try it.” That may as well be ‘Heads Up’’s mantra. (El Hunt) LISTEN: ‘Whiteout’, ‘Heads Up’

Scrambled ‘Eads You know us here at DIY – any excuse for a bit of silliness. With this in mind, we decided to take ‘Heads Up’ literally. Below, we’ve mixed up Warpaint’s faces with some more of our favourite musicians – if you can work out which ones, you might even win a packet of crisps*

With their debut album imminent, Beach Baby talk through its creation. Words: Emma Snook. You’re a London-based band and ‘No Mind No Money’ seems like a relatable track for a generation of young broke Londoners. How much has that struggle been part of your band experience? Ollie Pash: To a large extent I’d say. There’s not a huge amount of money in making music at the moment so it’s pretty right on and also being young… I think it’s the same for people doing a whole host of different things; if you’re trying to make it as a comedian or a journalist or something you have to slum it for a long time and I think that’s what pop music is quite good at. It’s quite good at representing youth culture and what young people have to go through. So I hope it’s a pretty good representation of our experience of working and making music and trying to keep all the plates spinning in London. So you’ve had to juggle jobs with the band? O: I hit rock bottom with jobs two days ago. I was picking up leaves in someone’s garden with my hands and putting them into a carrier bag and I was denied a rake. I had to do it with my hands! That was the shittest job I will hopefully ever have to do. I cried at the end of the day. *Maybe. Depends how nice we’re feeling. 63

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DOE

Some Things Last Longer Than You

(Specialist Subject/Old Flame)

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M.I.A.

A.I.M. (INTERSCOPE)

Today, we live in a world where one in every 122 people worldwide is now a refugee, asylum seeker or displaced person. Countless dangers face these people every single day as they flee their homes in the face of unspeakable violence to build a better life, and yet hatred, bigotry, and racism is a rising force in response. Wilfully entering this headspace on ‘A.I.M’, albeit with clear sarcasm, satire, and a liberal use of under-the-rug sweeping for yet more effect, serves a political purpose in its own right for M.I.A. A contrary, hard to grapple with statement on superficial, RT-if-yousupport-this-cause politics, M.I.A’s album is one that stands composed with a fixed grin, while internally raging. The world M.I.A speaks of won’t be saved by the puny looking olive branches on the faux-optimistic cover. That’s perhaps the punchline, except here, there’s no joke. (El Hunt) LISTEN: ‘Borders’, ‘Foreign Friend’

eeee TOUCHÉ AMORÉ Stage Four

(Epitaph)

Touché Amoré’s Jeremy Bolm has never been one to shy away from wearing his heart on his sleeve, but on ‘Stage Four’ he’s opened himself up even more so. Where previously, his lyrics told tales of anxieties and emotions that plagued him, or questions he could never quite answer, the band’s fourth record has him dealing first-hand with the passing of his mother in 2014. But while the album is very much a document of sadness and guilt, it’s also a vehicle for healing. Living, breathing proof that, even in our darkest of moments, music can still be the greatest remedy of all. (Sarah Jamieson) LISTEN: ‘Displacement’, ‘Skyscraper’ 64 diymag.com

London trio Doe showed a bucketload of promise with their quartet of EPs, collated into a ‘First Four’ compilation in 2014. Everything that made the band’s beginnings so exciting is condensed and refined on ‘Some Things Last Longer Than You’, a bringing together of what their early recordings hinted at. As has consistently been the case over the past few years, producer MJ has beefed up the band’s sound to intense levels, with the space left by the lack of a bass guitar not felt at all. Doe always hinted at such results from a full-length, and ‘Some Things Last Longer Than You’ delivers the lot and then some, with devastating power and sincerity. (Will Richards) LISTEN: ‘Sincere’, ‘Last Ditch’

Doe you really like it? Is it, is it wicked?

We asked Doe some great questions about their equally great album. Interview: Will Richards.

Do you feel more prepared going into this album after the four EPs? Does it still feel like a debut? Nicola Leel: It feels like totally the right time to do an album. Every band is different but it felt like we needed this time to develop and create something that felt right. We really wanted to approach it as a cohesive thing, almost with its own musical narrative which ties into the artwork, order, song names, everything basically. Although ‘First Four’ collated the previous EPs, it was very much a collection of separate entities which were originally written for short form releases and always felt that way to us. ‘Some Things’ definitely still feels like our debut album and I think we’re all really excited and proud to share it. MJ has helped on a whole bunch of great albums in the past few years how did you find your time at Suburban Home? Dean Smithers: So chill but also intense. MJ is very good at what he does and definitely knows how to get the best out of people. We were there until 2am on the last night and I almost had a breakdown, but the weird energy that came out of that session – and others like it – fed into the record and gave it life. I think that’s the kinda thing that sets him apart from a bunch of other producers.

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PARTYBABY The Golden Age of Bullshit (PARADYSE)

Few bands charge out of the starting gates with a manifesto you could set your watch to - even fewer with one as unifying as Partybaby’s. Dividing everyday anxieties into easily digestible sugar-bombs, their early singles injected a much needed heart and soul into pop-punk’s high-gain charge, establishing themselves as one of the brightest prospects in years within seconds of debut track ‘Everything’s All Right’. With debut album ‘The Golden Age Of Bullshit’, they step up to the plate; flag-bearers for a whole generation. From the cop-baiting hedonism of totemic party anthem ‘Your Old Man’ to ‘Don’t Say It’’s stitching of solemn reflection to chunky distortion, it’s vital from the off. Vibrant, fresh and yet instantly trelatable, it’s an old comfort blanket put through a deep cleanse. By the time closer ‘Overload’ drops in references to the preceding seven tracks, Partybaby have established their own mythology. It’s one that’ll stick around for millennia. (Tom Connick) LISTEN: ‘Everything’s All Right’, ‘Don’t Say It’, ‘Overload’

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Q&A

Partybaby’s troublesome twosome Jamie Reed and Noah Gersh shoot the (bull)shit. Words: Tom Connick. You’ve got yourself a record! Surprise! Noah Gersh: Yeah man - our record’s been done since before we played our first show! It’s a bit of a weird thing, to figure out how you want to put music out into the world these days. We wanted to let the music just be there, and not have it be about our faces. Not trying to be like The Weeknd, or some mysterious thing! Our music is genuinely about having fun with your friends, and it’s not about us looking cool or whatever. We’ve been figuring it out as we go. We’re really close to being done with the next one. Blimey, you’re not hanging about. Noah: I don’t wanna inundate people with music, because that can be annoying – bludgeoned to death. Like, ‘Young Thug puts out a new mixtape…’ I love Young Thug, but I can’t find the time to digest it all! I’d like to put out

more than one record a year. We write ‘em! It sucks to sit on music. The good news is when you start playing the songs out, they become important in your life again. Jamie Reed: They take on a new life. When can we expect Partybaby 2.0 then? Noah: I hope that we can get to a place where the music can come out a little bit more seamlessly. We have the ability now, and maybe the infrastructure in place, where if we sent one of those songs out to get mixed, it could go up tomorrow. That would be amazing! The way people used to cut dance records and go to the club and put them on and let people go off to ‘em – that’s amazing! Jamie: Or like golden era Dylan and The Stones and The Beatles – they’d put a record out every six months. Noah: They’d try to top each other!

DEAP VALLY

Femejism (Cooking Vinyl)

Within a few minutes - at the very latest when Lindsey Troy’s gnarly vocals hit in second track ‘Julian’ - it’s clear ‘Femejism’ is at least a bazillion times bolder than already-pretty-bloody-bold debut ‘Sistrionix’. Should you be of a certain 51% of the world’s population, by the unparalleled call-to-arms ‘Smile More’, there’s no way you won’t be punching the air mid-scream, then during penultimate number ‘Turn It Off’, cradling yourself in the foetal position. Lindsey, and drumming partnerin-crime Julie Edwards have their metaphorical balls out further than the eye can see on a record that’s so smash-full of gritty, dirty blues riffs it’s as if they’ve ransacked all the dive bars in their native LA. ‘Gonnawanna’ is an ultimate statement of intent, ‘Critic’ a wry sideways glance, ‘Teenage Queen’ a veritable sludgefest of the best kind. Deap Vally were always turned to eleven, ‘Femejism’ has them reaching for twelve. A fucking fantastic record. (Emma Swann) LISTEN: ‘Smile More’, ‘Julian’, ‘Bubble Baby’ 65

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AGAINST ME!

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(Xtra Mile)

(Play It Again Sam)

Shape Shift With Me

Love is far from a simple thing, but with ‘Shape Shift With Me’, Against Me! are putting all spectrums of the feeling under the microscope, and - in their own words - do not give a shit about expectations. ‘Provision L-3’ takes seconds to tell you how they tackle it: loudly and with bloody fury. Laura Jane Grace knows it’s not all candy floss and googley-eyed staring, and from refusing to wait around for something that’s dead to come back (‘Boyfriend’) to the jaded tones of ‘Dead Rats’ yelling, “It was a nice dream but it was a naïve fucking fantasy”, she’s got us covered. ‘333’ catchily pounds its way in and digs in its claws, swinging toe-tapper ‘Haunting, Haunted, Haunts’ steals the show, while ‘Suicide Bomber’ cranks up the swagger and distortion in all its murky brilliance. This is Against Me! shifting the topic but retaining all the glory: biting lyricism, punk fury and rock prowess wrapped up in an infectious and perfectly imperfect package. ‘Shape Shift With Me’ is one that you’ll, perhaps rather aptly but unsurprisingly, love. (Heather McDaid) LISTEN: ‘Boyfriend’, ‘333’

eeee BEACH SLANG

A Loud Bash of Teenage Feelings (Big Scary Monsters)

Beach Slang are a hearts on the sleeve, cards on the table kind of open. Across a handful of EPs and debut album ‘The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us’, the Philadelphia punks opened a door to a world of young love and old wounds. ‘A Loud Bash of Teenage Feelings’ sees the party continue. Self-aware but undaunted, every moment sees the band pushing at the walls, daring to take it bigger, promising to make it more open. See, the band are at their best when they’re writing scuzzy anthems about the dreamers and, dirt under the nail, every track on this record is Beach Slang at their very best. There’s a sanctuary to this group - it’s a house party where everyone’s welcome. (Ali Shutler) LISTEN: ‘Wasted Daze Of Youth’, ‘Young Hearts’

eee PHANTOGRAM Three (Fiction)

“I keep on having this dream where I’m stuck in a hole and I can’t get out / there’s always something that’s pulling me down,” laments Phantogram’s Sarah Barthel on ‘Same Old Blues’, the second track on the noticeably darker ‘Three’. The pair exchange verses with rapid spitfire, glowering lines that rise and glide. ‘You Don’t Get Me High Anymore’ is a standout, while ‘Cruel World’ touches upon Sarah’s tainted outlook on life and her disillusionment, optimism riddled. Tracks such as ‘Answer’ contain more light, pop-ridden sensibilities, but it’s in the grittier, heavier-sounding choruses where Phantogram are at their best. (Cady Siregar) LISTEN: ‘You Don’t Get Me High Anymore’ 66 diymag.com

KEATON HENSON Kindly Now

Keaton Henson’s first two solo albums are a collection of fraught, overwhelmingly emotional ballads for the broken-hearted to wallow in. For the most part, it’s still very much business as usual on ‘Kindly Now’, but there’s a spirit about this new record that ensures he isn’t repeating himself. Here, he’s been bold enough to ensure his introspective lyrics are no longer the sole focus. (Craig Jones) LISTEN: ‘Alright’, ‘Gabe’

Back to the drawing board As well as being really good at that music lark, Keaton Henson’s pretty nifty with a pencil. He’s put on exhibitions, published graphic novels, all sorts. With his artistic leanings in mind, we decided we’d ask Keaton about his new album ‘Kindly Now’, but with a catch: we only let him answer us with drawings.

Photo: Phil Smithies

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THE WYTCHES All Your Happy Life

(Heavenly recordings)

eee ZOMBY

Ultra (Hyperdub)

The sound of a gun being cocked and fired doesn’t often open an album these days, but this is Zomby we’re talking about. Returning after eight years to Hyperdub – the label that arguably saw his breakthrough - it’s a sign of intent and a good measure of what’s to come. ‘Ultra’ is over the top, it’s gaudy, it’s aggressive and frankly, it doesn’t give a flying fuck. The title is no accident either - for an artist capable of (but certainly not limited to) ambience and subtlety, this is his darkest side; this is Zomby-Ultra. Big name collaborations - from Burial to Darkstar - are occasionally guilty of overindulgence, but when Zomby flies solo, he manages to tie the album together, shunning madness for something sweeter. (Henry Boon) LISTEN: ‘Reflection’, ‘Burst’

eee REGINA SPEKTOR

Remember Us to Life (Sire / Warner Bros.)

Regina Spektor is unpredictable. While her albums are always built on a foundation of classically-tinged piano and her own theatrical, booming voice, Spektor’s attempt to capture the unpredictability of everyday life has always veered wildly between melancholic and mawkish. ‘Remember Us To Life’ might actually be one of Spektor’s most tonally coherent works to date, mostly because it’s almost split straight down the middle into two somewhat distinctive halves. These songs are, ironically, more cinematic than anything found on last album ‘What We Saw From The Cheap Seats’ - that sense of drama helps make ‘Remember Us To Life’ a return to form. (Eugenie Johnson) LISTEN: ‘Small Bill$’, ‘Tornadoland’

It’s been impossible, at any time in the previous three years or so, to attend a gig anywhere in the UK and not see at least one person wearing a Wytches t-shirt. That’s no surprise, given the way 2014 debut ‘Annabel Dream Reader’ and its insta-classic singles resonated far further than the fuzzy indie world from which they originated. It’s possible, then, that follow-up ‘All Your Happy Life’ could prove divisive; if their debut was ‘a little bit goth’, LP2 has grabbed all the black hair dye Camden Market could ever sell, stockpiled pairs of New Rock boots, and wiped a whole branch of Boots of its Kohl eyeliner. There might be a handful of quieter moments on this record, but they’re definitely not light. While ‘Annabel Dream Reader’ flipped constantly from highs to lows, ‘All Your Happy Life’ perfects the notion of living under a black cloud throughout. Gloomy, grey but definitely not dull, The Wytches have cast another stellar spell. (Emma Swann) LISTEN: ‘Can’t Face It’, ‘Dumb Fill’ 67

Jamie T’s new album is tea-riffic, in places.

jamie’s tea We matched Jamie T songs with different types of tea. Because this is 2016. We can do what we want. ‘Zombie’ Green Tea. For when you need that much-needed un-oxidised boost. ‘Calm Down Dearest’ Iced Tea. For when it’s time to chill out, hun. ‘Tinfoil Boy’ For when you drink too much English breakfast tea and start to go a bit cuckoo.

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JAMIE T Trick (Virgin EMI)

Jamie T’s 2014 comeback album ‘Carry on the Grudge’ was, in retrospect, signposted as his foray into ‘serious songwriting’. There were flashes of the man we knew and loved, that not-quite-rap in a broken accent, but they were drowned out by the sensible scholar who, on the likes of ‘Don’t You Find’, was more or less crooning. On ‘Trick’, his quickfire full-length follow-up, that refinement has, for the most part, fallen by the wayside. ‘Trick’ is a record that feels like a trip back into who Jamie once was, only with all senses heightened. ‘...Grudge’ was polished; this is as rough and ready as it gets. It’s not that there’s no progression; lead single ‘Tinfoil Boy’ is as heavy as anything he’s ever written, and ‘Police Tapes’ and ‘Drone Strike’ are

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‘Stella’ Not applicable. Have a pint, mate.

scored through with a nervous tension that hasn’t ever really been allowed to bubble to the surface before. This is Jamie T’s unification record. It will go down a whole lot better with his noisy away-end following than ‘...Grudge’ did, and the fact that it looks outward, rather than inward, should convince everyone else that he’s headed in the right direction. He’s certainly not shut himself off to new influences; you can feel Sleaford Mods weighing heavy on ‘Trick’, especially on ‘Tescoland’. There’s a pace and a purpose about it that should win over both halves of his fanbase. When ‘...Grudge’ came out, there was a sense that he’d been embraced by old heads, that divergence into the typical singer-songwriter arena was going to be the way forward for him. Instead, he’s burned all of that down to the ground. ‘Trick’ is the aural document. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘Tescoland’, ‘Sign of the Times’

ee HOW TO DRESS WELL care (Weird World / Domino)

Tom Krell’s trademarks - hushed, let-me-tell-you-a-secret croons and lush keys - are still central to fourth full-length ‘Care’, but he’s also more free-spirited. The results range from dazzling to disastrous. ‘Can’t You Tell’ is a joyous, twinkly pop song that conquers new territory, but blank slate ‘Burning Up’, however, meanders until there’s nothing worth consideration. Tom has a habit of singing everything like it’s a treasured, heartbreaking secret, each line carrying the same level of drama. There’s no additional gravitas when things really matter, no to-and-fro between states. On dense, ten-minute closer ‘They’ll Take Everything You Have’, How to Dress Well’s see-what-sticks approach actually works. It’s grossly epic, overblown to an extreme, but that’s the point. Being obnoxiously exploratory is a good look for Tom, most of the time. But it’s when he tries to filter this ethos into a digestible pop song that things become compromised. It’s due time he either sticks his neck out and goes full-gloss pop, or hedges his bets on the extremes of ‘Care’’s best moments. (Jamie Milton) LISTEN: ‘They’ll Take Everything You Have’

eee TRENTEMØLLER Fixion (In My Room)

Always a chameleon-like figure in the dance scene, ‘Fixion’, marks a complete revolution from the chilled, mellow sounds of the Trentemøller’s now decade-old debut, ‘The Last Resort’. Collaboration is something the Danish DJ explored with The Drums frontman Jonny Pierce on his last record, and it reaches its peak here with lead single ‘River In Me’, a perfectly streamlined slice of angsty synth pop featuring Savages’ Jehnny Beth - sounding more focused and accessible than ever before. ‘Fixion’ is not a traditionally cohesive record. It does not flow as whole - it’s all over the place, joined only by a sense of sonic darkness. But for a chameleon like Trentemøller, creativity is his cohesion, formula the enemy - and this is his most creative, experimental record yet. (Alex Taylor) LISTEN: ‘River In Me (feat. Jehnny Beth)’

eeee LAW HOLT

eeee PUBLIC ACCESS TV

Never Enough

(Cinematic)

When you consider where a New York City rock ‘n’ roll band might record their debut album, affluent riverside towns in Oxfordshire don’t exactly leap out as likely locations. But for Public Access T.V. – who found themselves extending a stay in England after their Manhattan apartment had been destroyed in a gas explosion last March – little old Henley-on-Thames played an important part in getting the ball rolling with ‘Never Enough’. Add the one track recorded in Nashville – whose scene band leader John Eatherly left behind as an 18-year-old – and more than half of it was made away from NYC. Listen to the finished product, though, and one thing is instantly clear: you can take PATV out of New York City, but you can’t take New York City out of PATV. These are songs that want you to dance to, ‘Evil Disco’, ‘Sudden Emotion’ and ‘On Location’ perhaps the best of the bunch in that respect. This is an album which very much belongs in 2016, and an expectedly assured debut from a band who are by no means redefining the sound of New York City rock ‘n’ roll, but are laying claim to being worthy flag bearers of it going forward. (Tom Hancock) LISTEN: ‘Sudden Emotion’, ‘Never Enough’

City (Soulpunk)

Fresh off the back of collaborations with Young Fathers and riding the wave of excitement that comes with a nod like that, it’s easy to see why they like Law Holt. Much like the debut that afforded the Scottish trio the Mercury Prize back in 2014, her debut is wild, eclectic and impossible to pin down. ‘City’ is an exploration of the self, a generally fruitful but occasionally hopeless search for joy among the shadows of both inner and external loathing. (Henry Boon) LISTEN: ‘Just Another Break Up Song’

eeee ALUNAGEORGE I Remember (Island)

When AlunaGeorge released debut album ‘Body Talk,’ the combination of Aluna Francis’s silky vocals and George Reid’s wobbly beats came with the tag ‘future pop’. Three years later that description proves curiously prophetic. They’re back, now finding themselves in a Top 40 landscape owing much to the sound they helped popularise; even DJ Snake had a chart-busting hit with his version of ‘You Know You Like It.’ So it’s little surprise that, on their second album, the pair develop the solid foundation ‘Body Talk’ provided. ‘My Blood,’ featuring ZHU, is drenched in heavy trap beats and the occasional chime of gothic bells, making it probably the darkest song they’ve ever created. The warped vintage house vibes of ‘Mean What I Mean’ envelop the record’s catchiest chorus, with rap verses from Dreezy and Leikeli47 just adding fuel to the fire. Some experimental moments jar, but you can’t knock the pair for trying something new and, for the most part, ‘I Remember’ is a bold next step in AlunaGeorge’s evolution. (Eugenie Johnson) LISTEN: ‘My Blood (feat. ZHU)’

eee TWIN ATLANTIC GLA (Red Bull)

With their previous record, Twin Atlantic decided to plug the gaps of their discography. Now, with a complete set of tools at their disposal, they feel confident enough to try something altogether different; playing by their own rules. As much is evident from their bizarre-but-brilliant opener ‘Gold Elephant:Cherry Alligator’ and its disjointed thrashing, before ‘No Sleep’ kicks up a fuss as a dark anthem, bathed in feedback and grittiness. While ‘Great Divide’ proved the quartet to be an arena-bothering ‘rock band’, ‘GLA’ delves into the band’s own personalities before translating them perfectly into sonic form. A record that tells the story of both band and birthplace, ‘GLA’ is a great glimpse into the heart that lies beating in Twin Atlantic. (Sarah Jamieson) LISTEN: ‘No Sleep’, ‘Whispers’ 69

eeee BANKS & STEELZ Anything But Words

(Warner Bros.)

On paper this sounds like a bizarre collaboration – RZA, the unofficial head of Wu-Tang Clan releasing an album with Paul Banks, lead singer of the notoriously gloomy Interpol. For extra bewilderment, Florench Welch guests on vocals. Fortunately, what initially sounds like something that will never work out turns out to make perfect sense, with both RZA and Banks sounding rejuvenated and more energized than they have done in a long time by their day jobs. This probably won’t appeal to Interpol fans desperately hoping that Banks returns to the despair of ‘Turn On The Bright Lights’, but the sound of two artists pushing each other forward makes for a fascinating listen. (Craig Jones) LISTEN: ‘Love and War (feat. Ghostface Killah)’, ‘One on One’

eee ALLAH-LAS

Calico Review (Mexican SummeR)

LA four-piece Allah-Las make music that evades time or place, classic stylings engaged with a clear cut modernity. A sun-scorched soundtrack to movie-perfect scenes, ‘Calico Review’ is enthralling in its splendour. So surf-stained you can almost taste the sea salt, ‘200 South La Brea’ breezes with all the excitement and trepidation that comes with the rush of escape, tinged with the darker undertone of consequence. Reinvigorating the band’s instinctive timelessness, Allah-Las’ third album has a distinct disregard for convention. (Jessica Goodman) LISTEN: ‘200 South La Brea’

eee STILL CORNERS

Dead Blue (Wrecking Light Records)

Still Corners are back from exile. ‘Dead Blue’ was written in isolation on the coast of Kent, after the band were pushed out of London by the usual overpriced accommodation and metropolitan hassles. From the bay window of their rented home, Tessa Murray and Greg Hughes looked out over the cold, deep waters of the Channel as they worked on the follow up to 2013’s ‘Strange Pleasures’. The landscape worms its way into the record’s grooves. The band’s dream-pop works best when taking on a nightmarish hue. (Liam Konemann) LISTEN: ‘Lost Boys’, ‘The Fixer’

eeee LOCAL NATIVES Sunlit Youth

(INFECTIOUS / LOMA VISTA)

Local Natives’ journey between 2013’s ‘Hummingbird’ and today is one defined by self-reflection. Having made a significant statement with breakthrough debut ‘Gorilla Manor’ at the turn of the decade, the growth that we saw in the following years was nothing if not logical. Moving beyond the realm of the emotive Californian indie rock that has served them so well up to now, the context for ‘Sunlit Youth’ is one of rebirth and redefinition. ‘Sunlit Youth’ strikes as a bolder statement than its predecessors; this time, there’s a sense that Local Natives are projecting outward rather than in. (Liam McNeilly) LISTEN: ‘Fountain of Youth’, ‘Masters’ 70 diymag.com

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MYKKI BLANCO Mykki (Dogfood Music Group/ !K7)

Mykki Blanco has been consistently bold, unashamedly explicit and experimental since his 2012 beginnings. Being self-titled, this debut solo LP sets itself up to be a personal affair, but it’s also one that brims with confidence. Mykki’s confidence and grasp of melody is incredibly clear from the off. Low-slung rap is applied with brashness to ‘I’m In A Mood’, a statement of intent if ever there was one. There are a few misfires - ‘My Nene’ features a pretty grinding and irritating motif, although Mykki does pull off a pretty accurate Prince screech midway through. The important advantage he possesses - mostly stemming from creating music for five years prior - is a clear sense of identity, a clarity which you don’t find on many debut albums. ‘Mykki’ is a promising starting point for some, a jump into a different league entirely for his following. (Sean Kerwick) LISTEN: ‘I’m in a Mood’, ‘High School Never Ends’

eee TEENAGE FANCLUB Here (PeMa)

Teenage Fanclub have enjoyed a near thirty year-career as one of Britain’s go-to powerpop exports. Having found success with ‘Bandwagonesque’ and ‘Grand Prix’ through the nineties, the group have delivered with consistent quality since. ‘Here’ finds each member at a matured - yet no less tender-hearted - chapter in their lives. Although it’s often difficult to entirely engage with the album at chosen moments, more a matter of pretty structures breezing through without leaving a mark, ‘Here’ joins the rest of the group’s catalogue in being consistently enjoyable, yet on this occasion not without flaw. (Ross Jones) LISTEN: ‘The First Sight’

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PREOCCUPATIONS Preoccupations (Jagjaguwar)

Photo: Jenna Foxton

Borne of an incomparable year, few records in 2016 come with as much baggage as Preoccupations’ self-titled. The newly renamed group’s past still chasing them like a carrier bag stuck to a shoe, they’ve stuck to a relatively stoic path, instead pouring every ounce of their anxiety, confusion and depression into the studio. It’s a bottling-up and subsequent release that works wonders. Opener ‘Anxiety’ perfectly encapsulates the crippling medical condition it takes its name from; an inescapable, stalking whine of feedback eventually erupting into all-encompassing gloom. It’s befitting of a record that’s happier to burn slower than the Viet Cong of records gone by – ‘Stimulation’ might still harness that thunderous energy they built their now-defunct name upon, but elsewhere ‘Preoccupations’ is far more content to lurk and plot in the shadows than seize the limelight. Their second record hits harder, digs deeper and lingers longer than that promising debut, and keeping all eyes on their art proves to be the best statement Preoccupations could ever have offered. (Tom Connick) LISTEN: ‘Anxiety’, ‘Zodiac’, ‘Stimulation’

eee YOUNG GUNS

Echoes (Windup Records)

You can’t keep Young Guns down. Following the bold exploration of space that drove ‘Ones and Zeroes’ skyway, ‘Echoes’ sees the band with their backs against the wall. And from the roar of opening track ‘Bulletproof’, they’re pushing back. Despite being a member down after the departure of Ben Jolliffe, Young Guns’ fourth album is fiercely unified. Forged together in the fire of the past few years, ‘Echoes’ channels the pain of having it all, then losing it. With a history of constantly changing pace, there’s an endless list of where Young Guns could have gone with album four. It’s another risk but with ‘Echoes’, they climb. “There’s no turning back, there’s no escape,” declares ‘Careful What You Wish For’. “Too much of heaven can hurt like hell,” but there’s a bliss to ‘Echoes’ that just goes up and up. (Ali Shutler) LISTEN: ‘Mad World’, ‘Awakening’

eeee BILLIE MARTEN

Writing of Blues and Yellows (Chess Club / RCA)

The title of Billie Marten’s debut refers to her experience of synesthesia – a condition whereby the senses are intermingled. The Yorkshire songwriter sees music as colours. And for her first record, blues and yellows are all the rage. You don’t have to be a fellow synesthete, however, for this record to be a striking sensory experience. There’s a lack of ostentation from start to finish. The sound is uncluttered but never lacking in clout. It’s a quality most glaringly obvious on the acapella closer, a cover of Jane & Barton’s ‘It’s A Fine Day’. All signs point towards a colourful future for this talented teen. (Emma Snook) LISTEN: ‘Milk & Honey’, ‘Heavy Weather’

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PIXIES Head Carrier

(Pixiesmusic/Play It Again Sam)

Many bands have spent their lives trying to sound like Pixies in their prime, always missing some fundamental aspect that made their heroes so great. But it’s somewhat jarring to hear the current incarnation of the Pixies doing so themselves. You can pretty easily trace each track on ‘Head Carrier’ to songs from their heyday they’re trying to emulate (the most obvious example being ‘All I Think About Now’ and its hilariously brazen similarity to ‘Where Is My Mind?’). That initial sense of innovation is distinctly lacking, but once you settle in, ‘Head Carrier’ is enjoyable. Indeed, the thing about sounding like Pixies is that it remains a fucking cool sound. It’s nice to hear lyrics like ‘Classic Masher’’s “they talk boots while they’re laughing at you”, that signature Pixies ‘thing’ of deliberately avoiding making sense. It’s good to hear their unorthodox, wrongfooting time signatures (see ‘Baals Back’). Pixies’ past is a double-edged sword, but that doesn’t prevent ‘Head Carrier’ from having its own unique strengths. (Nina Keen) LISTEN: ‘Baals Back’, ‘Um Chagga Lagga’

“For the last time, Gary, we don’t need a wolf in the band!”

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JENNY HVAL Blood Bitch (Sacred Bones)

Mixing together strangely twisted fairytales with jetlagged goths and menstruation, Jenny Hval’s ‘Blood Bitch’ is a universe swirling with surreal ideas. Ever the experimenter, the avant-garde enthusiast nods to her origins in Norway’s black metal scene alongside brash electronic edges, and the collaged together chaos of no-wave and noise. Despite the spoken word fragments and disarming experiments which pepper ‘Blood Bitch,’ this is Jenny Hval’s most accessible work to date. Though many of her ideas make as little logical sense as trying to bulldoze a pier with a packet of Frazzles (on paper) ‘Blood Bitch’ paints the richest dreamscape going. (El Hunt) LISTEN: ‘The Plague’ ‘Female Vampire’

Q&A ‘No cunts’!

Jenny Hval talks risky working titles, vampires and the themes around ‘Blood Bitch’. Interview: Eugenie Johnson. This album seems quite accessible, even though there are noise elements. Well the working title was ‘No Cunts!’ That was my goal, to make something without that language. Not purely because of the response that [previous LP] ‘Apocalypse’ got but I thought “what would people not expect now?” I don’t know if cutting out the cunts would make anything more anything more accessible, accessible can be on so many levels, but I do think it’s an album that’s easy to listen to. Apparently you watched a lot of exploitation films during the process. What drew you to them? I was drawn to Jesus Franco, who’s made hundreds of movies. They’re very lo-fi, and ‘Blood Bitch’ is an album made in the lo-fi universe. There’s a strong link between the production and the writing situation of ‘Blood Bitch’ and those low budget movies. I had to do a lot of work to piece together horrible narratives, horrible characters, nude women for no reason, vampires, Frankenstein. Very kitschy elements, but also the hypnotic belief in camera movements and the obsession with boredom and the modern condition of the 70s.

eee J CHURCHER

Borderland State

(37 Adventures)

We all love a romantic. Not too soppy. No over the top PDA. But smitten? Smitten is nice. J Churcher’s early singles were like love letters scrawled on scrunched up paper, passed through to someone at the front of the class. Regal orchestration and backing vocals from Anna B. Savage on three tracks help cast a cinematic scope, and most songs wouldn’t seem out of place as the last dance at his prom. If he ever got there, that is. Inquisitive and on tenterhooks, here is a man obsessed by love. Delicate percussion makes the heart ache on the minimal ‘How It Ends’, and it’s tempting to root for a romance that otherwise seems so doomed. There’s a sense, though, that his story doesn’t end at ‘Borderland State’. (Tanyel Gumushan) LISTEN: ‘How It Ends’

eeee MERCHANDISE

A Corpse Wired for Sound

(4Ad)

The nineties may still be the revival decade du jour, but Merchandise buck the trend. On ‘A Corpse Wired For Sound’, their time machine’s set a full decade back from the rest of the pack, more eighties-indebted than a Donnie Darko disco. Waft away the fog and there’s a laser-pointer cutting through the vintage haze. ‘Right Back To The Start’’s synth hook darts about like a techno offcut, while ‘Shadow Of The Truth’’s sheer clarity could only be a product of another thirty years of innovation. Merchandise pay homage to their upbringing without ever breaking eye contact with the sprawling future set ahead of them. (Tom Connick) LISTEN: ‘Flower Of Sex’ 73

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BANKS

The Altar (Virgin EMI)

BANKS’ 2014 debut ‘Goddess’ swept in through a cloud of hype, packing stories of heartbreak, destruction and redemption. But in a sea of gloomy pop, it was hard to figure out exactly what made up these tales. The formula is flipped on ‘The Altar’, a followup that thankfully sees BANKS swapping mystery for potential hits, songs with mammoth hooks that don’t shy away from cold truths. Opener ‘Gemini Feed’ is a SOHN-produced monster, led by robotic vocals that even manage to make the words “you’re passive aggressive” sound edgy. Mostly fed up with the misty nonsense of ‘Goddess’, the record goes on to boast swagging pace (‘This is Not About Us’), a hit-and-miss-but-nice-one-for-trying rap verse (‘Trainwreck’) and a breathless ballad that Rihanna would nab in a heartbeat, thanks to ‘Mother Earth’. Last time round, BANKS had a habit of coating dark realities in box-ticking, of-the-moment effects. That does happen occasionally here, too. Like on the nothing-y ‘Haunt’ and the misty ‘Judas’, where the latter’s important message is shrouded in a coat of cool. But when going for the jugular, BANKS combines unbending confidence, warts ’n all detail and gigantic choruses in the same move. ‘The Altar’ is very close to being a razor-sharp pop blueprint. Don’t bet against her striking pure gold next time around. (Jamie Milton) LISTEN: ‘Gemini Feed’, ‘Fuck With Myself’, ‘This is Not About Us’

eee CYMBALS EAT GUITARS Pretty Years (Sinderlyn)

With their fourth full-length, Cymbals Eat Guitars have produced an in-your-face rollercoaster ride. It turbulently clatters through a spectrum of emotions, replicating the urgency and unpredictable nature of life itself, and is at its most euphoric when not trying so hard to push the boundaries. However, a stand-off, prickly attitude just makes it a little too hard to really fall in love with. The whole album was pieced together in four days, and each song was plied together in only one or two takes. This gives ‘Pretty Years’’ songs an unrelenting, punchy urgency. But it just falls short of completely engulfing interest. (Amelia Maher). LISTEN: ‘Wish’

eee ULTIMATE PAINTING Dusk ( Trouble in Mind)

“All I need is a peace of mind / Looking for a place to hide / Run away and close my eyes” sing Londoners Jack Cooper and James Hoare on ‘I’m Set Free’. True to its title, hesitant early evening hues are reflected in the musical and lyrical content of ‘Dusk’. It’s a hushed, delicate affair recorded in James’ flat with the help of drummer Melissa Rigby. Each track is a musical sketch that assembles fragments of thoughts and shadows of daily pursuits, like ‘I’m Set Free’’s response to mounting bills and debts. Escaping the urgency of old, this Ultimate Painting is a picture of a uneasy melancholy. (Anastasia Connor) LISTEN: ‘I’m Set Free’ 74 diymag.com

•••COMING Up••• HONEYBLOOD Babes Never Die

With lead single ‘Ready For The Magic’ proof Stina and Cat are amped up with the follow-up to 2014’s self-titled LP, ‘Babes Never Die’ is a record to get very excited about.

HOOTON TENNIS CLUB .Big Box of Chocolates

Liverpool’s charming, fuzzy force recorded their new LP with Edwyn Collins in remote Scotland. They evidently had snacks. It’s out 21st October.

JULIA JACKLIN .don’t Let the Kids Win

There’s lots of excitable chat about this Aussie newcomer, for good reason. She balances an emotional tightrope on her debut, out 7th October.

LCD SOUNDSYSTEM

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LOWLANDS

Spijk en Bremerberg, Biddinghuizen. Photos: Andrew Benge nder blue skies, and the permanently smoking chimneys towering over Lowlands’ entrance, Nao kicks off the weekend’s action. All beams and joyous dance routines (a highlight coming in the shape of a super-dramatic spin mid-way through closer, Mura Masa collab ‘Firefly’) she brings debut album ‘For All We Know’ to life in effortless style. THE The Kills bring a KILLS taste of snarling, fuzzed-up chaos to the India stage, older favourites ‘No Wow’ and ‘U.R.A Fever’ sitting neatly alongside Jamie Hince and Alison Mosshart’s bold, sharp-edged new album ‘Ash & Ice’. The stage is later handed over to Warpaint. Previously, they’re a band who’ve struggled with festivals. That’s not the case today - theirs is a bold, punchy set complete with glimpses of album number three. Also on top form, Chvrches’ Lauren Mayberry is a force of nature, whirlwinding her way around the stage, ducking and diving under giant, earth-shuddering synth lines. They’re zooming towards headliner status at light-speed.

SIGUR RÓS

These days Sigur Rós look a little like they’ve rolled around in super glue and run full-pelt through a chandelier shop; they’ve upped their live game – and electricity bill – tenfold. It’s a move that works flawlessly with their intricate, closely woven arrangements. Fulfilling the weekend’s pop banger contingent in one fell swoop, meanwhile, are Disclosure, accompanied by a fuck-off-pair of DJ booths, and possibly the rowdiest crowd of the weekend.

various bits of plant-matter. A few lone palm leaves rise bright and early, ducking among the tent poles for a bewitching Aurora. Across the site, meanwhile, the crowds for Dua Lipa overflow out of a sardine-packed tent, and her star potential shines brightest for the peppy hand-claps of ‘Be The One’. Meanwhile, James Blake – typically not one for the stage patter - is all smiles and sincere gratitude on Sunday evening, calling Lowlands one of his best crowds of the summer. Skewed heavily toward new record ‘The Colour in Anything,’ it’s a beautiful set. Minimal, understated, and propelled by complex technical wizardry that’s barely noticeable, Jamesy B absolutely nails it. By the time Sunday headliners LCD Soundsystem come around– complete with giant disco ball, and a welly-packing catalogue of limb-jerking, all-the-feels, electro-post-punk – bamboo collection reaches fever-pitch, and the whole Alpha tent resembles a single, manically bobbing jungle. Among a scattered, ramshackle assembly of dancing bandmates, James Murphy, Pat Mahoney and Nancy Whang command every last funk bass-line, the former yelling into a tiny walkie talkie microphone, whooping, and whipping out the agogô for an unstoppable ‘Daft Punk is Playing at My House’. Not so much resurrected as completely re-energised, there’s nothing half-baked about this reunion. (El Hunt)

CHVRCHES

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Pukkelpop Kempische Steenweg, Kiewit-Hasselt. Photo: Leah Henson.

pening with ‘No Wow’, The Kills deliver a breathless set on Pukkelpop’s Thursday night (when having just recovered from pneumonia any set at all could be counted as an achievement). New songs from ‘Ash & Ice’ play nicely alongside older numbers like ‘Kissy Kissy’ and standout hits such as ‘U.R.A Fever’. Chvrches’ Lauren Mayberry has her own show to put on, with the band’s crowd pleasing appearance a very welcome remedy to the technical problems that cut short their set last year. It’s another excellent execution from the Scottish trio that can be plotted on their ascent to headliner status.

show their appreciation for an immaculate performance from opener ‘Happy Song’ all the way to ‘Drown’.

On Friday night, legends The Chemical Brothers play out the sort of set which lets you preface their name with ‘Legends’. Between unleashing giant suspended robots, tens of huge balloons and a suspended UFO they’re making headlining look so pathetically easy.

How do you follow an act like that? Well Soulwax have form. With home-field advantage, the Dewaele brothers have more than enough to match whatever brilliance they’re pitted against. With a stunning career behind them, their latest incarnation is as a beating electro heart propelled along by three (!) drummers. They may lack the bombast of Chemical Brothers and the philosophising of LCD Soundsystem, but Soulwax’s twisted organic blur of hooks and ideas, sounds and silhouettes is perhaps even the most compelling set of the weekend. (Matthew Davies)

If there’s one noticeable change in Saturday’s atmosphere it is the absolute sea of Bring Me The Horizon shirts. Rainfilled umbrellas, tessellated circles, stabbing friends (in the front, naturally); it was as if the entire county had been airdropped by Oli Sykes and co overnight. People are crying, shaking, trembling, shouting, tearing every sinew just to

Pukkelpop’s final headliner has a lot to live up to. With LCD Soundsystem though, whatever bar you set will be nonchalantly shuffled over, with a stylish, self-aware detachment. Simply, James Murphy is a man who is not, and probably not ever ‘Losing His Edge’, no matter how many times he’ll sing it. And what a roster to boast; ‘Daft Punk Is Playing At My House’, ‘Tribulations’, ‘You Wanted A Hit’ and ‘Dance Yrself Clean’ all delight the crowd, before the timeless classic of signature closer ‘All My Friends’.

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BRING ME THE HORIZON

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WARPAINT

Green Man Glanusk Park, Brecon Beacons. Photo: Duncan Elliott

t’s a packed tent for Wild Beasts on Thursday night, but a shame they’re restricted to the (smaller) Far Out stage; the neighbouring Mountain Stage could’ve given new baby ‘Boy King’ the celebration it deserves.

The rain casts a moody sheen over James Blake’s Friday night headline, ‘Retrograde’ and ‘The Wilhelm Scream’ closing it out with precision, and while immersive and glorious for existing converts, as a festival headliner he’s got a bit of work to do. During her Saturday headline set, Laura Marling shines brighter than ever. She leans heavily on 2010’s ‘I Speak Because I Can’, with only one song aired from last year’s ‘Short Movie’, and while lasting just an hour, it’s another spellbinding showing. After Julia Holter falls completely flat on Sunday, it’s left to Warpaint to provide the performance of the festival. Tonight’s show is drenched in darkness and rain, and the atmosphere it creates sees the band absolutely nail it. Hits are packed in early, with ‘Undertow’ and ‘Bees’ arriving in the first ten minutes, and Emily Kokal has transformed into a beast of a band leader, scaling the edge of the stage, scanning her prey. Finally, Belle & Sebastian give Green Man 2016 its send-off with an enjoyable enough performance - ‘The Boy With The Arab Strap’ seeing over a hundred crowd members rush the stage. (Will Richards)

VISIONS

Various venues, London. Photo: Freddie Payne

ith a majestic array of pooches gracing the midday dog show, the crowds are understandably reluctant to budge from the sun-drenched church lawns as Pumarosa open the St John at Hackney stage, but with the band giving yet another polished performance as they continue to bolster their reputation, those there are glad they did. Over at Oval Space, Jessy Lanza’s live arrangement is at the other end of the spectrum, but things are over far too quickly. This is no fault of hers - programming at the venue fell horrendously behind early on, and at a multi-venue event with people travelling over a mile there from some of the festival’s other stages, the disappointment is amplified. It leaves a sorry mark on an otherwise great showcase.

YOUNG FATHERS

Thankfully there are no such issues back at St John’s as ESG and Young Fathers prepare to close the day out. ESG might not be as tightly knit as they once were, but it doesn’t matter in the slightest when you’re a cornerstone of both dance and post-punk heritage. Ending the set with ‘Erase You’, they leave a crowd wanting more. Young Fathers are an astonishing live force, and their performance continues to reach new levels. They hardly pause for breath until G Hastings makes one singular address. “We are all migrants. Migration forever. Black Lives Matter. If you don’t believe in that, you can go fuck yourselves.” An unapologetic statement befitting of everything Young Fathers embody. (Liam McNeilly) 79

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Early on Friday, teenage wunderkind Declan McKenna rattles through a small but strong set on the main stage. He seems a little shy to start, but finds his feet more towards the end, jumping into the crowd as they join him for a rousing sing-along to ‘Paracetamol’.

Later, Swim Deep bring the feel good vibes to a crowd which whoops and woozily dances, mermaid costumes still intact, from the moment they debut the twinkling piano line of ‘Francisco’ to the close of ‘King City’. Then, over at the Laundry Meadows stage, Blood Red Shoes rumble through a roughand ready-set to a packed audience, followed by the ambient fuzz of Toy, offering chilled-out psych-rock to a slightly sparse yet suitably enthusiastic crowd. Back on the main stage are headliners Suede, with a marathon 90-minute set. Predictably and sensibly, they cover both old favourites and their slightly more experimental new ground - and by the time they hit ‘Animal Nitrate’ mid-set, a sea of exhilarating screams and sing-alongs cements day one as a success.

Early on the bill for day two are INHEAVEN, with a set that shows great promise. ‘Regeneration’ is an exploding powerhouse of anthemic fuzz where elsewhere ‘Tangerine’ is a slower, shoegaze sprinkled moment of reflection. Either way, we want to know when that debut album is coming. Yak frontman Oli Burslem is as delirious as the rest of us in the summer heat, as during their sunny afternoon set he thanks the crowd at “Kendal Calling” for coming to watch and mention how he likes playing here in “the North”. It’s just as well they’re brilliant enough for no-one to care. Today he treads the carefully calculated border between nonchalance and boredom perfectly, his unusually relaxed and totally at ease on-stage presence bringing contrast to the band’s energetic, pummelling sound. Then there’s Sunday, and, as can often be the case with smaller festivals, its a weird day with a sparser line-up as the show winds down and many people start to head home. Still, there’s always Anna Calvi, whose evening set is backed by a whole band tonight, her deep, brooding voice a mellow and welcome comedown. (Rachel Michaella Finn) DECLAN MCKENNA

Standon Calling

Standon Lordship, Standon. Photos: Robin Pope

SWIM DEEP

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øya

Tøyenparken, Oslo. Photo: Louise Mason

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his is a free space,” announces Christine & The Queens figurehead Héloïse Letissier; “You can be whatever you want.” That sentiment is nailed to the proverbial mast here at Øya, a music lovers’ paradise that houses all manner of eclecticism. Skepta proves to be day one’s highlight – as he hammers through cuts from ‘Konnichiwa’, he’s never looked more on top. It’s a set that day two’s Stormzy faces an uphill struggle to match, despite the frankly mind-boggling crowd of thousands that he pulls to the festival’s tiniest corner. Friday’s rainclouds part slightly for Daughter’s arrival, but it’s no less dramatic a showing of their billowing and blubbing soundscapes. Chvrches are an entirely different prospect, the three-piece’s diamond-encrusted, cascading synth work the perfect antidote to a mud-slicked site.

GRACE JONES

All bets are off by the time FIDLAR arrive. “This song’s about drinking beer,” announces frontman Zac Carper, as ‘Cheap Beer’ is then greeted by a sea of cheers and more than a couple of decidedly pricey pints shot skyward. Final day weariness almost gets the better of Foals’ crowd, but Yannis is never one to let his prey escape unharmed, yelping and screaming like a man on the warpath, goading the front rows into a frenzy. It’s a world away from Grace Jones’ final night headline slot. An impossibly accomplished showcase of an artist whose career’s lasted longer than the average age of tonight’s attendees. (Tom Connick)

The Magic Gang

Bermondsey Social Club, London. Photo: Carolina Faruolo

t’s two hours before the sold-out inauguration of Yala! Records, the brainchild of now ex-Maccabee Felix White and industry pal Morad Khokar. Nestled beneath an unassuming South London railway arch lies a hive of activity and anticipation.Tasked with kicking the whole thing off, The Magic Gang’s upbeat 50s-tinged melodies do nothing but enhance the celebratory atmosphere. Opening with the upbeat grooves of ‘Lady Please’ it’s hard to think of anything more suiting for this humid August evening. Jack Kaye cannot stop grinning between yelping vocals and the bass lines are proving as sweet and sticky as the room’s walls. The triumphant ‘Feeling Better’ is a particular highlight; starting like a smooching soundtrack for a midnight prom. Despite being very much in its infancy, if tonight’s any indication, Yala! is erupting with potential. (Sophie Thompson) THE BOSS TALKS Ex-(sob!) Maccabee Felix spills about Yala!’s future. “We’ve been talking to so many people in the last couple of weeks. I really love Idols and Bad Breeding. And I like this guy called Ten Tons. We’ve been talking to loads of people about the potential of singles and nights but I think we’re just gonna see how this goes and take it from there.”

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INDIE DREAMBOAT Of the Month

INHEAVEN

James Taylor First name: James Taylor Nickname: JD Jim Star Sign: Aries Pets: I’ve got an alpaca called Cecile Favourite film: Eraserhead, because that’s where INHEAVEN got our name from Favourite food: Monster Munch! Let’s spice it up a little bit Drinks order: Gin and Tonic. A classic G&T Signature scent: Sweat Go-to hair product: Johnson’s Baby No Tears Shampoo Song to woo someone: ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ by The Cure. Actually, any Cure song in general If you weren’t in a band, what job would you do: I’d be a barista, because that’s what I was before this band Chat-up line of choice: “I wanna be your dog”

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