Music

by Tom manning

At the start of this academic year, I had the chance to interview the singer songwriter Eliza Delf. Six months on and Eliza is back with her debut album which I have had the chance to exclusively listen to before its release on the 13th May. I can safely say that this album is a must listen.

Eliza’s music is steeped in folk imagery and sounds while having an operatic feel to it that allows Eliza to showcase her truly phenomenal voice. The album is produced by the folk producer Jon Loomes and this professional production makes for an incredibly well-crafted and executed album.

Into The Wilderness is a fitting title to this album. The tracks are sonically vibrant, filled with instrumentation that leaves you discovering more with each listen. The songs feel very well paced throughout the album and at no point do they feel unfinished or over staying their welcome.

Songs such as My Familiar and If She Were To Fall are empowering, focusing on female defiance. Throughout the album there is a clear recurring theme of female empowerment that comes through very strongly.

As I was writing this review, I was considering which songs I could use as examples for Eliza’s vocal performances but, if I’m being honest, every track showcases her vocal talent.

On Heaviness in the Head, Eliza delves into indie folk rock which makes for a welcome change of pace. The drums on this track sit perfectly behind Eliza’s refrains of ‘no-one will ever know’.

My personal highlight from this album, however, is In The Court of the Queen of Strangeness. The title itself feels similar to a late 90s Bright Eyes song. The track begins with these dramatic violin strings that feel like we are about to witness the closing moments to an intense drama. The harmonising backing vocals create added layers to the track and give it a haunting atmosphere.

Into The Wilderness is set to be released on the 13th May on all digital platforms and with physical copies available too. In the meantime, you can listen to Eliza’s lead single Howl which is available to stream on all platforms.

By Sienna norris

I’m sure at one point in your adolescence you had that one boy band you were obsessed with, especially if you’re a female. I recently watched the documentary Eight Days a Week, about The Beatles, and in most of the performance clips, teenage girls’ or “Beatlemaniacs” screams were louder than the music, I got to thinking about my generation and the chokehold bands like One Direction had on us, so why do teenage girls go so nuts over boy bands?

There’s actually a pretty simple answer; because it’s what boy bands are designed to do, yet it hasn’t always been like this. Contrary to popular belief, The Beatles were not the first boy band to exist, the earliest example of a boy band were barbershop quartets, in the early 20th century.

In the fifties, Doo-Wop became popular and paved the way for R&B, heavily influencing modern day music. For the remainder of the century, boy bands progressed from disco to alternative rock and pop, perhaps the most notable era for boy bands were the nineties, groups in this time tended to provoke extreme reactions from their female fans, to name a few: Take That, NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, and since, the definition of a boy band has hugely shifted.

It’s no secret that boy bands tend to be young and attractive, each member has their own unrealistic persona that’s projected onto their easily-influenced audience, each of these personas represent the different ideal male partners for young girls. Speaking from experience, I was a pretty hardcore Directioner, at school me and my friends allocated ourselves to each of the boys, I was a Harry girl, and to this day, I still adore Harry Styles. Interestingly, several psychologists have said that these life-long obsessions we have with boy bands are longings for our childhood and upon learning this, I’ve had a bit of an existential crisis surrounding Mr Styles - Do I really like him and his music or was my 12-year-old self just conditioned to do so?

I was listening to Rock Me by One Direction which I now know is about Liam Payne losing his virginity, at quite a young age, which is pretty messed up on both my part and for these types of boy bands too. Fifty years ago, The Beatles also produced extreme reactions from their fans but their music is like none other, it’s spanned across several generations, but boy bands from this century don’t seem to have that same artistry, it seems far more mechanical nowadays.

By tom manning

When Hana Yazz isn’t busy studying pharmacy right here at UEA, you can find her performing in and around Norwich or making some of the most exciting R&B music you’ll find in this city. I had the opportunity to chat to Hana at the square late last month and ended up talking about how she first came into music (I promised to not include the influence Little Mermaid had on her as a child), some of her influences, and what we can expect from her going forward including experimenting with production and potentially a new EP.

I opened up the interview asking about how she got into music. “I started off with little school things like Jessie J Pride kind of stuff in year 6 [at this point we went off on quite a tangent about Jessie J’s relationship with Channing Tatum]…and then when it actually kind of kicked off was when I was doing DofE in year 12. You need to do a skill for it and I mentioned how I could sing. The teachers at the time were like funnily enough we’re partnered with a music studio kind of thing for young people and you can do it there. I’d never been to a studio before but it wasn’t what I was expecting because when I went there it turns out it was a juvenile thing which I didn’t mind and added to the heat of it! But it was kind of like community service kind of stuff and there were loads of roadmen and just me, I was doing covers mainly.

“One guy there though was working with the BBC and he asked me if I wanted to be in the choir for Harry and Megan’s wedding but I had to be 18 which was annoying. Then he said ‘hey why don’t you write your own songs’ and said how I can use type beats on YouTube as I couldn’t play any instruments. But yeah I really liked that and just kept doing it and after a while reached out to pretty much every producer in London. I got blanked by pretty much 90% of them but one person actually responded. She was like an assistant engineer at the time at this fancy studio. Funnily enough she’s now done stuff with Koffee and I think she’s been on something that’s Grammy nominated too. That’s the one that’s got all my plays too [Fantasy].”

Hana’s music has strong R&B influences sounding similar to the likes of Jorja Smith. I asked Hana whether Jorja was an influence and what other music has played an influence in hers. “It’s funny you should say that because in that time period I was listening to a lot of Jorja Smith, Daniel Caesar, Rex Orange County. That was one of the things I think that really made me want to start making my own music because when I started listening to Rex he had less than ten thousand plays, so watching him grow I was like yeah that’s definitely possible. Arctic monkeys was an influence too. Especially their quite off beat lyrics. I think my influences have definitely changed and gotten a lot funkier.”

Hana recently performed at Voodoo Daddy’s with the Stripped Sets collective and I asked her about this experience. “Yeah that was really cool, I’d only ever done three other shows, a couple in London and this was the first one where it was organised by artists and probably the most proper show I’d ever done. It was actually quite stressful because the band I was meant to be playing with cancelled and so I had to switch to backing tracks which was fine in the end and my mum said I should just have fun. I think it definitely produced the best performance I’d done on stage.”

I asked Hana whether she had any other live shows planned in Norwich this year. “Yeah, I’ve actually got one planned on May 10th with the music college Access. That college is literally right next to Epic Studios and the gig’s in a café between the college and the studios and it’s free! I’ll be with a band too.”

Trying to do a degree is hard work in itself, but balancing music with studying is hard to balance. I asked Hana how she found it, “If I feel like doing something musical I’ll tend to just do it, I don’t really do it in my day to day which does upset me. I do it when I can and sometimes I’ll get splurges. I think for making an album I want to wait until I really know what

I want it to sound like. Right now it’s just experimenting so I think I want to do another EP before I do an album. I’m excited about my new music, I think it’s a lot less commercial sounding and more whatever sounds great.”

Be sure to keep up to date with Hana’s latest work across all digital platforms.

by lily boag

Growing up with a teenage sister in the early 2000’s, MTV ruled our television screen. Counting down the top charts while we fought over whose turn it was to take over the control, we spent the weekends dancing to music videos in the living room. But in an age where Spotify and TikTok now take precedence as the top video and music entertainment platforms, we may question whether music videos are still relevant today.

However, with the release of Blockbuster album length videos like Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’, and Taylor Swift’s short film production of ‘All Too Well’ which took the internet by storm and turned the world against Jake Gyllenhaal, it seems that we’re on the verge of a new music-video golden age.

Having become a key part of an album rollout to have at least one music video accompany a single, music videos have become a staple of music in the 21st century. Designed to promote the creative vision of new and existing artists with artistic visuals that allow listeners to see the world of the music through the performer’s eyes, it’s no wonder that the music video scene continues to thrive as they function as an essential marketing tool to boost a musician’s visibility and exposure.

So, in celebration of the art of the music video, here’s my top ten list of cult classics and artistic explorations in order of their release: 1. Thriller– Michael Jackson (1983) A Halloween classic featuring the King of Pop’s iconic zombie dance. 2. Take on me – a-ha (1985) A surreal sketch-pad moment that helped redefine music videos for MTV. 3. Sabotage – Beastie Boys (1994) A grunge-rap song accompanied by a parody of 1970’s American cop dramas. 4. Baby One More Time – Britney Spears (1998) Features Spears’ iconic schoolgirl dance routine. 5. Stan – Eminem feat. Dido (2000) An obsessed fan named Stan writes the rapper multiple letters. 6. Weapon of Choice – Fatboy Slim (2001) Christopher Walken struts his stuff to a groovy number. 7. The Scientist – Coldplay (2002) Moving in reverse motion as Chris Martin sings his lyrics backwards. 8. Single Ladies (Put a ring on it) Beyonce (2008) A black and white clip featuring Queen Bey’s signature dance moves. 9. Wrecking Ball - Miley Cyrus (2014) A nude Miley Cyrus swings in on a wrecking ball. 10. HUMBLE. – Kendrick Lamar (2017) Winner of Video of the Year at the MTV VMA’s and Best Music Video at the Grammys.

BY SEB LLOYD

A Google search of ‘Why do we Continue to Obsess about things that Disappoint us?’ throws up some Psychology Today self-care tips, celebrity obsession blog posts and if you keep scrolling, plenty of poorly curated Reddit feeds. At the height of my obsession with the Manic Street Preachers I saw them live at OnBlackheath in 2015. As the band laboured through their classics, my excitement curled into its shell like a hormonal mollusc. I was disappointed, even embarrassed. Why, of all my family, was I the most excited to see these 3 grumpy Welsh men? Who the hell were these guys, I wanted MY Manic’s! James Dean Bradfield with a crucifix on his chest singing ‘We live in urban hell’, spitting on the crowd . What had this Dad-bod done with my band! My 15-year-old self could not cope.

Upon discovering their early 90s incarnation 2 years earlier, a bunch of no-good atoms smashed guitars on stage in my adolescent brain. The Manic’s were effeminate and masculine, glib and anti-establishment. They cross-dressed, talked about books and miners strikes in interviews. They sounded like a scruffy Guns N Roses, not too punk, not too rock. They towed the line between my burgeoning Grunge love and MTV tuned palette.

Their self-destructive mantras ‘I believe in Nothing, but it is my nothing.’ Were clunky, poetic, nihilistic, smothered in leopard-print. ‘We thought we were a million times better than every band.’ Was the ballsy boast, and I was sold.

My true obsession began around early 2014, by which time delivering me to their glory days required hours of Youtube and sentimental fanzines. I bought 10 albums, 2 compilations, 2 EP’s, I read 3 fan written books and watched every gig and interview there was to consume. I printed off Richie’s infamous response to criticism on the 15th of May 1991 when he carved ‘4 REAL’ into his arm after a gig at Norwich Arts Centre (right) and stuck it to my wall, much to the perplexity and disgust of my friends and family. His dark, hunting eyes would follow me around my room for 3 years. Merch followed, T-shirts, mementos, a pair of white jeans (not strictly merch but required!), I quickly covered the arse of said jeans with anti-climb paint on first use and haven’t removed the stain since. Crucially no matter what I said or did, they were still a tired old touring band.

One reason for this was my Manic Street Preachers never existed. I thought Richie was beautiful, I thought writing the lyrics before the music was poetic, I thought the look was tasteless, sexy and cliché. I even thought my friends dislike or at best indifference was kind of alluring. I was rejecting the greasy haired indie aesthetic that seemed to be re-establishing itself again with Alex Turner’s discovery of hair gel (although I still loved the Arctic Monkeys). They didn’t dress like Topman models and say things like ‘I like riding

motorcycles indoors.’ (real Johnny Borrell quote) In my head they lolloped around, undereating, being antimachismo, reading Sylvia Plath and Tennessee Williams. If I could do that, or get close, it wouldn’t matter what era I was in.

The disappointment of the band in reality caused me to start Reading collections of fans experiences at the time. I listened just as extensively, if not more, to discography post-Richie, even into their dwindling mid-2000s years despite some of the music being truly terrible (‘Emily’ from Lifeblood is a grim example). Every piece of music I heard by the Manic’s had become potential to manufacture my own world. The quality or lack of quality in the art had become redundant.

They said things like ‘I wanted to be popular, nothing else.’ It was arrogant but honest. At 15, I thought it looked dazzling to be famous, more so to achieve it while still so naïve and impressionable yourself. They addressed sex (‘Yes’), masculinity (‘Little Baby Nothing’) and morality (‘Archives of Pain’) while Richie Edward’s disappearance meant the Manic’s went on to become both grief stricken and ironized. As a young Nicky Wire scoffed in 1990 “We’ll be dead before we have to (write love songs), anyway.’ But Richie for so many years was only missing, leaving them in limbo. A limbo I could not tolerate much longer. A year later I defaced my ‘4 REAL’ picture and retired my printed photo wall. I had to obsess about the Manic’s long enough for them to feel fully 3-dimensional, for me to gather enough information to build an obsessive Rubic’s cube of fact and fiction. Only when no side of the story was fully complete could I see the contradictions in these musicians I loved so much. Only then could I exhibit any youthful self-care, and listen to someone within 20 years of my age, which I promptly did, maybe a little Manic Obsession wasn’t such a bad way of getting started.