088
Releases
07
The Breeders All Nerve 4AD
08 04 Mist Diamond in the Dirt Sickmade
REVIEWS
Mist came through in a major way on this nine-track EP. Running like a movie with Rick Ross-level cinematics, the project sees the Birmingham rapper operating in second gear, matching slick, bassheavy production with stone cold lyrical steez. Intro Dreams to Reality is the calm before the storm, brewing with passion and demonstrating an audible improvement in Mist's trademark flows. As he strives to make the world a better place for his daughter on the Jessie Ware-assisted Wish Me Well and repress his anguish with honesty on Display Skills (“You know I’m the realest, my pain so deep you can feel it, I won’t tell you what I’ve seen but I seen it”), Mist continues to make gold with producer Steel Banglez. The same can be said for Screw and Brew teammate MoStack, who waltzes past a star turn on the slow-burning bop of Uber. Closing track Moshpit, also featuring Stack and produced by Swifta Beater, is an intense curveball from Mist; out with the smooth beats and in comes a visceral grime instrumental with frantic vocals to match. Featured vocalists Nines, Fekky, Mr. Eazi and WSTRN’s Haile contribute a sense of variety to the project without overshadowing the main star. Expect more health and wealth for Mist this year, with Diamond in the Dirt at the heart of it all. !
Yemi Abiade
The Garden Mirror Might Steal Your Smile Epitaph The Garden have managed to avoid strict categorisation in the seven years that they’ve been together so far. Still only 24 years old, for this third album the Californian twins don’t hold back when it comes to indulging their creative whims. The irony is that the curveballs almost become predictable as a result. On the back of the last two LPs, you’d expect Mirror Might Steal Your Smile to place moments that genuinely thrill alongside some badly-advised missteps. Sure enough, that’s what we get. This is an erratic piece of work that works better when it sticks to power pop on tracks like Call the Dogs Out and No Destination (credit where it’s due, too, for the furious psych punk of Voodoo Luck). Elsewhere, the dalliances with Busdriver-style alternative hip-hop – Make a Wish, A Message for Myself – are both garish and fall flat, whilst the less said about the messy, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink experiment Shameless Shadow, the better. You very much get the sense that The Garden are their own favourite band. You wonder, though, whether they’re anybody else’s. !
Joe Goggins
The Breeders have been a shape-shifting pillar of underrated alternative rock since the early 90s. Conceived by Kim Deal while touring with the Pixies – and at the time also including Throwing Muses’ Tanya Donelly – the band’s second album Last Splash achieved crossover success, in part thanks to their 1993 hit single Cannonball. But in 1995 Kim’s bandmate and twin sister Kelley was admitted to rehab, and The Breeders subsequently went on hiatus. When The Breeders eventually returned with a different line-up for 2002’s Title TK album, Kim’s deft song writing style and talent for a droll melancholy was given space and resonance. The formula of sideways, screeching pop, muted guitar distortion and vocals buried in effects that so defined The Breeders’ college rock days gave way to the scaled-back harmonies supported by engineer Steve Albini’s famously hands-off process. By 2008’s Mountain Battles, the band's embrace of elemental, dancefloor rhythms made it clear that their fraught history of yearsdelayed releases was small but impeccable. Reunited for the 20th anniversary of Last Splash five years ago, All Nerve sees the original cast of that iconic album establish The Breeders as a project of a quality comparable to PJ Harvey’s always developing, ever-evolving oeuvre – only at a fraction of the output. A theremin opening leads into the heavy breathing and cracked vocal of opener Nervous Mary, while Josephine Wiggs’ British accent delivers spoken word poetry carried on an insistent storm of bass and scratchy guitar pitches for MetaGoth. Meanwhile, Dawn: Making an Effort is perhaps the subtle standout, and part of the unsung aspect of The Breeders’ key strength. "Bursting flowers/ one wild sprawl/ untethered." It’s one where a mournful instrumental arrangement acts as a vast cushion for the raw and stripped back words of a world-worn life of loss and regret. !
Steph Kretowicz
07 08
Dabrye Three/Three Ghostly International
Frankie Cosmos Vessel Sub Pop A new Frankie Cosmos album can feel like picking up a lost thread of conversation. The band’s founder and leader Greta Kline is prolific – over the last six years she’s released 52 projects – and Vessel is the third studio album from Frankie Cosmos. Kline’s short songs, often seizing on one concept for under two minutes before moving on, have the effect of a meandering night in, drinking wine and batting back and forth ideas, circling around to the same topics but loving the detours. Frankie Cosmos’ bedroom indie sound remains similar to 2016’s Next Thing album and it’s easy to find Vessel a continuation of a vibe rather than something entirely new. But when you’re doing the quiet, certain loneliness as Kline does so well, why bother mixing it up? With Vessel comfort and anxiety track along side by side. The 30 second track My Phone feels like a 60s love song reimagined in the social media era, with Kline crooning sweetly, “Throw my phone out/ I know you’d be around/ you’re easy to be found/ I’m easy to be found”. It’s swiftly followed by Cafeteria, where Kline frets and backtracks: “I never look back/ It only hurts my head… Okay sometimes I look/ But only for a sec”. Greta Kline’s world is one of both grand potential and selflimitation. “And I knew,” she sings on excellent lead single Jesse, “if I thought really hard about flying/ I could probably do it/ I’m just too tired for trying.” Nothing is ever easy in Frankie Cosmos territory; nothing, as she sings on the title track, comes natural. Kline has a keen, quick grip on the back-and-forth of modern uncertainty, swinging high from triumph to low-lit sorrow. It’s why she’s such a comfort to return to, keeping you company in the long nights, laughing with you again in the morning over breakfast. !
Mikaella Clements
Under a manifold of aliases, Tadd Mullinix has tinkered with genres from glitchy acid house to raw-boned industrial. But the Michigan beatmaker is most known for his electronicainfluenced hip-hop as Dabrye. Dabrye has been quiet since 2008’s Get Dirty, but time has gifted Three/Three, Mullinix’s final instalment of his trilogy of albums for Ghostly International, with a greater perspective. Whereas Two/Three was heavy handed with the intersecting of angular electronica and sparse Dillabound hip-hop, Dabrye’s latest sharpens his tracks’ structural trajectories for the record’s myriad of MCs to lyrically doodle over. The kinetic flows of La Peace in Fightscene, Fatt Father’s Detroit-endowed story-building on Stranded, Jonwayne’s playful “Ain’t you learned how to knock?” refrain on Pretty have all been meticulously delegated to a beat that compliments their inimitable styles. Three/Three’s exclusively instrumental tracks, Electrocutor, Sunset (with Shigeto) and Vert-Horiz, are where Dabrye flags. Regardless, the amalgam of Clear Soul Forces’ plaited flows above perverted G-Funk on Sisfo Ridin’ and the irregular verbal discharges from Doom on Lil Mufukuz certifies Dabrye’s return to hip-hop production as not only welcome, but essential. !
Tom Watson