DIY, June 2021

DIY

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Warpaint John Grant Lucy Dacus Japanese Breakfast

ISSUE 108 • JUNE 2021 DIYMAG.COM

Grand Expectations WOLF ALICE JUST GOT SERIOUS

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As Wolf Alice are proving, a band's third album is meant to be the one that cements their legacy. So what are the best LP3s from music past?

LOUISE MASON • Art Director ‘The Queen is Dead’, ‘In Utero’ and ‘154’ were all gamechangers in equally wild amounts, but ‘Doolittle’ was and will continue to be the bible.

ELLY WATSON • Digital Editor Brockhampton’s third studio album (and last in their Saturation series) ‘Saturation III’ is so banger-packed it should come with a warning label.

THE STREETS WHO’S GOT THE BAG (21ST JUNE) The theme tune to The Grand Reopening, Mike Skinner’s lairy ode is essentially the ‘Three Lions’ to 21st June’s World Cup. “Curse off the zoom/ Burstin' we boom/ First in the room” - LET’S FAAACKIN’ ‘AVE IT!

BEASTIE BOYS - (YOU GOTTA) FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT (TO PARTY) Nobody understands the pure necessity of going out, shaking a leg and letting off some steam as much as the Beastie Boys. It isn’t just an urge, it’s a goddamn RIGHT, and after 18 months of cautious distancekeeping, the idea of having a big old communal jump around to this banger sounds nothing short of bliss.

QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE FEEL GOOD HIT OF THE SUMMER While we here at DIY in no way condone the naughty shopping list that Josh Homme and co sniff their way through on ‘Feel Good Hit…’, we can get behind the sentiment of the track nonetheless. The sentiment being: 100% hedonism, 100% of the time.

Yes please.

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LISA WRIGHT • Features Editor ‘Leisure’ was the baggy intro, ‘Modern Life Is Rubbish’ is probably the more muso choice, but ‘Parklife’ was when Blur hit the sweet spot of undeniably massive hits (‘Girls & Boys’, ‘End Of A Century’, the title track - duh) and weepies like ‘Badhead’ and ‘This Is A Low’ that'll hit you in the feels every damn time.

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EMMA SWANN • Founding Editor Not only was ‘White Blood Cells’ the record that saw The White Stripes move from Detroit curio to international sensation, it’s also the record of theirs I find myself returning to the most.

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SARAH JAMIESON • Managing Editor Obviously - OBVIOUSLY - a huge part of me is screaming ‘The Black Parade’ because - let’s face it - it was probably My Chemical Romance’s finest era. However, Arcade Fire’s ‘The Suburbs’ still thumps me squarely in the chest every time I hear the opening piano chords of the title track. Makes me get a little mistyeyed even thinking about it...

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QUESTION!

JUNE 2021

EDITOR'S LETTER Let’s be honest: ever since that glorious night back in 2018 when Wolf Alice won the Hyundai Mercury Prize for ‘Visions Of A Life’ (and DIY had one too many celebratory vinos in the process), we - like much of the rest of the country - have been patiently waiting to discover what magic they had in store for us next. And even we couldn’t have imagined how incredible ‘Blue Weekend’ could be. That’s why there’s no other band we’d rather have on the cover this month.

That’s not all! Elsewhere in our June 2021 issue, we dive into the past and explore Lucy Dacus’ early memories, we usher in Japanese Breakfast’s new era as she releases third album ‘Jubilee’, and we reconvene with Warpaint to talk their forthcoming new album, and how they’ve been piecing it together from across the world. Plus, there’s chats with John Grant, Rostam, Sigrid and even Sugababes (!)

Yes, you did read that right!

Sarah Jamieson, Managing Editor

ISSUE PLAYLIST Scan the Spotify code to listen to our June playlist now.

WELCOME

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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. 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 DIY 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.

Shout out to everyone involved in making the Big Bank Holiday Weekender a success, William and state51 for letting us shoot the cover feature in your factory / abuse your grand piano, Pooneh Ghana & Meesh, Natalie Piserchio & Colin Kerrigan, Super Unison Studios, Ryan @ We Care A Lot and Elspeth @ Artists' Way for their last-minute magic.

Founding Editor Emma Swann Managing Editor Sarah Jamieson Features Editor Lisa Wright Digital Editor Elly Watson Art Direction & Design Louise Mason Contributors Alex Cabré, Bella Martin, Ben Tipple, Cady Siregar, Eloise Bulmer, Elvis Thirlwell, Gemma Samways, Jack Doherty, Jenessa Williams, Joe Goggins, Louisa Dixon, Natalie Piserchio, Neeham Rahman, Nick Harris, Pooneh Ghana, Sean Kerwick.

Cover photo Pooneh Ghana For DIY editorial: info@diymag.com For DIY sales: advertise@diymag.com For DIY stockist enquiries: stockists@diymag.com

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PAINTING A MASTERPIECE

Five years on from their last record, WARPAINT are back together, working on LP4, and proving their particular sonic alchemy is still firmly intact. Words: Gemma Samways.

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“U

mm...”

Warpaint singerguitarist Theresa Wayman is contemplating the suggestion that being in the group isn’t the be-all and end-all of either her or her bandmates' existences.

“Yeah, that’s probably fair,” she concedes after a pause, adding, “We all have things going on.”

Talk about an understatement.

It might be five years since the release of their last album ‘Heads Up’, but individually the LA-formed quartet have been anything but idle in the interim. Drummer Stella Mozgawa has racked up a slew of session credits with The xx, Sharon Van Etten, Tracey Thorn and more; bassist-singer Jenny Lee Lindberg has worked with Deap Vally and appeared on Phoebe Bridgers’ ‘Punisher’, while singer-guitarist Emily Kokal has collaborated with Saul Williams and started a family. As for Theresa, well, she’s put out a solo album (2018’s ‘LoveLaws’), launched an underwear line, and been confirmed to star in the forthcoming film adaptation of Kenneth J. Harvey's novel, Inside.

And yet, for these four intensely creative and independent individuals, the magnetic pull of Warpaint remains strong, and there’s a new album on the horizon, tentatively pencilled for release in the spring of 2022.

From it they’ve just shared the first taster in ‘Lilys’, released as part of the soundtrack for the HBO series Made For Love. Blending a buzzsaw synth bassline with swaggering beats, chiming guitars and swirling vocal harmonies, it’s hypnotic and sinister and sexy, like some heady hybrid of trip-hop and dream-pop: basically, everything you could possibly want from a Warpaint record.

Work on their as-yet-untitled fourth LP has been ongoing since late 2019, with the band writing and recording in person at first, mostly at their studio in Joshua Tree, as well as at 64 Sound in LA. Once the pandemic hit, they reverted to Zoom sessions, with Theresa logging in from LA, Emily from Joshua Tree, Jenny from Utah and Stella from Australia.

And yet, as challenging as it has been to create collaboratively at a distance, Theresa is grateful for the reset lockdown provided.

“To be honest, I was wanting something to happen in a way because it had just been go, go, go, and I felt like it was starting to really hurt us,” she concedes.

“We were just in this grind, and we weren't playing music together outside of shows or rehearsals for shows. I mean, it's been 10 years of the same sort of routine in a way... And it's been great, but we definitely needed something to change things up.”

Learning lessons from their stressful experience promoting 2014’s self-titled second record, burnout was something the band had deliberately set out to avoid while touring ‘Heads Up’.

Instead of booking sprawling headline tours, they mixed things up, opening for Depeche Mode across the US (“They’re like superheroes”), and Harry Styles in Asia (“He’s a great guy; super cool and down to earth”). But despite their best laid plans, Theresa still looks back on the period between 2016 and 2018 as being “full-on”.

“It's so hard to step away and say, ‘No, we're not going to tour’,” she sighs. “That's what you do as a band, you know? But you do need to find time to do what you really need to do as a band, which is be together and play music.

“Creating together is why you form in the first place, and you won’t have anything to perform if you don't fill your cup back up,” she continues. “So it's become really obvious that playing [and recording] together has to be the number one thing for us now.

We’ve all come to this realisation that that's what's been lacking; we're all on the same page.”

“[Warpaint is] like being married to three other women, basically.” - Theresa Wayman

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espite the physical distance between the four of them, Warpaint’s almost telepathic creative rapport remains firmly intact even if decision-making still has to come down to a majority vote.

“It's so hard being in a band and having to compromise all the time,” Theresa jokes.

Spare a thought too for their co-producer, Frank Ocean and Radiohead collaborator Sam Petts-Davies, who is encountering this tight-knit dynamic for the first time. “It's always hard to add another person into the group,

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on the

‘Gram These days, even yer gran is posting selfies on Instagram.

Instagran, more like. Everyone has it now, including all our fave bands. Here’s a brief catch-up on music’s finest photo-taking action as of late.

You walk into your new WeWork office space and see this, what you doing? (@phoebebridgers)

and us four are all such strong personalities,” she grins. “But he's been great to work with.”

Another positive by-product of working through a pandemic has been the amount of extra time the band have had to consider their compositions. For Theresa in particular, it’s been liberating to fully immerse herself in the world of Warpaint without time constraints, and carefully consider their aesthetic for this album.

“I think we've always avoided going deeper into that, because it takes a lot of work to filter and assimilate all of our different impulses into one thing. That seemed like a daunting task in the past so we’d shy away from it. But this time round we’re really committed to feeding the fire.

“So whenever I hear anything we do now, I want to be like, ‘Yes! 100% I feel great about that’. Or, ‘I love that song’. I don't want to

“You can kill a song by overthinking it, but some of the best songs ever have had a lot of time and consideration put into them.” -

Getting ready to go the pub garden in May like... (@therealkano)

Theresa Wayman have any songs where I'm like, ‘Ugh, something isn't right, but I guess I'll just go with it like that’,” she stresses. “And I think we've had to do that in the past, because of money and time. I just feel so lucky that, this time round, we can really sit with these songs and try to hone them a lot more. Because as much as you can kill a song by overthinking it, some of the best songs ever have had a lot of time and consideration put into them.”

Mirroring their writing methods, Theresa reveals their lyrical focus is similarly reflective on LP4, scrutinising ideas of the self, as well as romantic relationships, and even tackling the dynamics within the band. “It’s like being married to three other women, basically,” she laughs. “Trying to communicate and trying to keep your own sense of individuality while letting others do the same.”

Valentine’s Day 2020 marked 17 years of Warpaint: a remarkable feat in any era, but even more impressive considering the

vast ways in which the industry has altered since the band’s inception, not to mention the huge changes in their personal lives. Theresa looks back fondly on their formation today, recalling that “we all had this love for each other immediately”. That affection and respect has only deepened with time, as they’ve overcome challenges together and strengthened their communication skills. And, according to Theresa, their creative journey is only just beginning.

“There's still so much that we haven't tapped into. We have the potential to write more music than we currently write, and discover some cool things, and I really want to explore that aspect of us,” she smiles. “I think I would be really satisfied if we could get back to that place where we play together a lot more, and we're writing songs kind of all the time. The idea of us soaking in our music all the time, and then creating things, really excites me.” DIY

Looks like someone missed the memo about leaving the loungewear at home... (@biffyclyro)

“I’m green da-ba-dee-da-badi” (@kevinabstract)

“I’m a mouse...duh!?” (@kimpetras)

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BABES in ARMS

Over two decades ago, Sugababes released their debut album ‘One Touch’, thus cementing their name in the girl group history books and helping to shift the landscape of pop. Written while they were still at school (!), the record would go on to become an iconic snapshot of teenage life, captured in candid lyrics and smooth harmonies, with beats and hooks that still endure today. Now, a staggering 21 (!!) years on, and a meme-worthy series of line-up changes later, the original trio Keisha Buchanan, Mutya Buena and Siobhán Donaghy - are revisiting their iconic first steps and inviting collaborators from across their career to contribute to a brand new reworking of the record.

Ahead of the ‘One Touch’ 20 Year Anniversary Edition release, we took a trip down memory lane with Keisha and Siobhán.

Interview: Eloise Bulmer.

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How does it feel to listen back to 'One Touch' now?

Keisha: It instantly connects me to a point when I was a kid and what I was feeling. When you read some of my early journals, it’s the ‘One Touch’ album, almost.

Siobhán: To me it sounds as fresh as the day it was cut. I'm so proud of it and not shy in being able to say I think it deserves another moment; I think it was ahead of its time.

What was it like writing and recording an album so young?

K: We'd come out of school maybe on the first break or lunch break and then we’d go straight to the studio. We’d be recording until maybe five o’clock in the morning, or six sometimes, and then literally we’d go straight to the house, brush our teeth, put a new uniform on and go back to school.

S: It was kind of magical, because we were super young and we weren't doing anything really that bad or naughty, but we were also kind of living the dream. We were so young, no one really knew what it should sound like, so we just had to experiment.

Looking back, what was your favourite track to write?

S: I always look back at ‘Look At Me’ because it was the first one we actually wrote.

[Producer] Cameron McVey gave us a backing track, a cassette each, and said, ‘Look, write whatever you want’. But he explained to us the importance around having a voice, never looking away, really kind of taking ownership.

K: There's a song called ‘Just Let It Go’, and I remember just wanting to write a song about being a tough cookie and girls supporting each other. At the time, there was this boy in our neighbourhood that we felt was taking Mutya for a bit of a ride, and I remember being like, ‘Just let it go, move on girl!’

How did you decide who to bring on board for the anniversary project?

S: MNEK we’ve worked with previously quite a lot, he was just a no-brainer. He holds a special place in our heart in terms of being a really big part of the MKS work that we did, he’s just someone who we clicked with instantly. I was really keen to ask Dev Hynes - he did ‘Flatline’, our single with

MKS. He was born in Essex and remembers the ‘One Touch’ record, and finding people that get us now but also understand where we’ve come from was really important.

It was quite nice he [remixed] something that had never been a single [‘Same Old Story’], it comes in with that piano intro and I just thought it was so beautiful.

People are beginning to look at the treatment of women in the 2000s through a new lens, do you feel like things have changed since then?

S: It was very obvious that it was an incredibly sexist industry, and I've actually noticed that more so since we came back as MKS. Having an opinion of any kind, you're just seen as so incredibly difficult. I find it exhausting because I don't know how to be any other way.

K: As the only Black girl in the group, I wasn't necessarily handed the same amount of fairness with public perception. It really took a toll on me, I would walk into every interview really defensive just hoping that people wouldn't notice.

Now, I think that people who are seeing injustices are speaking up.

Recently Leigh-Anne Pinnock from Little Mix did a documentary that I was a part of, and I feel like the more it's spoken about, the more there can be equality all the way around. I feel like I've been holding my breath for such a long time and didn't know why.

What advice would you send back to your past selves if you could?

S: It's okay to just be true to yourself and life's gonna work out anyway, you know? I turned down a lot of things that maybe could have made me more successful but would have made me really uncomfortable, and I’m really glad that I did that.

K: I would say to always really try to remember who I was as a person.

I could always talk for England, always bubbly, and I think being in the public eye made me feel like I couldn't be that because it was perceived as something else.

I would just say to enjoy yourself and check on that mental health to make sure you're not letting yourself be too affected.

SONG WARS! THIS MON TH:

WILD HORSES

The Rolling Stones VS Girls Aloud Of all the words in all the world, sometimes artists just plump for exactly the same ones. But which of these identically-titled songs is technically, objectively the winner? Ready, set, FIGHT!

THE ROLLING STONES Year released: 1971 How has it aged? It’s generally regarded as one of the greatest songs of all time, so that means pretty well, we’d guess?

What’s it saying? A melancholy number that began life as Keith Richards singing to his son who missed him while touring and may or may not also be about Mick Jagger’s relationship with Marianne Faithfull, it’s easily the legendary group at their most reflective.

Banger rating out of 10: It’s less a banger, more arms-around-your-besties kinda vibe, so 7.

GIRLS ALOUD Year released: 2005 How has it aged? While there’s no doubting the Aloud’s considerable contributions to pop, this - an album track on 2005’s ‘Chemistry’ - is already not one of those remembered beyond its time.

What’s it saying? Quite the opposite of the Stones’ number, the exes of our protagonists are so bad these feral foals are literally incapable of the job of returning Cheryl, Sarah and pals to them. It’s also batshit, from the nonsensical choral intro to such lines as “Get out of town and take your lazy dog with you / Your train is running late and overdue” (how did the dog wrong anyone?), “This peaceful crazy town, too much time for girls to feel strange” and “Time was as blatant as gold” (?!).

Banger rating out of 10: All that said, it is both a bop and an earworm. 8/10.

Result: If we’re going by pure banger stakes - and as we edge ever closer to returning to using dance floors for their intended purpose, the more banging the banger, the better - then Girls Aloud’s oddball number is easily ahead. But in this instance the oldies have it, this one’s a classic for a reason.

‘One Touch (20 Year Anniversary Edition)’ is out 1st October via London Records. DIY

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What’s Going on With…

“It has that red thread of me in everything in it.”

Lunch round Sigrid’s was an elaborate affair.

RETURN TO THE RIVIERA With a recently-released reissue of classic third album ‘The English Riviera’ welcoming us back into its idiosyncratic, seaside-y bosom once more, Joe Mount talks us through his memories of the record that changed the course of Metronomy’s career forever. Interview: Lisa Wright.

With new single ‘Mirror’ already out in the world, the Norwegian pop sensation is readying the next big step of LP2. Words: Elly Watson. Photo: Alex Sarda.

“I

t feels like starting school for the first time again,” smiles Sigrid. “Like, is this gonna do well? Are the other kids gonna be nice? It’s daunting! My chill time is over, it’s back on.”

Armed with comeback banger ‘Mirror’, however, Sigrid’s grand return would have her hailed as the coolest kid in class in no time. Two years on from the release of hit-fuelled debut ‘Sucker Punch’, the track arrived late last month and finds the now-24-year-old Norwegian singer back at her dance-pop best.

Penned just before lockdown back in February 2020, there was never a doubt in Sigrid’s mind that ‘Mirror’ would be the perfect return. “It’s very me,” she says. “It has a classic good reminder to yourself, and I love a good reminder.

There’s a lot of hurt in it, there’s lots of emotions. It’s like a break from something so it has

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Sigrid

this sadness in it, but it’s about moving on and accepting that sometimes you don’t agree with yourself and you have all these doubts, and it’s about trying to move past that and think it’s OK. It felt like a really good thing to start with.”

The first taste of her eagerly-awaited second record, Sigrid may have spent lockdown embracing some much needed chill time, but she was busy at work too. Decamping to Copenhagen in the summer of 2020 with producer Sly and writer Caroline Ailin, the trio formed a mini squad to write the new record and have some fun as well. “It was like a little fairytale,” she reminisces. “We’d go swimming in-between sessions. Like, we’d write for a few hours and then be like, ‘Should we go down to the pier and jump in the ocean for a bit?’

“Last time, it was a really great experience, but it was quite pressured because we had so

little time,” she continues. “We wrote a song in two days and I couldn’t go back and revisit anything. This time, it’s a lot more finessed.”

Describing her forthcoming new music as “energetic as always,” Sigrid’s new album promises to be full of the kind of pop bangers that saw her winning awards and bounding around stages two years ago. “I feel like it’s always different, always the same,” she explains.

“It’s different from the first album in terms of sounds, it’s leaning more explicitly in different directions, but it has that red thread of me in everything in it.

“I just hope that people connect with it and the fan accounts come out with some good memes,” she laughs. “I’m here trying to deliver the content. I’m very excited to see what they come up with this time. I can’t believe they’re still here!” DIY

RADA

Wesley Gonzalez

A SOCIALLY SPACED SHOW

Sam Dotia

Demae

Visions Festival

A SOCIALLY SPACED SHOW

A SOCIALLY SPACED SHOW

A SOCIALLY SPACED SHOW

TUE 8TH JUN MOTH CLUB

THU 10TH JUN RIO CINEMA

WED 16TH JUN ST PANCRAS OLD CHURCH

THU 24TH JUN LAFAYETTE

SAT 7TH AUG OVAL SPACE, HACKNEY

Blood Wizard

Aoife Nessa Frances

Les Filles de Illighadad

Pan Amsterdam

Alice Boman

The Goon Sax

THU 12TH AUG THE WAITING ROOM

TUE 31ST AUG THE LEXINGTON

WED 1ST SEP MOTH CLUB

FRI 3RD SEP PECKHAM AUDIO

MON 6TH SEP THE LEXINGTON

MON 6TH SEP MOTH CLUB

Skullcrusher

bbymutha

Black Country, New Road

Squid

Ólafur Arnalds

Virginia Wing

THU 23RD SEP PRINTWORKS

FRI 24TH SEP EVENTIM APOLLO

FRI 24TH SEP MOTH CLUB

Bo Ningen

Loraine James

Grand brothers

WED 13TH OCT VILLAGE UNDERGROUND

SAT 16TH OCT STUDIO 9294

TUE 19TH OCT EARTH

Braids

black midi

Drug Store Romeos

SOLD OUT

SOLD OUT

SOLD OUT

SOLD OUT

SOLD OUT

SOLD OUT

TUE 14TH SEP ELECTRIC BALLROOM

WED 8TH SEP THE LEXINGTON

THU 9TH SEP CORSICA STUDIOS

Kings of Convenience

WU-LU

Anna B Savage

THU 30TH SEP PECKHAM AUDIO

TUE 12TH OCTSOLD OUT THE LEXINGTON

JW Francis

King Hannah

MATINEE & EVENING SHOW

SUN 26TH SEP ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL

For Those I Love TUE 19TH OCTSOLD OUT WED 20TH OCTSOLD OUT THU 21ST OCTSOLD OUT THE COURTYARD THEATRE

Damien Jurado

THU 15TH JUL SCALA

SOLD OUT

WED 27TH OCT MOTH CLUB

WED 27TH OCT THE LEXINGTON

MON 1ST NOV MOTH CLUB

Peaness

Porridge Radio

Sorry

THU 11TH NOV ALEXANDRA PALACE THEATRE

Jaga Jazzist

THU 29TH JUL SET

WED 17TH NOV SCALA

Yard Act SOLD OUT

THU 30TH SEP THE LEXINGTON

SOLD OUT

THU 18TH NOV EARTH

THU 18TH NOV OSLO

TUE 23RD NOV WED 24TH NOV VILLAGE UNDERGROUND

Efterklang

Current Joys

The Weather Station

TUE 1ST MAR 2022 EARTH

FRI 18TH MAR 2022 THE DOME

WED 23RD MAR 2022 SCALA

TUE 30TH NOV JAZZ CAFE

Japanese Breakfast

WED 30TH MAR 2022 O2 FORUM KENTISH TOWN

TUE 15TH FEB 2022 ISLINGTON ASSEMBLY HALL

THU 17TH FEB 2022 VILLAGE UNDERGROUND

The Beths

Bikini Kill

MON 4TH APR 2022 O2 FORUM KENTISH TOWN

SUN 12TH JUN 2022 O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW MON 13TH JUN 2022 ROUNDHOUSE

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HAVE YOU HEARD?

BLEACHERS - STOP MAKING THIS HURT It feels like almost a century could’ve passed since Bleachers last returned with new music (it was only last November when ‘chinatown’ and ‘45’ landed fwiw, but y’know, time and all that...) but that’s all change now that he’s back with another

slice of his forthcoming third album. A typically joyous-sounding offering, ‘Stop Making This Hurt’ was maybe born from a bad spot ("I fell into a dark place after a loss and then starting to have that feeling of rage towards the depression,” says Jack An-

tonoff, of its beginnings) but it’s yet another example of Bleachers’ incredible talent for creating effervescent, cathartic pop hits. A perfect antidote for times like now. (Sarah Jamieson)

SHARON VAN MATT MALTESE- FOUSHEÉ ETTEN & ANGEL SMILE ENJOY THE Run yourself a hot bath and light OLSEN - LIKE I SILENCE USED TO That it’s taken those candles because schmaltz-core Let’s be honest, this Depeche Mode

a worldwide pandemic to push Angel Olsen and Sharon Van Etten together in collaboration is quite frankly wild.

The pair’s singular visions have long felt almost parallel; both specialise in indie rock that’s emotionally tuned-in and unafraid to bite - and with at least half an eye aimed back at the ‘70s. So that the visuals for ‘Like I Used To’ ape Abba, and the track itself - particularly the euphoric chorus - has a sprinkling of witchy Stevie Nicks magic should come as no surprise. The duo have taken the very nostalgia that’s circled most of our lives since March last year and spun it into a potential anthem.

(Emma Swann)

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purveyor Matt Maltese is back with a tune so romantic it deserves the full monty. ‘Mystery’ is the first taste of young Matthew’s third album, due out later this year. It finds the singer/ songwriter posing “a loving question mark” as he muses on “why we are what we are, and think and feel the way we do” over the glistening mirage of hotel lobby keys and dusky guitar which is, by now, his signature sound.

(Alex Cabré)

classic isn’t exactly devoid of other artists’ takes on it. And the world’s not lacking for cover versions featured in advertising campaigns.

Flipping all that on its head though, is LA newcomer Fousheé. Her spin on ‘Enjoy The Silence’ swaps the original’s electronic immediacy for a far more understated, laid-back vibe - and without descending into soppy tearjerker mode; the hooks remain, just from a lo-fi sounding vantage point: think if the og was ‘20s bedroom pop. It’s charming, and showcases the singer’s versatile vocal well; she’s hitting the high notes one second, breathily whispering the next. It all serves to create a late-night cinematic mood. (Bella Martin)

LANA DEL REY BLUE BA NISTERS

Is Lana Del Rey trying to give Taylor Swift a run for her money by becoming the most productive star in pop right now? Quite possibly. After all, it was only three days after her latest album ‘Chemtrails Over The Country Club’ landed on shelves that she announced another would soon be on its way; she’s making good on that promise when she releases ‘Blue Banisters’ next month. And in true Lana style, its title track is a swooping, forlorn meditation on loss, love and the seasons of our life. A series of vivid, Hollywood-esque vignettes which unfold intricately with each of her verses, it’s - unsurprisingly - evocative to the last drop. (Sarah Jamieson)

Fame OF

With their sixth record, the Californian desert rockers ushered in a dark and dirty new era for the band. Words: Sarah Jamieson.

Queens of the Stone Age - …Like Clockwork

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or the best part of two decades, Queens of the Stone Age have been heralded as titans of sludgy, swaggering desert rock. Over that time, any festival worth its salt has seen the band - led by the unmistakable, hulking figure that is Josh Homme - whip its crowd into a frenzy with alt-rock classics from their early albums ‘Rated R’ and ‘Songs For The Deaf’.

And while the likes of ‘No One Knows’ and ‘Feel Good Hit Of The Summer’ will undoubtedly remain iconic hits guaranteed to haunt rock clubs from here until eternity - it was with sixth album ‘…Like Clockwork’ that the band felt to step into a new era. Arriving no less than six years after their previous album, 2007’s ‘Era Vulgaris’, ‘…Like Clockwork’ ushered in a dark, dirty, doom-tinged new world for the band to inhabit.

And let’s be clear here: it’s not as though QOTSA have ever been afraid of dirty riffs or darkness before, but here, they seem to be dealing in a different kind of alchemy. Opening to the sound of breaking glass, there’s a grittiness from the off, with ‘Keep Your Eyes Peeled’ unfurling into a foreboding introduction, its guitars skulking into view while Josh Homme takes the lead as our

captivating but conflicted narrator.

FACTS THE

Released: 3rd June 2013 Key Tracks: ‘If I Had A Tail’, ‘Kalopsia’, ‘I Appear Missing’ Tell Your Mates: This is a QOTSA album, so there was always gonna be a few incredible cameos, but here, they take the biscuit. Dave Grohl, Alex Turner, Trent Reznor, Jake Shears, and even Elton John all contributed their talents to this one.

Over the course of the album’s 45 minutes, there’s a delicious eeriness at play. From the sleazy but seductive tale of ‘I Sat By The Ocean’ to the quietly reflective whisper of ‘The Vampyre Of Time and Memory’, there’s something almost otherworldly about Josh’s regaling of heartbreak and weariness, which - thanks to the album’s black humour - never quite feels overwrought.

With ‘Smooth Sailing’ things get giddily outrageous, with the frontman transforming into our arrogant, crooning protagonist (“I got bruises and hickies, stitches and scars / Got my own theme music, plays wherever I are”), while the Trent Reznor-featuring ‘Kalopsia’ feels almost like a fever dream gone awry, its dreamlike instrumentation skewered by scorching guitars and Trent’s unmistakable vocals. And that’s not even mentioning some of ‘…Like Clockwork’’s other A-list cast: yes, that is Elton John playing piano on ‘Fairweather Friends’. Why wouldn’t it be?

Devastating and dense, but intricate and intimate all at once, ‘… Like Clockwork’ is a complex beast of a record, which undoubtedly shifted the view of these Californian juggernauts. And even eight years on from its release, its punch is just as tremendous. DIY

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ICONS O Seven albums in, GARBAGE’s Shirley

Manson is still slashing down tired old industry bullshit one righteous affirmation at a time.

Words: Joe Goggins.

ver the course of the creation of Garbage’s seventh album, Shirley Manson had told journalists that it was not a political record. This isn’t a view that seems to chime particularly well either with the reality of ‘No Gods No Masters’ - a furious deconstruction of societal inequality deeply inspired by the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements - or this

For someone who's 'Only Happy When It Rains', Shirley's on fine form in the desert.

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conversation, which sees her take aim at the government’s abandonment of young artists during the pandemic (“It makes me fucking weep”), the political class in general (“They’ve abandoned the people and run out of ideas”) and structural misogyny within the music industry (“It drives me

absolutely insane”). “It’s not even eight o’clock in the morning here,” she laughs from her home in Los Angeles, “but you’ve gotten me fired up.”

And yet still, she insists that ‘No Gods No Masters’ - finally out this month after lockdown put it on ice just days away from completion - was not born of topical engagement. “I don’t consider this a political record. I’m not a political person. I’m very

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suspicious of most politicians. They make me recoil. None of them seem to be able to match their rhetoric. I think what you can be is a person with a very strong opinion, and a person with a very solid idea of what’s right and wrong. I want to be able to hold a strong moral compass without being accused of being ‘political’. Everybody I speak to, whether they’re on the right or the left, seems frustrated at the fact that the world has changed dramatically, but politicians have yet to get smart to it, and what that’s created is terrible division.”

‘Frustrated’ is the word that crops up most often. It’s obvious that what Shirley sees as the hypocrisy of the world around her is something that’s informed her life as a musician, and especially so on ‘No Gods No Masters’; this is something, she says, that goes back to her upbringing in the Scottish Presbyterian church, where she saw “people saying the right things, and then doing the complete opposite.” She’s drawn to the spiritual symbolism of the number seven, and its representation of rebirth; ‘No Gods No Masters’ is the seventh Garbage album. “It would have been very inauthentic of me not to talk about the things that I’m talking about with my friends and family on the album,” she says.

“There’s so much insanity in the world; black, brown and indigenous people being mistreated for the colour of their skin, or this bizarre sickness of violence towards women that’s not being discussed. I couldn’t really live with myself if I didn’t put that into the work.”

Those ideas have found their way into her writing; lead single ‘The Men Who Rule the World’, for instance, is an excoriation of “the old, white men who still hold the balance of power.” What these themes have had her reflecting on, too, is the influence that she herself holds; in recent years, Garbage have instituted a policy of only taking female and non-binary artists on tour with them, something that’s provided a platform to the likes of Dream Wife, Du Blonde and The Pearl Harts, and that has helped solidify Shirley’s status as a de facto godmother to up-and-coming musicians.

“I felt like an anomaly,” she explains. “Back in the nineties, there weren’t many of us. Me, Courtney Love, Missy Elliott, Gwen Stefani, Lil’ Kim, Fiona Apple - I see, now, our attitude among almost all the young women I speak to. They’re mouthy, opinionated, not afraid to take up space, not frightened to talk about politics, and more in charge of their sexuality. I just want to give them

an opportunity, and tell them they’re great. Who doesn’t want to hear that? Nobody ever said to me, ‘You fucking killed it on that song’. Instead, it was, ‘Oh, you’re such a sex kitten’. Which is fucking moronic.”

She rejects, though, the idea that she’s become a kind of mentor to these bands. “They don’t need my advice! All they need is a platform.

They know exactly what they want to do and how they want to do it. I think, nowadays, it’s increasingly difficult for alternative women who are stepping out of a mainstream gaze, and doing things in a more unconventional way. I’m fed up of seeing this constant barrage of young - and I really underline that word - babies who are being exploited by a vile, capitalistic, terrifying, toxic industry, and then thrown into the dumpster. It sets me on fucking fire. I just want to promote these women who are speaking to me in the way they do things. They don’t need a whole slew of people over the age of 35; they just need an opportunity to be in front of an audience. I want to help them, and if I can, I will.”

‘No Gods No Masters’ is out 11th June via Stunvolume. DIY

“I’m fed up of seeing this constant barrage of young [musicians] being exploited by a vile, capitalistic, terrifying, toxic industry.”Shirley Manson

ALICE GO, DREAM WIFE

The Next Generation A couple of our (and Shirley’s) faves explain exactly why Garbage will never get in the bin.

IZZY B. PHILLIPS, BLACK HONEY Why do you think Shirley is still an important cultural force?

Everything she did gave marginalised outsiders a voice. It was permission to be different and it was okay to be angry. Shirley took up space against a backdrop of ‘90s toxic patriarchal standards. I can’t even imagine how much harder it was for her back then.

Why should people go and seek out Garbage’s back catalogue?

‘Cos she’s a force! She made everything possible for artists like us, Wolf Alice and Pale Waves, and all the DIY bands. Because of Shirley, old men in record labels could visualise a space for women.

How have Garbage been a helping hand for Dream Wife?

The Wives had the honour of opening for Garbage for a run of shows in 2018. We felt totally supported

by Shirley, she made us feel very welcomed on that tour, it felt like she personally really wanted us to be there. The support and warmth she shared with us definitely struck home to us why it was so important to do a call out for women and non-binary tour support again for our 2022 tour. Sharing your platform and supporting what you believe in, at every level, matters. Shirley is an inspiring emblem in that way of engaging with others, she took us under her wing.

Why should readers who don't know her work go and seek her out?

Shirley isn't afraid of difficult, important, emotionally-driven conversations and also seems very willing to learn and grow. She's paved the way for us to be able to do what we do and is an inspiring role model with a killer set of pipes!

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neu The Irish songwriter crafting confessional pop destined to pull at the heartstrings. Words: Elly Watson. Photos: Leon McCullough.

SMOOTHBOI EZRA

We all remember our unfortunate first social media usernames or email addresses, usually a wild combination of ill-advised nicknames and current favourite things, maybe with the odd meme reference thrown in for good measure. Luckily, for most of us, these remain firmly in the past, but for Ireland’s Smoothboi Ezra it’s a slightly different story.

“Basically, when I was 14, me and my friend were gonna start a band and we didn’t know what to call it, and at the time the ‘dat boi!!!’ meme was all around. You know, the guy on the unicycle?!” they laugh. “We were obsessed with it and we used to put it on everything.

I don’t know where the ‘smooth’ came from but I do remember we were at some religious retreat when we decided.

“We both went to Catholic school and I wasn’t paying attention; I was thinking of band names and I just remember we came up with it on the spot and, to remember it, I changed my Twitter handle on my phone to @smooth_boi. And nothing happened, and we didn’t make a band, and then when I was releasing ‘Thinking Of You’ on Spotify years later I had to come up with an artist name and I thought I’d be able to change it.

I didn’t just want to be Ezra, I needed something to set me apart from the other Ezras, so I put it in as a placeholder and now I can’t change it and everyone knows me as that, so that’s what I am!”

However, though their name might originally be the thing drawing attention, Smoothboi Ezra’s confessional and moving pop is what pushes them even further apart from the rest. Recording mostly in the shed that they live in at the back of their garden in the small coastal town of Greystones, music had originally been a hobby more than a career goal. “I don’t know why, but I just always assumed I wouldn’t do anything,” they shrug. “When I was younger, I just did what I liked and I never thought it would go anywhere. I was always writing things, and then I taught myself how to record on my iPad and released them. There was no real motive for it to turn out any particular way, it was just me doing it because I wanted to at the time.”

That all changed with the release of 2018’s debut single ‘Thinking Of You’ - the first song they ever properly finished or recorded - and now Ezra is gearing up to

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release their eagerly-awaited debut EP ‘Stuck’ later this month. “I recorded all of it in my room. I have a section over there for recording things but I usually just bring everything over and record on my bed,” they say. “A lot of the time I fall asleep in the middle of it!”

Written last spring, ‘Stuck’ explores the intricacies of relationships through Ezra’s diary-like lyricism. “A lot of the time, my diary entries become songs because it’s easier for me to not think about anything and just write down words and make them rhyme afterwards,” they explain. “A lot of the time I don’t know what the songs mean until I read them back and make them rhyme and I’m like ‘Oh, that’s about this...’”

Their early songs weave between themes, depicting the kind of relationship rollercoasters that will likely ring familiar to every listener. On ‘Palm Of Your Hand’, Ezra unfurls the feeling of being utterly devoted to someone: “You don’t believe me while I hold your hair back and you’re throwing up on the floor / I could’ve stayed home but why would I miss out on this”. Meanwhile, on ‘Without Me’, they provide a lamentation on lost love - “I got your text, I saw that you were with your friends / They’d be mine too if I hadn’t let it end”. Throughout the EP, it’s the singer’s cutting songwriting that’s at the fore.

And indeed Ezra’s songs have already hit home for many, with their DMs flooded full of messages of support and stories of how their songs have helped people. “I’ve had some really nice messages from people saying that they listened to my music and it spoke to them,” they note. “I’ve had a few parents of kids who are going through things that I’m going through who have told me what my music means to them as a parent watching someone else go through it.

That’s quite nice.”

“I don’t have massive goals for everything, I just want to go with the flow,” they smile. “I want to release music and I want the people that want to hear it to hear it. I just want to make music and see what happens!”

What happens should be smooth sailing from here. DIY

I needed something to set me apart from the other Ezras, and now I can’t change it."

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CLEOPATRICK Great things can grow from even the most humble of beginnings: this Canadian powerhouse duo are proving that much.

Words: Sarah Jamieson.

Rewind the clock for a moment. It’s February 2020, Storm Dennis is the country’s biggest current issue, and 10,000 fans have crammed themselves into the vast cavern that is London’s Alexandra Palace, awaiting the arrival of Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes. And there, opening up proceedings are two best friends from Cobourg, Ontario; a long way from where they started.

We’re strongly against douchebags, and this boys’ club mentality that has permeated rock music over the years.” - Luke Gruntz

“That’s one of my last memories of how things used to be!” starts Luke Gruntz, one half of thunderous duo cleopatrick. “It’s like this strange fever dream. I just remember the feeling of getting on stage and seeing so many faces that it hurt my brain. I could distinguish the first few rows, and my brain knew there were faces in the distance, there were just too many to compute. I feel like we both clicked into a fight or flight mode and just shredded through that set.”

Yet, despite their humble beginnings - the pair first met aged four, at school in their tiny home town, and have been almost inseparable ever since - their stint supporting Frank isn’t even the band’s biggest accolade so far. Since they first emerged back in 2016, the band - completed by drummer Ian Fraser - have built a solid community of fans from the ground up, through booking their own shows and doing things on their own terms.

They’ve also established the New Rock Mafia, a like-minded collective of artists who “share the same ethos, and same passion” for a new, more honest version of rock music. “It’s also about developing a space for our audience where everyone feels comfortable and accepted coming to our shows,” Luke confirms. “We’re strongly against douchebags, and this boys’ club mentality that I think has permeated rock music over the years.” And if that’s not enough, they’ve even managed to amass an almost-unbelievable 77 million Spotify streams, all before releasing a debut album. “Even as you were saying it there,” Ian quips, “I was just like, ‘Huh? That’s a big number…’”

That’s all about to change, though, as the pair gear up to release their charged but eclectic fulllength ‘BUMMER’ this month. Blending together their love for guitars and hip hop, the pair seem to have hit on an intoxicating formula that showcases the power those genres can possess when united. “I find when you start to box yourself in, you’re only really limiting yourself,” Ian confirms, “and I think we tried to avoid that as much as possible.” “[We were] pushing for this sound that we’ve heard in our heads, and think guitar music could sound like. We had the option to record this album with a number of big-name producers that we totally look up to, but in the end, we wanted to embrace trusting our gut,” Luke says. Much like their formative years, they did just that. “We recorded with our best friend Jig Dubé, this guru of sound. We decided, if we were gonna do this record, we’d produce it ourselves; chances are we’d love it, maybe it’d be weird and some other people wouldn’t like it, but whatever. This is our first album; we’ve done things our way up until now and why should we change that?” DIY

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ORLA GARTLAND Dublin’s newest pop talent, with a killer knack for a hook.

ENGLISH TEACHER Leeds quartet upping their game with a glorious, rabble-rousing racket.

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SAM DOTIA The London songsmith hitting you right in the feels.

Delivering a goosebumpinducing set when he performed for our Hello 2021 shows earlier this year, London songwriter and poet Sam Dotia has only continued to wow with his hauntingly beautiful creations. Even capturing the attention of Rachel Chinouriri enough to appear on the stunning ‘Beautiful Disaster’ from her recently released EP, Sam’s emotive lyrics paired with his hypnotic vocals are a match made in heaven, and will only continue to hit us where it hurts.

But in a really good way, of course.

LISTEN: If you don’t feel a tingle listening to latest single ‘Daylight’, you’re made of stone.

SIMILAR TO: That cathartic feeling after you’ve had a sob to The Notebook.

COSHA

RECOMMENDED

There’s something satisfying about listening to a band noticeably find their sound, and you get the sense that’s what’s happened with the release of English Teacher’s latest ‘R&B’. Having drip-fed a few early singles throughout 2020, come the turn of the year the band have seemingly harnessed some new stores of anger and channelled them into a rattling post-punk storm of frustrated lyrics and rumbling bass. More of where this came from, please.

LISTEN: ‘R&B’ is the latest track from tastemaker label Nice Swan’s ‘Introduces…’ series.

SIMILAR TO: Part Shame, part Wolf Alice at their most antsy.

The Irish songwriter back with a bang.

After shedding her old persona Bonzai back in 2018, Cosha emerged, and she’s now armed with a new debut album full of sizzling new jams set to wow. With the aim to make the listener feel “light and liberated”, her sleek vocals expertly drive her sexy, sultry R&B-esque numbers, with the Irish singer leaning towards experimentation as she explores lust and desire.

Raw and mesmerising, this new reinvention is a definite phoenix rising from the ashes moment.

LISTEN: Forthcoming debut ‘Mt. Pleasant’ is set to be sexy jam packed.

SIMILAR TO: Your new “business time” playlist.

A Moonrise Kingdom-recalling clip in which Dubliner Orla goes around collecting the tears of stupefied, repressed men, the video for ‘Zombie!’ goes a good way to explaining the appeal of the fast-rising singer: cute yet cutting, playful but with a bite, her recent output is pop but souped-up.

Think HAIM if they were raised in rainy Ireland, or hints of early Kate Nash without the accent - full of character, ahead of her forthcoming debut LP there’s already a lot to love.

LISTEN: ‘Pretending’ is an all-too-relatable slice of self-examination.

SIMILAR TO: The catchiest diary entries you could hope for.

DORA JAR Alternative’s pun-loving new shape-shifter.

With only a handful of songs out in the world, California’s wonderfully named Dora Jar creates the kind of music that hooks you in after only one listen. Dancing between genres as her latest offerings flip from pop, to folk, to grunge, with her delicate haunting vocals guiding the way, she promises her upcoming debut EP will further show her ripping the genre rule-book up, and that’s something you won’t want to miss out on.

LISTEN: ‘Multiply’ is an intriguing slice of glitch-folk goodness.

SIMILAR TO: Laura Marling’s weird alt younger sis.

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DEEP TAN The London post-punks bringing darkness to the dancefloor.

Words: Elly Watson.

Photo: Emma Swann.

We’ve all missed the sesh, and no more so than deep tan who, back in February, dropped a video for their angular track ‘camelot’ consisting of videos of drunk people dancing with the wry caption, ‘21st of June, sometime just after lunch’. “You’re not gonna see me for the first week of June,” vocalist Wafah laughs today. “I’m going off the rails!”

Though the return to ‘normality’ (fingers crossed) might be the biggest cause of celebration for most this month, deep tan have an extra reason to get a bit merry: the beginning of June also marks the arrival of their debut EP ‘creeping speedwells’.

A long time in the making, the trio have been buzzing around East London’s alternative scene for a while, originally forming when Wafah recruited housemate Celeste as bassist, before the departure of their original drummer led to Lucy responding to a shout out via Instagram. “I don’t know how it felt before - maybe it was better! - but I feel like it fits really well,” Lucy smiles. “I agree, it was such a natural fit,” Celeste adds. “Lucy’s our sister!”

Finding their footing with their current line-up, the group’s blend of pop licks and dark postpunk grooves pulls influence from the musical

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heroes they idolised growing up. Wafah declares her love for The Cure’s ‘Disintegration’, while Celeste always wanted to be The Fall’s legendary, crotchety frontman Mark E. Smith and/or Sinead O’Connor. And as for Lucy’s teenage faves? “The Scissor Sisters!” she beams. “My mum and nan are obsessed with them and took me to see them when I was like, seven, and it was just Jake Shears strutting about in thigh-high boots. It was a real moment for me…”

Marrying together their shared influences, deep tan’s resulting debut EP sees the trio welcoming us into their surreal and spellbinding world, with track themes ranging wildly from feeling disconnected in life to meme page @doyoueverjustfuckingascend.

“It’s my favourite meme page,” Celeste notes. “I know, for me, memes have definitely helped my mental health over the last year.”

With the end now nearly in sight, deep tan are hoping that ‘creeping speedwells’ can provide a moment of escapism from reality’s various bites.

“Creeping speedwells are a type of garden weed,” Lucy explains. “They’re really resilient, and the meaning behind it is obviously that the past yearand-a-half has been really hard for everyone, so it’s a nod to the resilience of everyone.” Celeste nods, “That’s the T!” DIY

“I was seven, watching Jake Shears strutting about in thigh-high boots. It was a real moment for me…” Lucy

THE

BUZZ FEED

All the buzziest new music happenings, in one place.

PLAYLIST

Every week on Spotify, we update DIY’s Neu Discoveries playlist with the buzziest, freshest faces. Here’s our pick of the best new tracks:

PRIYA RAGU FORGOT ABOUT Growing up in Switzerland and with her family from Sri Lanka, Priya fuses her love of R&B with South Asian influences, resulting in a mesmerising and refreshing sound that oozes good vibes. With recent single ‘Forgot About’ showing her flexing different musical muscles as Priya slows things down for a heartstring-pulling number, it’s certain that what she does next will continue to dazzle.

MALADY - FAMOUS LAST WORDS THROUGH THE WALLS With her eagerly-awaited second EP due to land later this year, Holly Humberstone has given us a taste of exactly what to expect with her new track ‘The Walls Are Way Too Thin’. It follows last month’s single ‘Haunted House’, and you can hear it over on diymag.com now.

“I wrote ‘The Walls Are Way Too Thin’ about a time in my life when I felt like I’d lost control of where I was heading and struggling to find my place in the world,” she explains. “I’d just moved to a small London flat and felt claustrophobic and alone. To avoid confronting how I was feeling I’d sneak out the flat and go on train journeys to see my mates, get drunk, then come back hungover through the night and early hours. I wrote most of the Walls and the songs that come next on those trains. It was my place of therapy, in the middle of nowhere, constantly moving with no destination.”

Her forthcoming EP will follow on from last year’s ‘Falling Asleep at the Wheel’.

BAUHAUS, BABY! Julia Bardo has announced that she’ll be releasing debut album ‘Bauhaus, L’Appartamento’ on 10th September via Wichita Recordings, and has shared new track ‘Do This To Me’, too.

Speaking about her new song, Julia explains, “’Do This To Me’ is a very personal song about feeling abandoned, growing up and family.”

“The album is a collection of emotions and feelings; loneliness, solitude, separation, but also unconditional love,” she continues, of her ten-track debut. “Family, emotional dependency, mental health issues, feelings of emptiness and numbness, feelings of not being enough, inability to be in control of my own emotions, self-doubt, self-reflection, past traumas and dealing with them.”

HORSING AROUND South London’s Horsey have teamed up with long-time friend and touring companion King Krule for brand new track ‘Seahorse’. The track doubles as the first new original material to come from King Krule since his 2020 album ‘Man Alive!’ have a listen to it over on diymag.com now.

And that’s not all: the four-piece - which features Jerkcurb’s Jacob Read - have also announced plans to release their debut album ‘Debonair’ this summer. Their first full-length is due out in July 2021 on London label untitled recs, and will include last year’s single ‘Sippy Cup’.

Following the release of their debut single ‘London I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down’, London quartet Malady are back with their newest offering ‘Famous Last Words’. A dazzling feel good number incorporating the band’s love of electronic textures with undeniable grooves, in their own words the track is “a rumination about purpose”.

PSYKHI WHITE PICKET FENCE ‘White Picket Fence’ is the first outing from Ghanaian-born artist Psykhi. Showing off a wonderfully ‘90s slacker rock vocal style, it's spoken word in parts, meandering wilfully in others, and possesses one of the most gloriously grungy riffs 2021’s seen so far.

L’OBJECTIF BURN ME OUT Having been quick out of the gate with their impressively accomplished debut single ‘Drive In Mind’, it's little surprise that Leeds quartet L'objectif have pulled it out of the bag a second time.

On new track 'Burn Me Out', they’re a little more melodic than on their propulsive previous track; Saul Kane's sauntering vocals pair perfectly with chiming guitars, conjuring up visions of The Smiths’ dreamier moments.

Want to stream our Neu playlist while you’re reading? Scan the code now and get listening.

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neu Hey Wallice, look sharp!

If you turn the page, Ellie’s speeding away with yer frock!

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The whole EP sits under the theme of being a different character from one day to the next.”

Documenting the trials and tribulations of the early-20-something experience with a healthy splash of self-deprecation.

Words: Lisa Wright.

WALLICE Listening to Wallice’s melodically-rich indie pop - a burgeoning collection of tracks collated as debut EP ‘Off The Rails’ - you likely wouldn’t guess the places that have proved integral for the 23-year-old. Full of yearning, soaring highs and easy, breezy charm, the likes of debut ‘Punching Bag’ and the EP’s recentlyreleased title track come on like ‘00s faves Smith Westerns given a modern bedroom pop update. Perhaps they speak to summers spent frollicking in the sun and surf? Or days of listlessly staring out of car windows on the road to who-knows-where?

“My grandparents have this house in Utah that they don’t really live in and half the EP was created there,” Wallice begins. “My mum and all my aunts and uncles grew up Mormon, and my grandma and grandpa are the only ones that still are so they have this huge Mormon house. I never grew up like that, but my mum would tell me stories of her childhood which was… weird.

This house has more pictures of Jesus and their Mormon founders than our entire family, and our family’s huge. You go to the local Walmart and there’s the polygamist Mormons in their vans with their multiple wives…”

Perhaps not the natural birthplace for a set of tracks that acutely document the coming-of-age process in all its soul-searching confusion, but Wallice’s own upbringing couldn’t be further from those rigid traditions. Growing up in Los Angeles, she sings the praises of her creative mother (“I grew up with her having a kiln in my garage, doing pottery and painting huge canvases, so she was always very supportive of whatever I wanted to do, kind of a hippy mentality…”) and enthusiastically recalls going to childhood commercial auditions and attending a specialist performing arts school. As in, like Fame?

“Honestly it was kind of like that!” she giggles.

“There’s the art kids with the tiny bangs before it was cool and tattoos at 16, and the dancers in leotards, and the music kids were either really popular or really quiet if they were the violin or tuba players. When I was growing up there was a show called Victorious [about a teen who attends Hollywood Arts High School] and it really was kind of like that.”

So far, so LA then. But while the city’s sunsoaked climate bleeds through into the wideeyed haze of Wallice’s music, there’s a far more knowing, self-deprecating touch at play than you might expect from her stage school tales.

Take recent single ‘Hey Michael’, for example - a track riddled with deadpan observations to its

core (sample lyric: “You talk for so long about Mad Men, I’ve never seen that show / You don’t gotta say you love Pulp Fiction, I already know”).

“My mum dated two different Michaels and the second one had a tattoo based on Mad Men and they’re not together anymore so… it tells you that much,” she says with a cheeky glint.

Citing the lyrics of fellow LA-er Phoebe Bridgers and early ‘90s Weezer as the sort of “self aware, funny” tone she’s aiming for, Wallice’s first moves play the clever trick of making the specific feel universal. Everyone, as she rightly notes, knows a Michael. ‘Off The Rails’ as a whole, meanwhile, she cites as being “very coming of age for my specific age range - it’s a very specific time where if you’re there, you have those feelings”. “Usually the shows on TV are about teenagers being played by 28-year-olds, or about 30-year-olds. So something nice from the songs I’ve put out has been getting DMs on Instagram saying that people had never heard a song that feels exactly how they’re feeling and they’re also my exact age. They can relate to it,” she continues.

There’s an intensity and truth of feeling to Wallice’s music, however, that will feel relatable whether you’re still in your teens or if 23 feels like a tiny dot stretching back on the horizon, and it’s an integral quality that she’s keen to keep pursuing. On last year’s ‘23’ she mythologised the transformative powers of ticking over to the next year (“I just can’t wait to be all grown up and 23…”); now she’s there, there’s nowhere to go but forward. “On this EP I sing about still living at home and feeling like a kid, and I applied for an apartment yesterday so that’s a new chapter!” she smiles. “These tracks were all written from last August to January in a very specific time and during quarantine, but I like how short a time it was written in because it feels like a [distinct period] of my life and then the next EP will have a different outlook and feeling.”

And if that period of in between-ness, of not quite going ‘Off The Rails’ but perhaps wondering what the future will bring, has any grand umbrella outlook, what would it be? She ponders. “With this next video for ‘Off The Rails’, the theme is that life is a simulation and I think maybe the whole EP sits under that theme of being a different character from one day to the next. Life is a simulation - that’s the world [it lives in],” she decides.

As we said: Wallice may be an LA kid at heart, but she’s far from predictable. DIY

25

Full "If you ask me 'Are we there yet?' one more time..."

26 DIYMAG.COM

Thr

The most beloved bands aren’t always the ones who shout the loudest, but with ‘Blue Weekend’ Wolf Alice are proving that introversion isn’t akin to a lack of self-belief. Their most accomplished work to date, DIY dives deep into the joy of getting comfortable with your own voice…

rottle Words: Jenessa Williams.

Photos: Pooneh Ghana.

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At least Ellie was thinking outside of the box…

It’s always about striving to

create a world and a stimulating feeling.” Theo Ellis 28 DIYMAG.COM

W

e don’t go for subtle identification;

it’s either gold all over your face or blue all over your head,” laughs Theo Ellis, running a hand over his new Slush Puppy-hued scalp.

Every Wolf Alice album deserves a physical embodiment, and their bassist has taken the new album title ‘Blue Weekend’ quite literally, manifesting the emotions of the record with an icy dye-job.

“As long as the glitter doesn’t come back, I’m happy,” says guitarist Joff Oddie. “You find it everywhere; you haven't played a show in months and it's still everywhere. Just see a little glimmer on your arm like fuck, it's back.”

“I might bring it back,” quips Theo, swigging from a can. “Just to piss people off.”

Having become one of the most beloved guitar bands in the country, it’s difficult to imagine Wolf Alice inciting anything other than love.

Over ten years as a band, Theo, Joff, singer Ellie Rowsell and drummer Joel Amey have proven themselves to be a certifiable force of nature, nabbing a Mercury Prize and drawing in an everswelling legion of glitter-daubed fans with their sincere, versatile take on indie rock’n’roll. A different band might have let it go to their heads, but they’re still as humble-shy as ever, gathering on Zoom with all the ‘we’ll tell you later’ in-jokes and ‘no, you first’ nods that come from easing yourself back into a jam-packed promotional cycle.

“We'd been working solidly for a period of five or six years nonstop,” says Joff, recalling the headspace of late 2018. “In fact, there wasn't a gap at all - we finished touring ‘My Love Is Cool’, had three months working in a rehearsal space, went to record ‘Visions Of A Life’ and then went right back on the road. By the time the Brixton shows came around, I think we were just knackered, just done.

Needed a snooze!”

Nobody could have predicted quite how substantial that snoozetime would have turned out to be, but the precious months of prepandemic downtime did at least offer some breathing room, finding ways to reconnect with their offstage selves. Joff volunteered at a food bank, taught music lessons and set about finishing up a politics, philosophy and economics degree, while drummer Joel moved to Hastings and joined an angling society, settling into a slower pace of life. And our frontwoman Ellie? Ellie was in London, trying to piece her pre-tour existence back together.

“I tried to slip back into my old life and I failed miserably,” she says, lounging on an impressive array of sofa cushions. “I tried to do the things that I'd been putting on hold; I moved house three times, tried to repair all my broken relationships, went to the pub a few times.

But there’s always that background thought lingering when you realise you haven’t put any music out for a long time, that you don’t want to play the same songs at any more shows. Clearly I wasn’t getting up to much in those months off, so I needed something to do!”

That something turned out to be writing - sporadically at first, and then ramping up as the band reconvened at Mary’s Gaff, an Airbnb where they began to test out their ideas. In early 2020, they headed to Brussels to work with producer Markus Dravs and engineer Iain Berryman, known for atmospheric epics by the likes of Arcade Fire, Coldplay and Florence + The Machine. A bid for a ‘bigger’ sound wasn’t necessarily intentional, but with lockdown upon them, their focus on making a great record became singular. There were a few weekend adventures (“We did try to go out horse riding once, but they turned out to be miniature ponies and it was a bit of a disaster...”) but every weekday was spent ensconced in the studio,

figuring out how to push each track skyward with less filter.

“I think you do put a kind of protective, ambiguous blanket over your lyrics sometimes,” Ellie says, considering her much-discussed move towards more ‘straightforward’ songwriting. “You're not sure whether they're good or not, basically; when you're writing to make an album, it feels like all your songs have to ‘make the cut’ in some way, like you’re auditioning your own works against what you’ve done before. It can be a bit scary, but you know you won't ever move forward unless you get over that and embrace that journey.” She shares a somewhat apologetic smile. “When I have to do something that scares me, I just kind of go on autopilot.’

In truth, it’s Wolf Alice’s reluctance to let the world revolve around them that made February’s ‘The Last Man On Earth’ such an impressive lead single. A building examination of narcissism and self-absorption set to a theatrical, Beatles-worthy crescendo, it was the world’s first glimpse of a real shift in the singer, shaking off some long-held insecurities about how she might be perceived.

“I feel like I have a weird relationship with piano, I think because and this might be ridiculous - but because I'm a girl,” she explains.

“I always feel like I kind of denounced it because it was what was expected of me, so I went for the guitar even though I fucking suck at it and I find it really hard. Now that I'm older and wiser, I’m much less embarrassed about using the piano as a songwriting tool.”

Reflecting on the song’s meaning, some old embarrassments still die hard. “I don't really know who I'm speaking for on that song, probably just myself or something,” she laughs and squirms, shrinking back into her cushions. “I really don't know! I guess it’s about how we’re all kind of the main character in the movie of our lives and having to grapple with the pros and cons of that. But if I try and explain it too much, it always kind of looks like I'm pretending that it's about anything at all, do you know what I mean? I’d rather somebody else explains it to me so I can be like yep, that’ll do!”

W

hen DIY call again a month later, the comfort cushions are packed away, any residual awkwardness suitably loosened up by the turning wheels of their newly-packed calendar - a show at this year’s virtual Glastonbury, a slot at Reading & Leeds, and a recent televisual appearance on James Corden’s Late Late Show that has gained them a whole new fleet of American fans for starters.

‘Smile’ is thriving as a single, and ‘No Hard Feelings’ has premiered mere hours before we speak, its YouTube numbers tripling with every refresh. The idea of a new Wolf Alice era is properly upon us, the album release date only a few weeks away given their decision to pull it closer.

Talking about the logistics would be “a bit boring,” so we focus instead on the scope of the record, the undeniable step forward that it is for their cinematic outlook. Wolf Alice have never been quiet about their love of film, but ‘Blue Weekend’ really does have the widescreen aesthetic of a Hollywood soundtrack, capturing a mood as much as it does a lyrical specificity. By way of testing early demos, the band would play the songs over film trailers, trying to encapsulate what they saw. “It's always about striving to create a world and a stimulating feeling; the sound of your favourite band playing in the distance at a festival, trying to make songs that capture that excitement,” says Theo. “There’s all these kind of nuanced, weird, stupid ways of saying it, but I think ‘cinematic’ does fit into how we want to make things.”

The problem, with ‘cinematic’ however, is that it does tend to feel synonymous with age. “Quite a few people recently have described the record as ‘mature’, which is like oh, so we’re OLD now,” says Joel. “I much prefer ‘cinematic’; ‘mature’ sounds like the album is an adult movie, which is not exactly what we were going for…”

That would certainly make for a very different kind of ‘Blue Weekend’, but the conversation touches on an important air of expectation that tends to hover mostly around female-fronted bands or artists, the idea that their work should follow a pre-set path to emotional ‘confession’, particularly when it’s to do with love. Ellie acknowledges the somewhat infantilising “coming of age” narrative that has long lingered around observations of the band, and Theo

29

Lipstick On The Glass Joff: ‘Lipstick On The Glass’ took a very long time to get to the place where it is now.

There was always faith in the song, but not so much in the initial musical rendering of it, so it was just a lot of experimenting.

Experimentation sounds great and exciting, but after a while, you're just like, ‘For fuck’s sake, this is getting a bit much!’ It took a very, very long time for that to get there, but it was so worth it in the end.”

Hymn For The

Weekend…

Play The Greatest Hits

Wolf Al give us the lowdown on some specific album highlights.

Ellie: “This one was so fun to write, just an old school band in a room jamming. We'd just been out the night before, we were hungover and making this silly fun song with made-up words about going out every weekend with the same five songs on the playlist cos you don't want to hear anything else - just the greatest hits! When I think about where it comes in the album, it's a moment of like, ‘Look, everything's fucked, so I’ll just go out and scream’. The song sounds like what it's talking about, which is fun.”

30 DIYMAG.COM

No Hard Feelings

[On the lyric “Crying in the bathtub to ‘Love Is A Losing Game”] Ellie: I feel like one of the things that Amy Winehouse did was unashamedly sing about love, quite a lot! I’ve Theo: “In terms of the demos that we had always shied away from that, to choose from, we all had a real instant but listening to someone reaction to 'Last Man...' when Ellie sent it like Amy who has so much over. I think that's one of the most important moving stuff to say about it, things that I’ve learnt from being involved and was clearly so moved by in music, trusting that first instinct. When her own words, it was really we had the idea to put it out as a single, we inspiring. She was so fucking knew it was the most different song on the cool in so many ways.” record, maybe even the most different Wolf Alice song so far, and it's been amazing watching people's reactions. People filming themselves crying and all kinds of stuff – it’s been emotional. Viciously emotional!”

The Last Man On Earth

It’s like, ‘Oh no, I have to write something about me being insecure again!’. But why should I?!”

- Ellie Rowsell concurs, commenting on the “massive questions” that tend to get pitched at Ellie, pedestalling her as a de-facto spokeswoman for ‘women in rock’.

“I mean, it's kind of good in that it makes me think instead of just talking, I suppose,” she ponders, trying to be even-handed about her very visible position as a rare frontwoman in a very masculine space.

“But one of the things that I have been thinking about recently is how everyone keeps talking about how personal the record is, or how honest I've been. But how can they really know? I don't think people realise that I can mould my personal experiences to be something for everyone, I can be inspired by things I’ve seen or done or heard but then turn them into something else. Compared to a lot of others, this album probably isn't that personal or ‘diary-like’ - I’m not actually putting out my memoir, y’know! I do wonder how much of that has to be with me being a woman...”

A

s with all great art, ‘Blue Weekend’ is a balance of truth and evocative fiction, but it undeniably thrives under the growing dexterity of Ellie’s pen. Spiralling across raucous nights out and melancholy nights in, she examines the romantic skeletons in the closet but also knows when to lock them away for a laugh and a pint, using her singing voice in newly creative ways. Though it may wrangle with some emotional lows, it’s also a record that refuses to regret, drawing upon the wide-eyed spirit of the band’s early beginnings in order to chart their future path.

In keeping with that theme of cinema, much of ‘Blue Weekend’ lives under the sunny skies of Los Angeles. ‘Delicious Things’ references it directly in the story of a night out in Tinseltown, but there’s also a hefty dose of Americana to be found on ‘How Can I Make It Okay’, an instant classic from the songwriting school of Fleetwood Mac. What is it that they find so endearing about LA? “Well obviously, it’s where we came of age,” deadpans Theo, deliberately antagonising Ellie’s rolling eyes. “There’s always been these pinpoint moments of great things happening where we'd find ourselves in Los Angeles; finding out review scores for the first record, recording the second one.”

“If you're a young band going there for the first time, it is very much what I thought would be too obvious to be true,” says Ellie. “I found it

31

kind of sweet to remember us going there for a first time, really being a fish out of water.”

If the dive-bar decadence of LA plays its role on ‘Blue Weekend’, so does the confidence of a glossy stadium hit. Pressing play on ‘Feeling Myself’ for the first time, it’s difficult not to audibly gasp at its Ariana-noir, elegantly executed by a no-fucks-given Ellie.

Tapping into that desire not to shroud her life in metaphor, the groundswell of its latter half is nothing short of a sensual release.

“I mean, a lot of female pop stars big themselves up in their tunes don’t they!” she laughs. “I don’t know if you hear a lot of that in indie or rock music. I’ve always been like ew, I can't talk about myself like that, but why not? It felt good; it made me want to dance and it felt… sexy.” She shakes off a full-body cringe at the ‘s’ word, adopting a self-deprecatingly glum parody of her own voice. “It’s like 'Oh no, I have to write something about me being insecure again!'.

But why should I?!”

“It's like that thing Noel Gallagher said about ‘Live Forever’, that he wrote it in opposition to all the depressing grunge that was going on at the time,” chips in Joff. “He was like fuck that; I wanna live forever mate!”

There is perhaps nowhere on the record where Wolf Alice sound more immortal than on ‘Smile’. Tackling industry misogyny and misconception with fizzing guitars and triumphant choruses, it is the closest they’ve ever got to a mission statement: “I ain’t afraid though my steps seem tentative / I scope it out then I throw myself into it.” In just over three minutes, it says plenty about Ellie’s state of mind.

“I just had that first line and ran with it,” says Ellie. “There's such pressure when you're doing something that you find really difficult.

Doing radio interviews in the early days, I found it so nerve-wracking. You’re literally just having a chat with someone, but you come away after and you’re like, I wonder if they actually knew how nervous I was?

Maybe I just came across like I was being horrible? You see people being like, 'Oh, she was a bitch’ or whatever, and it's like nooooo, I was just really scared! That song is me saying I don't want it to be like this.

I'm confident that I am a good person, and it serves as a reminder of that, in a fun ranty way.”

With fun firmly on the agenda, her growing articulation is telling of just how far Wolf Alice have come. From the sombreness of ‘The Last Man On Earth’ to the bratty, turn-it-to-11 silliness of ‘Play The Greatest Hits’, Wolf Alice consistently make being in a band sound like the best thing in the world - no insignificant feat given the increase in bedroom pop soloists and singular stan objects. If ‘confidence’ is the word of the day, it’s not just about Ellie’s lyricism: it’s about the recognition that, ten years in, the quartet are more comfortable than ever to experiment as a unit, giving anything a go if it’ll lead to a better end product.

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“I always think back to when we first recorded ‘Fluffy’ - before the version that’s on ‘My Love Is Cool’ - and just getting to the shouted chorus and just not being able to do it because I was so embarrassed,” says Ellie. “I was just there whispering it; “Sixteen! So sweet!”. I always think back to that, being too scared to shout a single lyric. I don't feel like I have that trepidation anymore; I don’t want to regret that I didn't try.

“For me, the time where I really love being in a band is when we're having a ‘mare.

I'm really sensitive, and I know that if I was alone having that ‘mare, I would probably quit. But I can look around me and see support, and then it all just becomes jokes instead of horror,” she smiles. “Even though this album has got some really serious moments and it's very emotional, there's some really playful stuff on there too. I really like that about it, and about us.”

I don’t feel like I have the same sense of trepidation anymore; I don’t want to regret that I didn’t try.”

- Ellie Rowsell

“I don't think we've ever thought about things too much, and I think that's the best thing about us,” agrees Theo. “I feel like this record is just the organic next step for us, that we care about it so much that it must be the right thing to happen next.

“The reason I do this is because of the camaraderie. I still remember the first rehearsal I came to for Wolf Alice where it was like yeah, there's an amazing vibe in here that just feels...” he pauses, searching for the right words. The rest of the band stay silent, waiting expectantly for a profound moment. “Actually nah, I'm not going to big you all up on a Zoom, fuck this!” The call crackles with group laughter.

“I feel like I'm out on a night out telling you how good you are. I've only had one beer!”

DIY’s attempt to encourage at least one much-deserved brag has been foiled at the very last turn, but why change the habit of a lifetime? As always, Wolf Alice can be relied on to know exactly what works for them – one comfort zone shift at a time.

‘Blue Weekend’ is out now via Dirty Hit. DIY

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“

ONE OF THE THINGS A BOUT BEING A BIT IMMATUR E IS I STILL HAVE A HUGE PORTION OF THAT CHILDLIKE CUR IOSITY, A ND I LOVE THAT.”

34 DIYMAG.COM

STRANGER THA N FICTION JOHN GR A NT HAS SPENT HIS LIFE TRYING TO FIND HIS PLACE IN THE WOR LD. FROM THE MINUTIA E TO THE MOST MA XIMA L MODER N HOR RORS, ‘BOY FROM MICHIGA N’ SETS OUT TO PUNCTUATE THAT K A LEIDOSCOPIC JOUR NEY.

J

ohn Grant, both in conversation and his nowfive album catalogue of solo endeavours, has a way of wording things that’s just that little bit better than most.

Whether exposing life’s futilities or highlighting its beauty, pointing a fucked-off finger at the political shitstorm we’ve found ourselves in for years now or looking back at the formative moments that shaped him, the 52-year-old’s linguistic choices are ones that never fail to boil a feeling down to its bones.

Right now, dialling in from his adopted homeland of Iceland, heaving record collection spilling PHOTOS: HÖRÐUR out the sides of the screen in the SVEINSSON. background, he’s recalling the particular childhood moment from nearly four decades ago that informs ‘County Fair’ - the rose-tinted second track on this month’s Cate le Bon-produced ‘Boy From Michigan’. “It was dusk on a summer evening, with this twilight sun coming through the leaves that were already really green and lush, and this car pulled up and I saw this girl’s face who was so beautiful and it’s just funny,” he pauses to himself for a moment. “I’ve been around the world and been through all sorts of stuff and I still think back to that moment, which was just an incredibly beautiful moment for me.” Then he’s off, enthusing about his life-long passion for the Zipper fairground ride, trotting off screen for a second to find the painting of it that’s since become a reference point for his current album art.

WORDS: LISA WRIGHT.

Fast forward a few minutes, meanwhile, and we’re talking about what it’s like to turn 50. ‘Boy From Michigan’ - the follow-up to 2018’s more overtly antsy ‘Love Is Magic’ - is the first record John has written since the milestone; it seems notable, then, that his latest begins with a delve back into his childhood, the following tracks widening the lens out until we reach the present day.

“I suppose one thinks about death,

and one thinks about what one has accomplished and to what extent one can plan for the future or what extent one can analyse the past,” he ponders.

“And I don’t think I’ve ever been very good at living - just never really learned to do a lot of things, just getting by - so I suppose it’s quite natural for me to look back on those times when there was a structure and I knew what my place was. ‘Cause when you get out into the world, there’s no borders, no boundaries and everything’s up in the air, which can be great but it can also be overwhelming…”

I

f the two interactions seem like a u-turn in tone, then John makes them feel like parts of the same intrinsic whole. Since 2010’s solo debut ‘Queen of Denmark’, its title track a glorious, end-of-tether piano crash of withering couplets (“You tell me that my life is based upon a lie / I casually mention that I pissed in your coffee”), his niche has been one of brutal, often heartbreaking, regularly hilarious honesty.

The point seems to be that you can’t have one without the other. On this album’s sparse, reflective ‘Mike and Julie’ he reflects yearningly on his first gay sexual experience; two songs later, with ‘Rhetorical Figure’, he’s having a hoot reeling off obscure bits of linguistic terminology he’s just learnt while declaring himself an “ASSonance man”. There’s a constant, witty sense of playing with levels that’s a joy to listen to.

“I think it’s important to understand that every level of language is equal to every other level of language. The way a farmer expresses himself out in the middle of nowhere with tons of slang and maybe not in a way that’s considered educated - that’s not an inferior way of expressing yourself to me. That’s equal to any other way and maybe higher because the guy isn’t putting on airs, he hasn’t gone through a system where he’s been told, ‘You have to express yourself in this way in order to be taken seriously’,” he asserts. “I think that’s what I do in my music - I’m always using all these different registers of language because I love slang and I love profanity and I think all of these ways of expressing yourself are [equally valid].

“But I do love learning, and I do have this curiosity - one of the things about being a bit immature is I still have a huge portion of that childlike curiosity about things and I love that. That’s something I think is good about me,” he decides.

Indeed, if curiosity and inquisitiveness are traits normally associated with those his junior, then John has

35

lost none of the reactiveness and rage of youth either. Though the first third of the record acutely speaks of his pre-teen years - a time in his life where, he explains, he felt “there was definitely at least an appearance of stability” before uprooting to the harsher judgements of Colorado - then the latter portion is very much anchored in the present day. More than birthdayrelated, half-century reassessment, the impetus for ‘Boy From Michigan’, John states, was watching the slow self-combustion of American politics over the last years; despite having been away from the country for nearly two decades, it is still the place he thinks of as home.

“

“I’m tired of hearing how great our country is, how superior and incredible it is. If you look at the drug problem, the homelessness problem, the violence, the amount of death everyday - it’s a mess. Here in Iceland, people can’t even get their heads around that shit,” he begins angrily before pulling back slightly. “Can you imagine growing up and everyone’s always saying, ‘This is the moral standard’. ‘This is the best place’. But you also know that you’re not really welcome there - that the American dream isn’t really meant for people like you unless you can fit in and change? I feel like there is no other country that’s preached to the rest of the world like America has, and unleashed this way of living and doing business and manipulation. I feel like you have to be quite mentally ill to be well-adjusted in our country.”

I FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE TO BE QUITE MENTA LLY ILL TO BE WELLA DJUSTED IN A MERICA.”

John‘s hand-eye coordination has always been impeccable.

36 DIYMAG.COM

J

ohn Grant born in Michigan, raised in Colorado, brought up in an orthodox Methodist

household before traversing all kinds of demons and ending up here, sometimes happy and objectively successful (a casual mention in passing of his friend Elton John will nod to the latter) in Reykjavík - still clearly relates a huge part of himself to that American boy. “It’s where I come from and what I identify with. I suppose in some ways it’s always gonna be home,” he shrugs. “I wouldn’t write an album about Iceland or Germany, where I lived for six years before; [America is] what I come from and I’m very affected by it, I guess we all are affected by what we come from.”

But the takeaway from his latest album - and, perhaps, his life in general - seems to be that even if you’ve weathered your fair share of storms, if you approach things with an equal dash of hope and humour, and try not to shut yourself off to the world, then maybe you can create your own ending.

CATE: C’EST BON

The last track on ‘Boy From Michigan’ is a warm, actually fairly Elton-ish track entitled ‘Billy’ that rightly demonises the “cult of masculinity” with a still-fragile outlook: “We’re both Cate Le Bon helmed disappointments to so many folks in this production duties for society”. John, however, doesn’t see it as a John Grant’s latest - he negative. “Life is difficult and you can find explains how the two your place anywhere pretty much,” he paired up. decides is as good a conclusion to the record as any.

“We met in 2013 at Glastonbury and we’ve been friends ever “There are a lot of things to get since - so more than anything, we excited about: music and trees wanted an excuse to hang out. She’s and people and languages got impeccable taste and is incredible, and books and landscapes I love her as an artist and as a person. which trees are a part of…

I’m not gonna say it was easy because we There‘s so much stuff to were starting to get deep into the pandemic get excited about…” and making a record is never easy; it’s a crazy time in the world and ‘Boy From you’re making yourself Michigan’ is out really vulnerable to do 25th June via this thing, so a lot of the Bella Union. time I felt like I didn’t have the DIY defences up like I needed and I think it was similar with Cate. But we had a lot of incredible times, and it wouldn’t sound the same without her.”

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THE

DREAMING OF A BIGGER LIFE THAN THEIR SLEEPY HOMETOWN OF FLEET, - A DEBUT SET TO PUSH THEM FAR FURTHER THAN THOSE WALLS. WORDS: LISA WRIGHT.

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DRUG STORE ROMEOS HAVE CRAFTED ‘THE WORLD WITHIN OUR BEDROOMS’ PHOTOS: NEELAM KHAN VELA.

F

leet may only be a 50-minute train ride from the capital but, in attitude, it may as well be 1000 miles. No wonder then that Drug Store Romeos - vocalist Sarah Downie, guitarist Charlie Henderson and drummer Jonny Gilbert - would spend the majority of their teenage years obsessively creating their own reality, one informed by endless digging back into music’s past, seeking out artists from The Moldy Peaches to William Burroughs that knew a thing or two about worldbuilding themselves.

“We had a monthly kids club night run by the council which was kind of horrible,” recalls Sarah of Fleet’s cultural offerings. “It was in that period of BBC Three when everyone would watch Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents and all these kids would come dressed way older than they actually were and dance to awful music. One of the guests was Harry Styles’ cousin’s brother’s nephew’s friend or someone, performing Harry Styles songs, and that was as good as the music scene got.”

of purposeful naivety that the band wanted to capture before the big, bad city toughened their skins (all three have now moved to London), it’s a record imbued with a lightness of touch that feels rare. Anchored around Sarah’s featherlite vocal, and buoyed by pillowy keys and soft, rounded edges, it draws inspiration from the warmth of old Italian film scores and the positivity of modern psych-pop bands such as Mild High Club to make something audibly sweet.

There’s a surreal, abstract undercurrent to Drug Store Romeos too, however, that stops it all from veering into the saccharine. Utilising Burroughs’ cut and paste method of writing, Sarah trawled through old magazines, repurposing words and phrases to reimagine her own thoughts in new ways. “I don’t believe it’s random,” she enthuses, “I believe the brain puts together these patterns because they associate things together from what’s going on in your mind.

When you’re writing in that state of trying to be unthinking, that’s when a lot of the good stuff happens.

On ‘Quotations for Locations’, we used that technique a lot and I didn’t think anybody could really understand what I was saying, but then someone on YouTube wrote this long essay on exactly what the song was about and took my soul and threw it on the screen! It was amazing!”

“THERE WAS A REAL DESIRE FOR SOMETHING MORE THAN A DREARY TOWN WITH TWO AVERAGE PARKS AND A MCDONALDS.” CHARLIE HENDERSON

“There was a real desire to search for something more than a moderately dreary town with two average parks and a McDonalds, so it led me to become obsessed with random music cultures from different periods in time,” Charlie nods as Sarah picks up: “I think we were all just trying to escape really, going down big rabbit holes of YouTube and then wincing every time an advert came on because it would send us back into the actual world.”

First coming together at college before realising that they all lived within a triangle of houses, five minutes away from each other (“Being in such close proximity, we didn’t even have to walk far to cut ourselves off and start painting the world around us,” notes the singer), the band’s beginnings may have the wide-eyed whimsy of a suburban fairytale, but Drug Store Romeos have put in the graft too.

For years they recall schlepping their gear on the train twice-weekly to London, attempting to carve out their own niche within the more “hardangled, cocky” South London scene that they’d begun to be absorbed into. At one show, Sarah remembers the band turning up with a load of pots and pans in lieu of a drummer (“Jonny couldn’t play that night, but we knew we had to keep doing gigs because that was the only way it was ever going to happen”); at the end of each gig meanwhile, while the rest of the ‘scene’ celebrated their successes, the trio would heave their gear back to catch the last train home. “We definitely felt the difference,” Sarah nods. “We were from suburbia smoking loads of weed and they’re all from London taking loads of coke, so you can see it immediately…”

B

ut it’s these differences that make this month’s debut ‘The world within our bedrooms’ such a charming and pleasantly out-of-step thing. Prioritising playfulness, escapism, curiosity and the kind

Burrowing to the root of their souls and embracing their findings with giddy abandon, you sense, is exactly what Drug Store Romeos are about. Prone to mystical musings about the universe, they’re pure in the most endearing of ways; if, as Charlie says, “it’s a hard state to get to, [being] full of love”, then Drug Store Romeos right now are the poster boys and girls for it. You hope that the sledgehammer of boring old reality won’t come raining down on them too soon, but if it does then ‘The world within our bedrooms’ is at least a document of these early days.

“When I was younger, my grandma who was massively into angels and gemstones gave me this pendant, and when I saw it I instantly believed and knew that it was a key to another universe. I would lie on my bed, and have it above my head, and try to rock back and open this portal and be within this world that was frozen in this globular glass mass,” Sarah enthuses with an arm sweep, trying to push the image of the pendant that adorns the record’s sleeve back into her brain. “So maybe [the idea is] for people to close their eyes, and be taken on an insular journey in their bedroom like that artwork. A world to escape in.”

‘The world within our bedrooms’ is out 25th June via Fiction. DIY

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Rewriting 40 DIYMAG.COM

With Lucy Dacus’ third album ‘Home Video’, the Philadelphia-via-Richmond singer dives back into her past in order to help discover her future.

Words: Sarah Jamieson. Photos: Natalie Piserchio.

“I

feel like I’m kinda thriving in the chaos,” begins Lucy Dacus, as her black cat Cabbage - also known as “Chouch, Chouchou, Cabbage - she has many names” - nestles close to her laptop for the start of our call. She’s in the middle of giving DIY a quick tarot lesson - via Zoom, of course - from her home in Philadelphia. “I’ve picked the same card three days in a row, and it’s the Ten of Pentacles. I’m a Taurus and Pentacles are an earth sign, and the ten is like, the end of a cycle which means you’re absolutely in your prime and everything you’ve done has paid off; you’re surrounded by family and friends, you have pets and a home, and you’re safe. That’s kinda what that card means, so even though I’m really busy, I’ve been trying to rest in the idea that work is paying off and I should just be grateful for everything.”

While tarot may not be one of our strong points, it’s easy to imagine drawing such a card would feel particularly reassuring on the eve of releasing a record as startling and open as Lucy’s third.

An exploration of her early memories, ‘Home Video’ is an album which sees the singer revisit some of her formative moments in a delicate but detailed manner, producing some of her most vivid and vulnerable tracks yet.

“I think that I wasn’t sure who I was,” Lucy offers up, on just why she felt drawn to such a project to begin with. “Once I started touring after my first album came out, I just didn’t get to see people that know me very well, and then I had a bunch of journalists who didn’t know me very well still writing about me. It felt like there were all these different opinions about who I was, and I didn’t really have an opinion. I hadn’t thought about it that hard.”

It was in the wake of her second album ‘Historian’’s release that she found herself retracing her steps; looking back on the past in order to discover - or at least attempt to - more of a sense of her current self. “There were some things that were really easy to realise,” she explains. “I’ve always been a host. I’ve always wanted to create a space and invite people into it. I never wanted to be a musician so it makes more sense to me, in that context, than it did when it first started happening,” she laughs. “It did not make sense to me that I was doing music! But if I think, ‘Oh, I’ve always just wanted to create a space, be a host and make people feel warm and like they’re supposed to be there’. That’s, at best, what I think shows can be. It makes me think that I am doing what I’ve always wanted to do.”

Equally, much like any processing of life, there were bigger themes she found herself facing. “I feel like I kind of accidentally stopped believing in God, and I didn’t really notice it,” she offers up. From the bible camp that offers the backdrop to ‘VBS’ to the conflict that sits at the heart of ‘Double Dog Dare’, the imprint of her younger self’s faith feels very much present. “I’ve been thinking back to that time, and trying to relate to that person who had such a deep faith and excavate the lessons that are worth keeping, and actually say goodbye to the things I need to let go of.”

To pretend that ‘Home Video’ is a record that sees the past through rose-tinted glasses would be, however, to do it a great disservice.

While, of course, Lucy believes the process of sifting through memories to have been largely productive in the long term, it doesn’t mean that the journey has been an entirely comfortable one.

“I feel it in my gut,” she says, when asked whether she’s at all anxious about the reactions of some of song’s subjects, who - unlike with some art - are very much real people. “There’s a couple of songs that I am expecting that someone’s probably gonna reach out and I’m just gonna have to deal with it. I got some advice from some friends recently and they said, ‘If they call, pick up if you can that day and don’t pick up if you can’t.’ That’s one thing about living in the moment; you get to know how you’re feeling in that moment.

You don’t have to pre-plan how you’re gonna act. I think I often try to pre-plan my emotional state but I don’t think that’s very useful.”

On the other hand, some of the album’s players are already aware of their stories being told, and have found Lucy’s retellings to be positive. “‘Thumbs’, ‘Christine’ and ‘Please Stay’ have just strengthened my friendships,” she smiles, referencing three of ‘Home Video’’s most striking, personal tracks. “That has a lot to say about my specific friends. It’s a credit to the company I keep; they are generous and kind people, so I feel like I’m lucky.”

It’s not just the respect of her friends that Lucy feels grateful for right now. Even ahead of completing the record, Lucy would perform ‘Thumbs’ - a stark and disarming track about her feelings towards a friend’s awful father - at her live shows, politely requesting the audience didn’t film the track while she grew comfortable with its performance. They obliged. “I feel really lucky and listened to. Just the fact that I was playing ‘Thumbs’ for so long, and I asked people not to record it and people listened to me… When it came out, I

History

41

realised how much restraint on a grand scale [that was]. I probably played it for, you know, tens of thousands of people and they didn’t cross me,” she laughs.

It was this trust that granted her the freedom to be so personal here.

“I haven’t done it as much in the past,” she says of her earlier work. "I feel like I’ve been writing from my personal experience, but more generally, but these [songs] are so detail heavy, and it does feel scarier, but it feels like it makes sense that I’m doing it on my third record instead of my first, because I needed to trust people. I have a relationship with my listeners, and even though it’s an undefinable mass of people, I think that there’s a give and take.”

More than anything, through venturing back into her memories - positive, painful, confusing, or conflicting - has proven to be the powerful tool for selfgrowth she was first drawn to, and a reminder to appreciate just where we’ve come from.

“I think nostalgia is a really powerful thing. At a really basic level, nostalgia is about having good feelings about the past, right?” she reflects. “How lucky is that? I know a lot of people that don’t, and just hate the past, but I think that feeling connected to your past is such at least for me - a way to know oneself and feel comfortable in the present, and be grounded enough to face the future.”

‘Home Video’ is out 25th June via Matador. DIY

“It felt like there were all these different opinions about who I was, and I didn’t really have an opinion.”

42 DIYMAG.COM

True Love Lasts A Lifetime As the final component of boygenius to release a new solo record, naturally, the trio had to come up in conversation at some point. Unsurprisingly, it sounds like Lucy, Phoebe and Julien might be on to us by now...

“It’s funny, obviously I’ve been doing a lot of press, and Phoebe and Julien have been doing a lot of press for their records, and Julien texted the group chat recently and said, ‘Everything I have to say about y’all sounds so corny in a pull quote!’ and we’re like, ‘Same!’ It’s true though, we only have nice things to say because we love each other.”

Do you think the process of working with Phoebe and Julien ahead of this record shifted the way you approach writing?

“Yeah, I do feel like my writing changed noticeably. I feel like I’m willing to have more fun, and think less about forever.”

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The Only Constant Is Change

Solo artist, super producer and chart-topping band alumni, Rostam Batmanglij isn’t short of accolades these days. ‘Changephobia’ is the latest notch on his musical bedpost. Words: Sean Kerwick.

“I wanted to shed the skin of some of the [musical] hallmarks that I had come to be known for over the years.”

44 DIYMAG.COM

‘C

hangephobia’, the title of Rostam’s new solo LP, refers to the fear of change - but the multi-faceted musician isn’t so convinced.

“Changing doesn’t necessarily mean that things are going to get worse,” he ponders over a Zoom call, beaming in from California.

“The change part is scary but the actual situation on the other side of it is a good thing.”

For someone who bowed out of Vampire Weekend after a hattrick of successful records, two of which climbed to the top spot on the US Billboard Charts, it’s safe to say Rostam Batmanglij knows a few things about scary changes morphing into good things.

In the five years since his exit, he’s collaborated with a starry array of artists as a producer and creative force. He worked on Frank Ocean’s ‘Blonde’ - one of the defining records of the 2010s, produced and co-wrote Clairo’s debut LP ‘Immunity’, brought out an album with Hamilton Leithauser of The Walkmen and, most recently, celebrated success as a producer and co-writer on Haim’s ‘Women In Music Pt.III’ (which earned a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year) among many other things.

‘Changephobia’ marks the second LP in the expanding Rostam

solo canon following 2017’s debut ‘Half-Light’. It’s a slicker and more focused release than its predecessor, but one that still retains the same intense appetite for experimentation: a metallic crunch mutates restlessly beneath ‘From The Back Of A Cab’, toots of baritone sax blend soothingly with a gentle pattering rhythm on ‘Bio18’ and frequencies shift throughout ‘These Kids We Knew’ like tectonic plates. It’s filled to the brim with inspired ideas that pay off, such as on ‘Next Time’, when the track drops tempo on immediate impact with the chorus, making for a fantastic, otherworldly effect; “Next thing I knew I was in California / It didn’t feel strange at all,” he sings.

“I moved out of New York where I had lived for 12 years,” Rostam reflects. “There were a lot of changes in my life and I was really ready for them. I think that’s what the thrust of the album is.”

Slithers of the Californian sunshine definitely seep into the warm, sparse production, but it turns out the journey was a creative nudge in itself. “I’ve written some of my best lyrics on airplanes.

I’ll write songs while driving in my car. There’s a song on the album called ‘Starlight’ which was originally called ‘Shinkansen’ because I made the beat for it when I was on the Shinkansen train in Japan,” he notes.

T

he musicality of the album itself also marks a distinct shift in Rostam’s sonic identity. Known for embellishments of baroque instruments and classical music, he went about setting strict rules: no harpsichord, no strings and no features.

“I definitely wanted to shed the skin of some of those hallmarks that I had come to be known for over the years,” he explains. “I got to the point where I could no longer make any more music that relied on classical music as an inspiration. That may change in the future, but I got to a point where I just said, ‘The next thing has to come from a different place’.”

Instead, jazz steps into the frame. Most notable are the deep, soulful reeds of baritone sax which almost feel like a character of sorts across the record’s 11 tracks. It moulds a rich, woozy atmosphere on the blissful ‘Unfold You’, and powders closer ‘Starlight’ with a dusk-lit hue.

With a notable list of production credits and collaborations stacking up, Rostam appears to be a constant scholar of the art. “There’s always a back and forth between the work I’m doing as a producer and the work I’m doing for my own records,” he nods. “I can’t really describe what that is until five or 10 years later but I feel like I’m constantly learning, and that’s one of the reasons I love collaborating.”

It’s a job that only thrives with experience, too. If the producer’s seat often carries with it the weight of an oracle or a teacher, does he ever think of his younger self when he’s working with younger collaborators? Another long pause ensues. “When I was 22 making the first album that I would ever produce, I had a lot of strong opinions and I felt quite certain that my opinions were valid and they were a necessary rubric to follow. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve let go of those strong opinions. To a certain extent, I’ve let go of even the notion of strong opinions being necessary to make good music.

“I definitely feel like I’ve evolved, I definitely feel like I’ve grown in the past five years,” Rostam concludes. “I’d like to think the lyrics on this album reflect that growth and evolution, but I don’t know what I would tell my younger self because I don’t know how much he would listen.”

‘Changephobia’ is out now via Matsor Projects.

DIY

45

,,

I think everyone should always try to push

themselves to be the greatest version of themselves.”

46 DIYMAG.COM

Having spent most of her career exploring the grief and pain of losing her

mother, Japanese Breakfast's Michelle Zauner is

flipping the script on ‘Jubilee’, her sparkling new record.

Words: Seeham Rahman. Photos: Peter Ash Lee.

t’s an early morning in Brooklyn when Michelle Zauner, otherwise known as Japanese Breakfast, calls in.

Pausing frequently to collect her thoughts, she peppers conversation with apologies for faltering when her words don’t piece together as precisely as they perhaps would later in the day. Her hesitancy is understandable though - not only because the morning has barely brightened, but because her work pressures a more conscious, personal response than many’s.

I

The 32-year-old artist’s first two records - 2016’s ‘Psychopomp’ and the following year’s ‘Soft Sounds From Another Planet’ alongside a recent memoir, Crying in H Mart, all gouge at the intense grief following her mother’s death in 2014. The albums, swimming between shoegaze, lo-fi and indie rock, utilise celestial synths and lamenting vocals to accurately capture her shattering pain.

While Michelle’s songwriting is a poignant addition to the eerie instrumentation, subsuming listeners into her intimate fragility, it’s also filled with candour: a trait that pulls through to her memoir, where the tender memories that feed into her lyrics are given space.

She likens the solace she finds in poking her wounds through writing to Nick Cave’s sentiment on the loss of his son: “It was almost a comfort that you feel as much pain as you do in grief. Cave calls that the pact that you make with love.”

Through that process, Michelle began to realise that she was finally ready to close the chapter on her as a melancholic character.

Japanese Breakfast’s upcoming album ‘Jubilee’ is antithetically joyful, bursting into the open with large arrangements that introduce listeners to another side of the

47

THE ALBUM’S TITLE ‘JUBILEE’...

“I feel like a third album is the first time that you can think of your records in context of one another. Early on, I was looking at even just the colour scheme of the vinyl’s, like ‘Psychopomp’ is this melancholy kind of sky blue, and ‘Soft Sounds From Another Planet’ is red and black. I knew that I wanted the third record to have much warmer tones and that it was going to be a very yellow record. And, yeah, I love a one-word title! I don't know where I got ‘Jubilee’, but I just knew early on that I wanted it to feel very different.”

THE ‘BE SWEET’ MUSIC VIDEO...

“I remember just watching a Spike Jonze DVD that I had with my cinematographer, Adam Kolodny. We also watched the Beastie Boys video for ‘Sabotage’ and I was like, I want to kick down here and be berated and roll on the ground! We also started watching X Files episodes, and I just basically wrote like an X Files fanfiction. It was kind of perfect because of the era and the reoccurring ‘I want to believe’.” she exclaims.

THE ONLINE RESPONSE TO CRYING IN H MART...

“One thing that I love to see is when kids share [Crying in H Mart] with their moms, and like text messages between them where their moms are just like, see, it's just like us.” she laughs. “There are a lot of nuances in that type of love and relationship that I wanted to explore really deeply and truthfully. I hope that other kids of immigrant parents can relate to that in some ways and feel less alone.”

48 DIYMAG.COM

,,

Japanese Breakfast on...

I felt I had said everything that I needed to say about grief and loss - I wanted to tackle some other part of the human experience.”

she’s undoubtedly giving a voice to a community that will reach far wider, she maintains that representation alone can be unproductive; during a time of increasing Asian hate crimes, storytelling alone is an insufficient healing and educational tool. “It’s been tough for me,” she sighs. “I don't know if representation solves anything. Because, in the same way, the shooting in Atlanta was a whiplash moment after finding out that Minari had been nominated for all these Academy Awards. And so, part of me is unsure. I've always been a purist with art and felt that it was such a salve in a way, and now I don't know if it is?” singer. “I had this sort of narrative as an artist as ‘grief girl’ and I wanted to change that,” she explains. “I felt I had said everything that I needed to say about grief and loss, and I wanted to tackle some other part of the human experience. I thought nothing was more surprising and challenging than a record about joy!”

Yet, before Michelle could reach that point, she embarked on the four-year process of mourning and reflection via writing. A challenge that proved essential to acknowledging her relationship with herself, she soon found she could look back at the work with warmth rather than just pain. “It was a way for me to archive what we had experienced and my mother's character,” she nods, “to kind of relive a lot of really beautiful experiences.”

I

n the space of the last month, Michelle has not only become a New York Times best-selling author but her work has been widely received,

by Asian Americans especially, on an inconceivably personal level.

On social media, readers pour out their delicious recollections with the binding space of H Mart - the Asian supermarket that acts as a key character in her memoir, probing into her Korean-American identity. Still, the sunny feedback came as a shock to her, since the output of her book was primarily an exercise in thrashing out her own demons.

“I think if you're trained to think that you'll always be this sort of marginal voice, you never expect that you’ll make it,” she explains.

“But it's a time where people are really wanting it. There are more and more mixed race kids that are fucking confused and are comforted by someone that's finally talking about it.”

Yet Michelle is apprehensive to open the door to her work as more than a personal insight. Though, by sharing her own experience of the push and pull of her dual identity,

Be that as it may, her story showcases a realistic, open and important portrayal of its protagonist. Tales like hers move away from stereotyping and fetishisation, still Michelle worries that, while her identity is worth discussing, it shouldn’t become the sole marker of who she is as an artist. In comparison to many of her peers, she voices how she often feels as if her career is viewed as a consolation prize rather than a craft she worked hard to develop over time. “I don't mind talking about my identity,” she says. “But I think sometimes it just feels like I'm only here because I'm like, on the margins.”

It’s partly why she took the time to develop her musical knowledge for ‘Jubilee’. Writing many of its songs on the piano - an instrument she had only recently taken upon herself to fully master, despite playing since childhood - she also worked with bandmate Craig Hendrix to form the punchy compositions and fuller arrangements that vibrate throughout the record. Elsewhere, the zesty production of friend and fellow musician Alex G shines through in the buoyant ‘Savage Good Boy’.

Having spent time touring within

circuits of inspirational musicians, for LP3 the emphasis was on expanding her creativity and pushing her abilities. “Meeting all these incredible musicians, many of which have gone to music school or a conservatory, and seeing what that education brought to their creative output,” she begins, “I wanted to challenge myself to kind of up my chops, and it just felt like a necessary thing that everyone I think should do, you know? I think everyone should always try to push themselves to be the greatest version of themselves.”

T

he efforts were not fruitless; ‘Jubilee’ boasts an exciting new stage for Japanese Breakfast, with an entirely new and invigorating atmosphere. Bouncing between explosive indie-rock, ‘80s pop and cinematic, orchestral instrumentation, the record is testament to the hard work that went into it.

It makes for an overwhelmingly optimistic album: one that seems defiantly at odds with the experiences and records that preceded it. Clearly a product of personal and artistic design, it’s an album in which its author is purposefully choosing happiness.

The future, too, looks to be one aligned with contentment.

“I want to enjoy the smaller things more that we took for granted for so long. And also, I've always had these three huge projects I've been working on the book, ‘Jubilee’, and I've also finished the soundtrack for the video game, Sable, that's coming out later this year,” she says. “It’s the first time in my life that I don't have a sense of direction. I just have to float on those things and I'm really looking forward to that.”

It’s precisely the narrative of ‘Jubilee’’s opening track, ‘Paprika’, in which Michelle expresses: “How’s it feel to be at the centre of magic? / To linger in tones and words?”. She’s unravelling how the anguish that often comes from creativity does not always have to be so traumatic. That, despite how “all alone [she] feels so much”, maybe not everything has to hold the same emotional exertion.

Most importantly, it’s a record that suggests Michelle Zauner is finally where she always wanted to be - and that’s a magical position indeed.

‘Jubilee’ is out now via Dead Oceans. DIY

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revi Everything is executed with A* precision.

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ews 

OLIVIA RODRIGO SOUR (Polydor)

Photo: Natalie Piserchio.

Olivia Rodrigo knows exactly how you’ve pigeonholed her, but she’s well equipped with the skills to prove you wrong. Opening with a lilting violin, ‘brutal’ sets you up for sanitised Disney Princess fodder, but with her tonguefirmly-pressed into cheek, she abruptly rips off her costume to reveal a Wolf-Alice worthy rant of all the insecurities that plague her day-to-day; anxiety, popularity (or lack thereof), wishing she was older and could parallel park. It’s clever and funny and instantly sucks you into the charm of the record - a youthful tour through heartbreak angst that only falters when it plays too safe. To have amassed so much romantic woe at the age of 18 is a testament both to her natural storytelling talents and the visceral, dramatic nature of being a teenager, where even the most fleeting of kisses is worth immortalising in song. When it works, it really works; ‘good 4 u’’s R&B-verse-meets-pop-punk-chorus would have slotted immaculately onto the ‘Freaky Friday’ soundtrack, while ‘deja vu’ is the perfect bedfellow to Conan Gray’s ‘Heather’, a ‘Don’t know what you’re missing’ fantasy that thrives under chunky drums and painfully relatable snark. As moving as it all is, you can’t help but wish that ‘SOUR’ reflected more of the ‘acceptance’ phase of grief. At a time where we’ve all learnt a little more about the problematic internalised-misogynies of hating on other women in order to make yourself feel better, there’s only so many doses of ’she’s prettier/smarter/cooler than me’ bitterness that you can swallow in one sitting, even when you know exactly how the feeling goes. By the time ‘enough for you’ heaves another “maybe I’m not as interesting as the girls you had before” you can’t help but want to give her young shoulders a shake, drawing the curtains open and encouraging her to give herself a try. Maybe focusing on somebody else is the key to respite; album closer ‘hope ur ok’ is a real highlight, markedly different in its perspective as it reaches to a struggling friend: “His parents cared more about the bible / than being good to their own child”. It’s Olivia at her best; observational and emotional and sincere, all the things that her fans love about her most.

There’s still no knocking the poetic magic of ‘drivers license’, and indeed if you break ‘SOUR’ down to individuals, everything is executed with A* precision, a keen student of the songwriting school of Taylor Swift and Lorde. But the balance is off, and Olivia seems to know it; frequently she berates herself lyrically for being overemotional, and when she sings about social media comparison on ‘jealousy, jealousy’, she gives herself the answer in startling detail; “I know their beauty is not my lack / But it feels like that weight is on my back /…I think I think too much ‘bout kids who don’t know me”. Her honesty about her insecurities might have made her a star, but in the moments where she finds the courage to be more than a victim, Olivia Rodrigo truly soars. (Jenessa Williams) LISTEN: ‘brutal’, ‘good 4 u’

A musical representation of the intricate jigsaw of life.



LUCY DACUS

Home Video (Matador) Lucy Dacus’ storytelling has long been dominated by melancholic retrospection. Whether autobiographical or deeply metaphorical, her soft vocal tones and dynamic guitars paint grainy pictures of times gone by. The artwork for 2016’s ‘No Burden’ embodied this lo-fi lookback, one cemented in the title of 2018’s ‘Historian’. In her music, Lucy has established a stylised filter that both punches with realism and a sombre twinge of loss. With ‘Home Video’, a product of isolation and a musical reckoning with her past, she confronts her history. Each exploration of time and place brings its own tone. Opener ‘Hot & Heavy’ drives forward with the type of understated tempo that has secured her indie film soundtrack credentials.

At the album’s midpoint, the long-running live favourite ‘Thumbs’ pairs deep-seated anger with melodic beauty. At her most experimental, ‘Partner In Crime’ sees Lucy turn to vocal distortion and R&B tones. Elsewhere, she joins the ranks of fellow boygenius members Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker to cement a trifecta of solo albums that have seen each elevate and grow beyond their early confines. Much like her contemporaries, it is in this balance between truth and delicacy that Lucy finds her voice. “In the summer of ’07 I was sure I’d go to heaven,” she reveals matter-offactly on ‘VBS’ before speaking of hope. Her depiction of betrayal on ‘Cartwheel’ falls against gentle fingerpicking. The climactic ‘Triple Dog Dare’ - coming in at almost eight minutes - reflects on queerness and religion, building to a wall of distortion that perfectly mirrors the haze of confusion the complex relationship ignites. At every moment ‘Home Video’ presents a vivid snapshot into an upbringing that fundamentally defines Lucy Dacus’ adulthood. In each tale she finds both loss and hope, a musical representation of the intricate jigsaw of life. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘Triple Dog Dare’

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WOLF ALICE



DRUG STORE ROMEOS

It’s easy to shower superlatives on a band you’re really rooting for. When Wolf Alice’s 2015 debut ‘My Love Is Cool’ landed, its impressive breadth and fizzing, excitable energy prompted all kinds of ‘best new group’ mutterings; when 2017’s ‘Visions of a Life’ won the Mercury Prize, the industry gave it a definitive crowning itself. But with their third album, the London quartet have made something so undeniably brilliant, it’s impossible not to speak of it in the sort of lofty terms only reserved for the truly top tier: ‘Blue Weekend’ isn’t just Wolf Alice’s best record by a country mile, it’s an album that will be around for a long time - a history book-cementing document of a band at the peak of their powers. If the grand, introductory swell of ‘The Beach’, with its Macbeth-quoting opening line, sets the tone for an album unafraid to lean into the Big Moments, then it’s ‘Delicious Things’ that ups their own bar by several notches. A cheeky tale of finding yourself a long, long way from home, its shuffling basslines and seesawing vocal patterns - half-spoken rhymes that teeter between nervousness and wide-eyed wonder - have no discernible modern reference point; if it’s historically easy for a guitar/bass/drums quartet to fall into obvious lanes, across the record Wolf Alice defiantly create their own. This is clever, clever songwriting that never takes the obvious path, instead picking confidently between lush, fingerpicked acoustics (‘Safe From Heartbreak (if you never fall in love)’), bratty, brilliant thrashes (‘Play The Greatest Hits’) and sultry, spacious drama (‘Feeling Myself’) in the space of the same ten minutes.

It’s this sense of confident, high stakes emotion that rings throughout. Whether in ‘The Last Man on Earth’’s gorgeous, slow-building piano and choral goosebumps or ‘Smile’ - the kind of frustrated outpouring (“I am what I am and I'm good at it/ And you don't like me well that isn't fucking relevant”) that a million women will be worshipping at Rowsell’s altar for - ‘Blue Weekend’ is an album that revels in its feelings. The dynamics are constantly shifting, often moving from tender sparsity to luxurious sonic opulence in the same song, but everything feels like the absolute peak of what it could be; the highs soar higher, the riffs are gnarlier and by closer ‘The Beach II’ you’re left with an album that’s audibly chosen never to shy away from any second of potential. Majestic. (Lisa Wright) Listen: ‘Smile’, ‘Feeling Myself’, ‘Delicious Things’

The world within our bedrooms (Fiction) Drug Store Romeos are, like, too cool, man. The Fleet-formed, London-based trio take their name from Tennesse Williams’ iconic play A Streetcar Named Desire. They look like they’ve been dragged through a charity shop by their ankles.

And with a sonic palette that references shoegaze, trip-hop and alt-rock, their universe is a mesmerising one. Akin to the childlike wonder of The Orielles or Let’s Eat Grandma, ‘The world within our bedrooms’ is a hazy haven to enjoy getting lost in as it expands on last year’s single ‘Frame Of Reference’, which introduced the young threesome as slightly unearthly music makers. ‘Building Song’ and ‘Secret Plan’ make for a fantastic start, flitting around between tempos as Sarah Downie’s vocal drifts like vapor over their jovial basslines. There’s an abundance of character in these songs, even if their themes aren’t explicitly obvious; on ‘Walking Talking Marathon’ Sarah seems to speak in tongues over a hypnotic click track. But there’s such a sense of playfulness imbued in the instrumentals that you get the gist anyway. It's not often you hear softness conveyed through drums, as Johnny Gilbert does so deftly on ‘Electric Silence’. What could be very lacklustre, ambient sound is boosted by the very obvious artistic chemistry between the trio, who are completed by guitarist Charlie Henderson. Admittedly ‘...bedrooms’ becomes a little homogenised in its second half. ‘Frame Of Reference’ remains the highlight and everything that follows (save for ‘Adult Glamour’, the luxurious end cut) feels less engaging for it. But if the goal of a debut album is to introduce yourself to the world with a sound and a style that’s purely your own, the Romeos have done a pretty stellar job. (Alex Cabré) LISTEN: ‘Secret Plan’

A band at the peak of their powers.

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Photo: Pooneh Ghana.

Blue Weekend (Dirty Hit)

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GARBAGE

No Gods No Masters (Stunvolume / Infectious) Across their past six studio albums, alt-rock veterans Garbage have perfected their visceral anger. Half a decade since their last outing, ‘No Gods No Masters’ arrives with a poignant and unrelenting fury, gliding between the band’s distinctive grunge tones and industrial onslaughts. It layers new frustrations over vocalist Shirley Manson’s already well-established exasperation, spurred on by the social and political injustices that have dominated the landscape in that time. Yet as overt and outwardly targeted the likes of ‘The Men Who Rule The World’ and ‘Godhead’ are (“Would you deceive me if I had a dick?” Shirley asks on the latter), the album finds space for the introversion that has previously allowed Garbage to cross over. ‘Uncomfortably Me’ remains deeply introspective while still exploring the impact of external factors on self-esteem and self-worth. The vast swathe of instrumentation envelops the sound in a dense claustrophobia, harking back to the likes of ‘Hammering In My Head’ from 1998’s ‘Version 2.0’. Both rhythmic and chaotic, it mirrors the frenetic turbulence of the times that have inspired it. “I can’t seem to make sense of all of this madness,” she offers on ‘Waiting For God’, one of the album’s many ambiguous nods to spirituality. By the comparably orchestral closer ‘This City Will Kill You’ Garbage land on a fleeting moment of hope. Even within the chaos, we have some control over what we choose to put up with and what we choose to leave behind. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘Uncomfortably Me’

Japanese Breakfast can go anywhere and we’ll follow. 

JAPANESE BREAKFAST Jubilee (Dead Oceans)

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SMOOTHBOI EZRA

Stuck (self-release)

“The worst year of your life started when you met me / You say I shouldn’t take it personally,” sings Smoothboi Ezra, on ‘Stuck’, in a deft but devastating manner that seems to encapsulate the Irish teen’s talent perfectly.

Despite being just 19 years old, the songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has already proven themselves to be an emotional force, channeling the intricate but powerful work of influences such as Angel Olsen, Elliot Smith and Phoebe Bridgers. It’s on this four-track EP that they continue that journey; still nodding to those influences, but this time broadening their sonic palette to include fuzzy guitars and warm instrumentation. From the near-whispered reflectiveness of ‘You’ to the profound, country-esque ‘Palm Of Your Hand’, each of the EP’s tracks are intensely evocative, but in the most satisfying way. If this is the work Smoothboi Ezra’s producing so early in their career, the next steps will be undoubtedly more powerful. (Sarah Jamieson) LISTEN: ‘Stuck’

Japanese Breakfast’s first two albums were released in neighbouring calendar years. ‘Jubilee’, which arrives four years after 2017’s ‘Soft Sounds From Another Planet’, feels like a long gap in comparison, but Michelle Zauner hasn’t been resting on her laurels. 2021 also marks the release of her first book Crying In H Mart, a memoir which fuses tales from her American upbringing in a Korean family with food and grief following the passing of her mother. It debuted at #2 on the New York Times Best Sellers list.

Michelle brings the reflective mode of Crying In H Mart to the walls of ‘Jubilee’ too.

The breezy strum of an acoustic guitar that flows through ‘Kokomo, IN’ is rocked gently by strings as she reminisces - “I’ll wait, passing time just popping wheelies,” she sings before soaring into the track's longing chorus.

She ploughs a lot of sonic terrain across the record. Opener ‘Paprika’ stirs excitement in the restless, chirruping synths that eventually bridge to a euphoric fanfare, kicking things off in style. The bass-laced ‘Be Sweet’ immediately follows, contributing to an irresistible one-two punch. Swampy synths swell on ‘Sit’ and the fantastically brooding ‘Posing In Bondage’ while the torchlit ‘Tactics’ is a stringdrenched weeper.

Her storytelling is consistently cinematic and enveloping - on ‘Savage Good Boy’, she puts the human quest for riches and immortality under the microscope. “I want to make the money until there’s no more to be made,” she sings until we end up underwater where she’ll wine and dine her lover “in the hollows”. Elsewhere there are some showstopper one-liners that hold a world in their walls: “When the world divides into two people / Those who have felt pain and those who have yet to”.

‘Jubilee’ finds its creator older and wiser with melody, lyrics and storytelling pulling focus in a fashion that cements Michelle Zauner as a true creative force to be reckoned with. From here on out, Japanese Breakfast can go anywhere and we’ll follow. (Sean Kerwick) LISTEN: ‘Savage Good Boy’

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LIZ PHAIR

Soberish (Chrysalis)

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We have come to know many Liz Phairs. There is the Liz Phair familiar to most, the Liz Phair who upended the singular understanding of the ‘male rocker’ dynamic with her influential debut ‘Exile In Guyville’. There is the ‘Liz Phair’ Liz Phair, from her shift to major-label pop-rock. Then, finally, there is simply Liz Phair, the musician, writer and mother, who wrote the memoir titled Horror Stories. This is the Liz Phair most apparent on her latest record and first over a decade, ‘Soberish’, and perhaps it was the true Liz Phair all along. On ‘Soberish’, Liz returns to working with Brad Wood, who produced both ‘Exile In Guyville’ and ‘Whip-Smart’.

‘Soberish’ sounds more like her early work, with its lo-fi stylings and ramshackle guitars so reminiscent of her earlier work. Lyrically, this record teases her more sentimental side, but even then, she openly admits to not wanting to reveal her true self to the listener: “I don’t wanna talk about it / ‘Cause talking about it makes me sad,” she sings on opener ‘Spanish Bombs’. She drops inklings of herself at her most personal, though still these vignettes are sprinkled sparsely; “I’m meant to be sober, but the bar’s so inviting,” she narrates on the title track. “I don’t have the guts to tell you that I feel safe / … I feel great,” she confides across light guitars and an airy melody. Thematically, it is not a return to ‘Exile In Guyville’ - or as culturally significant - but it doesn’t need to be. Her greatest wish when she first broke into the music industry was to see more female musicians in the rock scene; and now she has got her wish. Her work is done - and now she has time for herself. “What I was longing for back in the early part of my career had happened!” she recalls in the accompanying blurb. “Everywhere you looked, on social media, there were women making their own music, fronting bands, it was their vision, they weren’t just women in a band, they weren’t just songwriters, they were the entire authors of the vision, head to toe. And it was so exciting!” On ‘Soberish’, Liz Phair just wants you to know she’s doing alright.

(Cady Siregar) LISTEN: ‘Spanish Bombs’

ROSTAM

Changephobia (Matsor Projects) Since departing Vampire Weekend back in 2016, Rostam Batmanglij has made a serious name for himself as a go-to producer-for-hire (Frank Ocean, Haim, Lykke Li), while his 2017 debut solo effort ‘Half-Light’ was a cherry-picked collection of songs he had been working on since his old band’s early days and felt a little disjointed as a result. On ‘Changephobia’ his own sonic identity is in full bloom. While choirs, strings and crunchy beats have always been in his wheelhouse, here they are realised and complemented further by jazz instrumentation, sparser production and a newfound confidence in his voice which fights its way out of its predecessor’s more reserved approach. A light breeze feels as if it runs through ‘These Kids We Knew’ and ‘Next Thing’, featuring bright acoustic guitar and carrying a sunny disposition in its stride.

The snappy, gun-cocking percussion that underlies ‘From The Back Of A Cab’ is countered by the chiming piano strikes and swelling pads that rise throughout the track as Rostam recounts the precious few moments two busy lovers share when their schedules align; “From the back of the cab to the airport / I am happy you and I got this hour,” he sings. There’s the house-y beats of ‘Kinney’ that feel as if they’re going to slip out of the grid any minute but somehow cling together even as a gloriously chaotic outro ensues. ‘Unfold You’ is a gorgeous doe-eyed waltz underpinned by a wonky Bari-sax sequence which finds heavenly choirs splitting the composition midway through. Beautifully constructed, surprising and brimming with invention - looking back at all the incredible music Rostam’s been a part of over the years, it feels as if he’s saved a little for himself on ‘Changephobia’. (Sean Kerwick) LISTEN: ‘Kinney’

Simultaneously inviting and intimidating. 

DEEP TAN creeping speedwells

(Practise Music)

A few years back and London bands vaguely loitering around the post-punk world tended towards the belligerent and shouty; in more recent months, the trend has been towards speak-sing detachment delivered with an arched eyebrow and pithy turn of phrase. It’s their complete removal from either of these sounds, then, that makes deep tan such an appealing prospect. Full of spidery basslines and an undercurrent of insidious danger, ‘creeping speedwells’ is simultaneously inviting and intimidating: the first steps into the darkened back room of the party. Over pinging guitar notes and singer Wafah’s insouciant vocal, recent single ‘camelot’ details a hedonistic night on the tiles, while ‘Hollow Scene’ flutters around a subtle but looming sense of dread; early single ‘deepfake’ meanwhile harks back to to Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the arty goths of yore. If there’s an area for improvement it’s that, while the minimal nature of much of ‘creeping speedwells’ is an artistic choice, there are moments when the production feels a bit thin. Still, for a debut EP, the trio already have a clear and exciting identity - they can hammer out the details later. (Lisa Wright) Listen: ‘camelot’

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GRIFF

One Foot In Front Of The Other (Warner) With a string of singles and an EP in her back pocket, debut mixtape 'One Foot In Front Of The Other' serves as a way to get acquainted with Griff as she faces down pop stardom. Almost entirely self-produced, the mixtape sounds intimate and nuanced, moving from the radio-sheen of ‘Black Hole’ to the more hushed ‘Shade of Yellow’. If the latter sounds pulled back, it's completely intentional; the gently percolating synths almost overtake Griff's vocals, vocoder close behind her as she confesses that the particular yellow of someone's room makes her feel safe. What could come off as cliched sounds sincere, such as on 'Earl Grey', an in-the-room style track with tape clicks included. ‘Walk’, with its cheesy ‘80s drum fills and hand-claps, comes closest to gauche if not for its self-awareness and genuine embrace of pop music conventions, nodding to retro influences without bending to them entirely. ‘One Foot In Front Of The Other’ is candid and unerring in representing the person behind it all - this is truly Griff distilled into a collection of tracks, and its imperfections only add to that from-my-bedroom-to-yours sensibility. A joy to listen to, full of crisp production, clear and emotive vocals, and genuine superstar presence 2021 could well be Griff's year. (Eloise Bulmer) LISTEN: ‘Walk’

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MODEST MOUSE The Golden Casket (Epic / Columbia)

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GREENTEA PENG Man Made (AMF)

Following years spent accruing buzz with a handsome array of singles and EPs, Greentea Peng makes a headlong plunge for immortality with narcotising debut ‘Man Made’. Delicately infusing hypnotic dub with seductive hip hop swings and jazzy, neo-soul excursions, this colossal, 18-song set has all the makings of an instant cult classic.

Recorded half a semitone below the industry standard in order to cultivate healing energies, and with a starstudded list of collaborators in tow, (Commissioner Gordon, engineer on ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’ no less, on mixing duties), ‘Man Made’ works to slowly peel away braincells and steadily unhinge the listener into a sensuous delirium, delivering a cannabis-scented invitation to the most blissed-out party in the cosmos. From the first bass throbs of the eponymous opening track, Greentea Peng announces herself as a masterful vocalist, preaching love and righteousness to ‘the collective’ with all the warm companionship and preternatural insight of a divining witch doctor. On the sultry reggae deliciousness of ‘Earnest’, she embodies all the classiness of Erykah Badu, compellingly condemning racism on ‘Suffer’ and ‘Kali V2’, and providing unabashed celebrations of druggy counter-culture on ‘Party Hard’ - “Free your mind and take some fucking shrooms” is the mantra there. All-in-all, ‘Man Made’ is an impressively accomplished, ever-giving record that rarely fails to enchant.

(Elvis Thirlwell) LISTEN: ‘Earnest’

Modest Mouse's last album ‘Strangers to Ourselves’ came along eight years after its predecessor ‘We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank’, after a gestation so protracted that, at one point, they cancelled a UK tour to finish it. Vowing to make its follow-up a speedier affair, 'The Golden Casket' still arrives more than six years later - timeliness is clearly still not their forte. That album felt messy and diffuse, a sprawling affair that suggested the Portland outfit didn’t quite know where to turn after the departure of Johnny Marr, who steered them in a riff-driven direction on ‘We Were Dead…’ On ‘The Golden Casket’, they’ve not necessarily become any more stylistically single-minded - their approach remains a scattershot one - but it feels like they’re bringing a rediscovered confidence with them. Often, you can hear them pulling in different directions on the same song; ‘We Are Between’ starts out sounding like Joy Division, before the funk-inflected guitars come in, while ‘Leave a Light On’ flits between airy pop in the verses and soft anthemics on the chorus. It’s the kind of restlessness that suits them nicely, not least because frontman Isaac Brock remains a bundle of nervous energy himself, his often-agitated vocals providing a neat throughline. This is not quite Modest Mouse at their best, but they’re not a million miles away from it, either. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘We Are Between’

A head-rush of a collection in the best possible way. 

KENNYHOOPLA

SURVIVORS GUILT: THE MIXTAPE (Columbia) Last year’s ‘how will i rest in peace if i’m buried by a highway’, and in particular its Joy Division-indebted title track, marked KennyHoopla out as a name to watch. ‘SURVIVORS GUILT’ goes one further; it cements him as one of 2021’s most exciting. From the first snippet of collaboration between him and Travis Barker, November’s ‘estella//’, it was clear something was afoot. And it’s not just that the blink-182 drummer is using his not inconsiderable platform to direct rock’s gaze towards the newcomer: his signature pummelling here creates the kind of pace and challenge that keeps both Kenny - and the listener - on their toes to exhilarating effect. The release’s finest moment comes with ‘hollywood sucks//’, a slice of the purest pop-punk with a witty chorus to boot: “Can you please move your Prius / You are not fucking Jesus / And he hates LA”.

There’s ‘turn back time//’, with all the carefree abandon of adolescence, and the kind of shoutalong chorus that’s begging for a festival appearance. Similarly, if there’s a number begging for a mid-afternoon Reading & Leeds spot than ‘smoke break//’, we’ll eat our Vans. The mixtape runs the gamut, too: the title track is ferocious, with hardcore screams to boot, in contrast to the melancholic - but with a killer call-and-response chorus - ‘inside heaven’s mouth, there is a sweet tooth//’. A head-rush of a collection in the best possible way, whoever paired this duo up deserves a medal. (Emma Swann) LISTEN: ‘hollywood sucks//’

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KOJAQUE

Town’s Dead

(Soft Boy / Different)

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FAYE WEBSTER I Know I'm Funny haha

(Secretly Canadian)

By way of a thesis summary, Faye Webster’s confession on ‘Both All The Time’ takes the cake; “I’m loneliest at night / after my shower beer.” Capturing the modern dating experience in 11 well-crafted vignettes, ‘Funny..’ is an album that tracks the life-cycle of an ill-fated romance, with all the glorious highs and lows trying to impress their family, sharing your deepest secrets and then scrabbling to find ways to piece yourself back together when it all goes tits up. Despite its tumultuous subject matter, Faye hasn’t abandoned the melodic Hawaii-Five-O charm of her earlier work, infusing it with just the right amount of bite. ‘Cheers’ drapes slinky, skippering guitars over a steely frame, while ’Sometimes’ is a SoCal Frank Ocean lullaby, dissolving its woes in a glass full of blissful piano. The music acts as a balm for the lyrical headspace; on ‘A Stranger’ she finds herself deep in self-pity, comparing herself to exes past through swooning spoken-word, while ‘A Dream with a Baseball Player’ beds its lyrical double-meaning in a swinging hiphop bassline: “How did I fall in love with someone / I don’t know?” Maybe the entire relationship was a fiction? It’s difficult to tell, but it hardly matters. Endearing and relatable without ever lapsing into total fondue, Faye Webster knows exactly how to roll with life’s punches, how to find the humour in a vulnerable moment. She knows she’s funny, but we think she’s pretty smart. (Jenessa Williams) LISTEN: ‘Cheers’

Kojaque comes through with a debut album that takes a widescreen-view of life in Dublin, and seemingly, the desire to get out of it. Opener ‘Heartbreak’ sets up the loose concept for the album which finds a love triangle developing on New Year’s Eve, “You’re gonna miss the countdown,” a passing voice says. Snags of conversation are peppered among the tracks which illuminate the scenes he sets and often ripple with humour - “Why the hell did Dominos text you to say he loves you?”. The loss of his father, who died by suicide when the 26-year-old rapper was a child, also looms heavy. “Remember when I first learned God was the villain? / Well he took my Da and stopped picking up the phone,” he raps on ‘Shmelly’. “Check me out Dad ‘cos I’m doing it / no hands / you proud of me? / I hope you’re tuning in,” he pleads on ‘No Hands’. Most impressive is his vocal performance that crawls from spoken word to rap to melodies in the blink of an eye. Combined with the storytelling tricks he employs across the record - such as on ‘Curtains’ where he takes on the perspective of a girl he’s chatting up in a bar to take shots at his own flaws - he plays with the form to stunning effect. “Bet you say you’re shy but you love the attention,” the girl in question points out. Dripping with humour, personality and cinematic storytelling, ‘Town’s Dead’ is all you could ever want in a debut. (Sean Kerwick) LISTEN: ‘Curtains’

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JOHN GRANT

Boy From Michigan (Bella Union) A glance at John Grant's life will tell anyone he has a host of stories to tell, so in naming his latest effort ‘Boy from Michigan’ it would seem we’re going to get the most intimate invitation yet into the singersongwriter’s world. And it’s a varied one - the material on offer ranges from the piano balladry of ‘The Cruise Room’ to the ‘80s synth pop of ‘Best In Me’ - in other words, every flavour John Grant has to offer. And that’s an exciting prospect on paper, so it's a shame that the record frequently suffers from songs too long by half. In contrast to the more fun moments on the album, like the Oingo Boingo bounce of ‘Rhetorical Figure’, the nine-minute ballads can feel quite excessive.

Nevertheless, the vision remains pure - a self-portrait with a violent colour palette. (Nick Harris) LISTEN: ‘Rhetorical Figure’

Q&A The singer-songwriter talks inspirations, and the limit to her comedy talent.

How has the lockdown treated Atlanta?

I’ve spent a lot of time between Atlanta and Athens [Georgia, USA].

It’s been interesting to see the difference between Atlanta and other cities, as well as the impact on artists. The pandemic didn't serve as a creative time for me like it might have for other people, the pressure and expectation to create was too much and it took the fun out of it for me.

What do you think ‘I Know I’m Funny’ says about where you are now, or where you were while creating it?

I think it’s a good representation of me in the last couple years since I released ‘Atlanta Millionaires Club’, it explains a lot about me and especially where I am now in life. I like to think that just from listening to my music you can get to know the kind of person I am and relate more on a human to human level rather than idolising.

You’ve said Japanese artist mei ehara is the biggest influence this time around, how did it manifest itself do you think?

I think I’ve just learned a lot listening to her and her band. Every part played on her songs is written perfectly. It’s very rare that I like an artist or a song and actually love everything about it, down to the small sound effects and basslines. I also have been inspired by her as a musician as she writes and plays most of the parts on her records herself, then later gets musicians to learn and play them for live performances and other things.

What was it like hanging out with the dirt bike guys for ‘Cheers’?

Sig and all the bikers involved are some of the coolest people in Atlanta and I’m so thankful to have them a part of my project. This group gets overlooked a lot or thought of incorrectly, and really they are just passionate people doing what they love like the rest of us.

If you know you’re funny: what’s your best joke?

I’m not very funny on command… maybe the record should have been named ‘I Think I’m Funny haha’.

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AFI

Bodies (Rise) Emerging onto the vibrant punk scene in the mid ‘90s and landing somewhere between traditional and skate varieties, it was AFI‘s switch to gothic theatrics that landed them widespread acclaim. At the time, the jump from 2000’s ‘The Art Of Drowning’ to the platinum selling ‘Sing For Sorrow’ surprised and divided, yet would quickly signify the band’s willingness to break convention. ‘Bodies’, the band’s eleventh studio album, is testament to both their longevity and their adaptability. Although not a huge departure, it forges together the various elements of AFI’s past into a remarkably coherent package.

Led by Davey Havok’s distinctive vocals, the band lean heavily on ‘80s new wave and their punk foundations. The record’s highly-polished production pulls it together, colliding both worlds on the likes of the rapid ‘Begging For Trouble’ and ‘Looking Tragic’. ‘Death of The Party’ owes much to ‘80s stalwarts. Aware of the risk of their transient nature, ‘Bodies’ sees AFI find the sweet spot between evolution and consistency. In fully embracing theatrics, their new wave leanings, and the unquestionable punk legacy, the band have landed on a sound both contemporary and unmistakably theirs. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘Begging For Trouble’

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MYKKI BLANCO

Broken Hearts & Beauty Sleep (Transgressive)

Mykki Blanco recently described entering their “most prolific period,” and there’s a real energy emanating from mini-album ‘Broken Hearts & Beauty Sleep’ that very much echoes the artist’s sentiment. A glorious trip through all facets of Mykki’s musical personality, we go from slinky, clubby opener ‘Trust A Little Bit’ with its matter-of-fact, authoritative verses, to Dev Hynes sprinkling his signature pop-funk on ‘It’s Not My Choice’, via the clubby ‘Love Me’ which features guests Jamila Woods and Jay Cue. Mykki and collaborator FaltyDL opted against the use of samples on the record, a fact most notable in ‘Want From Me’, with the kind of sweeping strings and booming chorus a Shirley Bassey Bond theme wouldn’t turn its nose up at. The highlight, though is the Big Freedia-starring ‘That’s Folks’ with its celebratory earworm of a chorus.

(Louisa Dixon) LISTEN: ‘That’s Folks’

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WALLICE

Off The Rails (self-release) Listening to ‘Off The Rails’, there’s little surprise Wallice is as buzzy as she is. The Californian singer-songwriter pens witty, confessional bedroom pop that takes melodic cues from the ‘50s and delivers even the most cutting one-liner in a sugary sweet way. How very 2021. “I heard you’re pretty good at drums / I think that’s pretty cool,” opens ‘Hey Michael’, a track with a chorus that doubles as a smorgasbord of pop culture references (she somehow rhymes the titular Michael with “American Psycho”). “But if you try and fuck my pretty friend / I’ll push you in the pool.” ‘23’, meanwhile has the then 22-year-old Wallice daydreaming that life will somehow shift gears once she hits her next birthday (“Maybe I’ll get married soon / And buy a house with three bedrooms / And settle down and get a dog / And make my partner get a job”). ‘Off The Rails’ is an astute snapshot of early 20-something life, and a promising enough start for Wallice. (Bella Martin) LISTEN: ‘23’

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N0V3L

Non-Fiction (Meat Machine)

So which member of N0V3L has harnessed the power of time travel? This debut full length from the Vancouver-based group, offshoot of the heralded Crack Cloud collective, is a near-perfect facsimile of some British post-punk gem recorded in, say, 1981 that any budding crate-digger might unearth from their dad’s dust-smitten record collection. While the mere mention of that much over-wrought term ‘post-punk’ might signal red flags for some, it’s nonetheless a term that neatly encapsulates the vintage subtleties of N0V3L’s sound. It’s a testament to how inextricably fucked the world continuously seems to be, that those quintessential post-punk themes of urban paranoia, individual disempowerment, and mass-media manipulation so unwaveringly touted on ‘Non-Fiction’ still feel so fiendishly relevant. The funereal, chorus-soaked bass-lines, razor-at-the-throat guitar turns, and febrile grooves, slinky and sinister like spiders’ webs, resemble the Cure’s goth trilogy, Gang of Four, and Josef K in one grisly retro-bound package. While their relentlessly lumbering portraits of post-industrial dystopias can be exhausting at times, there are several moments of twisted beauty to cherish here. The hypnotic ‘Notice of Foreclosure’ elegantly strings the listener into a despairing void, while the suspenseful psycho jazz-punk of ‘Violent and Paranoid’ proffers a refreshing slice of modernity within a record so indebted to the past. (Elvis Thirlwell) LISTEN: ‘Notice of Foreclosure’

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CLEOPATRICK Bummer

(Nowhere Special)

While Royal Blood have gone off in search of funky new territories, cleopatrick know the value of sticking close to home. Two friends since kindergarten, ‘BUMMER’ is rich with the tightlypacked references and singular vision that comes from being raised in a town so small that they literally couldn’t find a bassist, paring their sound back to just drums and a guitar.

Luckily, their member-quantity is far from a limitation. No one in rock right now sounds like Luke Gruntz - the product of a fucked up bar fight between Caleb Followill and Adam Levine, he commands an intimidating presence, tongue still pouring blood around his slurred vowels. Wielding a sledgehammer guitar, he dips riffs in molasses and watches the splatter – a guttural take on garage rock that takes courage from being the underdog.

Though the primal vibe drags a little in the mid section (both ‘Why July’ and ‘Peppers Ghost’ could do with a little more hook), there is enough in cleopatrick's hyper-specific lyrics to treasure-hunt you to the finish. ‘No Sweat’s skittering drumlines frame a great pop-punk chorus, and ’THE DRAKE’ is still one of the most intriguing rock singles of the year, the run-on vocal style of Alessia Cara’s ‘Here’ set to moshpit oblivion. When cleopatrick arrive on UK touring shores, there’s going to be carnage.

Not everything about ‘BUMMER’ is fully perfected just yet, but there’s plenty to feel upbeat about. (Jenessa Williams) LISTEN: ‘THE DRAKE’

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DEAP VALLY American Cockroach (Cooking Vinyl)

They might not have released their own album since 2016’s ‘Femejism’, but Deap Vally have remained productive. Last year saw them team up with the Flaming Lips for ‘Deap Lips’; back in February they released ‘Digital Dream’, an EP with guest spots from Warpaint’s Jennylee, Peaches and more. This time it’s a four-track release that suggests they’re testing the waters before they make their next stylistic move.

‘American Cockroach’ features two collaborative numbers; there’s ‘I Like Crime’, a fizzing scuzz-pop track that features new Eagles of Death Metal bassist Jenny Vee, and ‘Better Off with Nothing’, which is a very different beast. A brooding, sludgy post-punk track with Ayse Hassan of Savages, on which overlapping harmonic vocals stand in stark contrast to the ominous bass line, it’s a juxtaposition that shouldn’t work, so it’s to the LA duo’s credit that it really does. Opener ‘Give Me a Sign’ is also a long way from the furious rock and roll we’ve come to expect from Deap Vally; a softly swooning ballad that brings to mind another two-piece, The Kills, who took a similar turn with ‘The Last Goodbye’. The title track, meanwhile, is considerably closer to the Deap Vally we know; a swaggering punk track with a massive chorus. It might be that they’re figuring out their next move with ‘American Cockroach’, or maybe they’re just flexing their stylistic muscles. Either way, this is a triumph.

(Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘American Cockroach’

RECO MMEN DED Missed the boat on some the best albums from the last couple of months? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

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PARIS TEXAS

BOY ANONYMOUS Roaming influences like a two-man Brockhampton, they’re a duo ready to make a serious mark.

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BACHELOR Doomin’ Sun

A ten-song set of sexy, hot-blooded, high-stakes romance rooted in fuzzy ‘90s atmospherics.

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KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD Butterfly 3000 (KGLW)

The third album in seven months from ever-prolific psych-overlords King Gizzard also happens to be their most radical departure yet. Recalling the camp glam of fellow Aussie countrymen Pond and the new age rave of Kero Kero Bonito, ‘Butterfly 3000’ entirely jettisons the electric guitar, embracing instead arpeggiated synth to manifest futuristic dreampop. As with many of their previous crackpot experiments, Stu McKenzie and co attack their latest hare-brained concept - a cybernetic Garden of Eden on the brink of apocalypse - with trademark vigour and virtuosity. A continuous suite of music shifting seamlessly from one track to the next, perforated with leitmotifs, dramatic mood-shifts and beguiling time-signatures, ‘Butterfly 3000’ stands as arguably their most technically accomplished record since 2017’s masterpiece ‘Polygondwanaland’: the candied flutter of ‘Shanghai’, or the voyaging synth-pop splendour of ‘Catching Smoke’ rank among their most sublime moments to date. If anything, ‘Butterfly 3000’ is so unwaveringly pretty, so thickly smeared with bubblegum sheen, so unashamedly carefree and optimistic that even the most seasoned fan will find it a little awkward to digest. Full of surprising innovations, it errs constantly between confusion and brilliance. (Elvis Thirlwell) LISTEN: ‘Catching Smoke’

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BIIG PIIG

The Sky Is Bleeding A subtly powerful yet hot-under-thecollar new sound from the singersongwriter.

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reviews

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FOLLY GROUP

Awake And Hungry (So Young) At its base level, post-punk is all about

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SQUIRREL FLOWER

Planet (i) (Full Time Hobby) ‘Planet (i)’, the second album from Ella Williams, the musician behind Squirrel Flower, is a meandering record. It’s a record about disaster - the title refers to the second planet humanity will settle on and then most likely destroy - and in its DNA is catastrophe on a massive scale, hidden between murmured acoustic guitar and fluted vocals. Opener ‘I’ll Go Running’ develops from a sombre plucked guitar to an all-out exaltation, Ella declaring that she’ll “be newer than before,” wispy threads of harmony adding surety to the conviction that sometimes it can be better to start again from the ground up after weathering the storm.

Centred on disaster, you'd be forgiven for thinking the record was written during the pandemic, but the concept was in germination long before. “To overcome my fear of disasters, I had to embody them, to stare them down,” she says. Embody them she does, see-sawing from the buzzing ‘Hurt A Fly’ to the pared-back ‘Iowa 146’ where you can hear every fretboard squeak and intake of breath as she finds reconciliation and a moment of repose amongst the devastation. For all the immediacy of these tracks, the core of others can get lost: on ‘Pass’, she perseveres through changing seasons and a tornado, yet ultimately a highpitched, burbling synthesiser is the obstacle that proves too much, distracting from the atmosphere that's been so carefully cultivated. As humanity continues to adjust to the now while staring down climate change, ‘Planet (i)’ is a vocalisation of the anxieties of an entire civilisation, the blow softened by satin guitar tones and roaming melodies. (Eloise Bulmer) LISTEN: ‘Hurt A Fly’

experimentation. And anger. And weirdness. Oh and don’t forget angular guitars. Basically, for all of its desire to be different, post punk, like every other genre, follows a fairly ridged ruleset. ‘Awake and Hungry’, the debut EP from Folly Group, follows these rules to the letter, adding just enough of a spin on things to create a record full of weird and wonderful post-punk nonsense. The group are jagged, danceable and oozing with confidence. And unlike many contemporary post punk acts, Folly Group clearly view the genre through the lens of the mid-noughties. Throughout the EP they pay their respects to the shining lights of the era.; ‘Four Wheel Drive’ and ‘Butt No Rifle’ bring fully-fledged rhythms to the party. There’s a hint of peak Bloc Party at times and even a little bit of The Rapture in there, but with much more darkness, ensuring that they never fall into the trap of pure imitation. With ‘Awake and Hungry’, Folly Group have proven that it’s possible to follow the rules of a tired old genre and come up with something fresh and interesting. Not a bad start at all. (Jack Doherty) LISTEN: ‘Four Wheel Drive’

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THE LOUNGE SOCIETY

Silk For The Starving (Speedy Wunderground) The latest in a succession of acclaimed acts to emerge from Yorkshire’s fertile valleys, The Lounge Society cannily utilise the limited time-frame of an EP to showcase the full breadth of their guitar-smashing trickery. ‘Burn the Heather’ takes on an Orielles-esque disco-rock, but fires it with a frenetic punk psychosis. The labyrinthine warp and weft of ‘Television’, inspired by the group of the same name, stops and stutters with blustering swagger, while ‘Cain’s Heresy’ offers a true rock behemoth, chuntering at breakneck tempo before unleashing a transcendent psychedelic climax. As closer ‘Valley Bottom Fever’ burns through the last dregs of their adolescent chutzpah, The Lounge Society round off an EP of coruscating agit-punk that shoves two tobacco-stained fingers up the prideful nostrils of a corrupt elite. Vocalist Cameron Davey’s lyrical venom on ‘Silk For The Starving’ is also worthy of note: brutal anti-establishment cynicism (“Genocide makes for good TV”) roars across a record as ambitious as it is effervescently youthful, letting us know that for The Lounge Society at least, the world is their oyster. (Elvis Thirlwell) LISTEN: ‘Cain’s Heresy’

BACK TO THE

DRAWING BOARD W I T H F O L LY G R O U P 1. WHERE DID YOU RECORD THE EP?

2. WHAT DID LOCKDOWN LOOK LIKE FOR YOU?

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FRANCIS LUNG

Miracle (Memphis Industries) Since the strange, sudden dissolution of Mancunian upstarts WU LYF, nearly a decade ago now Tom McClung has decisively struck out on his own as Francis Lung. While that band’s frontman, Ellery Roberts, has ventured into similar future-anthem territory with his new outfit, Lost Under Heaven, bassist Tom has gravitated consistently towards his pop influences. This follow-up to 2019’s debut full-length ‘A Dream Is U’ is very much in the same vein as that album, not least in how accurately it reflects the press quip from him that accompanied it - that it sounded “like a short Mancunian boy single-handedly trying to incite Beatlemania”. Sure enough, ‘Miracle’ is deeply indebted to the Fab Four, packed as it is with melodically chirpy pop songs that are drenched with melancholy once you begin to dig into Tom’s lyrics, which are pleasingly witty, even if he does drop the occasional clanger; on ‘Blondes Have More Fun’, he sings of “spending all my time indoors, listening to The Cure, like it really is a cure.” A Mancunian born and bred, he’s never quite going to escape comparisons with The Smiths, and the ghosts of Morrissey and Marr do linger in the background on ‘Miracle’, but the band these songs really call to mind is Belle and Sebastian; the plaintive pop aesthetic, the smart, matter-of-fact lyricism, the handsome flushes of the string section. Tom isn’t reinventing the wheel here, but he knows what he’s good at; ‘Miracle’ is a skilfully crafted record. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘Bad Hair Day’

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3. WHAT DOES A ‘SAND FIGHT’ LOOK LIKE?

4. WHEN ‘AWAKE AND HUNGRY’, WHAT’S THE FIRST FOOD YOU’RE THINKING OF?

THE WORLD WITHIN OUR BEDROOMS ALBUM OUT JUNE 25th 59

Coming Up

reviews

BLEACHERS - TAKE THE SADNESS OUT OF SATURDAY NIGHT Now he’s done desk duties for his famous pals, Jack Antonoff has finally revealed his own third album will be out on 30th July.

MR JUKES & BARNEY ARTIST - THE LOCKET Bombay Bicycle Club’s Jack Steadman has teamed up with the East London rapper for this collaborative effort, released 2nd July.

LUMP - ANIMAL Another set of collaborative works from Laura Marling and Mike Lindsay will land on 30th July.

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Devastations

As Blue As Indigo

ANDREW HUNG

TIGERCUB

(Lex)

(Blame)

Andrew Hung brings the noise. It’s what he does best. For the past two decades he's created the most beautifully deranged electronic racket with Fuck Buttons, and now he’s back at it again, well, sort of… ‘Devastations’, his second album as a fully-fledged solo artist, takes a slightly different route into the electronic stratosphere. Gone are the crushing battle-cry synthesisers, replaced by a sweeping brand of lush, at times even beautiful, digital krautrock. That’s not to say the noise has completely disappeared. Opener ‘Battle’ is a reminder of his day job.

The track is a threatening psychedelic swirl of noise. It’s all bleeps, bloops and swelling keys, like an omega computer system loading up in reverse. After this things take a slightly different tone. The record wrestles between the calm and the noisy, climaxing with the euphoric ‘Space’. The track slowly dismantles itself, one throbbing note at a time, before floating away into the ether. Although an incredibly vulnerable listen, it never loses control of its chaos. Every synth swirl is perfectly executed, every drumbeat is ideally placed.

It’s the sound of someone with a deep understanding of their sound.

With ‘Devastations’, Andrew Hung has discovered a scenic route to noise. Who knew the digital apocalypse could sound so pretty? (Jack Doherty) LISTEN: ‘Space’

The fuel for the fire for this second album from Tigercub was drawn from frontman Jamie Hall’s side project, Nancy, a psychedelic diversion from the raw punk of this band's first album that he ended up taking around the world on tour. On paper, the similarities between his solo output and this second Tigercub record are not obvious, but you get the sense that the unexpected success of what was supposed to be a bedroom project to keep his songwriting instincts sharp has imbued him with a new confidence, one that ‘As Blue As Indigo’ is dripping with. This is a swaggering rock and roll record, stacked with monolithic riffs and packed with hooks. These are melody-driven pop songs, dressed up as grungy rock that stylistically falls somewhere between Death from Above and Queens of the Stone Age. In that respect, they call to mind another couple of Brighton outfits, Royal Blood and Architects. On this form, there’s nothing to say that Tigercub can’t follow them.

(Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘Blue Mist In My Head’

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MAX BLOOM

Pedestrian (Ultimate Blends) When London shoegaze outfit Yuck formally announced their split in February of this year, frontman Max Bloom had already made strides in announcing himself as a solo artist. Debut ‘Perfume’, released last spring, showcased his more sensitive side, a far-cry from the bristly repertoire of his former band. Follow-up ‘Pedestrian’ continues this narrative of artistic regeneration. Released on his own Ultimate Blends, and accompanied by a collection of artworks and videos designed by Max himself, the album’s creation was also marked by a newfound love of running, a pastime to epitomise ‘getting your shit together’.

‘Pedestrian’ succeeds where Max combines his desire for more mature, melodic songwriting with vestiges of his plucky Yuck past.

The skating arpeggios and silky acoustic drive of ‘Palindrome’ contains all the purity of a rushing summer’s breeze, while ‘Twenty-Two’ espouses a delightful ‘90s shoegaze dreaminess.

Save these few gorgeous moments, the piano-clinking soft-rock departures which populate much of ‘Pedestrian’ bear the flavour of an artist making tentative steps towards a new musical vision not yet fully formed. Whimsical songs about stormy weather and journeying across the United States are sweet enough, but Max Bloom’s virtuous desire for simple arrangements and affected naivety is often to his detriment, sounding pedestrian at best.

(Elvis Thirlwell) LISTEN: ‘Palindrome’

SOCIAL HAUL Social Haul (FatCat)

With TRAAMS on hiatus, Leigh Padley has taken advantage of the current postpunk revival to form Social Haul, a rough and ready trio with a surly attitude. There aren't many huge surprises here: the singing is largely angry chanting, although without the same anger and urgency of the likes of IDLES, and the band all take turns to shine, whether it's Leigh’s twisted guitar in The Bayou, Richard Trust’s Clash-like drum opening to ‘I Have A Pen’, or Daniel Daws’ rolling bassline in ‘The Ease’. The range of songwriting goes from upbeat Supergrass and grinding Queens of the Stone Age, to a late dip with ‘Utmost Care’ leaning more towards softer indie. If there is any weakness to the record, it is this sprawl of influence - admirable, but detracting from a cohesive identity. And the album has its fair share of filler too: there is more than enough material for a stellar EP, but it feels like the nascent trio haven't spent enough time being a band to understand fully their own dynamic. This is a deliberately rough album, and the charm of that leaves a desire to hear them with the polish of a fully formed identity. (Nick Harris) LISTEN: ‘The Bayou’

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PHOBOPHOBES

Modern Medicine (Modern Sky)

WAVVES - HIDEAWAY Nathan Williams and gang have teamed up with superproducer Dave Sitek for Album Seven.

Out 16th July.

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First kicking around in the delightfully ‘orrible mid-’10s South London scene that gave birth to the Fat White Family, Phobophobes’ journey has been a more tumultuous one, taking in personal tragedy and industry setbacks. It goes some way to explaining why, as their original peers have continuously ascended into influential scene-leaders, their star has been a distinctly slower burn - a shame since, as second LP ‘Modern Medicine’ shows, there’s much to love about their particularly nightmarish carnival. Whether in the brooding prowl of ‘Hollow Body Boy’, or the falsetto group chants and wonky wurlitzer of ‘Blind Muscle’, the worlds the ‘Phobes create here are disorientating ones full of gothic characters and woozy sonics. ‘Negative Space’’s sonorous baritone nods to Iggy Pop, while ‘Lick The Lid’ is like The Cramps down the disco. If you could essentially play ‘The Box’’s wind-whips and footprints as an immersive, terrifying Halloween experience, then title track ‘Modern Medicine’ is, conversely, a pretty damn catchy affair and ‘Muscle Memory’ - replete with slow, sad strings - acts as the album’s introspective torch song. More than just also-rans, Phobophobes deserve their own time in the sun. (Lisa Wright) Listen: ‘Negative Space’

radically thrilling

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IT’S YOUR ROUND

A big inter-band pub quiz of sorts, we’ll be grilling your faves one by one.

NO BROUW GHT TO YO U VIA ZOOM !

JULIE EDWARDS, DEAP VALLY Where: Somewhere sunny, California

General Knowledge

Specialist Subject: Knitting and crocheting 1. In addition to the knit stitch, what is the second basic knitting stitch?

The purl stitch.

Yes!

I guess my answer was not very fast. That’s crazy though!

2. What is another name for ‘duplicate stitch’?

Is that an increase?

It’s Swiss darning….

With darning you use what’s almost an upholstery needle, and it’s more sewing. That is the worst part of knitting.

3. According to the Guinness World Records, Lisa Gentry is the world’s fastest crocheter. But how many stitches did she achieve in 30 minutes?

So, if she was crocheting for 30 minutes… Um, 200 stitches?

It was 5,113 stitches!

4. What is the name of the technique used to close the toe in many sock patterns?

Oh wow, I’m really rusty. Well, I know how you do it - the stitches get left open on two needles. It’s kind of like darning, but maybe there’s another method. Grafting?

It’s the Kitchener stitch.

Of course it’s the Kitchener stitch! It’s been a long time.

We’ll give you half a point for attempting to demonstrate how to actually do it…

5. According to the Craft Yarn Council, how many sizes of crochet hooks are there? 5, 10, or 17?

17!

It is 17!

6. Which city had the first ever fashion week?

That’s general knowledge?! New York?

Correct! It took place in New York in 1943.

7. What type of fish is Nemo in Finding Nemo?

Ohhhh, a clownfish?

Yes! Well done!

I have a five year old child so I’ve seen those movies a few times.

8. From what grain is the Japanese spirit sake made?

Ooh, what grain is sake made out of it? Hmm, beverages… I guess, barley?

Ahh, it’s rice.

4.5/10

Verdict: “Shame on me that I blew it on the Kitchener stitch!”

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9. How many permanent teeth does a dog have?

I have one of these [gestures to her cat] so it’s not really the same.

Let’s say 28?

It’s 42.

10. Gordon Sumner is the real name of what famous British musician?

Can I just cheat?! I just want to make sure I’m not gonna be really embarrassed…

It’s Sting.

Oh wow, no, shame on me, I did not know that.

2/5

2.5/5 2.5 /5 FINAL SCORE:

Oh that’s so obvious!

Lindsey probably would’ve known that.

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St. Vincent is back with a record of all-new songs.

Warm Wurlitzers and wit, glistening guitars and grit, with sleaze and style for days.

Taking you from uptown to downtown with the artist who makes you expect the unexpected.

So sit back, light up, and by all means have that bourbon waiting, because…

DADDY’S HOME.

Available May 14th on vinyl, cassette, 8-track and more.

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