DIY, February 2024

+ IDLES Crawlers Yard Act MGMT & more

Take your seats for...

LAST DINNER PARTY

THE

We hope you’re hungry...

2 DIYMAG.COM

23.09 24.09 25.09 27.09 28.09 29.09 01.10 02.10 04.10 05.10 07.10 10.10 11.10 12.10 14.10 16.10

NEWCASTLE LEEDS SHEFFIELD NORWICH LINCOLN CARDIFF BIRMINGHAM NOTTINGHAM BRISTOL SOUTHAMPTON DUBLIN GLASGOW MANCHESTER LIVERPOOL CAMBRIDGE LONDON

O2 CITY HALL O2 ACADEMY OCTAGON CENTRE THE LCR, UEA THE ENGINE SHED TRAMSHED O2 ACADEMY ROCK CITY O2 ACADEMY O2 GUILDHALL 3OLYMPIA O2 ACADEMY O2 VICTORIA WAREHOUSE MOUNTFORD HALL CORN EXCHANGE EVENTIM APOLLO

TICKETS ON SALE FRI 9TH FEB AT 8AM

3

lafayettelondon.com 4 DIYMAG.COM

lafayettelondon

February 24 Lambrini Girls by Emma Swann

Question!

The world is ending and it’s it’s the last dinner party of all time - what are you serving?

SARAH JAMIESON Managing Editor Going for my absolute failsafe of a ridiculously massive lasagne, served with a cheeky rocket and balsamic salad and a pillowy, garlicky focaccia; you just can’t go wrong with lasagne. Then maybe we’ll throw in a tiramisu for afters…

M&S Christmas buffet food cos that’s actually what everyone really wants for their last soiree on earth. Tiny food 4eva!

EMMA SWANN Founding Editor I take precisely zero joy from food preparation, so takeaway pizza (with extra cheese) it would be.

DAISY CARTER Digital Editor I’ve recently discovered the brilliantly batshit ‘70sdinnerparty’ Insta page, so we’re going retro, people.

Olives suspended in jelly? Cheese and pineapple hedgehog? Basically, something that would make the end of the world seem not that bad after all.

LISA WRIGHT Features Editor Swerving very hard between fancy - a hefty beef wellington and everything that gives you gout - or just a smorgasbord of

LOUISE MASON Art Director Bottomless Dim Sum. And then technically the world would not be able to end. Double win.

Editor's Letter It’s not often that it feels as though the stars align and one band single-handedly sweep up all of new music’s accolades in one giddy flourish, but when it does happen, you know there’s something special afoot. Ever since The Last Dinner Party started offering up their hedonistic, theatrical wares to anyone lucky enough to get in across London’s live circuit, they’ve been on our radar as the Next Big Thing™, so it’s an absolute pleasure to welcome the quintet to our first cover of 2024 in celebration of their gorgeous debut.

Elsewhere this month, we’re back with a bang! We’ve got chats with DIY faves like Crawlers, Yard Act, IDLES, and more, and we’re taking a peek at some of the brilliant new records that 2024’s got up its sleeve, including releases from the incredible Remi Wolf, Rachel Chinouriri and Bob Vylan. Sink your teeth into all of that!

Listening Post NO DOUBT - TRAGIC KINGDOM With the announcement of this year’s Coachella lineup came the simultaneous news that No Doubt - Gwen Stefani’s iconic pre-pop megastar band were also getting back behind the wheel. Everyone still knows lavish ballad ‘Don’t Speak’, but there’s a whole lot of sass to love in their career peak third LP. BODEGA - OUR BRAND COULD BE YR LIFE The third album from the NYC outfit also sort of doubles as a prequel, with the group ‘remaking’ the album their previous band, Bodega Bay, dreamt up back in 2015. Confused? Don’t be. Grand concept aside, it’s an assured new collection that retains the cheekiness whilst prioritising melody.

THE MAGIC GANG - THE MAGIC GANG 2024’s first bit of sad indie news has arrived: following two top notch albums, a DIY cover back in 2018, and a lengthy period of quiet that meant we probably should have seen this coming, The Magic Gang have decided to call it quits. Pour one out with a dig back into their sparkling debut, and book tickets for their farewell tour in May.

February playlist Scan the Spotify code to listen.

Sarah Jamieson, Managing Editor

5

CONTENTS NEWS NEU 8 REMI WOLF 12 RACHEL CHINOURIRI 13 BOB VYLAN 14 YARD ACT

18 LAMBRINI GIRLS 20 SPIDER 22 KAETO

34

36

42

46

SERPENTWITHFEET

26

THE LAST DINNER PARTY

40

LIME GARDEN

CRAWLERS

MGMT

IDLES

reviews 50 ALBUM S 61 EPS ETC 62 LI VE

Founding Editor Emma Swann Managing Editor Sarah Jamieson Features Editor Lisa Wright Digital Editor Daisy Carter Art Direction & Design Louise Mason Cover Photo: Elena Rendina.

6 DIYMAG.COM

Contributors: Adam England, Alex Doyle, Alfie Byrne, Ben Tipple, Elena Rendina, Ella Margolin, Elvis Thirlwell, Hannah Mylrea, Jack Terry, James Hickey, Jessie Brown, Joe Goggins, Kate Brayden, Louis Griffin, Matt Brown, Max Pilley, Misha Warren, Nieve McCarthy, Otis Robinson, Sarah Taylor, Tilly Foulkes, Tom Williams.

For DIY editorial: info@diymag.com For DIY sales: advertise@diymag.com For DIY stockist enquiries: stockists@diymag.com

ll 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.

BIRD ON THE WIRE PRESENTS

LONDON & BEYOND

‘Fly The Nest’ with Malice K + more

John Francis Flynn

GHOST WOMAN

Meagre Martin

TUE 30TH JAN BELOW STONE NEST

SOLD OUT WED 31ST JAN THE DOME

FRI 2ND FEB STUDIO 9294

SAT 10TH FEB SEBRIGHT ARMS

Rachael Lavelle

Jeff Rosenstock

Helena Deland

@

MON 12TH FEB THE LEXINGTON

TUE 13TH FEB THE WAITING ROOM

SOLD OUT WED 14TH FEB THU 15TH FEB ELECTRIC BALLROOM

SOLD OUT WED 21ST FEB OSLO

SOLD OUT FRI 23RD FEB GEORGE TAVERN

‘Fly The Nest’ with special guests

Aoife Nessa Frances

Uma

DIIV

MIKE

TUE 12TH MAR O2 FORUM KENTISH TOWN

SOLD OUT SAT 16TH MAR SOLD OUT SUN 17TH MAR SOLD OUT MON 18TH MAR CAFE OTO

Hayden Pedigo

SOLD OUT

TUE 27TH FEB BELOW STONE NEST

WED 28TH FEB BERMONDSEY SOCIAL CLUB

Yard Act

Widowspeak

WED 27TH MAR EVENTIM APOLLO

FRI 29TH MAR LAFAYETTE

Discovery Zone

TUE 16TH APR PECKHAM AUDIO

SOLD OUT

THU 29TH FEB THE LEXINGTON

Tapir!

Julia Holter

WED 3RD APR PAPER DRESS VINTAGE

THU 4TH APR KINGS PLACE

TUE 9TH APR EARTH THEATRE

Louis Culture

Adrienne Lenker with friends

Erlend Øye & La Comitiva

Sen Morimoto

THU 18TH APR VILLAGE UNDERGROUND

SOLD OUT SAT 27TH APR SOLD OUT SUN 28TH APR BARBICAN CENTRE

SUN 12TH MAY EARTH THEATRE

TUE 14TH MAY THE LEXINGTON

Hurray For The Riff Raff

Kiasmos

Bikini Kill

Bikini Kill

Bikini Kill

FRI 17TH MAY ELECTRIC BRIXTON

SOLD OUT WED 29TH MAY HERE AT OUTERNET

WED 12TH JUN ROUNDHOUSE

THU 13TH JUN O2 ACADEMY LEEDS

FRI 14TH JUN O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW

Bikini Kill

Ty Segall

Nils Frahm

Wednesday

RALLY

FRI 28TH JUN ROUNDHOUSE

THU 11TH JUL TO SOLD OUT SUN 14TH JUL (6 SHOWS) BARBICAN CENTRE

TUE 20TH AUG SCALA

SAT 24TH AUG SOUTHWARK PARK

SOLD OUT SUN 16TH JUN THE CROSSING, BIRMINGHAM

H31R / Niecy Blues

MORE INFO & TICKETS

BIRDONTHEWIRE.NET

7

NEWS Striding out onto the arenas of the world in support of musical juggernauts Paramore and Olivia Rodrigo, Remi is roadtesting an ambitious second record in equally massive fashion. Words: Lisa Wright. Photos: Ragan Henderson.

8 DIYMAG.COM

emi Wolf might have a big year ahead of her, one set to encompass the follow-up to 2021 debut ‘Juno’ - a record that sent the 27-year-old California native on an uphill trajectory from buzzy, technicolour newcomer to a fixture on the world’s festival stages, with tens of millions of streams to her name. But before LP2 can fully come to pass, Remi has a more pressing decision to make: namely, whether she intends to incur the wrath of the mums of Europe when she heads out with Olivia Rodrigo next month for the ‘GUTS’ star’s mammoth arena tour.

“If you’ve seen my show, you’ll know that I swear like a sailor.

It’s like, ‘Cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt’ forever,” she chuckles down the Zoom camera. “I’m on the fence of taking out some of the language stuff or going full-on and letting [the kids] experience something new. It’ll go viral…”

The Rodrigo-loving youth might not know what’s hit them, but for anyone who’s been following the singer since her early trio of canine-themed EPs (‘You’re a Dog!’, ‘I’m Allergic to Dogs!’ and ‘We Love Dogs!’), Remi’s unfiltered approach to everything she does sits firmly at the core of her appeal. Some of ‘Juno’’s most eyebrow-raising lines ranged from a tattoo description of “two fish kissing on my clit, motherfucker” to ‘Quiet On Set’’s extremely quotable “eating my ass like the human centipede”. Wolf has never professed

ritten in snatches of time between tours throughout 2022 and 2023, Remi describes LP2 as a collection of sibling songs rather than a document of one specific time and place. “I would go on tour, get back and be home for a week-and-a-half and, in that week-and-a-half, I’d just be working on music the whole time. And then I'd go out and do it again. And I just did that for two years,” she recalls.

“So because of that, there’s definitely pockets of songs.

There’s three songs that sound like sisters, and then four others that sound like sisters, and five others. But if you put them together, they’re a nice happy family.”

It’s a routine that doesn’t allow for much downtime, but also one that perhaps worked in the singer’s favour going into the well-documented anxiety of the ‘difficult second album’.

Cliche though it may be, it’s one that Remi felt keenly.

“There’s so much lore around the sophomore album. I think that can get scary,” she nods. “There’s just this pressure where you want people to love it and be able to make it their baby as much as they made the first album their baby, and I think sometimes that initial breakage of a sound can be a hard thing for everybody [to accept]. You have to be open, and you just hope that everyone is open with you.”

Though she’s keeping titles and details to herself for now, the bones of the songs are evidently shaping themselves into new and evolved skeletons. She describes some “absolutely wild song forms” and a newfound love of synths. On this record, she plays drums, bass and guitar, and has been challenging herself vocally more than ever. “All the songs I write, for some reason I write the hardest vocal parts ever and then I’m like, ‘Fuck, now I need to execute this live’ and it’s so hard to do…” she groans.

“I just want to live on the edge of genre, on the edge of profanity, on the edge of everything.” to be anything except her unapologetic self, and that’s an attitude set to fully extend into her next body of work.

“I just want to live on the edge of genre, on the edge of profanity, on the edge of everything. I want it all to feel like it’s on the edge of falling apart - and I think I've done that!” she laughs. “I feel like it’s not up to me to decide what boundary-pushing is; I just hope I’m doing it by existing.”

Last year’s standalone single ‘Prescription’ - a laid-back, seven-minute soulful jam of a track - landed as a new card in the singer’s deck, but it’s by no means indicative of where Remi’s heading next. The thing to glean from it, she underlines, is not to have any expectations at all. “I will always just do what I want. I don’t think I will ever conform, and if I have feelings of conformity, I will actively fight them,” she shrugs. “There’s definitely not any other song that sounds like ‘Prescription’ on the record, but also none of the other songs sound like each other either.

“A huge thing to actively reject is the TikTok culture of it all,” she continues. “I feel like the definition of a singer-songwriter on TikTok is really, really specific and boxed in right now, and that sound is travelling around and really sweeping the Spotifys and YouTubes and whatever. As an artist you feel pressure and you want people to like your shit, and with that

9

NEWS

comes a lot of like, ‘Woah! Should I be sounding like that or trying to write my lyrics differently?’

And you have to push that all out of your head and be like, ‘No, whatever comes out of me is the best thing because it’s me’.” aving spent part of December on another massive arena tour, this time at the behest of Paramore, who also roped Remi in to contribute to their recent ‘Re: This Is Why’ rework album (the singer tackled live setlist opener ‘You First’), the wheels of rolling out Album Two have already been set in motion. Those shows, she explains, acted like a “less pressurised” testing ground for a couple of new tracks, including one with a “nice four on the floor” that she’s particularly excited for.

“That song’s pumping,” she grins, “and that’s part of the reason I wanted to play it on that tour, because we were playing arenas and when I first wrote the song, in my mind I was thinking I really wanted to play it in an arena with huge reverb. It’s a mini dream of mine that I got to realise.”

These days, having taken ‘Juno’ all around the world, massive stages are no biggie for the singer.

“I don’t view those shows as anything different than a club that has 350 people in it,” she says. “I think the only part that felt more difficult was that it wasn’t my fans per se, but I thrive in a situation where I have to win people over.” And these experiences of constant travel, growth and change have found their way into the new album too.

Remi describes the record as “an album of transition”. “I was travelling the world so how could it not be,” she caveats. “I think in writing this record, there was no ounce of my life that was grounded except for this one relationship I have which a lot of the record is about. And I love writing about love and the trials and tribulations of love, and of my own mind and living in my own body, so those themes are still running very strong.”

Still negotiating a journey through sobriety that she says has been up and down throughout the course of making the record, there are a lot of things that are still in flux for Remi Wolf; gearing up for another year of touring and relentless activity, that might not change for a while yet either. But though she’s still not got it all figured out, the singer is clear as to the ambitious, exploratory attitude that she wants to take into her next album and long beyond. “I didn’t feel the pressure when I was writing this music, but I feel it now when I’m like, ‘How the fuck is this gonna be received?’ she questions. “But I’ve just gotta give it up to the gods and hope for the best and know that I put my all into the music and I really fuck with this music.

I listen to this music, so if I love it then hopefully other people will love it too.” DIY

“If I have feelings of conformity, I will actively fight them.”

10 DIYMAG.COM

NEWS

he nu-disco grooves of ‘Future Nostalgia’ may have got us through lockdown back in 2020, but by this point we’re getting a bit, erm, nostalgic for the days of having a whole new Dua album to dig into. But never fear - the arrival of the almost frustratingly catchy ‘Houdini’ late last year (not to mention her scene-stealing addition to the Barbie film) is surely - surely? - a sign that LP3 is coming in 2024. She’s already hinted that her next offering will be more raw, drawing on personal experiences and taking inspiration from the unfiltered hedonism of ‘90s rave culture. Bucket hats? Bring ‘em on.

Though the initial launch of Skepta’s new project was slightly marred by a furore around the artwork for lead single ‘Gas Me Up’ (the rapper apologised and replaced the image), there’s nonetheless a huge swell of anticipation for the grime pioneer’s first new album in half a decade. ‘Knife and Fork’ is due later this year, with Skepta tweeting, “I’m truly grateful that my music is still resonating with the world, even in my absence.”

There’s an inherent confidence to releasing a self-titled album a significant way into your career, the implicit message being that this is the purest incarnation of your work to date. Super-producer and friend to the pop elite Jack Antonoff will be hoping that’s the case with the release of ‘Bleachers’ on 8th March. Antonoff has described the record as “extremely present”, with his writing extending “not beyond, but in addition to, the lens of grief” that’s informed the project to date.

From confirmed comebacks to the speculative ‘surely this year’s that we’re hoping will land before 2024 is through, here are the albums set to jostle for column inches over the coming months…

While Bring Me The Horizon may have had a bit of a false start after announcing details of their seventh album last summer (a new release date is still yet to be confirmed, but it will land later this year), one thing is for certain: it’s set to be a doozy. Having already shared cuts such as the Daryl Palumbo-featuring ‘AmEN!’ and recent single ‘Kool-Aid’, it sounds like ‘Post Human: Next Gen’ could see the Sheffield outfit swing back to the more frenzied metalcore of their roots, while maintaining the anthemic spirit of their recent chart-topping records.

Entitled ‘Star Line Gallery’, the follow up to 2019’s ‘The Big Day’ is tentatively set for a spring release, according to an announcement made by Chance on Instagram Live. During an interview on The Voice where he’s, slightly bizarrely, a judge, he described the release as “a collaboration with a lot of different folks from around the world, telling our stories in a new kind of way.”

Back for another internetbaiting viral masterclass, Ariana recently made her return to the high table of pop with ‘yes, and?’ - a disco-indebted club number that’s already caused rife speculation over its unapologetic lyrics. And with forthcoming album ‘eternal sunshine’ now confirmed for later this Spring (her first in five years, don’t ya know), there’s no doubting that the angel-voiced icon has a lot more to say. Talk to the pony, ‘cos the face ain’t listening.

After the few massive years that Sam Fender has had, it’s little wonder that the North Tynesider needed a bit of a breather. What was less expected, though, was that at his pair of huge hometown shows at St James’ Park last summer, he’d already begun looking ahead to LP3, with a series of billboards teasing ‘Seventeen Going Under’’s follow-up. Since then, his camp have been quiet about what comes next, but the singer has just appeared on Noah Kahan’s new single ‘Homesick’. Could more new music from Sam be on its way? Here’s hoping.

At this point, nearly a decade (!!) after it was first slated for release, who knows whether ‘Masochism’ will ever see the light of day. Comeback single ‘Don’t Forget’ arrived in 2022 alongside a handful of live shows and then… nothing.

So yes, 2024 could be Sky’s year, but then so could 2016 have been, and 2017, and… well you get the point.

11

NEWS Excavating trauma through the medium of indiepop earworms, the London singer’s debut is set to be a multi-faceted, starmaking turn. Words: Hannah Mylrea.

Photos: Lauren Harris

”There’s a therapeutic aspect to when I write songs,” says Rachel Chinouriri. “I feel like when this finally comes out, I’ll be able to let go of a lot of stuff personally.” The collection in question is the London singer-songwriter’s increasingly-anticipated debut album ‘What A Devastating Turn of Events’ - due out in May. A powerful and personal record, it lands as an honest examination of trauma and its lasting impacts, spun over a soundtrack of indie, alternative and pop.

The album is split in two, with the lighter tracks front-loaded. Chinouriri explains she intentionally built the tracklisting to “replicate what I felt when I was growing up as a kid”. “Life could be super normal, but you’re always anticipating something major to happen,” she continues, “whether it was traumatic, whether it was a fight, whether it was an argument. I was raised in an all-white neighbourhood, so whether it was a racism thing. I was always looking over my shoulder, anticipating something could happen, but it would always happen when I least expected it.”

Chinouriri wants the album to convey “this false sense of security”, with listeners passing through the songs “then suddenly - boom. You’ve been hit with a very deep and dark song and then everything changes… That’s what I wanted to replicate with the sound.”

he was like, ‘So, how are you finding LA?’ and I burst into tears. I was like, ‘I don’t want to be here’, and that’s probably one of the worst things you can say to Kenny Beats,” she recounts. “It’s not that I didn’t want to be with him, I was just having a tough time. But he was like, ‘No it’s OK’, and gave me all this great advice, which was so lovely.” Their session eventually led to the creation of ‘Dumb Bitch Juice’, a track about the “dumb decisions” made while dating.

Throughout, Chinouriri’s distinct songwriting and lyricism shine, with lush sonics accompanying across the record. Recent single ‘Never Need Me’ - a track “about the moment you let someone you love go so you can both grow” - is an indie-pop earworm. Meanwhile, the beautiful ‘Robbed’ - a hugely moving track that tells the story of a family member who passed away when they were young - evokes early Bon Iver or Coldplay, the ebb and flow of the song’s dynamics effortlessly supporting her vocals.

Ultimately, ‘What A Devastating Turn of Events’ is a powerhouse of a debut;

“I feel like when this finally comes out, I’ll be able to let go of a lot of stuff personally.”

Involved in the production throughout, Chinouriri was joined by indie producer Rich Turvey (The Courteeners, Blossoms) who helped build “strong foundations” to each track. Other creative foils included recent IDLES collaborator Kenny Beats, who she worked with during a particularly testing trip to LA. “I remember walking into his studio, and

12 DIYMAG.COM

one that demonstrates Chinouriri’s impressive songwriting and is sure to elevate her rapidly-increasing star even further. Her hope, she explains, is for listeners “to feel a weight lifted off their shoulders, or feel like they understand me more as a person”. Which would actually be a very life-affirming turn of events, after all. DIY

NEWS

n****r by my neighbour across the road, it’s a heavy thing. I understand that there is a helpful element of me performing it to new crowds, but I don’t want that to be our legacy as a band. Those things happened to us, but they don’t have to define us; we can define ourselves.

Game-changing London duo Bob Vylan have spent the first part of their career rallying against injustice and creating a long-overdue space for themselves as a Black punk band. Now with a MOBO Award and an entirely self-released Top 20 album to their name, they’re readying this April’s ‘Humble As The Sun’: a fourth album full of defiant hope that puts empowerment front and centre.

Interview: Lisa Wright.

Hi Bobby! With your last album ‘Bob Vylan Presents The Price of Life’, it seemed like everything stepped up a gear for you. Was there an awareness of wanting to make the most of that increased platform on this new record?

When we started the band it was a very small thing, and nobody was watching anyway, so we could do and say whatever we wanted. But now, you realise that sometimes people need a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down, and so this album is a lot more inspiring and hopeful and empowering. I listened to [second album] ‘We Live Here’ for the first time in ages last week, and when I listened to the title song from it I realised it was what I needed to write at the time, but there was a lot of anger and a lot of pain in that song. To perform that song, night after night on tour, and talk about the first time that I was called

What subjects did you find yourself tackling to get that message across?

This whole album started with meditations and conversations with nature, and being in the sun and being around things that I hadn’t necessarily been around before; placing myself in spaces that I hadn’t placed myself before. You feel powerful when you’re basking in the sun’s rays and it’s charging you up, and there are certain things that came to mind when I was feeling that. Things like the MOBO win, and being a child and watching So Solid Crew on the TV and thinking, ‘If they can do it, I can do it’. That is recognition of power - of the power that I hold and also the power that they hold, and that’s something I carried with me throughout the years until I was on that stage receiving the award with Bob [drums]. It’s only been through positive thinking and positive action that we’ve been able to achieve these things.

“Recognising our power as individuals is integral to us recognising our power as a collective.” - Bobby Vylan

Recent single ‘Hunger Games’ feels like a good example, where it tackles very prescient issues but ends with a message of hope.

On ‘Hunger Games’, we’re talking about this cost of living crisis and the squeeze that everybody feels - and it’s not a coincidence that we released it just after Christmas when famously nobody has any money. But that song ends with an affirmation: You are here. You are now. And that’s what I’m talking about. That’s what pulls me out of bed. I have the power within myself to make myself happy, and all I can control is my reaction to the world around me.

When people get to the end of this album, what do you hope they will have got from it?

I hope that people feel inspired and empowered.

When people are stripped of that sense of power, you see how it breaks the spirit of a person and of a community and a collective. Recognising our power as individuals is integral to us recognising our power as a collective. And I hope when you get to the end of the album, it reminds people of that. DIY

13

DIY in deep DIY In Deep is our monthly, online-centric chance to dig into a longer profile on some of the most exciting artists in the world right now.

When fulfilling your ambitions fails to fill a hole, what do you do next?

With widescreen second LP ‘Where’s My Utopia?’

YARD ACT

are unearthing the answers (or at least some of them) in familial foundations and unfettered creative freedom. Words: Daisy Carter. Photos: Louise Mason.

“T

D R E A M

he idea of ‘making it’ as a band indicates that it stops when you’ve ‘made it’, but it doesn’t.

And so a Mercury nomination - that’s brilliant, but then [everything] just carries on and what do you do? You either do it again, or you never do it again and you feel like you’ve failed. You have to learn how to live with yourself and [understand] why you’re doing it.”

James Smith - the charismatic frontman of Leeds quartet Yard Act - is no stranger to contemplation; his existential musings on politics and purpose, delivered in a distinctive Yorkshire brogue, are central to the band’s signature sound. But more recently, all four members have undergone something of a reckoning, internally grappling with their perceptions of success while outwardly riding a career rollercoaster that accelerated in earnest almost exactly two years ago with the release of debut LP ‘The Overload’.

While the charts don’t have quite the same thrill as they once did (Rage Against The Machine’s X Factor-beating Christmas slamdunk aside), every once in a while there’s something to get your teeth into: a David vs Goliath battle that prompts press coverage, emergency campaign strategies, and more than a few last-minute, five quid iTunes downloads. Such was the case with ‘The Overload’ - an album that, although beaten to Number One

by Years & Years’ ‘Night Call’, received rapturous critical and commercial acclaim, was shortlisted for the aforementioned 2022 Mercury Prize, and resulted in a collaboration with Elton John. Not bad for a first innings, huh?

“It’s weird, because I’m glad all those things

14 DIYMAG.COM

NEWS

C A T C H E R S

happened and I’d rather that than not, but it didn’t change anything,” James says, joining bassist Ryan Needham and guitarist Sam Shipstone on Zoom a few weeks after 2023’s Iceland Airwaves, where the windswept photos to accompany today’s chat were taken. “Well, it did change everything,” he concedes after a second, “but it didn’t solve anything. I didn’t take any pride in achieving those things, and I thought I would. That’s not because I’m ashamed of them, obviously. And it’s not because I’m ungrateful for them. But I thought it would do something to my psyche, that it would shift something in me that I thought I needed. And it didn’t.”

James chooses his words carefully, with frequent caveats that they’re all hugely

what you do to earn money. James agrees, explaining that his wife has helped assuage his self-reproach for having fun on tour.

“That’s been vital for my love of doing it,” he nods, “and I know when not to send her pictures of, say, the Tokyo skyline while she’s changing nappies…”

Alongside this period of significant mental recalibration, Yard Act also realised that if they wanted to take the golden Rover for another spin, they’d have to undergo a full MOT. The band go on daily group runs while on tour, James no longer drinks or smokes, and semi-regular massages are firmly on the agenda (he explains with a sheepish grin that one such appointment was the reason behind rescheduling our interview). “We are boring as fuck, and I feel amazing for it,” he laughs. “That first year, I had to fucking drink to get through it.

But you just weigh up what you find more important, and to me it was music. It was playing live; it was having the time and energy to do everything without being hungover all

“[Getting a Mercury nomination] is sort of like winning an Employee of the Month award.” - Ryan Needham appreciative of everything ‘The Overload’ has allowed them to do. But fame is nothing if not fickle, and Yard Act have come to understand that the conventional trappings of industry success only mean so much. “[They] were sort of like winning an Employee of the Month award,” Ryan offers.

“You have a little moment of going, ‘That’s a laugh’ and you get a gift voucher, but someone else wins it next month. Your job doesn’t really change.”

Away from the accolades and career milestones, for James, there is one thing which undoubtedly HAS changed the job: becoming a father. “That version of success didn’t actually result in any inner peace,” he explains. “Because to get to that point, we had to sacrifice a lot. I had to sacrifice time at home with my son to do that. So I had to reflect - why are you doing this? And who are you doing it for?” He pauses. “I think I realised that I am still doing it for my son.

But I also have to admit that I’m doing it for myself too, because I’m not content simply being a father; I have to be my own person as well. And that, in a sense, is inherently selfish of me. So that was an interesting conclusion to come to - [that] I’m not that selfless.”

But, DIY posits, doing a different job may well have entailed sacrifices of a similar vein - except the band would have been creatively dissatisfied to boot. Ryan nods, suggesting that “working class guilt” breeds an insidious sort of shame around enjoying

the time.” The rest of the band are similarly minded, having seen first-hand at festivals what “blow and booze” can do to musicians.

“I’ve gone about halfway towards where you are,” says Ryan, addressing his bandmate with a smile. “You’ve gone full monk - I’ve gone, like, LA monk.”

It’s with clear heads, knotless backs, and a renewed sense of perspective, then, that Yard Act approached the notorious Album Two. Due to arrive on 1st March, ‘Where’s My Utopia?’ sees the band take the outward-facing social commentary of their debut and turn its astute lyrical gaze inward, while musically they eschew their post-punk pigeonholing in glorious fashion. ‘We Make Hits’ is tongue-in-cheek self-referentialism at its finest, while ‘Dream Job’ - the record’s lead single - embraces synthy ‘80s grooves for their catchiest hook to date. Of their reluctance to be ascribed to a single genre, James muses that “no matter how many nice things people say about you, you still fixate on that one thing someone says that you disagree with. Well, I do anyway - some people are more noble than me.” He pauses, grinning. “Ryan’s an LA monk; it might be water off a monk’s head to Ryan. And we just quite like writing pop songs, really.”

‘Where’s My Utopia?’ is out 1st March via Island.

Read the full feature online at diymag. com/yardact. DIY

15

NEWS GOSSI P Real Power

The end of last year brought the frankly excellent news that Gossip - rulers of ‘00s dancefloors everywhere, not to mention our hearts - were back, and ‘Real Power’ undoubtedly cements that return. The title track from the trio’s forthcoming album, it sees Beth Ditto pay homage to the solidarity and communal action of the Black Lives Matter protests - all with that signature dance-punk, no-fucksgiven ethos. (Daisy Carter)

SH E E R MAG Moonstruck

That ‘Moonstruck’ has its roots in a disco record and a lyrical motif of the warm glow of a nascent crush goes a long way to describing just how bouncy, cosy and perfectly pop it sounds. There’s still plenty of the ‘70s classic rock sounds that Sheer Mag have so marvellously made their trademark, but here it comes with a pep in its step: the chorus could just as easily make its way into a Harry Styles single, say, while the middle eight would sound right at home in a sitcom theme of yesteryear. It’s a radio-ready bop.

(Emma Swann)

FAT DOG All The Same

Where debut single ‘King of the Slugs’ introduced Fat Dog as twisted sonic adventurers via a seven-minute epic that could largely be filed under ‘completely bonkers’, its follow up shows that the band can pack in just as much ominous hedonism even when operating in narrower confines.

Clocking in at less than half the run-time of its predecessor, ‘All The Same’ favours relative brevity over sprawling exploration. But from the gnarly, synthetic, industrial beats that underpin the track to the strangely euphoric crescendo that peaks midway through, Joe Love and co know exactly how to distil a seething sense of energy that feels like being trapped in the pulsing heartbeat of an underground club - somewhere in the middle ground of fun and scary. (Lisa Wright)

HAVE YOU HEARD? WAXAHATCH E E Right Back To It Waxahatchee’s 2020 album ‘Saint Cloud’ didn’t just mark a sonic departure - from indie-rock to country - but one of mindset too. Where her previous material lingered on topics of toxic relationships, searing regret and rippling anger, ‘Saint Cloud’ left room for grace, growth and well-earned wisdom. The warm and pleasingly twangy ‘Right Back To It’ picks up where Katie Crutchfield left off, speaking to the comfort of reigniting a longlost friendship (“Settle in / Like a song with no end”). Backing vocals from Wednesday guitarist MJ Lenderman deepen the sense of communal charm established by Katie’s rich voice and evocative imagery. (Tom Williams)

16 DIYMAG.COM

JAM I E XX It’s So Good

Written for Chanel's new COCO CRUSH film, Jamie xx’s first release in over a year is a South Americaninfused house jam. Building on 2022’s euphoric ‘LET’S DO IT AGAIN’ and the bouncing ‘KILL DEM’, ‘It’s So Good’ is an intricate and evolving track full of natural samples, steel drums and gritty energy. Tangible elements of 'In Colour' are present, but with the ever developing strength of his solo identity. Do not be surprised if you hear this played out and remixed come the summer. (Matt Brown)

A

C R O S S T O W N B Y

C O N C E R T S & F R I E N D S P R E S E N T A T I O N A R R A N G E M E N T W I T H W M E

ONE MORE THING UK TOUR 2024 WITH SPECIAL GUESTS

ALL I N C L U SIVE EXTRAVAG AN Z A

W

I

T

H

S

U

P

P

O

R

T

F

R

O

M

P I C TU R E PARLOUR & KYNS Y WEDNESDAY T H U R S D A Y F R I D A Y WEDNESDAY 3 1 JA N UA RY 08 FEBRUARY 09 FEBRUARY 14 FEBRUARY

BRIGHTON BRISTOL L E E D S LONDON C O N C O R D E 2 T R I N I T Y BECKETT STUDENTS UNION FORUM KENTISH TOWN AFTERPARTY - CONCORDE 2 BAR A F T E R P A R T Y - J A M J A R AFTERPARTY - BECKETTS SU BAR AFTERPARTY - CAMDEN ASSEMBLY SPECIAL GUESTS SPECIAL GUESTS SPECIAL GUESTS SPECIAL GUESTS

DRAG QUEEN ELVIS PRESLEY

WEDNESDAY 06 MARCH

THE FLEECE BRISTOL

SNOOKY MONO

THE SWORD SWALLOWER

2024

BY ARRANGEMENT WITH PLAYBOOK ARTISTS

UK TOUR

SUPPORT FROM

FEBRUARY 2024 MON 05 LOW TICKETS O2 INSTITUTE, BIRMINGHAM SOLD OUT TUE 06 ACADEMY, MANCHESTER SOLD OUT WED 07 ROCK CITY, NOTTINGHAM DATE ADDED DUE TO DEMAND

FRI 09 SAT 10 SUN 11 TUE 13 SOLD OUT WED 14 SOLD OUT THU 15 SOLD OUT SAT 17 SUN 18

TROXY, LONDON TROXY, LONDON DREAMLAND, MARGATE LEAS CLIFF HALL, FOLKESTONE O2 GUILDHALL, SOUTHAMPTON O2 ACADEMY, BRISTOL O2 ACADEMY, OXFORD LOW TICKETS DOME, BRIGHTON

MON 19 WED 21 SOLD OUT THU 22 SOLD23 OUT FRI

OCTAGON, SHEFFIELD O2 ACADEMY, LEEDS BARROWLAND, GLASGOW NX, NEWCASTLE

VENUE CHANGE ORIGINAL TICKETS VALID

A CROSSTOWN CONCERTS, SJM & DF PRESENATATION

BY ARRANGEMENT WITH WASSERMAN MUSIC

BY ARR ANGEMENT WITH WASSERMAN MUSIC

WWW.THEVACCINES.COM T I C K E T S

A V A I L A B L E

F R O M

SEETICKETS.COM GIGANTIC.COM DICE.FM TICKETWEB.UK CROSSTOWNCONCERTS.COM �CROSSTOWN_LIVE

�CROSSTOWNCONCERTS

�CROSSTOWNCONCERTS

17

Lamb

NEU 18 DIYMAG.COM

brini Girls

are being a lot more vigilant of it and opening dialogues,” muses Phoebe. “But I think there’s a lot of work to be done in London. It’s not a safe space; there are bands that are actively known to have done very dodgy stuff who still get to play the venues everyone else does.”

The modern successors to X-Ray Spex, Lambrini Girls are on a mission to exorcise society’s demons, one mosh pit at a time. Words: Daisy Carter. Photos: Emma Swann.

The first step towards stamping out these sorts of behaviours, the band believe, is “calling out your mates and believing victims.” Lilly explains that “we’re not trying to peddle a sort of inconsequential cancel culture where you hear something bad about someone then immediately cut them out. If someone is willing to take responsibility or explore the ways in which they might have hurt someone, that’s something really positive to go off.” The same can be said for their attitude towards the social discourse surrounding trans rights; in an era where social media has us primed to think in absolutes, it’s important to give people the grace to get it wrong (misgendering someone, for example) - providing they’re willing to learn.

Lambrini Girls, their vocalist and guitarist Phoebe Lunny explains, has always been “a passion project”. Born from the bones of a different band and a frustration with the Brighton music scene (and beyond), the project started in earnest when Phoebe met bassist Lilly Macieira-Bosgelmez who’d been given 24 hours to learn the band’s set from scratch - and “something just clicked”.

Both were ambitious, determined to try and make music their career.

More importantly, both were angry: about the ubiquity of misogynistic and homophobic ‘lad culture’; about the widespread occurrences of sexual assault at gigs; about the musicians and fans who perpetuate these behaviours. And so they set about addressing all these issues and more via the medium of fiery, three-minute punk scorchers - music that is virtually unignorable, intensely powerful, and utterly memorable.

“Hey mum / Why haven’t I had a boyfriend? / Um, maybe it’s because I’m potentially a lesbian?” Phoebe intones on debut single ‘Help Me I’m Gay’. Live, its performance involves asking the crowd to “put your hand up if you’re gay!” - something which can variously be “a celebration of people’s queerness” if there are lots of hands, or simply a way to show people that they’re not alone. And in encouraging this sort of community in others, the pair have gained confidence in their own identities, too.

“I was a little bit more of a late bloomer with my sexuality,” says Lilly. “I started off saying ‘I’m half gay’, because I’m bisexual, and then with time I learned that actually, that’s not being half gay - [bisexuality] counts just as much. There are some parts of the queer community where you can be made to feel a bit invalidated as a bisexual person, so the band really helped me in that sense.”

Elsewhere on Lambrini Girls’ 2023 EP ‘You’re Welcome’, tracks like ‘White Van’, ‘Lads Lads Lads’ and ‘Boys In The Band’ take aim at society’s deeply embedded problems with sexual harassment, with the latter placing the alternative music scene under particular scrutiny. Do they think that any significant progress has been made with tackling abuse culture within the industry? “In Brighton, it seems like people

“There’s ignorance on one hand,” says Phoebe, who is currently sporting a Lambrini Girls cap emblazoned with the words ‘FUCK TERFS’. “Then there’s wilful ignorance.

There are people who are being actively hateful and are trying to stop other people just having human rights.” But, as Lilly acknowledges, “fifty years ago we’d be having this conversation about homophobia rather than transphobia.

So I’d like to hope that [trans rights] will change with time.”

Phoebe also points out that these conversations shouldn’t centre around the band. Rather, their goal is “to show allyship and use [their] platform to bring these conversations into a slight mainstream” - something they believe is intrinsic to being a punk artist. “If you’re building your platform off politics, you have to put your money where your mouth is. If you’re a political punk band, then you do have a degree of responsibility to use your platform for good.”

So, having taken on the Twitter TERFS and a whole host of fragile male egos, next on the agenda is dismantling toxic patriotism and romanticised notions of national identity. Their upcoming new single, ‘God’s Country’, paints traditional ideas of ‘Englishness’ as stories we tell ourselves to distract from the grim reality.

“It’s delirium,” shrugs Phoebe. “I think it’s embarrassing to be from England.

We’re extremely racist; we’re extremely xenophobic; our government are fascists.

I don’t understand why anyone would be proud to be part of that.” Lilly herself is Portuguese and Turkish, but notes that “these dynamics exist in every country, and it doesn’t really look that different. Patriotism is really dangerous because it’s a huge generalisation of a really complex thing, and because [it means] you’re not actually looking at what’s really going on.”

No topic, it seems, is off limits for Lambrini Girls - and with more new music in the pipeline, they’re only going to get louder. “I think how you incite positive change is by making sure you’re not just preaching to the choir,” nods Phoebe. “As much as it is about enforcing safe spaces and making people feel validated, it’s also about making people question themselves. I wanna piss some people off; I want Rishi Sunak to be in the back of his fucking limo and hear Lammy [Steve Lamacq] play ‘God’s Country’ on the radio and shit his fucking pants.” She pauses. “Actually, I reckon he listens to Radio Four or Radio Two.” What about getting Lambrini Girls on Woman’s Hour? “That’s the plan,” Lilly smiles. “Unironically, it kind of is - to get to a position where we’re reaching the people who need to hear it.” DIY

“If you’re building your platform off politics, you have to put your money where your mouth is.” Phoebe Lunny

19

FRANCIS OF DELIRIUM

C TURTLE

LO-FI ALT-ROCK CHANNELLING THE BEST OF THE ‘90S. If you crossed Pavement’s penchant for lyrical obscurities and melodic fuzz with Pixies’ boy/ girl vocal trade-offs and howling, feral moments, you would find, in the middle, a C Turtle poking its head from its shell and displaying its wares. This particular reptile is gaining momentum on land, too; the debut LP release via London’s Blitzcat Records, ‘Expensive Thrills’ will arrive on 8th March, with brilliantly unhinged lead single ‘Shake It Down’ already out by way of an appetite-whetter.

LISTEN: ‘Shake It Down’ has a wild-eye spirit that Black Francis himself would envy.

SIMILAR TO: The sort of band that ‘90s cult film Empire Records would have on in the shop.

THE GRUNGY ALTER-EGO OF JANA BAHRICH, AKA LUXEMBOURG’S NEWEST STAR. While it might be true that Luxembourg hasn’t had the most vibrant of musical histories until now, that doesn’t seem to be getting in the way of Francis of Delirium’s grand ambitions. Having released three EPs in as many years, 22-year-old Jana Bahrich may still be new to the game, but she’s already painted a rich tapestry of sounds with her releases so far; with her debut album ‘Lighthouse’ on the way next month, she promises to dive even deeper.

LISTEN: The gorgeous distortion of recent single ‘Blue Tuesday’ is exhilarating.

SIMILAR TO: The gnarlier end of Wolf Alice’s sonic spectrum.

WHITELANDS

SHIMMERING SOUNDSCAPES MADE FOR GOOD QUALITY HEADPHONES (OR SURROUND SOUND SPEAKERS).

Ostensibly named after the location of frontman Etienne’s first show (a historic college at the University of Roehampton), Whitelands are no doubt all too aware of the contemporary relevance of their moniker. A breath of fresh air amidst a dusty, markedly pale shoegaze scene, this London quartet are every bit as poetic and evocative as the title of their upcoming debut album - ‘Night-bound Eyes Are Blind To The Day’ - suggests.

LISTEN: deary collab and latest single ‘Tell Me All About It’ is a poignant look at love from a neurodivergent perspective.

SIMILAR TO: Put it this way, it’s no coincidence that ‘90s pioneers Slowdive were keen to take them on tour.

NEU Recommended �

COSMORAT

LONDON-BASED PENNSYLVANIANS PUSHING SONIC BOUNDARIES TO GIDDY NEW HEIGHTS. It may still be early doors for Cosmorat, but even with just a handful of singles to their name so far, it’s easy to see they’re not afraid to dream big. Judging from their deliciously chaotic turn at our One Way Or Another show last November, the Pennsylvania-via-London outfit pack a maximalist punch, with the band mashing together sugar-sweet vocals, gnarly riffs, gang vocals and more into a heady, eclectic smorgasbord of delights.

LISTEN: Debut single ‘Backseat Baby’ is a sugar-sweet rush.

SIMILAR TO: If Los Campesinos! discovered their teenage American cousins.

20 DIYMAG.COM

DUVET

MANCHESTER NOISENIKS WITH A TASTE FOR CHAOS. They may only have five singles to date, but tentative or pared-back Duvet ain’t. 2022 cut ‘Clown Clown Clown’ has all the raw gutsiness of Bikini Kill, while the more recent offering ‘Sweaty Dog’ pays homage to the humble art of getting royally rat-arsed - as if you needed any more convincing to bid farewell to Dry Jan. LISTEN: We haven’t yet had the pleasure, but the aforementioned ‘Perspiring Canine’ is a guaranteed pit-starter.

SIMILAR TO: The next wave of riotous, righteous punk - Panic Shack, Lambrini Girls, M(h)aol et al.

Meet the fun but fearless artist, deadset on creating more space for Black, female creatives in alternative music. Words: Sarah Jamieson. Photo: Emma Swann.

“I don’t know if there was one thing that particularly turned me to music…” SPIDER muses, as she sits backstage at The Old Blue Last, ahead of her performance at DIY’s inaugural Hello 2024 show. “I think there was just something that I connected with. Being able to say how you really feel, and being able to very authentically express yourself without anyone contesting you.”

Growing up in a Dublin suburb as the youngest child “in a strict religious household”, the expressive, evocative statements that make up SPIDER’s music now feel like a direct response to the boundaries placed upon her back then. “I knew that, within my culture and that dynamic, there were things that I apparently shouldn’t say,” she recalls. “When I was listening to music, I was like, ‘Oh! I can just say it and no one’s reprimanding me for how I feel’.”

NEU

SPIDER

Having developed a keen interest in alternative music and its production thanks to the likes of Halsey and Lorde breaking through the wall of “very acoustic guitar, sad, white boy music” that dominated Irish radio at the time, SPIDER moved to London at the age of 18. Since then, she’s released two EPs 2022’s ‘C.O.A.’ and last year’s effort ‘HELL OR HIGH WATER’ - along the way. Fronted by powerful single ‘AMERICA’S NEXT TOP MODEL’, the latter’s disruptive lead track gave a frenzied insight into the musician’s knack for producing insatiably catchy but scuzzed up melodies, and her steadfast approach to carving out more space for Black, female creatives.

“I was very certain about wanting to do alternative music and, as a Black woman, occupying that space from probably when I was 16,” she explains.

“I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m doing this’.” In the incendiary track’s video, SPIDER takes centre stage, dancing with a sense of abandon as a series of white men shout in her face; a very literal representation of her “own experiences online,” and how it can feel as a minority creator. “I remember my brother saying he’d shown some people the ‘ANTM’ music video,” she says. “He still lives in Ireland, and they were all quite taken aback and didn’t really know how to react or what to say. When he told them that I did music, they had all assumed I did R&B.

“Before, I was thinking maybe I shouldn’t be so persistent about this ‘being a Black woman in alternative music’ thing. I was like, ‘Things are changing, maybe I don’t need to shout about it as much’,” she continues. “Then he said that to me and I remembered there’s a world outside of my bubble. It brought me back to [the fact that] what I want to do is still important and needed.”

SPIDER’s next EP will see the singer tackle more powerful and thorny issues of “sex, objectification, desire and intimacy,” but she’s under no illusions that her offerings will win over everyone.

“I’ve genuinely gotten some kind of hate on every song I’ve put out, regardless of subject matter, so it literally does not matter what I say; just the simple fact I exist is enough,” she shrugs. It’s an incredibly tough reality to contend with, but, says SPIDER, “all I can do is continue moving in authentic ways, and right now, what feels authentic to me is telling those people to go fuck themselves, so that’s what I’m doing.” DIY

“I was very certain about wanting to

do alternative music and, as a Black woman, occupying that space.”

21

NEU

Kaeto

“My worldview is that everything is creative.”

The Londonbased musician forging adventurous new trails in the pop realm. Words: Kate Brayden. Photo: Emma Swann.

Kicking off her Polydor era with a recent pair of psych-pop bangers - ‘No Body’ and ‘Little Me’ - Scotland-born Kaeto is turning all the right heads.

She’s already supported the likes of HAIM and Lauren Mayberry and, following a stint studying law at Birkbeck College, things have been heating up for the singer far away from the courtroom.

“I’m fascinated by human behaviour and the rules around it, and It’s important to be able to lay out an argument and advocate for yourself,” Kaeto explains, perched in front of a vintage mirror in her flat. “A huge amount of my confidence on stage was born out of moot court and trials.

That experience was way more terrifying!

“Not much can go wrong when I’m singing, whereas I’ve been completely embarrassed in front of a judge and a room full of people because I haven’t prepared a good skeleton argument. It’s helped my performances,” she continues. “My worldview is that everything is creative. My parents are from science backgrounds, but both of them had artistic interests like languages and music.”

Kaeto first entered the studio back in 2019, ready to build a distinctive sound that gave her total freedom after her DIY videos started gaining traction. “I was just jamming with friends,” she recalls. “My network expanded and I met producers when the videos got seen. I’ve been

22 DIYMAG.COM

really privileged to regularly write songs with talented people. I feel very heard and comfortable. I’ve got great management. My friends and I just work in a more efficient, professional capacity now!”

Fusing multiple sounds and art forms in an industry that loves to box musicians by genre, Kaeto’s output refuses these easy labels. Next up is forthcoming single ‘Don’t Ask’, which arrives as a wavey, groove-laden bop.

“The idea behind the song was just me trying to have fun, focusing on the thoughts that tow us into line,” she explains. “I’m trying to work out how much ownership you can take over them. Are my preferences actually mine, or do I feel like I need to present myself in a certain way because I’ve been trained? I’ve never felt like I could claim other people’s view of me.

“I don’t have an idea of anyone who’s listening to my music beyond my own mother,” she laughs. “I’m trying to make content that feels authentic, which is a hard line to walk online. I’d like to have the space to continue reinventing. I’m a huge fan of Caroline Polachek’s worldbuilding.”

It’s a trajectory that Kaeto is hoping to continue in 2024.

She’s got “loads of songs lined up to come out” and is hoping that a larger body of work will land by the end of this year. “But we’ll see!” she smiles. “I’ve sat on a lot of my music for a long time. I can’t wait to get it out there.”

DIY

Mould

NIGHT 1 Kicking down the door of 2024 for the first night of the run, hefty whacks of noise to blast the Christmas cobwebs away are the order of the day, starting with Bristol’s Mould - a tempochanging trio that nod to elements of Squid-like songcraft but with a heavier, gnarlier edge. Having bolted over from a BBC Radio 1 session to make it just in time for their set, Londoners C Turtle are in the throes of A Big Week. Mere hours away from announcing their debut album ‘Expensive Thrills’, there’s justifiable excitement around the quartet and tonight’s set of simultaneously tight-but-ramshackle lo-fi rock is proof of why. On new single ‘Shake It Down’, co-vocalists Cole Flynn Quirke and Mimi McVeigh trade lines with the howling vs deadpan duality of Pixies, while there are touches of Pavement and The Moldy Peaches to the idiosyncratic way they approach their craft.

C Turtle Fast forward a mere thirty minutes, and it’s in allegiance with a different section of the ‘90s that Dublinraised SPIDER is spinning her web.

Encouraging the crowd to call out the names of their “shitty exes” during one song, and preceding ‘Straight Out The Oven’ with an explanation about “wanting to be hot, and for the most toxic person in the world to validate you”, there’s a sassy spirit to the singer’s punk-pop wares that brings to mind Gwen Stefani in No Doubt’s early prime.

There’s an important message beneath much of SPIDER’s cheeky, fun surface, however; born to Nigerian parents, the space given to Black women in rock is still notably Spider

Antony Szmierek Here at DIY, we like to think of our annual Hello... showcase as a must-see in the January calendar for London-based new music seekers.

Over four weeks of gigs in partnership with Shoreditch’s Old Blue Last and state51, it’s a chance to catch the festival-slayers and radio mainstays of tomorrow in their earliest stages (and you can rewind back to early shows from Wolf Alice, Dream Wife, Shame and more over the years for proof). Photos: Emma Swann.

Vanity Fairy

minimal. By the time she concludes with ‘AMERICA’S NEXT TOP MODEL’, asking that “if you leave with anything from the show, it’s to tell bigots to go fuck themselves”, it’s clear she’s a young voice that can do both.

Like Confidence Man had they grown up on a diet of nu rave, tonight’s headliners Shelf Lives are prime candidates to resurrect the golden age of indie sleaze for a new generation. There’s plenty of

brilliantly bratty spirit from Torontoborn vocalist Sabrina Di Giulio, while guitarist Jonny Hillyard is her vesttoting foil; a girl-boy duo in the great tradition of them, whose mix of energies perfectly complement each other, with Di Giulio spending the vast majority of her time in the crowd.

Admittedly, there are some unfortunate technical issues mid-set but the pair style it out like pros; “We normally play perfect gigs but we thought they were boring,” deadpans the singer. If there’s one thing you can say about Shelf Lives, it’s that boring they most certainly are not.

(Lisa Wright)

NIGHT 2 Stepping on stage like a dazzling fever-dream vision, Vanity Fairy raises the curtain (or rather, the projector screen) on the night’s proceedings. Landing somewhere between Kate Bush, Sophie Ellis Bextor, and a Christmas-tree ornament, her infectious grooves and irrepressible stage presence come backed up by crystalline vocals that are delivered with all the effortlessness of bona-fide pop royalty. From playing onstage hide and seek with the DIY banner to gifting the audience a choice selection of - ahem - business cards, by the end she has everyone watching in the palm of her sparkly-gloved hand.

Babymorocco

Next up, Scottish-born Kaeto offers hypnotics of a different order, enchanting the crowd with eerie vox effects and riffs that drip with shimmering reverb.

Punctuating the funk-tinged set highlight ‘Good Morning’ with MJ-esque yelps and the sort of jittery movements that would make David Byrne proud, she delivers a performance that utterly belies her apparent ill-health. Dreamy, heady, and at times vaguely unsettling, it’s a set that leaves us feeling as if Kaeto and her incredibly tight live band - have cast some sort of spell.

Ramping the energy up a notch (or three), Babymorocco’s selfdescribed “sexy electro” is the very essence of after hours at a festival, distilled down to its purest, most hedonistic form.

Straddling the genre boundaries of hyperpop, drum’n’bass, and house, he offers up bouncing cuts from last year’s debut EP ‘The Sound’ before pivoting into a recent Jockstrap collab.

By the time tonight’s headliner Antony Szmierek steps up, the anticipation within the heaving room is palpable. But what eager crowd members maybe don’t have on their Hello 2024 bingo cards is a quick sonic trip to the Salford cobbles, courtesy of the band’s Corrie theme walk-on song. “Welcome to the Rovers Return”, Antony grins. What follows is nothing short of joyful: tracks lifted from 2023’s ‘Poems To Dance To’ are received by a word-perfect audience; a rendition of Sugababes’ ‘Overload’ involves one fan joining the fun onstage, karaoke-style; and Antony ends the evening with a quick stint performing from atop the venue bar. Personable yet vulnerable, he’s an artist with a singular knack for connection, and a room full of people singing ‘The Words To Auld Lang Syne’ seems a fittingly belated way to ring in the new year. (Daisy Carter)

Kaeto

Shelf Lives

23

Buzz Buz � Feed NEU

All the buzziest new music happenings in one place.

THE BEST KIND OF ABOMINATION

Lynks has had a busy month: not only did they host their own memorial service after their untimely “death” (RIP), but they’ve finally announced details of their debut album! ‘ABOMINATION’ - which will feature previous singles 'Use It Or Lose It', 'Sex With A Stranger', and 'New Boyfriend' - is set for release on 12th April via Heavenly, and is the culmination of "half a decade’s worth of artistic and personal progression".

"I think on the EPs, I was trying so hard to get anyone to pay attention," Lynks has said, nodding to their previous EPs, 'Smash Hits, Vol 1 & 2' and 2022's 'MEN'. "Early on I was like 'well, every song needs to be a hilarious concept.' Whereas this album, there’s quite a few of those, but there’s also songs that aren’t necessarily funny, or they’re exploring an idea rather than being really specific."

To mark the announcement, Lynks has also shared another taste of the record in the form of 'CPR'; a track about men with saviour complexes.

Check it out over on diymag.com now.

CONDITIONAL

Fresh from winning Best Live Act at NI Music Prize 2023 back in November last year, Belfast trio CHALK have announced plans to release their new EP, ‘Conditions II’.

EVERYTHING’S BIGGER

Led by their recent single ‘The Gate’, the band’s second EP is set for release on 1st March via Nice Swan, ahead of their upcoming visit to SXSW. To accompany the news, the band have also shared another cut from the release, ‘Claw’, which - according to the band’s Ross Cullen - is “about falling in love inside a nightmare”.

English Teacher have been teasing the prospect of a fulllength for months now - namely, with their superlative singles 'The World's Biggest Paving Slab', 'Nearly Daffodils', and 'Mastermind Specialism'. Now, they've finally revealed more info about this anticipated debut album; entitled 'This Could Be Texas', it's slated for release on 12th April via Island. “I want this album to feel like you’ve gone to space and it turns out it’s almost identical to Doncaster. It’s about inbetweens, it’s about home, and it’s about Desire Paths," vocalist, guitarist and synth player Lily Fontaine has commented.

24 DIYMAG.COM

Every week on Spotify, we update the Neu Playlist with the buzziest, freshest faces.

Here’s our pick of the best new tracks:

NELL MESCAL - KILLING TIME Released just before the start of her UK tour, Nell Mescal’s latest single ‘Killing Time’ continues to blend the indie and pop sounds of previous releases ‘Teeth’ and ‘Homesick’. Nell's wistful vocals build in power and emotion as the track progresses, its different layers coming together to soar cathartically as she repeats the chorus' question: "Did I give it up, before we had enough?" The result is one of her best vocal performances - and best releases - to date.

NXDIA - SHE LIKES A BOY Nxdia kicks off the year with queer anthem ‘She Likes A Boy’. It’s the Egypt-born, Manchester-based artist’s first release since their debut EP ‘in the flesh’, which arrived in August last year. Building from mellow, vocal-led verses into effervescent bursts of energy during the chorus, the track captures the ambivalence of onesided feelings. Much like fellow indie pop stars Boyish and flowerovlove, Nxdia’s latest effortlessly blends realism with nostalgia to create a resonant coming-ofage offering – one that wouldn’t feel out of place on the Heartstopper soundtrack.

WHIPPER SNIPPER DON’T COME OVER

IT’S ALL

“Subconscious feelings are at the crux of most of our tracks - something that we started on ‘Conditions’ EP,” he continues, referencing the EP as a whole. “We still feel like we’re in that universe of figuring ourselves out as people and using our sonic palette to make sense of it. There’s still a few feelings we want to explore and staying in the world of Conditions is something we’ve grown to enjoy - we don’t want to leave just yet.”

Listen to ‘Claw’ over on diymag. com now.

The PLAY LIST

IN TEXAS

Alongside the LP announcement, the band have also shared their newest single 'Albert Road', a crescendoing ballad that explores notions of belonging and community. “When people ask where I’m from I usually say I’m mixed race: half Yorkshire, half Lancashire", Lily has said of the track. "It allows me to divert with comedy from the potential connotations of that question, which change wildly depending on who’s asking it. One end of Albert Road in Colne [her home town] is cold, underfunded and uninspiring; the other is warm at night with live music. It sums up how I look back on the place I lived for 19 years.”

The track comes accompanied by a video co-directed by Sarah Oglesby and the band's own Douglas Frost. Check it out over on diymag.com now.

Whipper Snipper’s latest is a slice of darkness from Down Under; eerie, creeping guitars that wouldn’t sound out of place on the Donnie Darko soundtrack flicker underneath the dreaming, crystalline vocal line.

It’s their debut single ahead of an EP to come this year, and it’s introducing a band who are happy to lean into the off-kilter; happy to embrace vintage soundscapes; and are absolutely at ease putting their own characteristic, charismatic stamp over the top of it.

SERAPHINA SIMONE - BETTER DAYS The latest track from Seraphina Simone, 'Better Days' recalls the likes of PinkPantheress' discography, where indie is embraced by trap. Its up-tempo backing immediately grabs your attention as she swoops in with soft, controlled vocals - a satisfying contrast to the production-heavy instrumental. Tackling broken relationships and the idea of fate vs coincidence, this single highlights the strengths of Simone's musical ability with ease.

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

�

FEB

02 FEEL IT 03 LUNA BAY 06 BEAVERTOWN FREQUENCIES: OPUS KINK + FLAT PARTY + HOT FACE 08 NIEVE ELLA 09 GETAHEAD FEEL IT 10 HIFI SEAN + DAVID MCALMONT TRAMA 12 WILL LINLEY 15 TAMERA 16 NIEVE ELLA FEEL IT 17 ROSIE FRATER-TAYLOR HD LIFE 18 ADAM MELCHOR 19 SEAROWS 20 SEAROWS 23 NÖEP FEEL IT 24 HOLY MOLY & THE CRACKERS

MAR

01 BRITs WEEK 2024: VENBEE FEEL IT 02 O. SUPA DUPA FLY 04 CASSIA 05 BEAVERTOWN FREQUENCIES 06 DAN MANGAN 08 FEEL IT 09 OLD DIRTY BRASSTARDS THE DROP 10 THE HOLD STEADY 14 NECTAR WOODE 15 FEEL IT 22 FEEL IT 23 DEWOLFF 29 MURDO MITCHELL FEEL IT 30 TRAMA

25

26 DIYMAG.COM

27

“Would [the internet trolls] expect us to be handed a record deal and reply, ‘No thanks, I’d rather struggle’?” -

Abigail Morris

h 28 DIYMAG.COM

yyyyyyy

a

IN THE DRESSING UP BOX

They may be perhaps THE most talked about new act in the UK, but The Last Dinner Party remain fundamentally unchanged: it’s been just over two years since their debut gig at East London’s George Tavern, and the five-piece are still, in essence, a group of literature-loving arts students with a penchant for joyous, positive pretension. “I wish Tolstoy had a podcast,” Abigail laughs. “I can imagine him and Dostoevsky doing a Trisha Paytas Frenemies sort of thing.” All three band members present - lead vocalist Abigail, bassist Georgia, and vocalist / rhythm guitarist Lizzie Mayland - burst into laughter, before near-simultaneously suggesting that they should do a skit of that very scenario.

The Last Dinner Party have become renowned for their maximalist aesthetic and fantastical fashion, but what were the suggested audience dress codes on their recent UK tour?

Few people would immediately draw parallels between 19th century Russian auteurs and 21st century YouTubers, but such is the nature of The Last Dinner Party. Marrying high culture with camp, substance with style, they’re bricolage curators of a truly eclectic audiovisual exhibition. “We’re just magpie-like, forever collecting ideas and visual identities,” Lizzie affirms, discussing how five individuals go about executing such a rich yet cohesive creative vision. Abigail agrees, noting that there’s no sole ringleader to proceedings - rather, that the band are just “naturally hive-minded”.

They’ve been compared to the likes of Queen, Bowie, ABBA, Kate Bush and Siouxsie Sioux, but being mentioned in the same breath as such hallowed names has, if anything, only enhanced the sense of theatricality brought to proceedings.

O Muse! Greek Myths & Legends Think drapey white sheets, gold-leaf crowns, and copious amounts of wine.

The Language of Flowers & Victoriana

Their latest video - for ‘Caesar On A TV Screen’, which lands the morning of today’s chat - is am dram at its very best, complete with fake daggers and a death scene that recalls the rival school’s production in that modern Christmas classic, Nativity!. “That wasn’t a conscious choice,” laughs Abigail at the mention of the latter. “But someone did comment that! We are that school, basically - the ones who are just trying really hard.”

Pinning a green carnation to your lapel, à la Oscar Wilde.

Velvet Goldmine

aving met in London during freshers week at university, Georgia, Lizzie and Abigail were friends for three years before deciding to form a band.

After an early practice made it clear their line-up wasn’t quite complete, they found Guildhall students Aurora Nishevci (keys/vocals) and Emily Roberts (lead guitar, mandolin, flute) through mutual friends, and The Dinner Party - as was their original moniker - was born.

Sharp suits! Androgyny! Mullets!

Brothers Grimm: Folklore & Fairytales

“We got right into brainstorming mode,” says Georgia. “Basically, we aimed to be the band that we wanted to see. When we were first at university, it was very much that Windmill era of guitar music - black midi, Black Country, New Road, Squid. Bands who are all fucking brilliant. That was when we realised guitar music can have this kind of feral hype around it, and can build an audience based on live shows alone; that was something we really, really loved. What we didn’t like so much was the seriousness of a lot of things. It’s ironic, [some bands] put so much effort into trying to look effortless. It doesn’t matter to us that it looks like we’re trying, because we really are.”

Indeed, YouTube footage of some of the band’s earliest gigs - courtesy of the capital’s legendary chronicler Lou Smith - proves that they never set out to do anything by halves; for The Last Dinner Party, maximal theatrical flair has always been the order of the day. They draw inspiration variously from Christian iconography, Romanticism, myth, folklore and more, all of which is overlaid with a playful sense of Victorian fin de siècle hedonism. “Ding ding ding!” nods Abigail, when DIY posits Oscar Wilde’s The Picture Of Dorian Gray as an anchoring reference. Georgia smiles, explaining that, “We literally wrote down ‘Lord Henry’s garden’ when we were first coming up with the whole thing. That’s us: the sensory overload, the decadence and aestheticism.”

Delightfully dark, not Disney - Angela Carter, eat your heart out.

“I really like to talk about sex through religion because, growing up, those two were so intertwined.” -

x

“

olstoy was a teenage girl,” grins Georgia Davies. “I swear, he was going through puberty. The way he writes young women in War and Peace and Anna Karenina; the way he writes their motivations and thought processes - it’s so impossible.”

“Who told him?” her bandmate Abigail Morris exclaims, incredulous. “Who told him how ribbons make me feel?! He’s more relatable than Jane Austen, honestly.”

Abigail Morris

29

A case in point?

‘Nothing Matters’ - their superlative debut single, which landed last April like a suckerpunch to the senses. Majestic, anthemic, and with a guitar solo that would make even the most chin-stroking 6 Music dad strum the air, the track swiftly ended TLDP’s time as a cult band whose reputation was composed largely of live recordings and awed smoking area exchanges. By this point, they’d already signed to Island, who by all accounts discovered them off the back of Smith’s videography.

But to some corners of the internet, it was nigh on incomprehensible that the band could have major label backing - and an already fully realised creative vision without nepotistic connections. The phrase ‘industry plant’ was predictably tossed around, alongside a fair amount more insidious comments, the gist of which Georgia summarises as: “This can’t be real because you’re women you must have fucked someone to get to where you are.”

“It’s really important to us to curate safe spaces for audiences to come and be the biggest version of themselves that they can and want to be.” -

Lizzie Mayland

ver the past few years, there have been a few such instances that acted as flashpoints for important discussions around the nature of power structures in the music industry, and the types of privilege which afford artists access to them (namely whiteness, class, gender, and conventional attractiveness). “The nuanced comments about the music industry are so important,” says Lizzie, “but that’s not the conversation those misogynists are trying to have.” “Would [the internet trolls] expect us to be handed a record deal and reply, ‘No thanks, I’d rather struggle’?” Abigail asks.

“Even if we had struggled for five years and then had a rise,” Lizzie rejoins, “people who hadn’t heard of us would still ask, ‘Where have they come from?’ If you weren’t [in London] when we were playing those gigs for over a year then no, obviously you wouldn’t have known who we were.”

In what felt like a gloriously defiant two fingers up to the boys who cried industry plant, TLDP’s recent UK tour was supported by Picture Parlour, who too received vitriolic responses to their 2023 debut release. And though the rooms have got bigger, and the tickets sell quicker, there’s no doubting that The Last Dinner Party are still architects of those ‘you had to be there’ moments of the early days.

The second night of their two-date stint at Hackney’s EartH, for example, had an atmosphere that was tangible in its reverence, while you could spot the gig’s attendees on the Overground to Dalston based on outfit alone (the band frequently set optional - but encouraged - dress codes for their shows). What do they think it is that inspires such fervour? “I am the second coming of Christ,” Abigail deadpans, before breaking into a smile. “I think it’s just fan culture; when you find something quite niche and specific that speaks to you, you want to replicate it in yourself.

“I also believe that the instinct in humans that searches for meaning and community through religion is the same part that looks for understanding in music,” she continues.

“I think it’s that innate need for something bigger than oneself. Something communal like that is a social need for us - we’re fucking pack animals. It’s the same thing; the soul-searching and feeling of fulfilment that people find in music is the same as that [offered by] religion.”

30 DIYMAG.COM

Attending a gig - much like a football match - necessarily involves a relieving of individuality: for the duration of that event, you become one of many contributors to the collective experience, connecting you to your fellow crowd members on quite a primal, poignant level. “It’s really important to us to curate safe spaces for audiences to come and be the biggest version of themselves that they can and want to be,” nods Lizzie.

“And that goes for people of all genders, obviously, but particularly for women and queer people. It’s been so impactful on me - and on all of us - to be able to curate spaces like that.”

In that sense, The Last Dinner Party’s timing has been especially apt.

Post-pandemic, the public appetite for these sorts of joyful, communal events has been heightened dramatically, as people emerged from lockdown with what Lizzie calls “a post-war kind of mentality”. While the world at large had developed “more of a taste for theatricality, for just going for it”, the band themselves had spent the period honing their craft, emerging in earnest just as the post-punk boom reached peak saturation.

“I think art always subconsciously responds to things that are in the political and public zeitgeist,” muses Georgia. “The post-punk thing kind of emerged as a product of the Brexit austerity era, and people wanted to be viciously angry about that. And then post-Covid, people just wanted to have fun.” Abigail agrees, citing “the natural pendulum of taste” as a factor behind the band’s fairly immediate popularity, rather than any deliberate reactionism on their part. “We’re just drawn to dramatic maximalism, and we’ve luckily come at the right time when people want this. It’s just a good fucking alignment.” ramatic maximalism” is one way to put it. Another is ecstasy: both the MO of TLDP’s live shows and the central tenet of their debut album. ‘Prelude To Ecstasy’ arrives on 2nd February, and is an exploration of extremes. Here, love is obsession (‘Burn Alive’); subversive desire is exorcistic possession (‘My Lady Of Mercy’); gender envy is profound (‘Beautiful Boy’), and breakups are torturous in their anguish (‘On Your Side’;

x

What have the band got on their mood boards and bookshelves?

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

by Oscar Wilde A tale of decadence, obsession, and the pursuit of new sensations. *Chef’s kiss*.

THEY CAN’T KILL US UNTIL THEY KILL US

by Hanif Abdurraqib A “really beautifully written” collection of music essays which Lizzie says “is nicely digestible, but also so personal.”

WAR AND PEACE

by Leo Tolstoy One of the greatest novels ever written… by a man who apparently thinks like a teenage girl. Sign us up!

COLLECTED POEMS OF JOHN BERRYMAN Abigail describes his sonnets as “some of the best modern poetry I’ve ever read”.

JULIUS CAESAR

by William Shakespeare So good that TLDP staged their own version.

31

“I feel like the best artists and the ones with the most longevity are those where the fans can see that they’re just purely doing their own thing.” - Abigail Morris

32 DIYMAG.COM

‘Portrait Of A Dead Girl’). It’s a collection of songs which take the inner workings of young women’s minds and, through metaphors of history and high culture, render them so grand as to be deserving of similar attention.

“If you listen to a love song that’s describing common emotions in a common tongue, it’s relatable because it’s so universal,” says Abigail. “But if you write a love song that talks about the pain of love in a way that’s very, very specific to what you’ve experienced - using a particular literary reference or whatever then for the person who listens to it and relates to it, it’s even more meaningful.”

“There’s a reason Greek tragedies are still performed and read today,” adds Lizzie. “They express emotion in a very beautiful, very extreme way - which is how it feels.”

“That’s how it FEELS!” Abigail rejoins, laughing now. “It feels like my liver getting pecked out, or pushing a huge rock up a hill.”

At the core of ‘Prelude To Ecstasy’ are two themes: sex, and religion. More specifically, the record dissects the nature of what’s found in the middle of this Venn diagram - the perception of sexuality as sinful; the analogous nature of orgasmic pleasure and spiritual fervour; how

ultimately, the concepts are two sides of the same coin. “I was raised Catholic very strictly,” affirms Abigail. “Now, I wouldn’t say that I’m a religious person in that sense, but I’m not an atheist. I really like to talk about sex through religion because, growing up, those two were so intertwined.

“Sex: bad. Homosexuality: bad. These are things to be ashamed of,” she continues, referencing her childhood’s Catholic school teachings. “But then in Catholicism there is also religious imagery that is very sexual, because Catholics are obsessed with sex. [The band] is kind of wanting to reappropriate religious imagery for our own gain, for [the purpose of] expressing sexuality and femininity and queerness.”

Musically, it’s just as extravagant and ornate as this suggests. From literally opening with a curtain-up orchestral overture (‘Prelude’), to switching up song structures, tempos, vocalists and even languages, the album is a supremely confident, stunningly rich affair on which The Last Dinner Party revel in the full extent of their showmanship. “It was just a pleasure outing, really,” Abigail says of the recording process, which took place with the help of producer James Ford - “the nicest man in music” - before ‘Nothing Matters’ was even released.

“It all came from a place of insular joy, from just being like kids in a candy shop thinking, ‘What’s going to make us the most excited, happy, inspired, and challenged?’”

She continues: “I feel like the best artists and the ones with the most longevity are those where the fans can see that they’re just purely doing their own thing, like David Bowie, rather than falling into the trap of doing what you think people want. If you make something you think people are gonna like, they either like it and you feel empty, or they hate it and you feel stupid. We have no choice than to just do what we love, in that sense.”

It’s an approach that has held them in good stead so far. They’ve sold out London’s 3,300-capacity Roundhouse, performed on Later… with Jools Holland, won the BRITs 2024 Rising Star Award (the first guitar band ever to do so), and topped BBC Radio 1’s Sound Of 2024 poll. “I think we would all go completely mental if we weren’t doing this together,” says Lizzie on whether they feel prepared for the speed and scale of it all. “I’d hate to be a solo artist having this kind of meteoric rise; the only reason I’m sane is because the others are also going through the same thing, so I’m not just making it up in my head.”

And some of their recent experiences really have been the stuff of daydreams. Most significant, Georgia says, was meeting Florence Welch at the George Tavern - back where it all began - when Welch broke the news of their BBC Sound Of win. “I’ve idolised her since I was probably ten. I was a really troubled, misunderstood child, and I found such solace in her. So to have her be even more brilliant in person than who I’d built her up to be in my mind - which was, y’know, God. For her to say, ‘I’m so proud of you, you’re doing fantastic things’...” She pauses, slightly emotional. “When [Georgia’s boyfriend] proposes, you’ll be like, ‘Oh this is nice’,” Abigail grins at her bandmate, who replies: “This is the second best day of my life!” as everyone cracks up. “He can’t compete, he knows that.”

They may be being (only slightly) flippant, but the anecdote illustrates one of the key reasons why The Last Dinner Party have struck such a chord with so many: they’re fans. Of other artists, of literature, of art and fashion and history. They wear their influences on their ruffled sleeves and are utterly unafraid to enthuse, which in turn gives their audiences implicit encouragement to enjoy the show as much as the band clearly are.

And the best thing? All this is only the ‘Prelude To Ecstasy’. The pomp and circumstance, the bells and whistles, the sheer, unadulterated euphoria - it’s all just a hint of what’s to come, a mere taste to whet the appetite. So stay firmly seated and prepare to tuck in, because The Last Dinner Party’s next course is sure to be spectacular.

‘Prelude to Ecstasy’ is out 2nd February via Island. DIY

33

34 DIYMAG.COM

ho goes by the shortened form of his nom de plume, serpent - presents a similarly more stripped-back version of himself, where the richness of the message is enhanced by the relative simplicity of the arrangements.

“I wanted to do something that felt a little more immediate and didn’t feel quite as abstract,” he explains over Zoom from his Los Angeles apartment. “I want something that feels like you know what’s going on within the first few seconds.”

With often little more than a modest assembly of samplers and synthesisers, lightly enhanced with treated guitar lines and tight, steamy vocal harmonies, ‘GRIP’ is a paradox: it is the most direct, streamlined version of serpentwithfeet to date, and yet also the most sonically exquisite and rewarding. “I think all the iterations of me are still me,” he considers, reflecting on the changes to his music over the years. “There are times when things need to have more weight and times when they need to feel more of the air. I think I’m just letting the pendulum swing.” serpent and his team of around ten producers – including Nosaj Thing and the collective I Like That – were painstakingly meticulous in the process of making ‘GRIP’ seem light to the touch. But whether it’s in the form of twitching banger ‘Damn Gloves’ or the intimate, sultry ‘Rum/Throwback’, one thing that’s paramount throughout the album is the glorification of physical human contact, whether in the public arena of a club or in the privacy of one’s own home.

“If god is a god at all, he lives in your grip,” he sings on ‘Lucky Me’, one of the tracks that takes us into a personal space behind closed doors. For an artist with a biblically evocative name, the line could be misconstrued as an iconoclastic provocation, but to serpent, he is focused on the divine pleasure of holding a loved one close.

“I was thinking about the wonder of physical closeness, and somebody who you care about and who cares about you knowing how to touch you,” he says in his characteristically unhurried manner, taking his time to select his words. “It’s beautiful when we know the curves and contours of each other’s bodies; we know what things make us ticklish or what things arouse us, or what things soothe us after a difficult day. I wanted to make a project that rhapsodises about that.”

Q

ueer Black love may continue to be underrepresented, but while serpent is clearly unafraid to be frank, he is careful not to frame himself as a spokesperson. “I don’t know if what I’m doing is for representation,” he says. “I’m making the work I do because that’s who I am. I am a Black gay man, so I’m gonna write about that.”

Nevertheless, he’s acutely aware that by releasing a record like ‘GRIP’, he is creating the type of work that he himself struggled to find when he was growing up in Maryland in the 2000s. “The climate was very different,” he says. “The representation for queer people, in a way that felt full and whole and not the butt of a joke - I did not witness that much in mainstream media.”

The fact that an esoteric artist like serpent is now able to articulate his lived experiences to an established audience has, in his opinion, as much to do with technological advances as anything else.

“I think the internet did a beautiful thing in the 2010s; people were sharing their lives more. My generation were the guinea pigs for social media, and that started us expressing our lives, and in those moments the world started to feel a lot larger. It was like, ‘Oh wow, I didn’t realise that I have kindred souls that live in other countries, or that live down the street from me, but we wouldn’t have spoken otherwise.’ It really changed what we were willing to accept. Now, we’re like, ‘Mm-hmm, now I know I’m valid’.”

Where, in a more analogue age, a demographically conservative coterie of gatekeepers wielded enormous cultural power in influencing what types of voices were able to rise to the fore, now artists from all backgrounds have the opportunity to be heard, and to create the platform that makes sense for their own artistic pursuits. For serpent, that has meant not just the sonic and lyrical developments on ‘GRIP’, but also a step into the world of theatre. serpent wrote the show Heart of Brick alongside the poet Donte Collins as a companion piece to the album - a love story set in a Black gay club between Serpent’s character and a security guard. Dramatising ‘GRIP’’s songs on stage, he grasped the opportunity to manifest the lusty, physical dimensions of this music that were already tangible into a show that received rave reviews from the New York Times and the LA Dance Chronicle.

“It was incredibly exciting to make a new kind of connection to an audience,” he says about the show, which toured across the US. “I love the theatre and I love creating albums, so I think I’ll be doing both for as long as I can.”

With serpentwithfeet now confidently producing fully-realised work that both fulfils the promise and ambition of those scattershot early releases and hones in on a true form of self-expression, it seems he has completed the puzzle. Fully unleashed, there’s nothing left to stand in his way.

‘GRIP’ is out 16th February via Secretly Canadian. DIY

35

With a new generation of listeners tuned into their next moves,

MGMT are relishing the moment with an album - ‘Loss Of Life’ - that looks for the light amongst the world’s darkness.

Words: Lisa Wright. Photo: Jonah Freeman.

C

all it a case of eerie presience or just a splash of fortuitous pessimism on the part of their earlier selves but, as lockdown hit in 2020, MGMT suddenly found the title track of their two-year-old album ‘Little Dark Age’ thrust into the spotlight. A fourth LP rooted in paranoia and a very modern form of social media-affiliated unease, its crotchety yet catchy lead single became an unlikely TikTok trend; more than a decade after Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser had scaled their mainstream peak with the global smash of sparkling debut ‘Oracular Spectacular’, they found themselves with a second commercial resurgence on their hands.

“We were just watching in awe,” giggles VanWyngarden, sat on the sofa of his family’s house in Memphis. “I think it’s pretty funny that a lot of the themes on the album are about technology-induced anxiety and being addicted to your phone and out of touch. It was an album where we were accepting in a cheeky way that we’re getting older and there’s no use trying to cling to any relevance. And then it became a TikTok [hit]. It was very random…”

To date, ‘Little Dark Age’ has clocked up nearly 600 million streams: significantly more than the wide-eyed magic of breakthrough single ‘Time To Pretend’, and nipping at the heels of timeless juggernauts ‘Kids’ and ‘Electric Feel’. The critical narrative spun at the time around both the single and album was one of a hooky ‘return to form’; that after 2010’s ‘Congratulations’ and its 2013 self-titled follow-up, MGMT had stopped being wilfully obtuse and finally offered up a record that could please fans of their debut. In reality, the duo had never intended to be anything but crowd-friendly throughout.

“I think in some ways we’ve always been a little bit delusional,” shrugs Goldwasser. “Every time we make a record, we feel like it’s something that can reach people and we hope it’s inclusive and not alienating.

So when we have put out music that didn’t connect with people as much, that was more of a surprise to us I think. We’re never trying to be intentionally obscure, or anything like that.” “I wish we had that much control over the narrative of things where we could conduct it like, ‘Now we’re gonna be obscure!” his bandmate picks up. “But that’s not really the reality.

A Golden “It’s a testament to our friendship that our creative relationship has persevered over half of our lives.” - Andrew VanWyngarden 36 DIYMAG.COM

n Age

“I think Ben and I have finally, in the past few years especially from making our new album - figured out our identity as artists, and it’s one that’s constantly changing.

The whole meat of MGMT is that we aren’t experimental in the sense that we’re trying to be avant garde, but we’re experimental in that we just play around with lots of different styles. Now looking back, all [those comments] just feel like people trying to make sense of that by putting it into a more defined category.”

W

ritten over the past two years, MGMT’s fifth album ‘Loss of Life’ is one that’s just as stylistically difficult to pigeonhole as that realisation might suggest. From the acoustic folk-rock of ‘Mother Nature’, to the ‘80s-leaning ‘Dancing In Babylon’ (featuring their first ever guest vocalist in the form of Christine and the Queens), to the Syd Barrett-y, baroque strangeness of ‘Bubblegum Dog’ and out to the title track’s twinkling, dawn-like sweetness, it would be tricky to work out where exactly to file the pair’s latest. What does feel like more of an umbrella, however, is the record’s warmth and tenderness. It is, we suggest, quite a cosy-sounding record, especially when placed next to the twitchy sonics of its predecessor.

“That’s what we wanted it to be,” nods VanWyngarden.

“Every piece of news serves to make people anxious and terrified so, without getting too spiritual, we were just trying to remind people that love and connection and relationships aren’t affected by rising temperatures of the earth; they’re indestructible things.” “I think what I really wanted as far as the intention is like when I hear something and it gives me goosebumps,” says Goldwasser. “To give someone else that feeling, and for it to transcend all the overthinking and analysing.”

Having both turned 40 during the making of the record, with lockdown necessitating the most domestic period of their lives since they’d come to fame fresh out of university, it’s perhaps of little surprise that the pair were in a reflective mood. They recall listening to a lot of ‘90s music from their youth whilst making ‘Loss of Life’ - a throwback to the earliest days of the band when they would cover a hodgepodge of the decade’s greatest hits, from Nine Inch Nails to Sheryl Crow. “There’s so much great pop music that’s really infectious from that era that’s just totally ingrained in my brain,” VanWyngarden grins.

Though you’d be hard-pressed to find a direct correlation between Trent Reznor’s industrial slabs of sex-rock and the dreamy spirit of MGMT’s latest, there are understated golden nuggets to be found throughout. It’s a record that truly reveals itself over several listens; spin the aforementioned ‘Bubblegum Dog’ more than once and we’ll defy you not to be humming its idiosyncratic hook for days after. Filled with meditations on love, alongside sentiments that feel more inquisitive and intangible, ‘Loss of Life’ has the observational air of an afternoon sat kerbside, watching the world and the people go by.

“I don’t really meditate,” says VanWyngarden, “but when I’ve done a phone app that tells you how to do it, you’re supposed to let things come and go; any thought is OK and you’re supposed to just listen and identify everything.

There’s a psychedelic and meditative character to observing, and that’s something that usually would be pushed more into a self-conscious or paranoid realm [by us], whereas this record is more about just soaking it up.”

T

he pair live on different coasts of the US and give a brief snort of laughter followed by a succinct “No” when asked if they’re the sort of people that write all the time, outside of directly working towards an album. It means that when they do come together, they come together for a reason. “We’re not a prolific band,” says VanWyngarden. “Every album that we make is pretty much the exact amount of songs that we have. I think if we didn’t feel the connection and we didn’t feel that the music was meeting the standards of who we

37

are and what our band is, we wouldn’t make it. It’s a testament to our friendship that our creative relationship has persevered over half of our lives.”

They describe ‘Loss of Life’ as an album that, having come to the end of their previous record contract with Columbia, came with zero pressure. If they didn’t want to make anything, they didn’t have to; feeling free and unburdened by external force, it allowed them to “get back to some of the more naive, jokey or lighthearted [parts] of the band that, when you’re wrapped up in your own bubble and touring all the time and promoting yourself, [is easy to lose]”.

There’s perhaps no greater underlining of this reignited sense of fun than the all-singing, all-dancing show that MGMT concocted for last year’s Just Like Heaven festival: Pasadena’s indie-leaning answer to When We Were Young.

Revisiting ‘Oracular Spectacular’ in full, the “community theatre-inspired” show featured paper mache-headed versions of their younger selves, a troupe of ribbon-wafting dancers, and an overwhelming sense of nostalgia for a record that, more than perhaps any of that era, felt absolutely in thrall to the giddy, wide-eyed feeling of being young with the world at your feet.

“At first we started thinking about it a little bit cynically, having this fatalistic

“Every time we make a record, we hope it’s inclusive and not alienating.” - Ben Goldwasser

38 DIYMAG.COM

approach to it, but then the more we dug into mining our past and figuring out how to relate to that and come to terms with it, the more fun we started having with it,” says Goldwasser. “One of the big parts of remaking that record was we opened up our old demo files from back then - which somehow we were still able to open, which was pretty impressive!” he notes with a laugh. “And it was this perfectly preserved time capsule of who we were at that time. I had just moved to New York - I guess we both had - so there was this similar feeling of possibility and being overwhelmed and confused by everything. It was a cool combination of looking at it like, ‘Wow, I was so young and didn’t know anything back then’, but also being fascinated with these people that are still somehow us.”

17 years on from the record that made them stars, the sentiments that permeated the cheeky refrain of ‘Time To Pretend’ have all essentially come true. MGMT made some music; they made some money; they found some models for, if not wives, then girlfriends at least. Even the more wistful moments of the track, of missing “the boredom and the freedom” of a simpler pre-fame life, have worked their way into the band’s narrative along the way. But though VanWyngarden and Goldwasser have maintained a career that’s turned fantasy into reality, it’s the playfulness they’ve returned to over recent years that feels like the greatest victory. “We’ve got the vision / Now let’s have some fun,” sang MGMT back in 2007. In some ways, it’s the same as it ever was.

‘Loss of Life’ is out 23rd February via Mom + Pop. DIY

NAILAH HUNTER THU 1 FEB HOXTON HALL DAMSEL ELYSIUM FRI 2 FEB THE OLD CHURCH STOKE NEWINGTON

VERA SOLA FRI 12 APRIL CHATS PALACE PALEHOUND TUE 16 APRIL HACKNEY OSLO

TV PRIEST FRI 2 FEB BLUE BASEMENT

MOLLY LEWIS WED 17 APRIL THE LEXINGTON

ONE WAY OR ANOTHER CRUUSH, SOMOH + AL COSTELLOE WED 7 FEB THE SOCIAL

TIRZAH FRI 19 APRIL IN THE ROUND FESTIVAL ROUNDHOUSE

A. SAVAGE WED 14 FEB THE GARAGE GLASSER FRI 16 FEB ST PANCRAS OLD CHURCH SAM EVIAN THUR 22 FEB HACKNEY OSLO ASTRID SONNE & ML BUCH OUT TUE 27 FEB SOLD WED 28 FEB ICA TATYANA FRI 22 MAR THE WAITING ROOM MARY IN THE JUNKYARD WED 27 MAR CORSICA STUDIOS

KAI BOSCH WED 1 MAY 2024 THE SOCIAL MITSKI T LD OU 8/9/10/11 MAY ALL SO EVENTIM APOLLO FRANCIS OF DELIRIUM TUE 14 MAY HACKNEY OSLO LANKUM SAT 18 MAY SUN 19 MAY HACKNEY EMPIRE THE GARDEN TUE 25 JUNE OUT SOLD WED 26 JUNE HEAVEN THE NATIONAL FRI 5 JULY CRYSTAL PALACE PARK KETY FUSCO THU 14 NOV ICA

PARALLELLINESPROMOTIONS.COM 39

P E R F E C T

40 DIYMAG.COM

Four mates whose fully-bonded friendship has allowed their band to blossom and evolve, on

Lime Garden’s debut album ‘One More Thing’, no ideas are off limits. Words: Tilly Foulkes. Photos: Ella Margolin.

H a r m o n y

when we wrote the songs, I actually haven’t changed at all…”

I

t’s a bone-chillingly cold afternoon at the top of the new year, and Brighton wonk-pop weirdos Lime Garden are all freezing. “I’m wrapped in my electric blanket!” drummer Annabelle Whittle tells us over Zoom from her home in London. “It’s so cold,” lead guitarist Leila Deeley winces with a shiver. Despite their imminent heating bills, however, the quartet - completed by vocalist Chloe Howard and bassist Tippi Morgan - are in good spirits. With a steady run of tours, a co-sign from Hayley Williams, and a hotly anticipated debut record - this month’s ‘One More Thing’ – to their name, there’s no reason not to be. And, crucially, they’ve done it all with their best friends. “I can’t imagine spending this much time with people I’m not really close with,” smiles Leila.

Indeed, their close-knit friendship forms the basis of Lime Garden’s appeal.

What draws them out from their postpunk, dream-pop and shoegaze peers is their capacity for experimentation: something that would not be possible were it not for the depth of trust between them. “What I really like about us is that, first of all, these girls are my besties for life!” Leila continues with a grin. “It’s so valuable and amazing to have that kind of friendship; I really love the fact we’re so different but we all click. But I also think it really helps our writing, because you need to be vulnerable and having that trust makes it easier.”

“If we weren’t such close friends it would massively change the dynamic of the band,” Annabelle agrees. “We feel super comfortable around each other. It’s harder to write and to try weird, new stuff if you’re fearful of getting judged, but we’re not, so we can try more strange things and see if it works.”

‘One More Thing’ leaps even further into the experimentation already seen throughout the band’s singles to date. There are no dull moments on the album; collectively, it’s ten tracks of dynamic musicianship, taking inspiration from artists as diverse as Bloc Party and Charli XCX. “We listen to a lot of different stuff, and even from our own personal influences, our music is where it hits the middle of the Venn diagram,” Leila says. “The Strokes have and will always be the coolest band in the world to me,” enthuses Chloe. “I was thinking about their debut album a lot before and during our time in the studio. Songs that grab you with their immediate hooks, and an album filled with just really great pop songs: that’s what we wanted our debut to be.”

W

hile Lime Garden themselves might not have changed (and more the better for that), there are ideas tackled within ‘One More Time’ that yearn for re-evaluation. The record examines the music industry from the perspective of people who have traditionally been excluded from it; working class women without any insider connections. On the album’s lead single ‘Nepotism (baby)’, Leila says they “weren’t trying to do a crazy statement, [but] more of an observational thing”.

“It’s a reimagining of life from the ease of having contacts in the industry and having a fast route up; thinking about how fun and easy life would be.”

Annabelle adds that both ‘Nepotism (baby)’ and ‘Popstar’ were about “coming to the realisation that the music world isn’t what you’d think it would be when you were younger”. “Being a musician, let alone a working class one, is probably the hardest it’s ever been,” Chloe agrees. “Up until about three years ago, I had no clue about the music industry and how it worked and, quite frankly, the more I learn the more I question if it’s even something I want to be a part of. But as soon as you get on stage or hear a track back in the studio I remember it’s not a choice but a need.”

With the issues facing artists – funding cuts, Spotify not paying artists, Brexit putting a halt on European tours – and the backdrop of the UK’s cost of living crisis, it’s difficult for bands like Lime Garden to get a leg up. However, they’re keen to emphasise that they wouldn’t have it any other way – and they’re buzzing about the future.

“We’ve got a few tricks,” Annabelle says of their upcoming headline tour.

“We’ve upped our game in terms of sound, got a few fun little things prepared, maybe even a fun cover… It’ll be a level up.”

“The more I learn about the music industry, the more I question if it’s even something I want to be a part of.” - Chloe Howard

Here’s a band, then, that ticks all the boxes.

With strangely thrilling guitar-pop, smart and sarcastic lyrics, brilliant live sets and an effortless cool, Lime Garden succeed in doing what all great bands do: inspire you to pick up a guitar and make something weird, in the hopes of forming your own charismatic gang, just like them.

‘One More Thing’ is out 16th February via So Young. DIY

One track that stands out is ‘Floor’ - an out-of-the-box, hyperpop spiral.

“It used to be a dream-pop thing,” Annabelle explains. “Then Chloe and I were really into The Japanese House and autotuned vocals so we were like, ‘Lets just speed this song up and put loads of autotune on it’, and it became this whole new thing. It was a bit random but we were like, ‘Oh this actually slaps!’”

Written over an extended period of time, the album simultaneously shows both musical and personal growth. “This entire album is an in-depth story that captures my mindset over the past few years,” nods Chloe. “It’s deeply personal on many levels, but also somewhat elusive upon a first listen. The majority of the songs on the record are straight from my brain and exactly how I was feeling at that precise moment, unfiltered!

“I was surprised when we revisited older songs like ‘Floor’ though, because they took on different meanings, but still reflected 100% how I felt at the time of writing them,” she continues. “Through the process of making this record I’ve realised that, although I feel like a completely different person now from

41

AFTER A DIZZYING FEW YEARS OF VIRAL HITS, SOLD OUT TOURS AND HUGE FESTIVAL SPOTS, LIVERPOOL’S CRAWLERS ARE FINALLY READY TO DIVE HEADLONG INTO THEIR AMBITIOUS, HEADY NEXT CHAPTER: IT’S TIME TO JOIN THEM FOR THE RIDE. Words: Sarah Jamieson. Photos: Misha Warren.

I

t’s no secret that Liverpool’s musical river runs deep, but even on the first bleary Monday morning of January, the city wears its fandom proudly on its sleeve. From the blue-haired teenagers wandering around town sporting Witch Fever t-shirts, through to the choir performing a rousing rendition of David Bowie’s ‘Rebel Rebel’ a stone’s throw away from its main shopping centre, it’s clear this is a city for music lovers.

It feels somewhat apt then, to be sitting down with Crawlers on home turf ahead of their next big chapter. Gathered in their favourite cafe, 2024 might have barely kicked into gear but the quartet are already casting their minds forward to the middle of next month, and the release of their debut album.

“It’s quite a scary period,” nods guitarist Amy Woodall, in between sips of matcha. “Some days you’re like, ‘This is the best album in the world!’ and the next, you’re like, ‘Ohhhh my god, we’re literally gonna get dropped’.” “Some days you think it’s gonna take the world by storm,” vocalist Holly Minto chips in, before pulling a face of fear, “and then you’re like ‘Argh!’” “Girlhood is a spectrum,” bassist Liv May adds with a metaphorical wink.

For the band - completed by drummer Harry Breen - this next step has been a long time coming. Having formed back in 2018 after various connections were made during their school and college days, their life as a group began in the typical fashion, “fitting everything into Amy’s Corsa, travelling to any gig that would have us, where we’d lose all our fucking money,” Holly nods. It was during the pandemic, however, that things took a different turn, when their blistering breakout hit ‘Come Over (Again)’ would blaze a trail across

Strength Numbers in

42 DIYMAG.COM

“You can do it for the money or the fame, but you kind of forget the innocence that music can give you.” -

HOLLY MINTO TikTok (the track has had over 53 million Spotify streams to date), and propel them into a new space entirely.

What’s followed since has been a series of bucket list moments. In early 2022, the band signed to major label Polydor, before releasing their ‘Loud Without Noise’ mixtape later that year. They’ve since completed two sold-out headline tours of the UK, and embarked on both European and US tours to boot, as well as a series of huge support slots and festival appearances along the way. “I’d never even been on a long haul flight before,” Holly laughs. “The longest flight I’d done was half an hour to Dublin!”

But after such an intense year (in our December 2022 cover feature with the band, Amy described the period as “chaos, but good chaos!”), Crawlers decided to take a gamble in 2023. “We were like, ‘We can either go hardcore again this year, and beat what we already had, or take a step back, work on the album, work on new things’,” the singer nods, “and we kinda did that. We went, ‘Let’s put everything into this because there’s no point in half-arsing your first album’.”

I

f one thing is immediately clear from talking to Crawlers, it’s that there was no chance of their debut being half-arsed. In the course of today’s conversation alone, there are references to a series of pitches and presentations made to their label and management during which Holly recalls writing in bold: ‘In this era, Y2K is dead’. Amy descends into fits of giggles. “You said it like, 12 times in the speech…” There was also an ambitious Venn diagram drawing, which Holly recently unearthed during a spring clean. “I really wish I’d brought it so you could see it,” she laughs. “It had ‘dark side’, ‘lighter side’, ‘the middle’, ‘how do we connect the line?!’ There were 55 songs on there! It was like, dude, what were we writing, an opera?!”

Instead, ‘The Mess We Seem To Make’ is a meticulously crafted full-length that sees the band build on the no-holds-barred ambition of their mixtape, crafting their sound into something equal parts emotive and intoxicating.

Inspired by the sounds of ‘90s grunge legends Nirvana (particularly ‘In Utero’), Smashing Pumpkins and Pixies, alongside the evocative nature of artists like Lorde, Halsey and the early work of The 1975, their record is a heady sonic journey that delves into sexual politics, anxiety and self-worth, while showcasing just how much they’ve grown as musicians.

43

“I want our fans to recognise that, if lyrically, they’ve resonated with what Holly has said, that’s coming from inside them.” - LIV MAY

“The mixtape was very spontaneous and we just wanted to show everyone what we could do,” Holly nods, gesturing to its all-out approach to exploring styles and genres.

“We could do heavy songs, we could do the acoustic ballads.

I think the mixtape almost addressed that there was no box anymore. When we first started, we were a rock band that liked playing dingey riffs and I’d talk very politically, whereas now I speak politically about myself rather than externally. I use my external observations and examine it against my own experience, which is something I didn’t really do then; I was too scared.”

T

here’s one song in particular from their past that Crawlers feel has helped them make sense of ‘The Mess We Seem To Make’. The only track to be carried over from their previous work, the aforementioned ‘Come Over (Again)’ - a raw but featherlight rumination on toxic relationships, which grows into a fiery beast of emotion - not only opened the door to a whole new sonic realm for the group when they wrote it several years ago, but has become, in Holly’s words, “the loose thread that ties it all together”.

“That’s why it was so important for us to have ‘Come Over’ on the album,” Liv explains. “It’s been such an integral part of the journey for so many different reasons. One, for how much it’s helped us to push ourselves as writers and musicians, then also the personal growth that has come from that. Getting from writing it to where we are now, it’s been such a massive part of our journey that it didn’t feel right to not have it on there.”

“When it blew up, we didn’t even have the tools to do it how we wanted to; we did it in a day,” Holly reflects. Now, they’ve been able to re-record the track and give it the attention it deserves.

“There was this moment where we had the Northern String Section come in and play it for the album, and Liv just turned around to me, crying,” they trace tears streaming down their face.

“It was really special.”

What makes the album perhaps even more special is that they were able to record it right here in Liverpool, at their adopted home of Coastal Sound Studios.

“You want to return to the same space where you learned how to be the band that you are,” says Harry. “You want to protect that, especially for your debut album.

We’ve been figuring out who we are for all this time, so it made

44 DIYMAG.COM

sense to hone in on where we’ve done that.” “It means so much to us, that silly place,” Holly echoes wistfully, before gesturing to Harry’s arm. “Harry’s even got the window of the place tattooed on him now!” He holds aloft the underside of his right arm, where the porthole-like window of the studio is inked on him forever.

S

peaking to the band, it’s impossible not to see how much all of this means to them. Whether discussing the intensely personal themes of the record (“I love pushing the barrier too far,” Holly quips, before recounting an awkward conversation with their producer around a lyric in the album’s opener ‘Meaningless Sex’) or the connection and responsibility they feel towards their fans, the quartet care deeply about every facet of the world they are creating, and those who inhabit it.

“For me, I would want anyone listening to the album to be able to get to the end of it and recognise their own selfempowerment,” Liv offers up. “I think a lot of people give us too much credit for moments where they have pulled themselves up, and been their own support system, and been their own words of comfort. We didn’t do that. It was all them. Holly always says to our fans who come to us and say these beautiful things that we were just the soundtrack to your moments.

For me, I would want our fans to recognise that, if lyrically, they’ve resonated with what Holly has said, that’s coming from inside them.”

“I want there to be some songs that kids fall in love to, I want them to be the first songs they go to see live, or they become the songs they listen to when they’re getting ready for their first emo night when they turn 18,” Holly picks up. “Sometimes when you’re in the music industry, it becomes exhausting and it becomes work, you forget the purity of what music is. The other day, I put some songs on that I hadn’t listened to in years, and I was just basking in it. I forget that people do that to our music, and that’s what makes music so special. You can do it for the money or the fame, or for the Met Gala, but you kind of forget the innocence that music can give you,” Holly concludes.

“I’d love the album to transcend what we brought it into the world for.”

‘The Mess We Seem To Make’ is out 16th February via Polydor. DIY

LONDON 2024

DANA GAVANSKI

O.

BOY & BEAR

ĠENN

TIM BERNARDES

HELADO NEGRO

07.02 - FOLKLORE

07.02 - ELECTRIC BALLROOM

11.02 - EARTH THEATRE

02.03 - OMEARA

06.03 - THE LEXINGTON

07.03 - SCALA

DOMO GENESIS

08.03 - VILLAGE UNDERGROUND

PERSONAL TRAINER POM POKO 24.04 - ELECTRIC BALLROOM

BAR ITALIA

02.05 - ELECTRIC BRIXTON

COSMO SHELDRAKE 03.05 | 04.05 - EARTH THEATRE

SHABAZZ PALACES 07.05 - VILLAGE UNDERGROUND

EL PERRO DEL MAR 08.05 - KINGS PLACE

PHILINE SONNY 08.05 - THE SOCIAL

KEIYAA

JUNIOR BROTHER

08.05 - THE LOWER THIRD

12.02 - THE GEORGE TAVERN

JANN

HANNAH JADAGU

EDWIN RAPHAEL

13.03 - THE LEXINGTON

20.05 - THE LEXINGTON

BEACH FOSSILS

BILL RYDER-JONES

UCHE YARA

12.02 - LAFAYETTE

20.03 - ISLINGTON ASSEMBLY HALL

21.05 - THE LEXINGTON

14.02 - OSLO

FOLLY GROUP

22.05 - OSLO

LOS CAMPESINOS!

MARIKA HACKMAN

13.02 - ELECTRIC BALLROOM

TORRES

17.02 - TROXY

SKYDADDY

20.02 - THE 100 CLUB

21.03 - SCALA

21.03 - HACKNEY CHURCH

MØ

23.03- XOYO

L’RAIN

HOME COUNTIES BRIMHEIM

22.05 - THE LEXINGTON

DUCKS LTD 27.05 - MOTH CLUB

PILLOW QUEENS 07.06 - ELECTRIC BRIXTON

21.02 - THE BARBICAN

FEUX

26.03 - JAZZ CAFE

LES SAVY FAV

23.02 - ELECTRIC BALLROOM

SPEEDY ORTIZ 24.02 - MOTH CLUB

WINGS OF DESIRE 28.02 - COURTYARD THEATRE

WALDO’S GIFT

28.02 - CORSICA STUDIOS

JOHN

29.02 - SCALA

DEKKER

THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN

29.03 | 30.03 - THE ROUNDHOUSE

PISSED JEANS 30.03 - EARTH HALL

LE BOOM 06.04 - XOYO

ALTIN GÜN 11.04 - TROXY

LYNKS

14.06- VILLAGE UNDERGROUND

NUBIYAN TWIST 19.06 - OUTERNET

SLOW PULP 20.06 - KOKO

ALVVAYS 26.06 - TROXY

KOKOKO!

01.10- VILLAGE UNDERGROUND

17.04 - KOKO

01.03 - THE LEXINGTON

FAT DOG

ADWAIT + MELIN MELYN

EEE GEE

01.03 - THE LOWER THIRD

CHASTITY BELT

18.04 - ELECTRIC BRIXTON FORMPRESENTS.COM SEETICKETS.COM

19.04 - LAFAYETTE

45

LET TING Featuring love songs, crooning and production credits from Nigel Godrich, ‘TANGK’ is perhaps

IDLES

’

biggest curveball yet. For LP5, say Joe Talbot and Mark Bowen, they just wanted “to be the sun”.

Words: Louis Griffin. Photos: Daniel Topete. e were very much in love.” These are Joe Talbot’s words when asked what his first impression of Mark Bowen was. The two have been making music together as part of IDLES for nearly sixteen years, and have been friends for almost exactly as long. “We met at a bar called The Tube,” explains Joe. “I went there, and Bowen got naked and danced on the stage, and occasionally DJed. Correct?” The guitarist laughs - the laugh of someone hearing a well-worn story for the umpteenth time. “Yeah, that was the main thing I did that night.”

“W

The pair have the kind of relaxed, self-deprecating and occasionally spiky rapport that immediately marks them out as very old friends.

They also share the unique viewpoint of two people that have ridden a very tumultuous, very successful ride to rock’s major leagues: a journey which has seen them take in a UK Number One album, a Mercury Prize shortlisting, storming performances at Glastonbury and across the stages of the world - essentially, everything they set out to do after meeting in that bar. They piece together a vague recollection of the night: a lock-in, an after-party, a techno DJ they were hosting in Bristol. “Then we realised we were both looking to start a band,” Joe grins. “The rest, as they say, is a fucking mess.”

Talbot and Bowen are in the middle of promoting fifth album ‘TANGK’, which marks the latest in a series of side-steps away from the joyously shambolic sound that IDLES burst into public consciousness with back in 2017. The muscular basslines and sandpaper guitars are still there, but these days they sit alongside tape loops and synth lines. Most prominently of all, Talbot’s trademark snarl (a cross between Mark E Smith’s yelps and a West Country drawl) has been replaced by an almost-delicate croon. We first heard moments of this on their previous LP, ‘CRAWLER’, but the band felt they had further to go, and hadn’t fully committed to their pivot away from – in Bowen’s words – “the standard formula of a guitar-based band.” “‘Crawler’ had really given us an impetus to go further,” he explains.

“It felt like unfinished business – we’d started [tracks] like ‘Progress’, or ‘MTT 420 RR’, where we had a more deft approach, and we hadn’t

46 DIYMAG.COM

“WHAT’S KEPT US AFLOAT IS OUR COMBUSTIVE NATURE, BECAUSE WE’VE MANAGED TO COLLIDE IN A WAY THAT WORKS.” - JOE TALBOT

F F O

M EA

ST

47

“HUMANELY, THERE IS NO ROOM FOR A MONARCHY, IF YOU BELIEVE IN LOVE AND EMPATHY. FULL STOP.” - JOE TALBOT quite nailed it. So we approached that line with this album again in places, and used our experience with the last album to sew those things up.” He pauses to think. “Having the production inform the writing process, rather than what has happened previously with IDLES, which is the writing informing the production. I think what we ended up with on ‘TANGK’ is much more accomplished.”

Talbot agrees, although he doesn’t just put their new sound down to changes in writing practice – for him, the story of ‘TANGK’ is very much the story of his friendship and collaboration with Bowen. “We are very much opposites; we are not the same, in any way,” he says. “I’ve had to change, because the music that I make is very simple and block-like, [whereas] Bowen likes to fit many different facets into one song.” He smiles. “That’s what’s kept us afloat, our combustive nature, because we’ve managed to collide in a way that works. I’m learning more from Bowen than he is from me, I expect, but there’s a constant forward motion.” albot thinks this way of working owes its origins to the pandemic. ‘Crawler’ was written during the tail-end of the lockdowns, largely remotely. “We were extracted from the practice room,” he nods, “and we then had to build a new relationship – over Zoom, basically. We learned a new creative dialect. We had time to write ideas, and send them to each other, and that’s what came about: this sense of transgression through poise, and calm, and introspection. No fear of what it’s going to sound like live; we weren’t playing live, so that wasn’t in our consciousness like it was before.”

T

Bowen has a succinct metaphor for their relationship, both in and out of work. “If Joe was only my friend, he wouldn’t be my friend any more – he’d be a guy I see at weddings. And if he was only my colleague, he wouldn’t be my colleague any more, I would have quit the band.

But he’s neither of those things, he’s literally my brother,” he says, with a twinkle in his eye. “We can’t get rid of each other now, it runs too deep.”

The two musicians weren’t the only people involved in the writing process, though. This time round, IDLES invited producer Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Pavement, Beck) to push them in new directions, in addition to co-production from Kenny Beats and Bowen himself.

Given the band have referenced several of Godrich’s roster as influences before - including quoting a line from a Pavement track on ‘Danny Nedelko’ - are they big fans?

Bowen laughs. “I’d actually forgotten he’d done the Pavement album, and I went to see them with him! But yeah, massive fans – I approached Nigel at Glastonbury in like 2008 and fanboyed over him.”

Godrich hosted the band on his From The Basement live series last year meaning, presumably, that he was an admirer of IDLES too. “One thing that is very clear,” Mark smirks, “from having conversations with Nigel, is that he is not a fan of IDLES. I think he’s probably less of a fan now than when he was setting off. He was like, ‘I don’t know the band, I don’t know any of your work…”

To be clear though, both men see this as a good thing. “The important thing was that it was a new perspective on our potential,” explains Talbot. “To have someone who was willing to work with us, and

48 DIYMAG.COM

“I THINK [‘TANGK’ PRODUCER NIGEL GODRICH] IS PROBABLY LESS OF A FAN NOW THAN WHEN HE WAS SETTING OFF…” - MARK BOWEN

IN THE PASSENGER SEAT ‘TANGK’ was far from a solo affair, as evidenced by these all-star collaborators.

LCD SOUNDSYSTEM

Joe Talbot: We were touring with them, and I wrote the backing vocals [of single ‘Dancer’] with LCD in mind. They’re a beautiful bunch of people, very lovely and generous and hard working. When we asked them, they obviously said yes, but they let us use their studio in New York and gave us the day off too - which is a big thing on a tour, especially when you’ve got families. It was a really gracious thing to do, and we're very grateful.

KENNY BEATS

(PRODUCER ON ‘TANGK’ AND ‘CRAWLER’) Kenny was just like, ‘Fuck all the people that are telling you who you are. Make what you want to make. You’ve got to make mistakes, you've got to burn things down. You’ve got to do an ‘Ultra Mono’; you’ve got to completely destroy that concept in order to move forward.’

And we did it.

take a risk. That forced us to really move forward.” Bowen nods: “I mean, it’s Nigel Godrich. But also, he famously works with bands when they want to take left turns: Beck, The Divine Comedy, Travis.

All those bands had huge preconceived notions about what they are, and they’ve made albums with Nigel that are the exact opposite of what people think they should be, and that’s given them the impetus through the rest of their careers to just transgress, and transgress, and transgress.”

He stops to think. “What I thought Nigel was going to do was help tether us to IDLES - push us on these boundaries, but keep us on a sound footing. What actually happened was [he] had the exact opposite effect, in that all the barriers disappeared. There was no perimeter on this album at all.” His bandmate nods: “[In the past] there were certain songs that we walked away from like, ‘That’ll do’.

Whereas these songs are accomplished, in our perspective, because they feel complete. And completion is when it feels, in essence, like IDLES. And then we can leave it.”

NIGEL GODRICH

On ‘TANGK’, Talbot continued with the same writing strategy he’s employed on IDLES’ previous two albums - not preparing any lyrics in advance of recording; turning up at the microphone and seeing what happens. Is it not a terrifying way to work? “It became scary because of the weight of this album,” he says. “I intended to write the whole album before we got to the studio because I was [thinking], ‘You’re working with Nigel Godrich, this is a very important album, you should work on these before’, forgetting that all my best work is written at the microphone.”

A good example [of Nigel’s guidance] is ‘A Gospel’. I was like, ‘This song’s great, I love it, [but] I don’t know what to do with it’. Nigel would say, ‘Trust it. Fine, you don’t understand it, just write on it. It’s not a song until you sing on it’. That was a new relationship, where someone says, ‘No, shut the fuck up, write’.

We came out of it much smarter, and more dynamic.

It’s a stance that flies in the face of received wisdom about rock lyrics – the antithesis of Leonard Cohen writing 80 possible verses for ‘Hallelujah’.

“There’s a confidence thing,” he explains. “You have this sense of high culture, [that] you’ve got to sit there and pretend to be Nick Cave, nine-to-five it.

And that’s not me, that’s not who I am. Now it’s not scary at all, it’s the most liberating feeling. I’m never going to write lyrics before the booth again.” But, although Talbot knew that he wouldn’t write anything in advance, he did know the album’s subject matter well ahead of time. “I said very early on, ‘I can only write about love right now in my life, that’s all I’m interested in writing about’.

And Bowen said, ‘OK, I trust you.’”

In light of this, it feels remiss not to mention Talbot’s snarl of “Fuck the king!” on ‘Gift Horse’ – one of many furious references to the monarchy throughout ‘TANGK’. How does that fit into his framework of writing love songs? “The idea of compassion is the antithesis of occupation and monarchy. Humanely, there is no room for a monarchy, if you believe in love and empathy. Full stop.”

Talbot’s new focus on empathy also feels slightly at odds with some of the band’s older tracks, such as ‘Model Village’ and ‘Never Fight A Man With A Perm’ - tracks that feature working class stereotypes as their antagonists. He bridles at the suggestion. “That’s for you to decide. I was writing about getting my head kicked in, because I was an obnoxious prick to the men who beat me as a teenager. I can tell you that song was written in hindsight; maybe if I learned to show some respect to strangers, I wouldn’t have gotten my ass handed to me.”

Talbot takes a moment to collate his thoughts before hitting what, for IDLES, is the biggest change on ‘TANGK’. “It’s self-reflection, and all our music is about the progression of self. It’s a different tone, yes – hence the reference of the fable of the wind and the sun,” he says, referencing Aesop’s fable in which the sun’s gentle warmth triumphs over the wind’s bluster, nodded to in the album’s liner notes. “We’re trying to be the sun for once. Same moral, different tune.”

‘TANGK’ is out 16th February via Partisan. DIY

49



Green Day

SAVIORS (Reprise) That so much was made of Billie Joe Armstrong switching his lyrics on a New Year’s television performance to entertain millions of American households with “I’m not part of the MAGA agenda” is, of course, puzzling to anyone who’s paid more than a cursory glance to Green Day over their thirty-plus years as a band. Delightfully, for both us and Green Day themselves, ‘Saviors’ is an outstanding record that showcases that same still unrivalled ability to incorporate biting social commentary within perfect, threeminute pop (punk) songs. A spoonful of sugar, so they say.

Scene-setting opener ‘The American Dream Is Killing Me’ unsurprisingly fits this mould perfectly, while ‘Strange Days Are Here To Stay’ touches on the opioid crisis (“Grandma’s on the fentanyl now”), and nestles the savage within the quotidian: “Everyone is racist / And the Uber’s running late”. And of course, it’s all with an anthemic singalong of a

chorus: “They promised us forever / But we got less”. Mass shootings are referenced in both the raging ‘Living In The ‘20s’ and ‘Coma City’, with the latter also raising the issue of police brutality. Both, too, have gigantic, immediate choruses primed for nihilistic (and yet socially-aware) moshpits.

The subject matter isn’t all in the present, though. ‘Look Ma, No Brains!’ appears to mock the ‘slacker’ aesthetic attributed to much of the band’s own Gen X in the ‘90s, with nods to I’m With Stupid t-shirts and Trainspotting.

Meanwhile, ‘1981’ - which sounds like Ramones taking on Elvis Costello’s ‘(I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea’ - sets itself at the launch of MTV while delivering a time-specific comparison (“She is a Cold War in my head / And I am East Berlin”). As if to tie the time-shifts together, this chronicling of angst from the early 1980s to today, closer ‘Fancy Sauce’ - an epic chant-a-long - drops in a cheeky selfreferential “stupid and contagious”.

What elevates ’Saviors’ even higher, though, is the personal themes the trio have woven throughout. ‘Dilemma’, equal parts ‘50s doo-wop and gnarly riffs, is a candid song about addiction (“I was sober now I’m drunk again / I’m in trouble and in love again / I don’t wanna be a dead man walking”). ‘Bobby Sox’, which takes sonic cues from past tourmates Weezer, switches between “Do you wanna

Catharsis has never sounded this good.

50 DIYMAG.COM



be my girlfriend?” and “Do you wanna be my boyfriend?” both seamlessly and playfully. A musical outlier which bolsters comparisons to Oasis’ softer side, ‘Father To A Son’ is a slower cut with strings and brass that sees Billie Joe reflect on parenthood: “I never know a love / Could be scarier than anger,” he sings, the full-blast rock opera crescendo of the track a flourish that echoes the song’s emotion. Nontoxic masculinity, if you will.

The Last Dinner Party Prelude To Ecstasy (Island)

Unapologetically flaunting an MO of gleeful maximalism at every turn, The Last Dinner Party’s hotlyanticipated debut album was never going to be a meek thing, but it’s hard to recall an opening gambit that greedily embraces every possible ounce of opportunity quite like ‘Prelude to Ecstasy’. It’s an album that dreams not just big but huge, beginning with a literal orchestral overture - 96 seconds of world-building that removes you from boring old reality and plants you into their version of Fantasia.

Then, 11 tracks of similarly sky-high, grandiose ambition, that tie together lofty literary sentiment, cinematic sweeping theatricality and killer melodic indie hooks with an equal affinity for each.

Not just a return to form from a group whose recent catalogue has been somewhat patchy, but a true classic, ‘Saviors’ is Green Day at their musical and thematic best. A soundtrack while the world’s going to shit - catharsis has never sounded this good. (Emma Swann) LISTEN: ‘1981’



Declan McKenna

What Happened To The Beach?

(Columbia)

Going off its title alone, you’d be forgiven for thinking that on this third offering, Declan McKenna was potentially plotting a return to the roots of his 2017 debut ‘What Do You Think About The Car?’. Or maybe, you heard buoyant second single ‘Nothing Works’ and were put in mind of 2020’s ‘Zeros’, replete with maximalist arrangements and glam rock textures. In reality, though, ‘What Happened To The Beach?’ is something entirely its own. From the off-kilter percussion of ‘Breath Of Light’ to the riff-led swagger of ‘The Phantom Buzz (Kick In)’, via louche grooves (‘Honest Test’; ‘Mezzanine’) and the distinctly Beatles tone of ‘I Write The News’ (which follows TikTok losing its collective mind over Dec’s Macca-sounding ‘Slipping Through My Fingers’ cover, after all) - ‘What Happened To The Beach?’ is an exercise in refined ideas and original execution. The only vague question mark lies in what’s alluded to by the slightly eerie, sub-60 seconds closer ‘4 More Years’. When we can expect LP4, perhaps? Regardless of that particular conundrum, here Declan is truly coming into his own as one of indie’s most innovative minds. Decidedly mature yet still with that same self-aware playfulness, this is undoubtedly his most eclectic offering to date. (Daisy Carter) LISTEN: ‘I Write The News’

It’s this unlikely balance that is The Last Dinner Party’s greatest trick. A band composed of both classical and alternative musicians, they knit the two sensibilities together in ways that sound like little else. Recent single ‘Caesar on a TV Screen’ might be the only modern pop song to reference Leningrad and the Red Scare, but it’s also all sorts of fun, switching up time signatures and styles from bombastic chest-puffing to a cheeky ‘60s shuffle.

Early highlight ‘Burn Alive’ begins with tense, ‘80s gothic drama before exploding into a rousingly defiant chorus; ‘Beautiful Boy’ makes use of woodwind and an Oscar Wilde-like sense of romanticism; ‘Gjuha’ sees keyboard player Aurora Nishveci singing in Albanian, while it’s frontwoman Abigail Morris’ natural sense of vocal melodrama that’s likely earned them a fair whack of Kate Bush comparisons.

Dangling the carrot right through to the record’s closing moments, they leave breakout debut ‘Nothing Matters’ until the penultimate track. But it’s a holy trinity of brilliance in that single, the roaring rock opera of ‘My Lady of Mercy’, and ‘Portrait of a Dead Girl’ that sees out ‘Prelude…’s final third in truly ecstatic fashion. The latter in particular serves up crescendo after crescendo; nestled between the band’s two finest singles, it’s even better than either of them.

In an age of algorithms, TLDP are a singular band that have come out on top without diminishing a shred of their vision. If their debut is only the ‘Prelude to Ecstasy’, then it’s truly thrilling to imagine what The Last Dinner Party could dream up when they reach the real meat of their career. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘Portrait of a Dead Girl’

51

ALBUMS 



The Mess We Seem To Make (Polydor)

TANGK (Partisan)

Crawlers

Anyone after evidence of Crawlers’ growth, from buzzy Merseyside newcomers pre-pandemic to genuine rock contenders as we hit 2024 can find it in ‘Come Over (Again)’. The version featured here on debut ‘The Mess We Seem To Make’ sits in direct constrast, sonically, to its 2019 outing on the quartet’s self-titled EP. It helps, of course, that the song itself was an impeccably-formed one to begin with, but where, before, its push-and-pull came largely in contrast to the ferociousness it sat alongside, its new iteration is expanded, the chorus transformed to a big hitter, vocalist Holly Minto pushing themselves further to convey every bit of emotion expressed in their lyrics.

And for all this is a sonically rich, musically accomplished record - and it truly is - it’s Holly’s enviably dextrous voice that can’t help but take centre stage. They can belt with the best of them: the rock stomp of ‘Hit It Again’ has it reaching a metallic roar, the chorus of the decidedly Weezer-indebted ‘What I Know Is What I Love’ has them belting out as if their life depended on it, ‘Better If I Just Pretend’ invokes ‘90s grunge ennui via their low-key delivery, while piano ballad and literal centrepiece ‘Golden Bridge’ flips the script entirely, with a turn that’s soft, subtle and jazzy; the wistfulness of Ellie Rowsell can be heard, the sadness of Billie Eilish’s whisper, even (dare we say it) the soar of Adele.

Through this, the snapshot of life Crawlers provide across the record is a vivid one, the heart-on-sleeve lyrics sometimes stark: “Am I just your pornography / A quick fix and some company” asks opener ‘Meaningless Sex’, a track which uses glitchy guitars and stop-start percussion alongisde Holly’s voice at full pelt to create a satisfying cresendo as the song fully kicks in. “I say I’m not addicted,” confesses ‘Hit It Again’, “‘Cause I only ask for one.” Closer ‘Nighttime Affair’ meanwhile, may offer no wholesome conclusion (“Everyone can see the way you look at me / When she’s not looking”) but there’s something so utterly pleasing about its use of ‘50s Hollywood style strings and classic pop chord changes to evoke romance and sympathy. Crawlers’ buzz has been simmering for some time now. ‘The Mess We Seem To Make’ should see it fully explode. (Emma Swann) LISTEN: ‘Meaningless Sex’

IDLES

When IDLES unveiled ‘Dancer’, the lead single from their follow-up to 2021’s GRAMMY-nominated ‘CRAWLER’, something lurked beneath their usual bullish drawl. Beyond the guest vocals by LCD Soundsystem’s regulars, the track tantalisingly hinted at an expanded palette, not least in its dramatic opening string section. Joe Talbot’s spitting vocals remained, but there was something more, something new, and something distinctly different. That vice is fully explored throughout ‘TANGK’, a record that dances between the defining visceral post-punk of IDLES’ career so far and a newfound delicate swarm. Opener ‘IDEA 01’ unfurls as a twisted Sigur Rós, while single ‘Grace’ and choral counterpart ‘A Gospel’ reveal a side of the Bristol five-piece that few would have envisaged in the explosive charge of debut ‘Brutalism’. “Make no mistake, IDLES have not softened…” the record’s accompanying biography reads, superficially at odds with the record’s shift to singing over spoken word, and melody over poignant rants. But despite its embrace of love as an underlying theme, and displaying Joe and co. as their unique blend of happy – albeit with bite - ‘TANGK’ possesses a certain hardness beneath its wide musical spectrum. ‘Hall & Oates’ rattles with distortion among its rallying gang vocals, and ‘Gratitude’ swirls to a riotous crescendo. If love is the theme here, it’s quickly masked by a balanced ferocity IDLES have never tapped into before. With it, their fifth record emerges as a jarring clash between two distinct tones, in part down to the songwriters’ polarising influences, but in among it, the battle veers off to discover unmistakable beauty and connection. By the closing moments of the eery ‘Monolith’, it all becomes clear: this is love, but through the unmistakable eyes of IDLES. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘Grace’



The Smile

Wall Of Eyes (XL) It would be impossible to talk about The Smile without comparison to Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood’s other band, but ‘Wall of Eyes’ leans less on Radiohead and more on the prolific work each has undertaken elsewhere. Unlike their first album, which seemed to be about The Smile discovering themselves as a tight three-piece rock band, ‘Wall of Eyes’ sees the trio, completed by drummer Tom Skinner, adventure into rich soundscapes that call to mind Thom’s soundtrack for 2018 supernatural film Suspiria. ‘Teleharmonic’ and ‘I Quit’ serve as highlights of these textures, being propelled by glitchy and robotic ambience that subdue rather than exacerbate the tone of the music. The band’s use of conventional instruments is also astounding, with Jonny showing just why he’s considered one of the most inventive guitarists in the world on ‘Under Our Pillows’ and ‘Read The Room’. ‘Friend of a Friend’ is an oasis of normality on this album, providing a piano ballad that could easily be a Neil Young deep cut, but for the most part this album is exactly what a side project should be – all the ideas too weird to fit anywhere else. (James Hickey) LISTEN: ‘Friend Of A Friend’



MGMT

Loss Of Life (Mom + Pop)

Sonically rich, musically accomplished.

Photo: Misha Warren

52 DIYMAG.COM

In the press notes for this fifth record from MGMT, the comedian Tom Scharpling proclaims the New York duo “five-for-five, which last time I checked gets you into virtually any Hall of Fame.” Few would agree with him on that 100% hit rate and ironically, their insistence on staying true to themselves has largely meant they’ve avoided that sort of hyperbole ever since they eschewed the idea of repeating ‘Oracular Spectacular’’s penchant for big-hitting singles and gave us the charmingly off-kilter oddity ‘Congratulations’ instead, way back in 2010. It freed up Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden to pursue their own, deeply idiosyncratic musical path, and those who checked out after ‘Congratulations’ arrived free of another ‘Kids’ or ‘Time to Pretend’ might be surprised to hear that not only are MGMT still a going concern but a genuine creative force, on the basis of the handsome and assured ‘Loss of Life’. They’ve become remarkably adept at taking classic pop structures and inflecting them with smart new ideas; ‘Mother Nature’ has a touch of glam-rock stomp to it, ‘Dancing in Babylon’ and the softly anthemic ‘People in the Streets’ reimagine Tears for Fears’ stately synth rock for the 21st Century, and the standout ‘Nothing Changes’ mixes its swooning balladry with impressionistic saxophone-led interludes, all the while nodding to ‘Disintegration’-era The Cure. Throughout, Andrew’s eccentric lyricism leans away from the paranoia of ‘MGMT’ and ‘Little Dark Age’ and towards a search for love in the midst of darkness; quietly, he and Ben continue to plough their strange pop furrow with aplomb. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘Nothing Changes’

ALBUMS



Real Estate Daniel (Domino)



serpentwithfeet GRIP (Secretly Canadian)

On ‘GRIP’, serpentwithfeet sheds previous gospel influences and classical flourishes for a celebration of Black, queer nightlife that still reaches celestial heights. Where ‘soil’ sought inspiration from the sounds of serpent’s youth in Baltimore, and follow-up ‘Deacon’ chronicled heartbreak and its aftermath, ‘GRIP’ finds serpent much more content, cherishing small moments of physical closeness without becoming sentimental or saccharine. ‘Damn Gloves’, featuring frequent collaborator Ty Dolla $ign, sets the scene by plunging the listener into the club environment with its propulsive beat and insatiable hook, as does ‘Rum/Throwback’, a fusion of house and EDM. The record fluctuates between adjacent moments of raw desire and tenderness.

Later track ‘Hummin’’ is ASMR-like, with serpent’s hums and whispers seeking to mimic moments of intimacy between fleeting lovers. serpent’s trademark silky vocals and heart-onsleeve declarations of love still shine here, as they did on ‘soil’, but the instrumentation moves away from previous grandeur, making it more accessible. Take ‘Ellipsis’, a track built upon a ‘90s R&B instrumental, or standout ‘Lucky Me’, which is underscored by its finger-style guitar plucks and the gentle crash of waves, with serpent at his most vulnerable, reaching a delicious falsetto as he sings “I’m lucky to be word on your page [...] Sorry I’m gushing again.” An artist in every sense of the word, serpent recently lent his hand to scoring A24’s ‘The Inspection’, as well as curating an audio-visual experience ‘Heart of Brick’ last year in Hamburg, encompassing dance and music. It’s little surprise, then, that ‘GRIP’ is reflective of serpent’s other artistic pursuits; it is a dynamic and sensual album, rich with imagery, peppered with romance, and imbued with joy.

(Sarah Taylor) LISTEN: ‘Lucky Me’

This sixth full-length from Real Estate, which arrives as they mark fifteen years together, was recorded in Nashville in just nine days under the tutelage of a producer who’s won Grammys for his work with Kacey Musgraves, but anybody expecting either these myriad country connections or the fast pace of the recording process to have rubbed off on the sound of ‘Daniel’ will be disappointed. Their line-up has changed again too, but this is, in the main, the same Real Estate we’re well acquainted with by now - the one that frontman Martin Courtney uses as a vehicle for the handsome, gentle brand of indie rock that he carved out on ‘Real Estate’ and ‘Days’, and had pretty much mastered by ‘Atlas’ a decade ago. Since, the group have largely focused on tinkering with, rather than reinventing, a winning formula, with some pleasingly subtle expansion on 2020’s ‘The Main Thing’. Here, perhaps counterintuitively, they go against that, bringing in acoustic and slide guitars for a disarmingly simple set of songs that nevertheless still lack the rustic feel that you might have expected Nashville’s country tradition to have imbued in them. When we finally get a freewheeling guitar solo on penultimate track ‘Market Street’, it is liberating, while the spacey and softly epic closer ‘You Are Here’ might be the standout. For those to whom Courtney’s songwriting is a soothing balm, there is plenty to like here - but there’s a sense of creative inertia that means it’s a difficult record to truly love.

(Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘You Are Here’

Art Attack



Ghetts

On Purpose, With Purpose (Warner)

Setting the bar higher once again.

There are few artists boasting a discography as strong as Ghetts. With three superb full lengths and a collection of mixtapes under his belt, he returns with his most vulnerable and considered effort to date with ‘On Purpose, With Purpose’. His trademark bombastic flows and high-energy beats remain intact, particularly on the Kano and Wretch 32-featuring ‘Mount Rushmore’, but he’s also added an explorative streak that sees R&B, gospel, soul, Afrobeats and amapiano all folded into the mix. That he can still make a run of songs like ‘Mine’, ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘Gbedu’ sound so different, but still so coherent, is masterful. But it’s Ghetts’ insistence to talk about real issues that shines brightest. It all culminates in ‘Jonah’s Safety’ - a spinetingling, brutal story about postnatal depression and abortion laws. Pip Millett’s delicate melodies of “Rockabye baby, rockabye baby, who’s watching over you while I’m watching my baby” are a gut punch in tandem with rhymes about “dealing with different emotions, jealousy, hatred, anger, envy”. His storytelling has never been so raw. ‘On Purpose, With Purpose’ also continues Ghetts’ penchant for guest star appeal, this time bringing the likes of Sampha, Dexta Daps and Muzi in on the action.

That willingness to utilise the skills of a wide range of artists allows Ghetts’ own input to remain so focused. Ghetts secured his place in the conversation around the greatest UK rappers years ago; ‘On Purpose, With Purpose’ sets the bar higher once again.

(Jack Terry) LISTEN: ‘Jonah’s Safety’

Bassist Alex Bleeker on the story behind the cover image chosen for ‘Daniel’.

“Sinna Nasseri is the most prolific and highly skilled photographer that we know personally, and his aesthetic has been a part of this album since day one. We invited him to spend time with us in the studio when we were recording, and he captured the feeling in there effortlessly. Naturally, when it came time to pick an image for the front cover, we thought of him. Our band’s roots can be traced all the way back to our time spent making music together in high school, and Sinna is also from our hometown. He was a few years ahead of us, and part of an artsy crew that we always looked up to. We wanted to showcase his fine art photography skills on the cover, because it feels like he’s been an organic part of our world for a long time. Thematically, if you listen to our albums over the years, being on the other end of a telephone, and in turn struggling to communicate from a distance has always factored into our songwriting. This image just made sense. It was expertly ornamented and laid out by our friends at FISK design.”

53

ALBUMS 

Jazmin Bean

Traumatic Livelihood (Island / Interscope)



A 21st Century internet sensation in the truest sense (read: six-figure counts of fans while a still-niche concern in most spaces), on this eventual full-length debut, Jazmin Bean presents less of the full-throttle, gnarled-riffs-and-horror imagery of their early outings, and more as a pure pop beacon. Like Charli XCX if she’d spent her ‘True Romance’ era in ‘90s Camden Market instead of sneaking into raves, ’Traumatic Livelihood’ plays with pop tropes before dropping a little unexpected twist here and there: the slacker rock chorus of the title track; the kitchen sink production of ‘You Know What You’ve Done’. Anyone who’d only listened to their early tracks may be a little shocked by just how slick it all is: Jazmin’s deliberate intonation often brings to mind Marina’s operatic side, for example, while the chord changes of ‘Terrified’ are right out of Pop 101. But rather than weaken their identity, the lyrical dissonance it causes - and, make no bones, this is a heart-on-sleeve album lyrically - only makes Jazmin’s words all the more stark. “Midlife crisis / Pervert, a virus,” begins the harrowing ‘Piggie’, while ‘Best Junkie You Adore’ describes squalor with intricate detail while Jazmin hops around a pretty vocal line. Between its big production and even bigger messages, it’s admittedly a lot - one wonders if without Jazmin having been so candid about their experiences to date, perhaps it would seem too much - but it’s an accomplished and immediate pop record that will surely find the underground superstar receiving greater name recognition (Alfie Byrne) LISTEN: ‘You Know What You Did’



Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes Dark Rainbow (International Death Cult / AWAL)

Frank Carter and Dean Richardson have lived a lot of life together. Since the old friends formed their band in 2015, they’ve constantly shifted with the times, releasing four albums that each reflect where they are in that moment. Now with ‘Dark Rainbow’, their fifth album as Frank Carter & the Rattlesnakes, they opt instead to reflect on where they’ve been, where they are now, and where they’re heading. Indeed, ‘Dark Rainbow’ sounds like many of the best bits of each of their previous records. From rousing opener ‘Honey’ to the soft ballad closer of ‘A Dark Rainbow’, there’s a familiarity without ever feeling rehashed; that is to say existing fans will be pleased, while any new ears this falls on should want to hear more. ‘Man Of The Hour’ best illustrates their longstanding honest and open call to do away with the traditional view of a rock star. And while ‘Dark Rainbow’ does lack those ‘I Hate You’-esque standout moments of their earlier records, the eleven tracks here are perhaps their most consistent and level to date. Frank’s smoky crooning is a mainstay, while Dean’s guitar work is more versatile and pliant than ever before, allowing ragers like ‘American Spirit’ to slot in seamlessly alongside the likes of the vulnerability of ‘Happier Days’.

Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes have long been a prolific machine and it seems they’re keeping themselves well oiled. (Jack Terry) LISTEN: ‘Honey’

Lime Garden

One More Thing (So Young) Spending the best part of four years hammering one immaculate indie-pop gem after the other in succession, the debut album from Lime Garden finds the Brightonbased quartet losing none of their talent for an earworm, while also baring their entire souls. Exploring their experience of needing to depend on the humdrum nine-to-five for essential sustenance despite touring internationally to ever-growing audiences, ‘One More Thing’ is an intimately touching listen, with each of vocalist Chloe Howard’s words confessed as if over a cup of tea on a kitchen table (“I don’t want to work my job because life is fleeting and I’m a popstar,” she sings on ‘Popstar’). For anyone who has ever struggled in the blind pursuit of a far flung dream, who has ever felt weighed down by life’s dull realities and yearned for more - admittedly, a large catchment area - Lime Garden offer a reassuring hand to warm shoulders and a candied melody or ten to sweeten ears. Not only this, but as an album indebted as much to Charli XCX or Bon Iver as it is to The Strokes, as equally comfortable with cello-bowing ballads or auto-tuned pop anthemia as it is with the guitar-chugging banger, it confirms Lime Garden as a band with potential to achieve even higher artistic greatness. (Elvis Thirlwell) LISTEN: ‘Popstar’



Brittany Howard

WHAT NOW (EMI)

Such was the impact of ‘Jaime’, Brittany Howard’s 2019 solo debut - with single ‘Stay High’ seemingly so ubiquitous that even Childish Gambino cover the hit - it’s baffling to realise that ‘WHAT NOW’ is only the musician’s second solo album (the same number as her output with Alabama Shakes).

That timelessness of touch that she brought to previous projects is here too: a crackly warmth seeps through opener ‘Earth Sign’, even while the track builds to a crescendo that’s equally euphoric and claustrophobic. Dualities are woven in throughout, whether via the gorgeously jazzy ‘Every Color in Blue’ which touches on themes of depression, or ‘Red Flags’, on which she sings of running “right through” the titular warnings atop a soothing, trip-hop instrumental.

Sonically sprawling (‘80s guitar sounds are referenced on the title track; a glitchy beat flickers through ‘Another Day’; ‘Power To Undo’ brims with pop-funk chaos) yet also unafraid to find joy in simple pleasures (the most immediate moment comes courtesy of ‘Prove It To You’, a club-ready stomp), ‘WHAT NOW’ is a gem. (Jessie Brown) LISTEN: ‘Prove It To You’

‘WHAT NOW’ is a gem.

54 DIYMAG.COM

ALBUMS  

Zara Larsson

Venus (Sommer House / Black Butter) Tirelessly playing both Radio-Friendly Main Pop Girl and Underappreciated Pop Craftsman is a tough gig - one that could confuse the artistic direction of most - but on third record ‘Venus’, Zara Larsson balances the simplicity of conveyor-belt pop all while dialling up her ABBA-on-nightcore niche to a hundred. Overarchingly, yes, the former encourages a slightly crowded mishmash of genre - from dance to R&B to balladry - but it’s always opulently executed. Lead single ‘Can’t Tame Her’ treads the ongoing retro synthpop revival, belying a vintage sound for her fourth record that only ever appears once again on its fantastically glistening (and standout) title track. Then there’s a handful of obviously-manufactured-forsuccess club hits - see the thumping ‘None of These Guys’ and the trancey ‘On My Love’ - that are undoubtedly fun, but a little solitary and directionless. And there’s perhaps one-too-many saccharine ballads, but they do well to pace the good stuff. Primarily, ‘Venus’ proves Zara is at her best when embracing the vibrancy of her Scandipop origins - going full pop princess, dreamy and ethereal, no-holds-barred. The super-cutesy, glittery ‘Escape’; the haunting strings of ‘End of Time’; and the preppy punchiness of ‘You Love Who You Love’ (among others) fill a particular Scandipop niche that never sacrifices on campy, hyperbolic sugary-sweetness. Driven by Zara’s unwavering vocals and energetic delivery, ‘Venus’ is icy, crystallised and super fun - “fit for a goddess,” she says - and, aside from being a slight hodgepodge of genres, it’s a lush flex of skill. (Otis Robinson) LISTEN: ‘Venus’

Alkaline Trio

Blood, Hair And Eyeballs (Rise) It’s been a tumultuous few years for Alkaline Trio but with tenth album ‘Blood, Hair and Eyeballs’ they have promised a return to basics, back to their original sound that the emo-punk crowd fell in love with all those years ago. ‘Hot For Preacher’ kicks off brightly, with gang vocals and a driving riff running rampant in the opening moments.

Recorded at Dave Grohl’s Studio 606, the album does sound huge, even in its softer moments, and the singalong potential is apparent, especially here. But Alkaline Trio have always been consistent across their albums - you can safely assume what you’re going to get - and with ‘Blood, Hair and Eyeballs’, there’s something a bit too familiar. Whether it’s the late-‘00s hum of ‘Meet Me’ or the peak-emo drama of ‘Break’, large swathes of the record feel like well-trodden ground. There are however more promising spots, like ‘Versions Of You’ and ‘Scars’, which stand the best chance of muscling their way into a greatest hits set at some point. Clear highlights of the album, they possess the trademark punch, urgency and emotion that Alkaline Trio have always done so well. All told, ‘Blood, Hair and Eyeballs’ is a level, if somewhat uninteresting, addition to the Alkaline Trio lexicon. Fans will find pockets of the band they fell in love with, while less seasoned followers may be better served diving deeper into the back catalogue instead. (Jack Terry) LlSTEN: ‘Versions Of You’



Madi Diaz

Weird Faith (ANTI-) 

Future Islands

People Who Aren’t There Anymore (4AD) There are few bands with a sound so distinctive as to be so singularly recognisable, and fewer still that have maintained Future Islands’ knack for feeling as fresh as when they started. On this, their seventh album, the band offer up a selection of songs that sit neatly alongside anything they’ve previously released. There are differences, sure, such as the ‘80s twist on ‘Give Me The Ghost Back’ that lends a certain Billy Idol drama; or Michael Lowry’s tripping, almost Afrobeat drums on ‘Iris’. But on the whole, while the music is a little more inward, more reserved, it still carries all the hallmarks of the signature Future Islands sound. Samuel T Herring’s vocal delivery remains unique and unbridled, and is put to good use telling a more grounded narrative in ‘The Fight’, as the airy synths of Gerrit Welmers and slinky, punchy bass of William Cashion colour every song without overstepping for a moment. And while there may be signs of holding back, ‘People Who Aren’t There Anymore’ still carries more than its fair share of upbeat anthems.

This album isn’t much different, but why the band would ever change is a question that doesn’t need asking. (James Hickey) LISTEN: ‘The Fight’



Mary Timony

Untame The Tiger (Merge) It’s a shame that it took going through the hardest years of her life for Mary Timony to find the catalyst to make a first solo record in well over a decade, but there is consolation in the results, which demonstrate that a series of life crises clearly brought the creative best out of her. ‘Untame The Tiger’, the illustrious guitarist’s first full-length solo outing since 2007’s ‘The Shapes We Make’, came together over the course of an arduous two year period during which she tended to her ailing parents during the final months of their lives and saw a long-term relationship disintegrate around the same time.

The subsequent peering into the abyss appears to have awoken something in her, as ‘Untame The Tiger’ is scored through with real ambition and stylistic daring, right from epic opener ‘No Thirds’, which unfurls across a sprawling, moody sonic landscape. Mary’s influence on indie rock guitar playing over the past three decades has been as consistent as it has, often, been underappreciated and the key to her enduring appeal to new players is the way in which - on her solo records especially - she refuses to close off creative avenues. This is something thrillingly underlined on ‘Untame the Tiger’, which finds her deftly turning her hand to everything from garage rock and classic rock (both in the same song, ‘Summer’) to seventies folk rock (‘The Dream’, the title track) and woozy Americana (‘The Guest’). Having been better recognised as a key member of Wild Flag and Ex Hex in recent years, Mary Timony’s singular ability as a guitarist and songwriter had been forgotten somewhat; ‘Untame The Tiger’ serves as a stirring reminder of it. (Joe Goggins) LISTEN: ‘Summer’

Following on from her 2021 breakthrough album ‘History of a Feeling’, and a stint as both an opening act and a touring member of Harry Styles’ band during his mammoth Love on Tour, ‘Weird Faith’ sees Madi Diaz return with a set of wistful yet self-aware folk-rock numbers. Where her previous record detailed the breakdown of a long-term relationship and her return to her hometown of Nashville, ‘Weird Faith’ sees Diaz defiant, ready to let her guard down again, with the title essentially referring to her faith in love; her work here evokes the gut-wrenching melodies and storytelling prowess of American supergroup boygenius. Nashville native Kacey Musgraves lends her vocals to ‘Don’t Do Me Good’, a duet in every sense of the word, with its waltz-like pacing mimicking the push-and-pull of a partner you know you shouldn’t keep going back to. Kacey’s breathy accented vocals add a new dimension to the track, with the pair’s vocal harmonies suggesting a sense of sisterhood in the face of heartbreak. Closer ‘Obsessive Thoughts’ feels like the album’s true climax as drums pound and Madi’s fraught vocals and screams in the background feel truly cathartic, with her sense of self reaffirmed. (Sarah Taylor) LISTEN: ‘Obsessive Thoughts’



Nadine Shah

Filthy Underneath (EMI North) A lot has happened since Nadine Shah last put out an album – 2020’s ‘Kitchen Sink’ - both in terms of world affairs and Nadine’s own life. Nearly four years on, ‘Filthy Underneath’ is a different beast, but it’s fair to say that it’s at least as good.

This is an album inextricably linked to the context during which it was created: a suicide attempt; the end of her marriage; her role in caring for her mother, who was terminally ill with cancer. While grieving, she listened to Iranian pop icon Googoosh, Indian singer Asha Puthli, and, as she puts it “shitloads” of glam rock.

All of these influences come through to some degree, making for a delightfully unique record that’s impossible to pin down. ‘Sad Lads Anonymous’ is sort of Dry Cleaning sprechgesang meets Sam Fender imagery, Nadine offering dry commentary on everything from her home on the southern English coast – a fair distance from where she grew up in the North East – to her own identity, and aspects of her career and life as a musician. It’s followed by the intense, pounding ‘Greatest Dancer’, with its trippy synths. ‘See My Girl’ is more mellow, with her vocals taking centre stage. Nadine looks at the “Scandi beauty” she sees when she looks back at pictures of herself and her mother. “I see her dressed in her leopard print / And I hear her singing out of tune / I am holding a note for her,” she sings. It’s hauntingly beautiful. As is the album closer, ‘French Exit’, which sees Nadine addressing her suicide attempt. The frank manner in which she discusses it here sees her zoom in on the smallest details, painting a vivid, evocative – yet not overly plaintive – picture of the evening. Being aware of the context, it’s not the easiest listen, but it’s extremely rewarding. (Adam England) LISTEN: ‘Sad Lads Anonymous’

55

ALBUMS 

J Mascis

What Do We Do Now (Sub Pop)



Laura Jane Grace

Hole In My Head (Big Scary Monsters) Five songs into punk royalty Laura Jane Grace’s twelfth studio album (including as frontwoman to Against Me!), she recalls how long it has been since playing punk rock in basements. “We were loud, we were proud, we were freaking out,” she reminisces. It’s a poignant moment on a record that captures her scene’s raw magic while simultaneously brimming with nostalgia. At once, ‘Hole In My Head’ harks back to a punk heyday and celebrates its power today. The intimacy of those basements remains the album’s obvious lifeblood.

Collaborating with Matt Patton of Drive By Truckers, ‘Hole In My Head’ plays out like a jam session the listener is wholeheartedly invited to. There’s something inherently welcoming in the short, sharp, and lyrically open songs, as Laura looks both inwards and outwards at her identity, her chosen music, and her vices. Each track unfolds with an ease only reserved for somebody with so much skin in the game. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘I’m Not A Cop’

ABSOLUTE (BEHIND THE) SCENES! In the studio with Laura as she puts ‘Hole In My Head’ together.

Bass amp! Matt Patton brought his vintage B-15 along with him from Mississippi to track on the record and damn did it sound so sweet!

J Mascis is something of a spectre in his output: whether guesting on someone else’s record, forming a new band every other year, or the sporadic output of Dinosaur Jr, it’s impossible to guess what his next move will be. His new solo record is a case in point, being his fifth since 1996, and the first with a full band lineup. It’s a unique palette for him, with The B-52’s Ken Mauri providing piano for most of the tracks. Opening with the blazing, joyful ‘Can’t Believe We’re Here’, the album sets an early promise of nostalgic sweetness, which it unfortunately fails to sustain. There are some wonderful standouts on here, such as the Midwest emo-tinged ‘I Can’t Find You’, but for the most part the music falls victim to its formulaic nature. It feels as if the songs were written for the instrumentation, rather than the other way around, and each ending with an obligatory fuzzed-out guitar solo only serves to confirm that there’s not an awful lot of substance on offer. Fans will hear echoes of his best work, but for most this is a stale, uninspired outing for the legendary figure. (James Hickey) LISTEN: ‘Can’t Believe We’re Here’



Allie X

Girl With No Face (Twin Music) Like a thespian Transylvanian vampire in leathery gay bars, on third album ‘Girl With No Face’, Allie X careens through ghoulish ‘80s glam rock, weaving together sounds of the analogue, the synthetic and the theatrical: an energetic retrospection to digest all the mundane, vulgar, maddening and unsettling future contemporaneity she faces. At times she muses on the irony of the modern dystopia (“Big Brother’s always out of office”, she sings on opener ‘Weird World’) while at others she unravels her strengths and limitations as a woman. Nevertheless, the cacophony is always well paced, and across this no-skip tracklist of experimental pantomime pop, it’s impossible to pinpoint its best, but the campy strangeness of ‘Hardware Software’ and dentist drill screams of its glam rock title track come close.

Then, there’s feudal intensity across ‘Off With Her Tits’, frenetic aggression in ‘You Slept On Me’, underbelly balladry on ‘Saddest Smile’, a leathery, Germanic outro on ‘Staying Power’ and twinkling disco throughout ‘Truly Dreams’. This solitary endeavour - which she describes as sitting in front of a mirror and staring at herself - results in near-complete reinvention, all while retaining melodic guts and expanding the malleability of her misfit artistry. (Otis Robinson) LISTEN: ‘Hardware Software’



Meltheads

Decent Sex (Mayway)

Mirror fit check… I don’t even care how I look I’m looking at the guitar. Isn’t it pretty? I used my Yamaha LJ16 all over the album.

Me and Matt Patton.I owe a debt to Matt, he really complete the record in my mind.

We did not know each other, and he took a chance and drove up to St Louis and jumped right in to record and it could not have worked out better.

Where Meltheads’ debut excels is when the Belgian outfit live up to their name. Past single ‘Theodore’ is by far the standout, its bubbling angst (“I’m fucking selfish / I lie and I cheat / About five times a week”) delivered atop a heady combination of industrial percussion and Adam Ant angularity, while ‘Vegan Leather Boots’ conjures moshpits in the mind with its brash ferocity. Elsewhere, though, it’s a mixed bag: the swivel from Franz Ferdinand-aping guitar stabs to IDLES-style hammering chorus on the opening title track has seams still visible; the post-punk rattle that introduces ‘White Lies’ a little too obvious, and while ‘Gear’ proves itself an earworm, it’s also exceedingly similar to early SOFT PLAY release, ‘Sockets’.

Still, bar the tedious ‘Screwdrivers’, with its whiplash-inducing shift in style to lingering ‘70s soft rock, ‘Decent Sex’ is a perfectly decent album. (Alex Doyle) LISTEN: ‘Theodore’



Tapir!

The Pilgrim, Their God and the King of My Decrepit Mountain (Heavenly)

David Beeman! The engineer mastermind behind ‘Hole In My Head’! David owns a studio in St. Louis called Native Sound.

56 DIYMAG.COM

My 70’s twin reverb! I forget what the exact year is but I have used this amp on every single record I have made since Against Me’s second album, ‘As The Eternal Cowboy’. There is no twin reverb in existence that is louder.

Immersed in the cinematic, the mythological and the art of experimenting, Tapir!’s debut is an ode to the power music has to transport. Here they’ve created a captivating universe.

Enlisting a narrator to act as guide, they bed out the landscape of their world with finger-picked guitars, buoyant vocals and grounding strings. ‘On A Grassy Knoll (We’ll Bow Together)’ in particular is ethereal, as it leads into the twang-heavy ‘Swallow’. The reassuring ‘Eidolon’ is pieced together in calm, whisper-soft harmonies, and as it softens in its conclusion, ‘Mountain Song’ is a cleansing resolution to the outfit’s tale. In the cold of winter, Tapir! offer something to retreat into: ‘The Pilgrim, Their God and the King of My Decrepit Mountain’ is an escapist dream, and immersive story.

(Nieve McCarthy) LISTEN: ‘On A Grassy Knoll (We’ll Bow Together)’

EPS, ETC.



Holly Macve

Time Is Forever (Memory / Believe)

Coming Up

While ‘Beauty Queen’ does, admittedly veer closer to her sound than any previous releases, it’s easy to hear from mere seconds of this EP why Holly Macve has found a new friend in Lana Del Rey. They share a similar brand of nostalgic wistfulness, taking well-worn styles from pop decades past and twisting them around narratives no longer unspoken. In Holly’s case, the lush-sounding opener plunges right into its thematic darkness: “I was just eighteen / Days ago I was a child / It was his birthday / 45 years round the sun”. Lana herself pops up on ‘Suburban House’, a sort of flip-side to her own American dreaming, the pair’s voices intertwining hypnotically. It’s the solo ‘1995’ that’s the standout here, though: a ballad in the traditional sense, a driving song in the literal, and with such lines as “Don’t know if it’s the weather or fluoxetine / But lately I’ve been able to remember my dreams” perfectly avoiding becoming pastiche along the way.

(Jessie Brown) LISTEN: ‘1995’



Shygirl

Club Shy (Because)

Q&A With her star on the rise, Holly talks about how she met Lana, the suburban house that inspired it all, and living in between wall-to-wall Elvis memorabilia.

Interview: James Hickey.

What was the inspiration for ‘Time is Forever’?

I wrote it while living temporarily in this old house in West London after a breakup. It hadn’t changed since the ‘50s and it was really old school, no heating or anything. It was a bit like a time capsule. There was this old piano there that had this magical thing about it and that’s where I wrote most of the songs. It came so quickly, I wrote ‘Suburban House’ and ‘1995’ in maybe an hour each. The record is about moving on from a relationship: the ups and downs, and then ultimately the end of it and coming to terms with that, but also coming out of a period of your life. It’s sad, but hopeful at the same time, because you’re realising who you are and what you want in your life and in love.

How did you come to record ‘Suburban House’ with Lana Del Rey? I’ve been a fan for a long time. I was around 15 when ‘Video Games’ came out, and that was a pivotal moment for me and helped me find other artists that were inspirational at the time. I’m not sure how she found me, but she heard my first album and sent me a very sweet message about it. She was extremely supportive of me, and after COVID we met up in LA and she drove me round while we listened to demos and just kind of became friends, which is quite surreal. When I went through this breakup, she was very kind and put me up in LA for a while, and I’d just written ‘Suburban House’ and played it for her. She said she wanted to sing on it, so we went to the studio the week after and just did it. It was quite spontaneous, really.

Aside from ‘Time is Forever’ you recently released a cover of Elvis Presley’s ‘Blue Moon’ with Laura-Mary Carter from Blood Red Shoes. What brought you two together to do that?

We actually live together! We’ve been friends before we were housemates and she’s one of my closest friends. I don’t know if peaceful is the word, but it’s a good household and we fit together really well. We really like each other’s music, and we’d been meaning to do an Elvis song for years, because we bonded over our love of Elvis – the memorabilia in this house is quite insane. We picked ‘Blue Moon’ because it’s one of my all time favourites that Elvis sings, and also we wanted to do one of his most classic iconic songs and that’s one we felt we could pull off. I love the atmosphere that song has, it was written back in the ‘20s and is a really timeless piece of music.

“We keep putting them boys on mute / Huh? What did you say? / I can’t hear you” sings Shygirl, staple nymphoandroid vocals and all, over ringtone sounds on ‘mute’. As ever, London’s experimental club dominatrix Blane Muise is confidently disinterested in anything but voluminous electronic music and sexual submission. Throughout ‘Club Shy’, the Shygirl branding - that is, intoxicating dance and hypersexuality - is blown up, exaggerated to hedonistic highs that slip far from the slow, watery alt-pop of debut ‘Nymph’, leaning instead into a longevity of global club appearances and an affinity for chromatic off-piste nightlife. Its six bitesized, adrenaline-infused tracks conjure sticky dancefloors, sweaty late nights and plentiful twangs of alternative electronica to stay interesting, while standouts ‘mute’ (with Lolo Zouaï), ’4eva’ (with Empress Of and Kingdom) and ‘thicc’ (with Cosha)’ amalgamate niche pop artists under Shygirl’s vibrant femme-fatale club lasers. And other cooks in the kitchen electronic pop artisans Boys Noize, SG Lewis, Karma Kid and Sega Bodega - help to fluff the unrelenting, rule-breaking electronica. ‘Club Shy’ is staple Shygirl, re-packaged, preremixed, pre-prepared for the club: a dose of thumping post-midnight trance, a playful extension of self with all the irreverence, at her creative high.

(Otis Robinson) LISTEN: ‘mute’

WAXAHATCHEE TIGERS BLOOD FYI tiger’s blood has nothing to do with tigers, or blood. It’s an American ice-based dessert.

Katie’s album taking its name is out 22nd March.

LYNKS - ABOMINATION Indie’s favourite masked singer (sorry, Ricky, Charlie, etc), Lynks’ debut album is finally set to hit shelves on 12th April.

PORIJ - TEETHING Will the Mancunian dancefloor fillers’ debut have bite? We’ll find out on 26th April.

DEAD PONY - IGNORE THIS Assuming its title is a dare and not a demand, the Scottish noiseniks’ debut will demand attention from 5th April.

57

Truly at the peak of their powers.

58 DIYMAG.COM

T

here presumably isn’t much left on Bring Me The Horizon’s bucket list. From their roots as befringed Sheffield noiseniks through to the festival-headlining, mainstream chartbothering behemoth that the group are today, their journey has been a staggering one.

Never does that ring truer than on this current UK arena run.

Bring Me The Horizon The O2, London. Photos: Emma Swann.

SET LIST DARKSIDE EMPIRE (LET THEM SING) MANTRA TEARDROPS AMEN! SHADOW MOSES OBEY DIE4U KINGSLAYER STRANGERS DIAMONDS AREN’T FOREVER PARASITE EVE ANTIVIST DROWN CAN YOU FEEL MY HEART DOOMED LOST THRONE

Kicking off the first night of two at London’s O2 Arena, this is a room the band have come to know quite well over the more recent half of their career, but - despite having played here on two tours previous to this NX_GN WRLD run - nothing can quite prepare for the enormity of their performance this evening.

Much like all brilliant arena shows, tonight’s comes with the kind of conceptual thread that is more expected of pop greats, but here, their sinister story arc adds a whole new dimension to what’s normally considered a rock show. Granted, there’s fire and pyro galore, but against the towering highdefinition backdrop - which switches from a gothic church to a fiery hellscape via snowdrenched ruins throughout - the story of the band’s AI companion EVE and her fellow troops (collectively undertaking the “greatest mission of all time: the salvation of mankind”) adds a frenetic energy to proceedings, and helps to tie together the fury of their early metalcore discography with the dizzying heights of their more recent hits.

What’s more, even against such a colossal backdrop, there are still moments that cut through the slickness of the show with the kind of irreverent chaos they first built their name on: midway through their rendition of ‘Obey’, Yungblud bounds on-stage only to be warned by Oli Sykes to avoid stepping near the pyro so he doesn’t “burn those lovely eyebrows.” They readily stop the set before ‘Die4u’ to ensure someone’s safe exit from the crowd after an injury; when Oli himself climbs down to the barrier during the goose-pimply ‘Drown’ he throws himself into the arms of fans with a genuine sense of abandon. Even their nod to their stillunreleased new album ‘Post Human: NeX GEn’ - complete with song snippets and crowd participation - works seamlessly, with Oli referencing “internal issues” (presumably connected to last month’s departure of Jordan Fish) to justify its delay with a wink.

An intense but fulfilling ride through their life as a band so far, it almost feels apt that the show’s encore opens with a video montage of their 20 year career; a reality that few - perhaps band included - thought possible when they first emerged as scrappy deathcore-loving teens in 2004. But, as confetti rains down on the crowd during their explosive final track ‘Throne’ and their show comes to a triumphant close, the impact they’ve made on modern rock music is impossible to ignore. Bring Me The Horizon are truly at the peak of their powers. (Sarah Jamieson)

59

ENGLISH TEACHER

ESNS

Various venues, Groningen. Photos: Emma Swann.

If you’re looking to sniff out new artists before they go fully above ground, there are a host of events across Europe and beyond designed with exactly that in mind. In the UK we’ve got The Great Escape, Liverpool Sound City et al; over in Texas, there’s SXSW. Leaping into action with Christmas barely in the rearview mirror, meanwhile, ESNS is the first stop on the trail: a four-day fiesta of buzz bands, stomping a path through the quaint streets of Groningen with the hope of making their mark while the year is still in its infancy.

Here are some of the best things we saw during the festival’s 2024 edition.

CLARISSA CONNELLY With a truly jaw-dropping vocal range that stretches from Nico-like sonorous baritone to the highest of falsetto via moments that are almost yodel-adjacent, Scotland-born, Denmark-based Clarissa Connelly is in possession of an instrument like no other. She uses it to full advantage, too. At points, the set is heady and heavy, bringing to mind the cerebral piano crashes of Radiohead; at others, Connelly’s CMAT

idiosyncratic melodies could be filed next to Aldous Harding or Cate Le Bon. It’s an amorphous canon that makes for a truly special moment against the backdrop of Stadsschouwburg’s theatrical stage.

CMAT Readers of DIY will know our pledge of allegiance to the church of CMAT by now. But nonetheless, there’s still something impressive about seeing Ireland’s most fabulous export winning over a crowd as initially arms-folded as this. Coming off the back of a sold-out UK tour, tonight’s gathering of the largely uninitiated is clearly a harder gig to work, but CMAT refuses to give in - rallying for whoops and cheers, and giving gags-a-plenty alongside a belting vocal performance. “I like cheese and stuff,” she nods of the region’s dairy predilection. “Speaking of cheese, here’s my music!” Campy it may certainly be, but there’s far too much meat on the bones of these songs for that.

MELIN MELYN So good we watched them twice, Cardiff psychpop oddballs Melin Melyn have all the ingredients to become Wales’ next great hopes. Decked in matching outfits and visors, the six-piece are a riot to watch; a gang whose infectious energy is impossible to deny. In frontman Gruff Glyn, meanwhile, they have a centrepin whose natural strange humour is a perfect vehicle for raucous songs about obscure Welsh riots (‘Rebecca’) and a wild romp called ‘I Paint Dogs’. At one point, he does a fish impression; another track is an eyewateringly high (yet genuinely impressive) rendition in falsetto. The spiritual successors to that other famous Welsh Gruff’s band Super Furry Animals, it’s impossible to leave their set without a massive grin.

PEARLY DROPS Sonically landing in the hypnotic yet forward-facing realms of Yaeji, Finnish hyperpop duo Pearly Drops spend their Thursday night set clouded in a literal and metaphorical smoke. Though theirs is a particularly modern sort of synthetic sound, there’s a softness to Sandra Tervonen’s vocal that pulls them away from the 100 gecs end of the

60 DIYMAG.COM

ELMIENE spectrum and into something that equally nods to hazy ‘10s bedroom pop.

ELMIENE Holding a late-night capacity Grand Theatre to pindrop levels of silence between impeccablyperformed songs is one mean feat by itself, but doing so while squeezing in a mini stand-up set makes Elmiene every bit a superstar in waiting.

He begins not by introducing himself, but by using the moment to rid himself of the day’s earworm, a cappella. Later, he apologises for a set switchup, comparing the apparently bolder number to a menthol-laced brick in the face (“It’s minty as well”).

But it’s his voice - soaring, booming, filled with emotion - that can’t help but take centre stage.

ENGLISH TEACHER It is difficult to overstate, heading into English Teacher’s just-announced debut album ‘This Could Be Texas’, just how far the band have come from the slightly post-punky indie kids that first graced our stages only a few years back. The tracks that fall into that camp are evolved and multifaceted (see: last year’s ‘The World’s Biggest Paving Slab’), but Lily Fontaine’s vocals have stepped to the fore to enable the Leeds band to stretch far beyond those confines and into huge, affective, anthemic territory.

Skyward new single ‘Albert Road’ is but one moment in a set of many that underlines the band’s equally limitless potential.

UNIVERSITY With an onstage mascot/ mate/ Bez figure who spends the whole set on his laptop, playing (we’re informed by some taller people at the front) video games, buzzy Hull types UNIVERSITY are an almost impossible proposition to pigeonhole. On one hand, their dense, mathy post-rock comes from the school (or uni…) of serious, head-down musicianship; on the other, clearly the trio have a self-awareness of the stereotypes such dispositions bring. Either way, they’re fans of big slabs of noise, delivered in uncompromising fashion. (Lisa Wright)

2024 SAT 20th APRIL THE GARAGE, LONDON SAT 4th MAY BAND ON THE WALL, MANCHESTER

WED 15th MAY LONDON O2 Academy2 Islington SUN 19th MAY BRISTOL The Louisiana THU 23rd MAY MANCHESTER YES Basement SAT 25th MAY BIRMINGHAM Rainbow An Academy Events & Greyline presentation by arrangement with Filter Music Group & Across The Road Music

An Academy Events & CLUB.THE.MAMMOTH. presentation by arrangement with ATC live

Sat 6th April London Islington Assembly Hall Wed 24th April Sheffield City Hall Ballroom

plus special guests

May 2024 Thu 02 ABERDEEN Tunnels Fri 03 GLASGOW Stereo Sat 04 NEWCASTLE Cluny Fri 10 LONDON Omeara Sat 11 BRISTOL Strange Brew Thu 16 SHEFFIELD Leadmill Fri 17 MANCHESTER Band On The Wall Sat 18 NOTTINGHAM Bodega Fri 24 NORTHAMPTON Black Prince A Crosstown Concerts, Academy Events & friends presentation by arrangement with ATC Live

SEPTEMBER 2024 15 DUBLIN 17 BRIGHTON 19 LONDON 20 BRISTOL 21 BIRMINGHAM 23 NOTTINGHAM 25 GLASGOW 26 MANCHESTER 27 LEEDS AN ACADEMY EVENTS PRESENTATION

BY ARRANGEMENT WITH WASSERMAN

EUROPE &

UK 2024 23.05 GLASGOW GARAGE 24.05 MANCHESTER CLUB ACADEMY 25.05 BIRMINGHAM O2 INSTITUTE2 26.05 BRIGHTON CONCORDE 2 29.05 SOUTHAMPTON ENGINE ROOMS 30.05 BRISTOL O2 ACADEMY sonsoftheeast.com An Academy Events & friends presentation by arrangement with Filter Music Group

JULY 2024 30 BRISTOL BEACON 31 FALMOUTH PRINCESS PAVILION (GARDEN) AUGUST 2024 02 MANCHESTER ALBERT HALL 03 GLASGOW DETAILS TBA 04 LEEDS PROJECT HOUSE 06 BOURNEMOUTH O2 ACADEMY 09 LONDON O2 FORUM KENTISH TOWN 10 LONDON O2 FORUM KENTISH TOWN 19 DUBLIN 3OLYMPIA THEATRE

61

A once-in-a-lifetime dream gig, designed and curated this month by... Brian from The Traitors!

VENUE: KING TUT’S WAH WAH HUT, GLASGOW

I’ve gone with King Tut’s in Glasgow, as it’s really quite iconic, but it’s so local for me. It was the first venue I went to when I first moved to Glasgow, and all these huge bands have played there. I saw De Staat there, and I was so close to the lead singer [while taking photos] and then a week later, I saw them playing to thousands of people; that was a highlight.

It’s so cosy in King Tut’s as well, and I love intimate gigs. I hate when you go and see bands, but when they get bigger, the vibe gets worse.

That’s why [King Tut’s] is perfect; I’ve never had a bad gig there.

SUPPORT ACTS: ELTON JOHN FROM THE ‘70S, SOFT PLAY, FIDLAR AND MARC REBILLET

I’m going for Marc Rebillet for opener because he’s quite crowd-orientated, and he creates music on the spot, so he can start off slow and get a bit more chaotic, and get the crowd going. I’m dying to see him as I’ve watched him since he was a small YouTube person - one day I’ll get to see him! Now, I’m gonna go with FIDLAR. I don’t really listen to them anymore but I’m putting them in there for nostalgia, [thinking back] to when I listened to their first albums. That’s when I got my FIDLAR tattoo. I remember I had an instant connection with them and it was my first tattoo - it was quite big! We went to their gig at the Cathouse in Glasgow and me and my friends went on this sort of Hangover-esque night out, and we got to meet them and the show was just incredible.

SOFT PLAY would be next - I absolutely adore them. I’ve seen them about four times, and the first time, I saw them at King Tut’s and it was probably one of the greatest gigs I’ve ever been to. They’ve got a special place in my heart, for sure. Then, we’re having a shower break. King Tut’s have installed showers, and it’s gonna be really sweaty after SOFT PLAY, so we’re all able to get ready again, and then the next person to come on is Elton John, but from the 1970s. If we’re having a boogie, you don’t want to be all sweaty, and I don’t think Elton’s ever been in a mosh pit in his life.

HEADLINER: HARRY STYLES

It’s Harry Styles headlining. He was always gonna be my headliner. I went to see him last year at Murrayfield in Edinburgh, and we were right at the front - me and tens of thousands of girls! It’s tapping into the feel-good thing; music-wise, what I dance about the house to, or what I put on to make me feel happy, or what I put on in the car to sing along to, it would be Elton or Harry Styles. I think feather boas and cowboy hats get handed out, once we’ve showered and they’ll get thrown about.

62 DIYMAG.COM

WHO ARE YOU GOING WITH?

This is such an eclectic list of names: Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Walsh, Alan Carr, and then Robbie Williams. I just think they’re all up for a party. Bradley would be a good laugh! None of my friends. I was with my friends last night at the pub, and one of them kept going up to everyone, saying, ‘Have you seen The Traitors?’

It was so embarrassing! They were giving me the ick! So they’re not coming to this.

WHAT ARE YOU DRINKING?

I went down the route of thinking, ‘What do you drink at gigs at King Tut’s?’ And it’s gotta just be pints! But it might change when the vibe changes; maybe it’s pints and cocktails?

WHAT ARE YOUR PREGIG PLANS?

I’ve not really gone for any pre-gig plans because it’s an early start and you’re at the venue for the whole time. It’s an all-dayer, so the pre-gig plans are technically going to King Tut’s! Before the gig, the freestyle rapper Harry Mack will be there as entertainment downstairs, just doing freestyle raps about anyone that goes up to him. I think he’s a genius.

IS THERE AN AFTERPARTY?

So, we’re gonna get a private jet and we’re going to Vegas! The reason it’s Vegas is because I like when you’re on a night out, and then at the end, you’re like, ‘Oh no, what are we gonna do now?!’ and you end up at a casino, so we’re going to the ultimate casino! Then, Spiller will be doing a DJ set for us, and it’ll be such good vibes.

New episode every Tuesday on Spotify, Apple and all major podcast platforms.

63

64 DIYMAG.COM