Gigwise IN DEPTH: April'23

IN DEPTH / APRIL’23

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For all advertising enquiries including print and digital please contact: Dale Maplethorpe

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dale@gigwise.com

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MOMENTS OF APRIL

Bobby Geraghty, a 32-year-old singer, songwriter and producer has made an AI Oasis album that sounds … dare we say … better than anything the boys have made lately. The reason behind it all, “We just got bored waiting for Oasis to re-form… So we got an AI-modelled Liam to step in”.

CoAChell A reTurnS

Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is continuing its victory lap around the US. Keeping fans hooked onto grainy live streams, desperate to hear what surprise song might be played and what easter eggs they might spot, we’re still waiting on the UK dates announcement…

over in LA. First weekend highlights included a typically bonkers appearance from Bjork, a joy-filled live show from everyone’s favourite trio boygenius, and an interesting headline from Frank Ocean. Not only did the singer show up an hour late, but he ditched his whole set last minute, leading to a deeply disappointing and confusing live return fans had waited years for.

To the dismay of his fans, Matty Healy has retired from social media. Deactivating his instagram account, fondly titled The Problem Attack, we have to admit we’ll miss the memes. Talking about the decision, Matty has stepped back from socials simply to stop himself from being a “fucking asshole”. Fair enough.

TAylor DomInATIon

Bye Bye mATTy

If you hear the number 7.7 and read enough music publications, you know exactly what it means. One Twitter user called it ‘Pitchfork’s essential gay listening bat signal’, but largely it’s just a number giving merit to someone else’s piece of art. That’s what critics, like me, find ourselves doing- attempting to quantify the art itself, the intangible feelings you feel as a result and somehow represent it in an amount of stars, a percentage or a numerical figure. It’s like trying to translate colours into numbers or sounds into smells. It’s literally impossible to give an

Laduca’s talent show track blow up 10 weeks after its debut for no reason other than fans and queens just having a good time with it, and it bolstered its streams massively.

Beyond certain subsects, we seem to have left the comedy in music behind at some point within the 2010’s. The Lonely Island dominated YouTube, and long before starring in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Andy Samberg was rubbing shoulders with Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Robyn, Akon, T-Pain just to name a few.

Adults seem to feel some inherent shame in embracing campy tracks and fearing it showing in our end of year statistics as if we’re going to be berated by an online mob of those seeing the Instagram story graphic Spotify gives you. But kids are too young to feel embarrassed by their choices, and we’re all the better off for it. So are most artists too, with Haim dropping an absolute banger for the Croods as a caveperson three-piece band, and one of my favourite collaborations of all time, The Vaccines and Kylie Minogue, existing only via the Shaun the Sheep movie. It’s a ridiculous combination that can only have been brought together by some record execs with either too little a grasp on either artist or knowing all too much. It makes no sense and it’s not really that great of a song. Yet I can’t get

infamy, has her trademark nasal voice berating someone over a kinda generic but earworm of a backing track. The ‘Let Loose’ viral trend from the most recent season of Drag Race saw Loosey

There’s something to be said about embracing your inner child and deeply allowing ourselves to have fun. Whether it’s tracks tinged with nostalgia for us, as the consumer, or of it’s just producing something ridiculous from the side of artist and production. Maybe this is why we saw a resurgence of adults collecting Pokémon cards in the pandemic, and whilst Gen Z Tiktok creators led the Y2K aesthetic resurgence, it’s been embraced by the millennials who pioneered it the first way around. Maybe nostalgia doesn’t just come in the exact same form it once did (a 1st edition Charizard card or jelly shoe) but comes in an updated, possibly chicer version for the modern day (Lady Gaga performing with a gaggle of Muppets).

We neeD To leT The DeSIre for fun To WIn. We neeD To leT The SIlly gooSe In All of uS ouT.

We suppress our desire to have fun and be creative to fit in with a world moulded by Western capitalism, one which deems fun and art as less valuable to society and thus less valuable to the self. The lack of funding to the creative industries through COVID is a prime example of how the world sees those of us operating in these spheres. Disposable and deserving of a career path deemed by the necessity of those in charge. And then we, shaped by this narrative, become the arbiters of our own persecution.

Whether we sneer at someone’s enjoyment of

a supposedly trash television show, excusing the fact that it might be enjoyable to sit around with your friends and watch delusional real estate agents talk about how they love to drink water. All media suffers this problem, people trash on each other’s book choices, horror films are rarely given the same merit in award shows as films of other genres and many laud their podcast of choice above others. Again we’re trying to translate these intangible reactions into categories that don’t evolve near as much as they need to, and find themselves outdated at every turn.

We begin to imbue capitalism into our own daily function, we forget we don’t have to be ‘profiting’ from the consumption of media, and in this landscape the creators of said media aren’t making much themselves. As society downplays the value of the arts, we may begin to on a personal note. We ignore what is fun over what might be more valuable with our time, as there will never be enough hours in the day to listen to every album we like, to catch up on whatever TV show has social media by the throat (if you’re not watching Succession, you may as well switch your phone off every Monday). Whether we place this merit ourselves or follow paths written by others, we may begin to form our own joyless cage.

Maybe some art is needed to make our brain feel better, like how we need some TV shows that allow us to mindlessly scroll on our phone as we watch them. Maybe it’s purely pointless and that doesn’t fucking matter. Who cares, as long as we’re having a good time.

words by David Roskin

ShoTS ShoTS ShoTS

The BeST lIVe ShoTS of 2023 So fAr

Kyoto

Kyoto by Jess Keatley

Stone by Rosie Carne

Biig Piig by Yas Cowan

PArTy gATor PurgATory

James Acaster IN Conversation

Words: Dale Maplethorpe

James Acaster is a massive name throughout the UK thanks to his innovative stand-up routines on the likes of Repertoire and Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999, not to mention his appearances on panel shows such as Would I Lie To You and Mock The Week, plus his incredibly popular podcast with fellow comic Ed Gamble, Off Menu. It’s hard to find someone who hasn’t heard of James Acaster in some shape or form, but very few will know him as a musician.

The truth is that music has always been a massive part of James’s life, both in his growing up but also as an adult. He, like so many of us, owe a lot to the craft, both in the form of expression, development and comfort. His book, Perfect Sound Whatever, is an homage to albums released in 2016, as James describes 2017 as the worst year of his life and the likes of Lemonade, Blonde and Black Terry Cat as saving graces. He also talks about his own past as a musician, drumming in numerous bands and even making an unreleased album with his friend in a project called ‘The Wow! Scenario’. He describes this process in ‘Perfect Sound Whatever’ as one of the happiest moments of his life.

Now, however many years later, James is back making music with a new album Party Gator Purgatory set for release on May 19th. He speaks to me over zoom in what looks like a dimly lit recording studio, and the first thing I ask is how the process of making this album in lockdown compares to the happiest he has ever been with The Wow! Scenario.

“Yeah, same. You know, I wasn’t in the studio with everybody, obviously we were doing it remotely so there wasn’t that immersive part of it, but in terms of just completely throwing myself into something that is pure creativity and just feels boundaryless, you do feel completely free. I loved it. I was so

addicted to doing it. I really missed being able to create something and progress something whenever I felt like it, whenever the inspiration hit, and then having inspiration hit pretty regularly as well because of how into it you are. Yeah, I really did feel like this is something that has been absent from my life for a while.”

But why is now the right time to make an album?

“I guess the first thing was my parents saying I needed to take my drum kit out of their house. For years it’s been there in its drum case and they’ve always said ‘when are you gunna move this?’ At the start of 2020 they said, ‘this year you have to take it out at some point.’ I knew I had to do that and I remember thinking, because I lived in a small flat at the time, that all I was gunna do was just put it in storage somewhere else, and that seemed a bit sad, to just move it from my parents and put it in another room.

“So in between doing that I thought why don’t I unpack it for the first time in 12 years and record myself playing it. I’ll be really rusty, the drums will be really rusty, I won’t tune them and I can do something with that, or I can do nothing with it, but if I’m gunna pick this drum kit up from the house then I should at least try something.

“Then I had this production company ask me if I wanted to make any documentaries. It was Louis Theroux’s production company, I really wanted to work with them but I had no ideas. I thought since I’m picking up that drum kit maybe I’ll do a documentary about that, about me getting my old drum kit, but obviously that’s not enough so maybe I should make it like I’m starting to play the drums again or I’m trying to reconnect with that, then I thought it would be funny to do a mockumentary because I didn’t want to come across too serious and do a documentary about me and drums, so I thought just do a mockumentary about me sidestepping from comedy into music. I thought maybe it would be funny to do it where I’m taking myself seriously as a musician and amongst that I could actually make an album which is a bit of a joke album.”

“We made a taster for that and recorded me playing the drums for two days in the studio and then got Seb Rochford to play the drums over the top of that, the idea being that my character within the mocumentary had decided his drums sounded a little bit chunky so he got a professional drummer in to play over the top and make them sound better. At that point the first lockdown was announced, the mockumentary got canned and I had to decide what to do with these hours and hours of drums. I was bored in lockdown, I assumed other people were, there were many musicians I’d interviewed for my book and podcast so I emailed them asked them if they fancied knocking about with it and it just built from there.”

This album is a hard one to describe. It’s a collaborative project but not in a way that I’ve seen before. It’s less like there has been an idea and artists have moulded to fit it, rather, artists have provided something innovative and exciting, and the project has

moulded itself around that. Around 40 or so artists have contributed in total, each of which bringing different elements to the table, whether it’s sweet sounding vocals, spoken word, free jazz, rock, rap and so on. It’s messy in parts, sonically a trip, and yet remains cohesive and accessible throughout.

Jonathan Snipes of Clipping once said, “If someone doesn’t really listen to classical music and doesn’t have a sense of music history, if you play them Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, they might not be able to tell the difference, even though they’re like years and years apart… I love the idea that our contemporary music, which is so specifically genred and sub-divided, that in 300 years, you play somebody Philip Glass, Lil Wayne and Merzbow and they’re like, oh yeah that’s 20th Century music.” The album sounds like a steppingstone towards this kind of future.

“In 2023 genre is becoming less and less of a thing and that’s great,” said James, “musicians seem to be rewarded now for thinking outside the box, messing around and breaking the rules a bit. Definitely when I was making this with people I don’t think any of us felt bound by a particular set of rules because it was all of our side projects, nothing was hanging in the balance, we could really be free and do whatever we wanted. I don’t know where it fits in in the bigger picture or in music as a whole, but for all of us we were taking a step forward and not just staying in the same place.”

A personal highlight on this album are some of the lyricists. Rappers such as Quelle Chris and Open Mike Eagle make appearances, as well as Gaston Bandimic who has a flow unlike anything I’ve ever heard. “I first heard him on an album called ‘Sélébéyone’” said James, “it’s got a lot of jazz musicians on it, it’s very frenetic jazz music and he’s just

flowing over the top of it like it’s the easiest thing in the world. I knew anything that felt impossible I’d send his way and ask him to rap over it.”

The album sounds like not just an exploration of a love for music, but a reminder of that love as well. Gaston Bandimic is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to producing that which sounds impossible, as James himself confesses. “There were so many moments like that, that’s what was so nice about making something collaborative, where I’d get sent the stems back and I’d be like, not only do I have no idea how they’ve done that, I don’t know how they’ve come up with it, how they’ve thought of the idea to do it, then executed it, and that was lovely, to do a project where it’s not all come from

my head, I still don’t know where it’s all come from.”

I’m happy to go out on a limb and say that Party Gator Purgatory is one of the best albums I’ve heard this year. It highlights the things I love about music. There’s togetherness reflected in the fact that this is the result of 40 people coming together in a time where we had to remain apart. It embraces creativity and innovation in a way which is freeing and messy, and it highlights the massive array of talent and ingenuity from all over the world. Enter it with an open mind as so many genres clashing isn’t going to be palatable for everyone at first, but realistically, if you break down a clashing of genres, this album is just a celebration of an art form that we all owe so much to.

ellIe DIXon

Who is Ellie Dixon? Her Instagram bio states she creates ‘alt-bops for every weather’. Her Youtube? ‘I make music and dumb stuff.’ Facebook? ‘Music and bad jokes’ On speaking with her, a devilish sense of fun is present from the off. Confident in her work whilst maintaining a self-deprecating charm, Dixon is the epitome of the self-aware artist so prevalent in the modern age. 2020 saw the release of her break-out hit Space Out!, a parade of whimsical lyricism that explored her desire to escape the chaotic nature of the everyday. The following year’s Sucker told the story of a tragic romance in an equally comic way. Both songs, along with the vibrant Green Grass and the lively CEO of Watching Television came together to create her 2022 EP the deftly titled ‘Crikey It’s My Psyche’.

With the release of her barnstorming new single, ‘Big Lizard Energy,’ Dixon is as buoyant and energetic as her online persona suggests. A song brimming with confident jive and witty wordplay, Big Lizard Energy has cemented itself as a staple of Radio 1’s current pop playlist. After a year which saw her landing a record deal with legendary label Decca, a a multitude of headline shows and radio spots, Dixon considers this track, and many others still to come, as accurate summations of the cavalcade of mayhem her life has become.

What do we need to know about the younger Ellie Dixon to understand her today?

Younger Ellie was hyperactive up and down, doing a lot and very creative in all its forms. I always tap into younger Ellie when I am writing to keep that childlike fascination. I’m in love with this idea that you can just manifest things physically that just come from ideas. It is the closest thing we have to be in God’s, isn’t it?

Do you find that creating music is a form of therapy?

I see music as healing. The songs I write are

lessons I’ve learned or advice for myself or things that I want to pass on to other people as a form of care. It’s channelling stuff that needs to get out.

Take us back to 2020. You were a recent graduate, you’d received radio play, but then the world shut down, what came next?

I didn’t understand the music industry at all. My primary avenue was gigging and that all went. Then it was straight to the online world. I’ve always made videos. I grew up watching Dodie & Orla Gartland and I loved the marriage of visuals with content that isn’t just music. But I never had the time to commit to it because I was studying, I was busy, and there was always something in the way. Honest to God, I think during the first year of lockdown I worked every day. I didn’t take weekends off.

What was your relationship like with social media before & do you think it’s changed?

Looking back, I can’t believe how little I used social media. I used it for Instagram and YouTube a little bit and I’d post a video once every three months. The thought of that now is mind-blowing. I’m stressing out if I don’t post two a week. Through lockdown, it was my life. However, I have come out of that phase nowmainly for balance for health. It gave me time to give more attention to the other parts of my career that get to grow now that life is somewhat more normal.

How did you find keeping up with an everchanging social media landscape?

I was just being myself there. I felt the pressure of getting enough posts out there, getting enough likes, and getting enough comments. If you ask any content creator or any artist, the number one stress is watching statistics and watching numbers because they’re so without context, they’re so black and white and you are either doing well or you’re doing terrible. There’s no nuance, there are no backstories, there’s no who’s watching and why, you know, don’t see a family playing your video and dancing

around the living room. You just see one view. I felt the stress of making enough and doing enough. As it moves quicker, entertainment in general is getting fickle. It’s easy to be forgotten immediately.

What made signing with Decca the logical next step?

As an artist, you have a job of about 50 people minimum. I produce, mix and perform all of my songs myself. That alone is a day job. You contact radio pluggers & streaming playlists. Plus you’re trying to gig. You’re reaching out to venues, coordinating with venues, sorting out equipment, practicing for live shows, advancing shows, and sorting out the tech for them, it’s just madness. I put out an EP in 2021 and it then happened quite naturally. It was around this time that labels started reaching out. Of course, I was very cautious because you don’t sign with the first label that says hi, especially when I spent so much time building something. I know my business and I know can do it all myself. So we had lunch with Decca and they made it incredibly clear how passionate & serious they were about me and my music. It felt natural and felt like a home for my music at a point where I needed support from the right people.

As an independent artist did you have trouble finding a balance?

I was lucky that it was through lockdown because there weren’t any social occasions to miss. But it is still a huge part of my life finding a balance between friends and family and downtime is still something that I’m figuring out and trying to get the right balance of because it’s hard when you’re not doing a nine-to-five job and weekends aren’t off the table and everything. Things come in last minute and I might have a last-minute show when I am supposed to be seeing my family. It is a constant push and pull. I have been learning to put boundaries and just know that something will be sacrificed because of that because it inevitably will be.

What keeps you going musically?

There is a core part of me that just knows what

path it’s on. It doesn’t matter what happens. There is this path that I know is there and I’m following it. I had this when I left first left Uni to do music. It was such a risk and there was no reason that I was going to make it because I had no understanding of how it was going to work. I just really liked playing music. A big part of it is how much I love it. It’s not like I’m sort of being helped held captive by destiny. I love to make music and I think the magical feeling of when you are writing a song that you love and you are flowing and the music’s just sounding great.

What sticks out to you then as an early sign of a good song?

I get the tingles. There isn’t a recipe, there is a feeling to it, but often the next step feels obvious. When the song feels like it’s writing itself. When you’re just following this gut feeling of “ it needs to do this and then it needs to do this” I think you are tapping into something very human in you and chances are lots of other people are going to agree with you and relate to that.

If a song isn’t working do you stick with it or do you move on?

I have such a bad attention span, I drop things quite often, but I never delete things ever. I have loads of great and very cursed projects going on. And then if I’m stuck for new ideas, I’ll just listen back through. And sometimes things just aren’t at the right time or you aren’t in the right head space. I try not to get too distressed or judgmental when something’s not working. You just let it be. If you get stuck down a particular path, sometimes drop it, forget what it even sounds like, give it a couple of months and then suddenly you come back with a different song in your head.

How was your new single Big Lizard Energy written?

I wrote this on piano, which is quite unusual, but I think the lyrics came to me first. Normally I’d write a beat or backing. I had this concept in my head of trying to beat these fears that feel so much bigger than me and then deciding to make

myself bigger than the fears.

So it’s autobiographical?

This track was directly linked to how I was feeling at the time. I was a couple of months into signing and was feeling very overwhelmed because my life was so different. I was still in the same, still lived in the same flat, and woke up in the same bed every morning. But everything that I became super comfortable with, suddenly became bigger. I had a bigger team to communicate my ideas with and had to get to know people to trust with my music. It’s intimidating when regularity stops. I have a lot of anxiety, so the removal of routines feels like the floor’s been taken from under my feet and I couldn’t comprehend what was next because it was uncharted territory.

How do you find mental health is handled in the music industry?

The industry and the people within the industry have got a lot better. I get counselling as part of being an artist with Universal, which is just brilliant. And it’s a new thing that they’ve brought in because everyone’s sort of starting to realise quite how stressful it is.

And how are you doing?

I’ve come out of a formative period of learning and doing. That broadened my horizons. I’ve matured a lot in the last six months, so I’m positive for what’s to come and I can handle it even if it’s not super positive. I’ve learned a lot about how to look after myself, how to have boundaries and how to protect my space; making people aware of what I need. Before a show, everyone knows I need five minutes backstage with just me and the band to be still for a minute.

With another headline tour on the way, an abundance of new music, and enough surprises to shake a stick at, Dixon’s eagerness mirrors that of a fired-up locomotive chugging at top speed; destined for exciting & jaunty yet cunning musical pastures.

Words: Beth Mountford

SPONGE

Volume 2 - kIng gIzzArD AnD The lIzArD WIzArD @ Ally PAlly

By BeTh mounTforD

11:01am at work. Phone buzzes. Ethan. And henceforth I quote directly:

“Do you potentially wanna come see king gizzard ? My mates got a spare ticket , he’s giving away for free.”

7:15pm stepping off the train at Alexandra Palace station. I convened with friends by the bin at the top of the platform. And so began our ascent up the hill. The crowd conga’d from the train in swarms, swelling and winding through the street, moving ever upwards. Ally Pally sat high on the crest, the city a low lying moat surrounding it. I hadn’t expected such a grand marvel of architecture and found myself craning my neck like a child at a theme park. I wanted to know about the history of this building. I wanted a guided tour. Imagining King Gizzard on stage seemed wildly incongruent.

The very very cool Los Bitchos were already playing when we arrived, and it dawned on me

where I was. Sure I hadn’t expected Ally Pally to be such a beautiful spectacle of a venue, but I hadn’t expected any of this. I had gone to work like any other day and now I was looking live upon a band who’s KEXP performance had dictated most of my Youtube algorithm. It was so rash, so unadvised, so sudden. Our group became flustered and disorganised, scrambling for pints, always one of us missing. In impatience and awe we stood around the bar for so long that a cleaner encircled us - confining us to a small ring of sticky floor.

Ethan, who had so far been very patient and well behaved, now had a serious look on his face. He was also bouncing, from foot to foot. It was a look (and a stance) that said he was through with all of the pint-drinking pleasantries, and would wait for us no longer.

“I’ll meet you here after” he said and sprinted face-first, to the front of the dense crowd, heading as close as his bullish mindset would take him.

The marvel of the building wore off when we went to join the crowd. The pitch on which we all stood was vast and flat and unforgiving for those under six foot tall. It always surprises me at big

venues when the people on stage are just normal sized people. My subconscious logic presumes that their status of central importance to the event should grow them physically to fill the huge space provided for them.

Saying that, imagining the members of King Gizzard as giants became immediately terrifying as they began to play. Though they appeared to me as specks so tiny I could not decipher arm from guitar, they were big enough where it mattered - in sound. And from the comparatively tiny slice of the King Gizz discography with which I am familiar, we got a relatively heavy and unique set.

There was lots of beard-stroking going on around me, and also a surprising amount of men who might be described as ‘lads’. One guy behind me exclaimed “I’m so happy I’m stoned.”

Hypertension, Sadie Sorceress and Hot Water banged hard. There were moments of reprieve for boogying - I had my best boogie to Shanghai, tossing my drink in the air and catching it like a pancake in a pan. Movement in the crowd did pick up throughout the gig, the scale of vibrancy gradually rolling back as it does. Ethan later reported that the front-centre crowd were “fucking wild” - on par with Laneway 2020 (IYKYK - forever in our hearts), where we I had seen King Gizz for the first and only time ever before; a mosh which I thought I might die in.

Of course, of course, of course, I was in the bathroom when they began to play Work This Time. I didn’t bother with the crowd when I came out, I stayed at the back and leaned right back into that gorgeous solo, which felt very good. Everyone felt the sentimentality of this one. Everyone considered themselves lucky to have witnessed this live.

They ended with a Gizz song I had never heard before. I shazzammed it - which seemed like a weird thing to do at a gig - but which can surely be forgiven in the context of the prolific Gizzards. I didn’t care anyway because I HAD to know this song. Something about this one bit GOT me. It just felt so familiar and mmm, like, enthralling. It pissed me off because they kept tangentially diverging from this one bit - this one fucking bit - that GOT me.

And herein lies the essence of Gizz for me: they require a patience, and a lot of hours spent to appreciate everything they are. I do not have this patience. It’s like they agree to give me everything I could ever want in a minute and a half but then I’m obliged to hang around for a 16-minutelong face-melting, self-indulgent guitar wank before they’ll give me something else I like.

Anyway, the calibre of gig at the disposal of an unplanned evening is unrivalled in this city.

On Repeat: APRIL Selects

On repeat all month, as picked by the Gigwise team…

Drew Thomas - ‘Smoke’

If there’s one thing I’m always on the hunt for, it’s good new indie. Nottingham born Drew Thomas well and truly delivers on ‘Smoke’, reaching anthemic proportions with classic rock, Springsteen-esque vocals and vibes. It’s made to be played loud. - Lucy

Harbron

King Krule - ‘Seaforth’

Set in his signature dreamy soundscape, Seaforth feels like a more mature and measured version of King Krule, and features co-writing credits from his four year-old daughter. Beautifully melancholy, it suggests a new, more domestic chapter for the artist, swapping out the tales of drunken nights out for musings on domesticity and life. - Martha

Storey

Chappaqua Wrestling - ‘Opaque’

Singles like ‘Wayfinding’ and ‘Full Round Table’ from Chappaqua Wrestling’s debut album Plus Ultra have already seen an abundance of success, but deep cut ‘Opaque’ is a clear highlight of the record. Reminiscent of 90s Brit-pop, complete with vocals tinged with a Mancunian accent and a less-than-subtle Gallagher twang, the track relies heavily on its influences, but the results can’t be argued with. Who needs an Oasis reunion when you’ve got this? -

Gemma Cockrell

Jessie Ware - Begin Again

Jessie Ware’s new era has been an expertly executed masterclass in sultry pop hits. Again, she’s showing the range she’s famous for and this time bringing us an anthem that doesn’t push herself out of her comfort zone but shows us why no one else can do what she does. ‘Begin Again’ gets existential and sexy, what more can you ask for? - David

Roskin

Spider - ‘Growing Into It’

The final single from Irish-born, London-based rising alternative artist Spider ahead of her EP Hell or High Water, ‘Growing Into It’ is a blistering takedown of men’s use of women as social capital. The tracks frenetic, blazing energy builds upon Spider’s already rich discography and shows off the best alt has to offer. -

Cailean Coffey

The Japanese House - ‘Sad To Breathe’

Marrying 80s synth pop and wistful Americana melodies, the second single from the artist’s upcoming album lingers on the ache of heartbreak. Balanced with intricate production, singer Amber Bain not only reminisces on her losses, but most importantly strives for a better future through acceptance. -

Adèle Fennessy

Squid — ‘Undergrowth’

After their debut Bright Green Field, Squid got put on the map of current British post-punk with a style that leans towards krautrock and almost techno-style strict rhythms. Their second album O Monolith is out June 9th, and meanwhile Squid treat us to a glimpse of what to expect with ‘Undergrowth’ as a brilliant introduction. -

Aleksandr Smirnov

M A Y G I G G U I D E

BILLIE JOE ARMSTRONG