Pavement – Loud And Quiet 153 by LoudAndQuiet

Black Midi, Neneh Cherry, Lunch Money Life, Shovel Dance Collective, Σtella, Sampa the Great, Gwenno, Sniffany & the Nits, Yunè Pinku, Superorganism, Katie Alice Greer, Pigs × 7, David Keenan

issue 153

Pavement

You can never quarantine the past

Contents Contact info@loudandquiet.com advertise@loudandquiet.com Loud And Quiet Ltd 445 Hackney Road London E2 9DY Founding Editor: Stuart Stubbs Deputy Editor: Luke Cartledge Art Direction: B.A.M. Digital Director: Greg Cochrane Contributing writers Alex Francis, Alexander Smail, Andrew Anderson, Ben Lynch, Charlotte Marston, Colin Groundwater, Dafydd Jenkins, Daniel Dylan Wray, Dominic Haley, Esme Bennett, Fergal Kinney, Gemma Samways, Guia Cortassa, Isabel Crabtree, Ian Roebuck, Jack Doherty, Jasleen Dhindsa, Jemima Skala, Jenessa Williams, Jessica Wrigglesworth, Jo Higgs, Joe Goggins, Katie Beswick, Katie Cutforth, Liam Konemann, Max Pilley, Megan Wallace, Mike Vinti, Nadia Younes, Nick Tzara, Ollie Rankine, Oskar Jeff, Patrick Clarke, Robert Davidson, Reef Younis, Sam Walton, Shrey Kathuria, Skye Butchard, Sophia Powell, Susan Darlington, Tara Joshi, Tom Critten, Tristan Gatward, Tyler Damara Kelly, Woody Delaney, Zara Hedderman, Zhenzhen Yu Contributing photographers Andrew Mangum, Annie Forrest, Colin Medley, Dave Kasnic, David Cortes, Dan Kendall, Dustin Condren, Emily Malan, Gabriel Green, Gem Harris, Heather Mccutcheon, Jake Kenny, Jenna Foxton, Jody Evans, Jonangelo Molinari, Kyle Johnson, Levi Mandel, Matilda Hill-Jenkins, Nathanael Turner, Nathaniel Wood, Oliver Halstead, Phil Sharp, Sonny McCartney, Sophie Barloc, Timothy Cochrane, Tom Porter With special thanks to Aoife Kitt, Ben Ayres, Chloe Melick, Chris Cuff, Duncan Jordan, Frankie Davison, Jamie Woolgar, Judy Miller, Luke Twyman, Mick Jacobs, Nisa Kelly, Noam Klar, Will Burgess, Will Lawrence The views expressed in Loud And Quiet are those of the respective contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the magazine or its staff. All rights reserved 2022 Loud And Quiet Ltd.

ISSN 2049-9892 Printed by Gemini Print Distributed by Loud And Quiet Ltd. & Forte

Issue 153 In late 2019, on our Midnight Chats podcast, Stephen Malkmus told me that Pavement were getting back together because they didn’t know how much longer they’d all be in good enough shape to. The pandemic delayed their comeback and big return at Primavera Sound by an extra couple of years, but it gave us enough time to insist that we needed to speak with indie rock’s ultimate cult band. With Dominic Haley’s cover story pieced together in LA and Barcelona, Malkmus’ fears are laid to rest, as Pavement appear to be in the best shape of their lives. Stuart Stubbs

Anna B Savage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 08 Superorganism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Sniffany & The Nits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Yunè Pinku . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Lunch Money Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Σtella . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Sampa The Great . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Katie Alice Greer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Shovel Dance Collective . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Primavera Sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Pavement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Gwenno . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 David Keenan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Black Midi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Neneh Cherry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs . . . 78 03

The Beginning: Previously

Since the last edition of Loud And Quiet

Artists Vs TikTok Over the course of May, a story that quickly picked up pace concerned a number of artists – all of them female – speaking out about the pressures they’re under from their labels to create viral-ready content on TikTok, often at the expense of their music and even their personal lives. FKA Twigs, Florence Welch, Self Esteem and Halsey all posted about the issue, with the latter stating that her record company are currently not allowing her to release a track “unless they can fake a viral moment on TikTok”. Twigs posted: “Got told off today for not making enough effort [on TikTok]”. Florence

Welch: “The label are begging me for ‘low fi tik toks’ so here you go. pls send help.” Charli XCX also featured in the growing story but later said that her Oct 2021 post on the subject was her “just lying for fun”, while Self Esteem’s extensive Twitter thread flagged how, overwhelmingly, it appears to be female and non-binary artists under such pressure from their labels. Ironically, of course, these posts did go viral, but they’ve started a new debate about artist wellbeing in an age where musician are also expected to be their own marketing machines.

The Beginning: Previously L&Q × War Child

L&Q Weekly

As part of the Parallel series from t-shirt printing company Everpress, last month we ran a limited t-shirt campaign in aid of War Child. The ‘Loud And Quiet Starting Eleven’ tee was available for a three-week window and featured a football team lineup of some of our favourite artists at the moment, with Sleaford Mods between the sticks, Self Esteem up front and Theon Cross at left back. (Our false number 9 was Fontaines D.C., if you needed to know.) The campaign ended on June 14, but you can still support War Child via Everpress’s website. We might even do another Starting Eleven tee later in the year. everpress.com/warchild.org

On May 27, we launched a new newsletter called the Loud And Quiet Weekly, about 15 years late to the newsletter game. But we’re here now, and figured that it could be not only FUN but useful to our readers if we sifted through the week’s alternative music news, hot links and scurrilous gossip, and served it up straight to their inboxes every Friday morning. We’re even unveiling our Album of the Week on its day of release, sharing an article we didn’t write ourselves but wish we had and throwing in a typically bad Party Wolf joke. If that does sound not only fun but also useful, sign up to start receiving it from this Friday. bit. ly/LQWeekly

Charli XCX On June 17, Charli XCX performed a concert (a first as far as we can tell) in the metaverse. It was the headlining set, if you will, of a five-week virtual event hosted by Roblox, an online game platform that allows users to program and share their own games. Ahead of Charli’s show, users/fans made popstar avatars and completed tasks to progress them up the leaderboard. The highest scorers where then invited to join her on the virtual stage.

From the Basement Anyone who’s spent/wasted enough time watching bands on YouTube will be familiar with From the Basement, the live sessions series from producer Nigel Godrich, which has featured sets from Radiohead, The Fall, Thundercat, Laura Marling, Sonic Youth and many more. It vanished some ten years ago, but returned on June 1. The new series features a lineup that includes Nilufer Yanya, IDLES, Caribou, Sons of Kemet, Squid and more, and will reportedly run until October. fromthebasement.co.uk

Cosey Fanni Tutti On May 18, legendary experimental musician, performance artist and author Cosey Fanni Tutti announced the release a new book. Re-Sisters: The Lives and Recordings Of Delia Derbyshire, Margery Kempe & Cosey Fanni Tutti will be published August 18 by Faber & Faber, and will explore the connections between three boundary-pushing women – Tutti herself, electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire, and 15th century mystic Margery Kempe. It will be Tutti’s second book, following her excellent 2017 autobiography Art Sex Music.

Independent Label Market A staple of the independent music calendar, the Independent Label Market has announced that it will be returning to London on July 16. A wealth of excellent independent labels will congregate at Coal Drops Yard in Kings Cross laden with fresh vinyl and merch, including plenty of rarities and special editions. Among the attendees will be Because, Erased Tapes, 4AD, State51, Upset The Rhythm, Brownswood, Untitled (Recs) and many more, and we’ll be floating around to flog some L&Q gear as well. independentlabelmarket.com

illustration by kate prior

RIP Vangelis On May 19, film score legend Vangelis (Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou) died aged 79 in a hospital in France while undergoing treatment. He was true pioneer in electronic film music, most notable for his work on Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner.

Kate NV Experimental pop songwriter and producer Kate NV has shared a new collection of music to raise funds for Helping To Leave, an organisation that aids people seeking evacuation from areas of military conflict. Made in collaboration with Andrey Bressonov, NV describes Bouquet as “a small gesture, but by offering this music to help raise funds for Helping To Leave’s monumental efforts in aiding Ukrainian refugees, I hope that it brings more awareness around the devastations of this senseless and inhumane war.” It’s out now via RVNG Intl. igetrvng.com

Bob Dylan May ended with with Bob Dylan re-recording a one-off version of ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ in a new analogue format called Ionic Original, which has been developed by Dylan producer T Bone Burnett. It’ll be the first of its kind and is to be auctioned at Christie’s on July 7. Experts estimate it will reach somewhere in the region of £600,000 - £1,000,000. Having heard how Dylan sings these days, Loud And Quiet will not be bidding on the record.

A new MVP In May, the Music Venue Trust announced a bold new scheme that could have a major impact on independent culture in the UK. Music Venue Properties has been set up as a community benefit society and aims to buy several spaces across the country and bring them into community ownership. Music fans can invest in community shares, the money from which will go towards the freehold purchase of the properties and secure the venues’ long-term future. musicvenuetrust.com

The Beginning: You’re the Worst

Is Lil Wayne’s Rebirth the worst rap rock album of all time? Few phrases strike more fear into the hearts of music fans than ‘rap rock’. These two words have mothers clutching their crying babies to their chests; send adults cowering for cover under torn tarpaulins; cause the sensitive to rapidly repopulate their underpants. It’s the genre that gave us Linkin Park, Bloodhound Gang and Papa Roach. If you say the words “Fred Durst” while holding an open carton of milk it will immediately curdle (and did you know that each time you listen to a Head P.E. song a kitten dies?). Ah, but you say, not all rap rock groups are bad. Take Rage Against the Machine. Take Run DMC. Take the Red Hot Chili Peppers (oh, please god, take them!) But even quality acts like Run DMC and Rage Against the Machine cannot redress the musical karmic imbalance (RHCP are not a quality act). That would be like expecting two magnums of champagne to stop a fifty-foot-tall tyre fire. So little wonder then that ‘worst albums of all time’ lists feature frequent contributions by the rap rock fraternity. Limp Bizkit’s New Old Songs. Crazy Town’s The Gift of the Game. Numerous efforts by Papa Roach (because sometimes even passing a turd takes effort). Really, this entire series could be populated solely by rap rock albums – assuming I could find enough strong sedatives and that L&Q would stump up for frequent convalescent trips to an exotic sanatorium (I can’t, and they won’t). As a result, this will be the only time I cover a rap rock record in this column. With that in mind, I’ve chosen the supposed king of the bad rap rock albums. An album that Pitchfork called “terribly unsexy” and The Guardian “ghastly” (L&Q, you’ll be surprised to hear, didn’t deign to review it). I’m talking of course about Lil Wayne’s LP Rebirth, his first (and only) rock album. And, since I’ve managed to get halfway through this column without actually talking about it – mainly so I could avoid having to listen to it – we’d better get started. For those of you who don’t know, Lil Wayne was a hip hop prodigy, who had a number one album before he was twenty and sold a million records a week in the mid 2000s. That commercial success was accompanied by critical acclaim, with many calling him the best rapper of all time. Alas, a fall followed, and these days he’s best known as being friends with Donald Trump – and in fact, he would currently be serving a ten-year prison sentence for gun crimes if the flabby former chief hadn’t pardoned him. Rebirth comes somewhere in the middle of this dichotomous life story. Released in 2010, it was Wayne’s attempt to fuse his love of rock with his distinctive high-pitched, word-spitting style. And that’s fair enough. But what isn’t fair, at least for the listener, is the actual album itself. Oppressively plodding, it’s so slow that by equivalent it makes Pearl Jam seem like Megadeth on uppers. It lasts just under an hour, but feels like it might be twice that length.

And the torpidity of the tunes isn’t the only issue. Opener ‘American Star’ has more autotune than a T-Pain cover of Cher’s ‘Believe’, while ‘Paradice’ has a guitar tone that could be best described as Nickelback-meets-Dave Matthews. The one hit from the album, ‘Drop The World’, is the only song that doesn’t try to be rock, opting instead for synthy-hip hop stylings with a distorted drum beat. As a result, it’s the only good song here. The album does have some redeeming qualities, though – namely the lyrics. Yes, they sound silly written on the page, but Wayne’s words still have the quality of the best schoolyard insults. See “I’ma pick the world up and I’ma drop it on your fuckin’ head” from the aforementioned ‘Drop the World’ (I did warn you that they’re not as good written down). There’s little else worth writing about that wouldn’t be repeating myself, and so we must answer the question we always end with: is Rebirth the worst album of all time? No, it’s not. And now, thanks to his fascination with Trump-brand plastic fascism, it’s not even the worst thing he’s done in his life. In fact, it’s not even the worst rap rock album (probably it wouldn’t make the top ten of such a list, if I could bring myself to make one). Which means we must answer one additional question: if it’s not that bad, why is Rebirth so routinely listed as one of the worst albums of all time? It might have something to do with a regressive music industry expecting a Black rapper to ‘stay in his lane’, but it could also be due to the standards he set himself. Papa Roach never released anything that came close to Tha Carter series, so of course we judge them differently. But from Lil Wayne, we expect more… and Rebirth is definitely less.

words by andrew anderson. illustration by kate prior

FMD NEW RELEASES

HATIS NOIT ‘Aura‘

Erased Tapes LP / Ltd LP / CD There isn’t a more unique entry into a musical journey than that of Japanese voice artist Hatis Noit. This summer will see her return to the stage at the Grace Jones curated Meltdown and Womad.

FIELD LINES CARTOGRAPHER ‘Dreamtides’

Castles In Space 2LP “'Dreamtides' was conceived after a dream. One of those genuinely strange, vivid, weird dreams that you just can't shake-off after waking…” Shimmering and unsettling' - The Wire 'The sound of big, strange worlds' - Electronic Sound magazine

AKUSMI ‘Fleeting Futures’

OLDBOY ‘Bloody’

Tonal Union LP A hallucinatory, genre-defying blend of minimalism, cosmic jazz and Fourth World influences on the newly minted Tonal Union imprint.

CONTORTIONS ‘Buy’

Agitated LP The debut album from pre-grunge crunch merchants Oldboy. Mucho influence by the primer / premiere cuts of late 80s, early 90s Chicago / U.S. noise as once released by Touch and Go, Amphetamine Reptile and Sub Pop. Pummeled home with a British post-punk thWACK... its pop music, it’s just nasty pop music.

HARKIN ‘Honeymoon Suite’

Superior Viaduct Reissue LP James Chance’s Contortions firing on all cylinders. Their first full-length album, 1979’s Buy, is a marvel of hot-wired energy.

Hand Mirror Records LP / CD The songs on ‘Honeymoon Suite’ are a blend of love, grief, anxiety, resilience, danger, heartbreak and hope. Part pop record, part electronic soundscape, part interior still life. Solo project of multi instrumentalist Katie Harkin (Wild Beasts, Sleater-Kinney, Sky Larkin, Courtney Barnett).

New album

‘ The Stylist’

AGITATED RECORDS - CD/LP

OUT NOW IN ALL GOOD RECORD STORES! info@fortedistribution.co.uk

The Beginning: Losing My Edge

We asked Anna B Savage what her favourite song is, really

Sam Carter: Hello Anna. Let’s pretend you’re trying to impress me and I ask you what’s your favourite song. What would you typically say? Anna B Savage: It depends how annoying I was feeling. I’d actually probably say something that wasn’t deemed cool, to test you, and then see if you’re going to shit on my parade. Sam Carter: Clever! So what is your favourite song? ABS: ‘I Can’t Read You’ by Daniel Bedingfield. SC: You know what everyone’s asking right now, don’t you? ABS: No, what’s that? SC: I didn’t know Daniel Bedingfield had two songs. And why hasn’t Anna chosen ‘Gotta Get Thru This’? ABS: I love that song as well. It just doesn’t make me fizz inside. SC: When did you first discover this fizzy song? ABS: I must have just found it online when I was at uni. My housemate was a grime DJ and he’d always slip in ‘Gotta Get Thru This’, and it was epic, and everyone would go mad. I must have come home from that one night and thought, ‘I don’t know anything else by Daniel Bedingfield’, and downloaded the album. I heard this song and straight away it was going on every playlist ever. SC: I’ve listened to this song and it reminds me of the sort of music they played on The OC. ABS: Do you want to hear something really wanky that I was thinking about this song? SC: Yes please. ABS: Part of me was thinking that the reason I like it so

much is that there’s so much angst in it. It’s that moment of not being able to cross the precipice – that thing of needing to reach out to you, to explain this thing, but I can’t. And it makes me think of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot. That poem is all about that… I’m obsessed with J. Alfred Prufrock. My birthday when I was 21 was Prufrock and The Grinch themed, blended into one. And I was looking at the lyrics listening to this song, and I think there’s something in that angst that speaks to me. It’s present in the lyrics and the music, and it’s also super present in The OC. So that’s my wanky theory. SC: It’s a good wanky theory, but let’s go back to this themed party with The Grinch. What did that involve? ABS: I regularly say that my personality is based on Jim Carey in The Grinch, Jack Black and my sister… SC: Jack Black? ABS: Yeah. Tenacious D, putting your leg up and playing the guitar. Fucking love that. And I watched The Grinch every day when revising for my A Levels. And for my birthday, my sister, my brother and some of my friends rewrote the The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock mixed in with the poem that’s The Grinch… This is another thing I want to reiterate – none of these are cool things. SC: There’s a line in ‘I Can’t Read You’ where Bedingfield sings: “I like you so much, I’m acting stupid.” ABS: “… I can’t play the game, I’m all intense and alive.” ARGH! I LOVE IT! SC: What’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done for love? ABS: Err… Moved into my ex’s family home for three years? SC: Did it go well? ABS: No, no. Absolutely not. SC: That is quite stupid. ABS: Well, I was young. But when he sings that line, “I’m all intense and alive”, he does this growl! This song sounds like it’s from a fucking musical. It’s so extra. It’s so dramatic. And that’s why I love it so much. And, again, musical theatre, as we all know, is the coolest thing. SC: Have you ever performed this song at karaoke? ABS: I’ve only done karaoke once and I sang Shania Twain. Either ‘Man, I Feel Like A Woman’ or ‘That Don’t Impress Me Much’. I loved those songs when I was little. SC: How did it go down in the room? ABS: Exceptionally well. Whichever one it was, we hadn’t quite got the system worked out, so it came on three times in a row, so I just sang it three times in a row. And the person I was with there, who I had a crush on, ended up kissing me at the end of the night. Safe to say it was a big win. SC: Do you think it was the third time that did it? ABS: Oh yeah. ‘This is a feat of endurance and beauty, and I want everything to do with this person.’

photography by sophie barloc

OUT 10.06.22

OUT 17.06.22

Superorganism We’re all just trying to keep our shit together, by Alexander Smail. Photography by Jake Kenny

Superorganism were born in an explosion of colour. It started with a song: a bouncy millennium-era throwback called ‘Something for Your M.I.N.D.’. Its lo-fi production and deadpan vocals, courtesy of then-17-year-old lead singer Orono, thrust the electropop collective into the kind of stratospheric rise to fame usually reserved for big-budget pop acts. It was immediately picked up by major music publications, and not long after received spins from Frank Ocean, Elton John, and Ezra Koenig. Suddenly, this group of internet friends – some of whom had never met offline – were bona fide stars with an underground hit.

“I’m still in disbelief, it’s just surreal,” Orono reflects in a video call to discuss the group’s second album World Wide Pop. She recorded ‘Something for Your M.I.N.D.’ from her high school dorm room in stops-and-starts while her roommate used the bathroom. Now in her early 20s, she’s touring the world and singing on tracks with Stephen Malkmus and Gen Hoshino. World Wide Pop is bigger and louder than its predecessor, teeming with tongue-in-cheek bravado. But creating it was a more spun-out process than the first go-around. As early as summer 2019, the band stated in interviews that they were hoping to have their second record ready within months. Not long after, their plans came to a screeching halt along with the rest of the world. Guitarist and co-producer Harry says the unexpected delay of the pandemic gave them time to tinker: “You get into a situation when you’ve got no end date for making a record. If you put artists in a situation like that, we’ll just keep working on it and writing new songs.” Orono also spent the better part of three years working on a piece of art that would eventually become the album cover. It depicts a group of people raving in outer space while streams of colour erupt from Planet Earth. “There’s a whole other painting under it,” she teases, “but you gotta buy the record to see the full thing.” “The evolution of the art in a way matched the evolution of the record,” Harry continues. “It got more and more detailed as time progressed.” World Wide Pop started off as an album about Superorganism’s global tour, but grew to include the pandemic and them reckoning with their new-found fame. It’s a collection of snapshots from a tumultuous period in their lives. One of the biggest changes that occurred was a metamorphosis of the band’s line-up. Synth player Emily, background singer Ruby, and visual artist Robert Strange’s names were all notably absent in the album’s announcement. For the record, Orono and Harry were joined by Tucan, B and Soul, each member making a range of different sonic and creative contributions. “We’ve always had this vibe of being a band from lots of different countries where people will go off and do their own thing,” a zen Harry says. “The shape is, and always was, intended to be fluctuating.” Around the release of Superorganism, a hot topic in interviews was the small London ‘production house’ seven members of the band had recently moved into. This too was short-lived. “It was really fun living there together, but it was such a pressure cooker,” Harry confesses. “All of us are the kind of people

who, even though we work really well together, need to have our own space.” Luckily, they got out before Covid hit. “I think we probably would have all gone insane if we’d been in lockdown together in there,” he jokes. “We did kinda go insane,” says Orono. — Giving up has never felt better — Although they’re no longer all under one roof, World Wide Pop involved a lot more IRL collaboration than the band were used to. Jam sessions and potluck dinners were an integral part of the process. “When we did that first record, some of us were already good friends, but some of us didn’t know each other very well,” says Harry. “It was us getting together to see if we had any chemistry, whereas World Wide Pop is the sound of friends making music together.” The album is more immediate than Superorganism, with songs like ‘World Wide Pop’, ‘crushed.zip’, and especially lead single ‘Teenager’ falling into the black hole of hyperpop. The latter is a cacophony of high-speed drums, squelchy synths, and sound effects. Fans of the laid-back vibe of Superorganism were naturally taken aback by the muchness of it all. “We didn’t set out to make a maximalist record, it just kind of fell into place that way,” he admits sheepishly. If nothing else, the absurd video for the song showed not everything had changed. Its neon-drenched, collage-style aesthetic has been built into Superorganism’s DNA from the beginning. “It’s the kind of shit that we grew up with and that we see on YouTube,” Orono explains. “It’s also what’s practical and what we’re capable of doing”. Despite Strange’s exit from the band, the clip may be the most mental thing they’ve ever put out, featuring actor and TikTok star Brian Jordan Alvarez dancing through Rainbow Road and riding a unicorn across the galaxy. One look at World Wide Pop’s tracklist – with songs like ‘Black Hole Baby’, ‘Solar System’, and ‘Into The Sun’ – should tell you Superorganism are far more interested in what lies above Earth than on it. Almost every one of the album’s 13 songs features at least one reference to planets, or spacesuits, or satellites, or aliens.

“We didn’t conceptualise this record as a concept album,” Harry insists, “I think we’ve all just always been fascinated by the universe and our place in it.” After struggling for a few moments to articulate what he means, he uses a meme to help explain. “It’s like that GIF of Eric Wareheim with all the explosions and he’s having his mind blown. That sense of being humbled by the universe around us and the interconnectivity of all of life and Earth, it starts to make you feel like you’re part of something that’s really big. The songs are us trying to grasp something that’s too big to comprehend and then crush it down into chunks that are more personal.” Though fans of the abstract lyricism (or, as Orono puts it, “English class assignment vibes”) of the group’s debut will find plenty to latch onto, when writing World Wide Pop, Superorganism found themselves with a wealth of new experiences to draw from. “The starting point was from such a different place to the first album,” Harry reveals. “We’d gone through so many quite intense things. I think that inspires you to go into a more personal place.” For her part, Orono was listening to a lot of Kacey Musgraves, whose music inspired her to write “more from the heart”. The lyrics on World Wide Pop retain her too-cool-forschool attitude but with a touch more vulnerability. “Giving up has never felt better / I’m logging out forever,” she sings on ‘It’s Raining’. Though there are occasional nods to existential ennui and even the apocalypse, they’re submerged in a sea of quirky samples and synths. Ever since the release of ‘Something For Your M.I.N.D.’, it’s been hard to know just how seriously to take Superorganism. While they’ve outgrown the “hashtag random” lyricism of their debut – Orono’s words – their writing and production style is still unabashedly fantastical, to the point where you’d be forgiven for thinking it was put on. Surely no one can be that happy in 2022, on a planet imploding in on itself? “I like to feel good,” Harry counters. “I like to party. I like to dance. Maybe that’s escapism, but we’re not the kind of people that get intimidated by challenges or by the weight of the world to the point that we can’t push through it. I think that once you have pushed through things, you start to realise you can get through whatever as long as you have the right spirit.” Orono recalls a particular low point during the making of the album, when the others invited her over to their friend’s house to jam out what would eventually become ‘Oh Come On’. “I was so mega depressed that day,” she says matter-of-factly. “I locked myself in my room and binged RuPaul’s Drag Race. I was just eating Chipotle, crying, being miserable. But I ended up going, and you know what? I felt better.” She pauses. “I think we’re all on the edge of falling apart and having a breakdown. We’re all trying to keep our own shit together. I just try to be myself as much as I can, because if I’m not being myself, I think it drives me even more insane.”

Sniffany & The Nits Stick your nose into something troubling, by Ollie Rankine. Photography by Chiara Gambuto Josephine M.K. Edwards, better known as less-than-sanitised hardcore punk matron Sister Sniffany, is fed up of the sort of benign innocence often associated with feminine stereotypes. “[It’s about] all the worst, most humiliating and shameful things about being a girl and not being proud of it,” she says, talking me through the creative drive behind her band, Sniffany & The Nits. “I’m sort of against being proud of girliness. Don’t get me wrong, girls are awesome and I hate men. But I believe girls can be extremely evil in ways far more interesting than boys can be. There’s just loads more to talk about.” Huddled inside the band’s makeshift rehearsal space, it’s clear Sniffany and bandmates, who include members of Joanna

Gruesome, Ex-Vöid and The Tubs, have been friends for some time. “I had a zine ages ago called Sister Sniffany’s Chamber Pot. It was mostly just drawings and comics and stuff,” explains Sniffany. “I wanted to have a name like Tiffany, but somehow even snottier and more snobby. So Sniffany kind of works.” “It’s not an Amyl and the Sniffers reference,” says drummer Owen Williams, keen to be quite clear on that. Touted as ‘deranged’ and ‘genuinely troubling’, it’s a name that more than fits the bill. Sniffany And The Nits’ music is mostly fast, potent and deadly. “I think unfortunately, I’m too much of an overpowering force,” laughs Sniffany, gesturing towards her bandmates. “They’ve all been in other bands before me which were somewhat more collaborative. But I wanted to really stick my nose in the artistic direction of this one.” She’s not pulling any punches either. Written and recorded throughout lockdown, whilst the band were isolating in an abandoned south-east London care home, their incoming debut album The Unscratchable Itch sees Sniffany awaken a maniacal energy that she suggests lies dormant within the female psyche; an evil so pure that it makes toxic masculinity look like a frilly table-clothed tea party. “All my favourite films are about women doing evil things over and over again. All my lyrics tend to mix the sort of repulsion nobody ever associates with hyper-femininity. There’s nothing else I find as interesting.” These vignette-like outbursts come spoken through a revolving door of unhinged characters, each plucked from the murky depths of Sniffany’s imagination. A woman tails her husband to a Vaseline-smeared swingers party. An enraged grandmother’s glasses fog up as she brutally chastises her granddaughter. They’re all pretty grim, to say the least. “I’m a chicken dinner. I couldn’t look thinner,” chants Sniffany, reciting lyrics from the band’s new single, ‘Chicken Liver’ in childlike, sing-songy fashion. “It’s a song about wanting to be as close to something as possible, but also the sort of envy and jealousy that breeds hatred against other women.” For the rest of the band, their task has been to develop a no-holds-barred style of punk that’s deafening and twisted enough for Sniffany to unleash her demons. “We don’t tend to put too much pzazz into writing the music; it’s essentially about setting a spooky vibe and making space for Josie [Sniffany] to do her thing,” explains guitarist Matt Green. “I’ve never thought to ask what a song is about or try to decode what we’re doing.” The result is a perfect balance between music and dialogue, retaining the visceral noise but leaving enough space for Sniffany to scrawl upon.

WORLD WIDE POP THE NEW ALBUM 15TH JULY 2022

CD/LP/DIGITAL

Yunè Pinku Just fun energy from a DJ who can’t deal with raving, by Jasleen Dhindsa. Photography by Ryan Blackwell

South London born, raised and still based, Yunè Pinku is one of dance music’s most understated and nonconformist newcomers. Taking her stage name from ‘yunè’, a nickname she had as a child which translates from Japanese to English as ‘cloudy’, and ‘pinku’, a surname that nods to claymation icon Pingu, her approach to dance music is upbeat and unconventional, and an amalgamation of an array of cultural and sonic influences. As a teenager she had a self-proclaimed love for ’70s and ’80s guitar music le like the Bee Gees, The Kinks and Joni Mitchell, and, with her skater sister, aligned with punk and indie subcultures. The inception of Yunè Pinku can be traced back to the ‘weird soundscapes’ which the half-Malaysian, half-Irish producer would make in her bedroom from samples of post-war radio broadcasts, which over the last four years have become more sophisticated in their production and arrangements as she refined her skills as an artist. Her singing voice only started to become a feature of her tracks three years into this process. “I wouldn’t really listen to electronic music, but I found [that] working with electronic gear, it’s easier to create otherworldly things,” she says about what drew her to the genre in the first place. “Electronic sounds feel really familiar in a lot of ways.” Ever since she started making music, Yunè has been very much an artist placing herself beyond a specific genre within the scene. Her debut EP, Bluff, was released earlier this year, and is a thrilling, experimental and unorthodox mix of UK garage, postdubstep, house, and dance music genres beyond that. Last year she collaborated with Sydney-born, Berlin-based Logic1000 for the compelling, syrupy dancefloor smooth groove ‘What You Like’, and has a fan in UK club titan Joy Orbison, who invited her to contribute a guest mix to his recent BBC Radio 1 residency. As an artist who didn’t grow up around electronic music or adjacent scenes, Yunè never had a vision for what her journey into music would look like. She explains: “Because I’m still quite new to listening to a lot of electronic stuff, I’m still discovering the differences between all the different genres in electronic. In terms of me making it, it’s more [about] making stuff when you’re in it, you’re in the music properly, you’re in this world that’s created by the music. That’s how I listen to music, so I think it’s quite similar to how I make it.” She’s slowly racking up a fanbase within and beyond London club culture, playing sessions and performing her

first live show at Bermondsey Social Club (which she did by herself and describes as her proudest career moment so far), yet Yunè still doesn’t feel part of the scene around the genres she’s working with. “I’m probably one of the furthest people from it,” she laughs. “I really can’t deal with raving, I’m really quite bad at it. I prefer being the DJ than the attendee.” Though she may not feel part of the scene quite yet, her love for the genre and its limitless possibilities is palpable. “It’s a really unifying kind of music,” she says. “You can have people in their 50s and then someone who is 13 listening to the same song, and they could both dance to it. As a genre it’s a relief from more serious stuff a lot of the time. If you’re not particularly listening to the lyrics, it’s just fun energy.” She continues: “[Electronic music] is definitely a release and an escape for me. I think it’s nice to share your music with other people as well. Whenever one of my mates shows me a song they’ve been working on and they’re really proud of it, it’s nice to listen to it. It’s nice to lock yourself away for a bit [too] and just make something.” With no parameters in sight, what’s next on the horizon for Yunè? “I think I’d like to get going with doing a proper physical album,” she says. “[As well as] fine tuning the live [set], and fine tuning where everything already is.”

THE BEST NEW MUSIC

RON TRENT PRESENTS WARM: WHAT DO THE STARS SAY TO YOU?

TOTALLY ENORMOUS EXTINCT DINOSAURS WHEN THE LIGHTS GO

DEAF HAVANA THE PRESENT IS A FOREIGN LAND

SINEAD O’BRIEN TIME BEND AND BREAK THE BOWER

ZOLA JESUS ARKHON

Dance music legend releases highly collaborative, careertopping new LP ‘What Do The Stars Say To You?’. Special guests like Brazilian royalty Ivan Conti and Alex Malheriros fromAzymuth, violin maestro Jean Luc Ponty, ambient hero Gigi Masin, hype band Khruangbin and more performed, whilst NY cornerstone François K provided mastering duties. At various points Ron himself played drums, percussion, keys, synths, piano, guitar and electronics. An essential release for 2022.

Recorded predominantly in Orlando’s studio in Los Angeles, ‘When the Lights Go’ is his first album since 2012’s critically acclaimed ‘Trouble’. The new album marks a departure in sound, defined, of course, by the events of the last few years. Encompassing songwriting, ballads and a popcentered aesthetic, it’s full of depth, feeling, storytelling and woe presented in a compelling manner, as only he can.

Despite the impressive legacy Deaf Havana have built for themselves over the past decade, they’ve no interest in trading on past glories. Why would you, when the future is so exciting? The new album ‘The Present Is A Foreign Land’ could just be the best thing they’ve ever made. A record that isn’t afraid of what other people might think, or where it sits in the wider rock scene, the twelve tracks are confident, cathartic and celebratory. Dealing in the expected and the surprising, it’s the album they’ve always wanted to make.

Sinead O’Brien has always conjured powerful worlds: but none more powerful, or as immersive, than on her debut record. In the space that exists between her delivery – at once wry, silky, vicious, and self-assured – and the music – a dynamic, dancing call-andresponse – lies a productive tension, with O’Brien carving out a space as a musical oracle for an ever-shifting era.The 11-track album was produced by indie super-producer Dan Carey (Fontaines DC, Squid, Kae Temptest, Bat For Lashes, Hot Chip, Franz Ferdinand).

‘Arkhon’ is the visceral, welcome return of a voice that can cut through the fascia of reality, cleaving through habit into the raw nerve of experience. Zola Jesus reaches deep inside herself, beyond ego or control to unleash her most provocative and powerful music to date. Released on Sacred Bones Records on CD, black vinyl, and limited edition sand coloured vinyl.

KELLY LEE OWENS LP 8

TOSCA OSAM

MOMMA HOUSEHOLD NAME

MELTS MAELSTROM

THE FERNWEH TORSCHLUSSPANIK!

In the midst of the pandemic Kelly Lee Owens made the spontaneous decision to go to Oslo. There was no overarching plan, it was simply a change of scenery and a chance for some undisturbed studio time.

For Richard Dorfmeister and Rupert Huber, the idea of rebirth is a creative driving force – an artistic device which informs their work. As the avant-garde electronic group Tosca, the two artists have lived many musical lives, from their early electronic experiments with tape decks to blissed-out dub compositions.

Momma, the band led by Allegra Weingarten and Etta Friedman, release their anticipated new album on July 1st. ‘Household Name’ perfects a balance of heavy riffs, deep emotions, inviting sonic production, and a light-hearted, wry sense of humour, creating a singular lane for Momma in today’s world of alt rock.

The Fernweh’s second album ‘Torschlusspanik!’ (German for fear of being left outside the gates) addresses some of the conflict and turmoil both around the world and also internally and emotionally.

Their latest project, ‘OSAM’, takes this idea of renewal even further. A meditative journey through rhythm and texture, the album represents a new chapter for the Austrian duo.

Available on limited red vinyl and Includes the singles Rockstar, Speeding 72, and Medicine

Dublin five-piece MELTS release their debut album ‘Maelstrom’, produced by Daniel Fox of Gilla Band (FKA Girl Band). ‘Maelstrom’ is an album that gracefully yet potently merges psych rock with touches of post-rock-esque soundscapes, pulsing krautrock, all of which is driven by demented organ wig outs. Their debut occupies something of a middle ground between Spacemen 3 and Primary Colours-era The Horrors. Or, as the band say themselves, something that sounds “driving and fucking stomping.”

Late Night Tales

Smalltown Supersound

Arriving to snowglobe conditions and sub-zero temperatures, she began spending time in the studio with Lasse Marhaug, an esteemed avant-noise artist. The resulting album mixes tough, industrial sounds with ethereal Celtic mysticism, and music that ebbs and flows between tension and release.

Nice Age

Limited red marble vinyl in gatefold sleeve available at all good indie stores.

So Recordings

Lucky Number

!K7 Records

Chess Club

Mother Sky

Support your local independent retailer www.republicofmusic.com

Sacred Bones Records

Winterlude Records

Many of the songs tell stories or follow characters who represent or personify some of these themes. There is humour and there is sadness within these stories. It is an album that expresses both frustration and confusion but that very much affirms its belief in the rich and complicated experience of humanity.

The only rule is don’t stop, by Cal Cashin. Photography by Parri Thomas

Lunch Money Life Apocalypse music. That’s what they called it. When Lunch Money Life released their lurching debut album Immersion Chamber in 2020, they were all too happy to label their bastard inversion of jazz as music for armageddon. But things are a bit more nuanced now. “It feels crass now, in hindsight,” electronics maven Jack Martin would later tell me, about what Lunch Money Life used to brand their work. “I believe in it to the extent that the world is fucked up, and we make fucked up music – not the most fucked up – but we choose to reflect that in our… weird stuff ”. Indeed, on subsequent EPs, 2021’s Tarmac The Lake and May’s factory-fresh Under The Mercies, the band are far more expansive than before. Cataclysmic hellfire crescendos are mangled with staggering percussion, shredding guitars and synths that sound repurposed from places as disparate as Chicago drill, vaporwave and Throbbing Gristle’s Death Factory. Vocals come to the fore, as this genre-less colossus goes from strength to strength. Under The Mercies is their most accomplished work to date. ‘Jimmy J Sunset’ combines a glutenous math-rock riff with an illuminating THX synth, whilst ‘Royalty Laid Bare Before God’ sees Yellow Magic Orchestra’s electronic spirituals mashed by a real glam stomp, interspersed with frequent whole band freakouts. Like all of Lunch Money Life’s material, Under The Mercies took shape in Trinity Centre, a red brick community church around the corner from Dalston Junction. Originally, the band had used All Saints Haggerston, where member Spencer Martin was working as an organist, as their rehearsal space, before burglaries and rodents forced them to congregate in its sister church. I am in Dalston on the first nice day of the year. Spencer leads me down an alleyway, and in through the back door of Trinity Centre church. Every fibre of my being is resisting the urge to say: “So this is where the magic happens?” Lunch Money Life have just finished their soundcheck; tonight they will play a sold-out headline show in the church’s main hall, a cavernous space usually reserved for bake sales and fetes. I’m led to the nave, where the band are sat supping Budvar on a table next to the altar. Lunch Money Life are Spencer (electronics, vocals), his brother Jack (electronics), Luke Mills-Pettigrew (bass), Sean Keating (guitar) and Stewart Hughes (drums). An electric group of friends, they spend the duration of the interview enthu-

siastically regaling me with stories from their surprisingly long existence, each tale packed with in-jokes, quips and zingers. “Right at the start there were between ten and twelve players,” Spencer begins, reminiscing about the band’s scrappy beginnings, all of twelve years ago, when the group met on an Ethnomusicology course at SOAS. “It wasn’t really a band at that point, more like a ridiculous idea. People kept leaving, and with every person that left the music got a little bit better. We reached five people and found that to be the best.” “We need to sack more people to find out where the bell curve stops,” retorts his brother Jack. — The aux cable is a mess — Lunch Money Life first rose to infamy with their debut album, produced by Danalogue from future-jazz titans The Comet Is Coming. They’d been meandering about for the best part of a decade before, but the band view its recording and mixing as their great jump start. “We recorded it terribly,” Jack says. “But we took it to TLC and Danalogue, and they somehow made it sound amazing. It was like, ‘Oh, sick, we can make the band sound like this.’” The band credit the process of creating Immersion Chamber with shaping their chameleonic sound, although other breakthroughs have been frequent and inspiration has been dense. “When we wrote the Nicolas Cage track [‘Nicolas Cage Please Get In Touch’] last year, we thought it was ridiculous,”

says Jack. “It’s got this prog bit in it. We were like, ‘This isn’t the sound of the band.’ But it is though, we wrote it together. That is a tune we wrote, as a band. We realised we can do any sound, and it’s still going to be us.” The five-piece are adept at finding inspiration everywhere. We’ll get to their obsession with Nicolas Cage later, but watching films together is a big influence. “The stuff we’ve been recording recently,” Sean says, “a lot of it came from improvisation. One night where we got really high, stuck on the film Blade, turned the sound off and decided to just improvise a live score. Just played. It was intense.” “The only rule: we couldn’t stop, at any cost,” Luke murmurs. “Watching Blade just totally set us off.” “We’re working on the next release,” adds Jack. “There’s like five or six tracks on it, where their working title is Blade and then a number. ‘Blade 1’. ‘Blade 8-12’. ‘Blade 9’. Banger. All the best stuff.” What’s apparent, speaking to them, is that Lunch Money Life are intense in their passion for music. “It’s the best thing about being on tour together, driving everywhere,” says Luke. “The aux cable is a mess.” “Alright, one track, what’s everybody playing?” asks Spencer. “Sean, you’d put on a Def Leppard track. I’d put on some choral shit, ‘The Lamb’ by John Taverner.” “‘Glory of Love’, Peter Cetera,” says Stewart. “Luke would put on some gqom music.” “It’s pronounced gqom,” Luke replies, putting on a thick South African accent. “DJ Lag, very heavy stuff.” “The one namecheck I would make is 67,” adds Spencer. “We listen to ‘67’, by 67, before every show as loudly as Luke’s Bluetooth speaker will go.” — Cease and desist — The setting is certainly novel. We’re sitting between the priest’s pulpit and the main body of the church, Christian icons covering every wall. Loose guitars lean up a few feet away from an icon of St Philip with spookily long fingers. There’s a stage door to the left, that you’d think would lead to the priest’s quarters, but is in fact a DIY studio in which the band toy with their music. “Agnostic probably covers it for most of us,” Jack says when asked about whether the group has a particular religion. “We’re mostly drawn to it being a free rehearsal space,” admits Luke. In spite of this, though, religion does seem to creep into the music of Lunch Money Life. New tracks are called things like ‘Royalty Laid Bare by God’ and ‘Holy Water Streaming’, and the music certainly takes on the vastness of the church. For although the songs are written elsewhere, this is the space in which they are given flesh and form. “People think it must sound amazing, playing in a church,” Jack says. “But, mostly no. Apart from a couple of moments, it’s mostly just bzzzz – I can’t hear anything!” There are clear perks to the band’s psychogeographical state, though; the vast church spaces which shape their music give the songs the quality of sounding huge. Spencer and Jack

have a knack for finding synth lines that sound like faulty house hooks, and turning them into eternal echoes capable of filling any room. Another perk though, is the immense network of clergy that comes with being the premier church-dwelling electro-skronk band in the area. “We hired a priest to bless some merchandise we were releasing,” Jack recalls. “We invited him to come on stage at our Boiler Room show. Of course, we said don’t step on anything that looks important…” “A big nest of cables –” “ – He crunched it.” “As a not-supremely-successful band now, you have to do a lot of stuff on the internet,” Jack summarises: “You have to find it funny yourself, or draw some sort of fun out of it, otherwise it’s just, ‘Oh, make a post now’.” “On our way home from We Out Here,” Sean says, “we pied the Oliver Cromwell Museum.” One in the eye for all war criminals. Luke interrupts, stony-faced, before bursting out into laughter. “I mean, it hasn’t quite balanced out history, but y’know.” This sense of humour writhes through Lunch Money Life’s oeuvre. 2021 saw them release a tune called ‘Nicolas Cage Please Get In Touch’, which was followed by a cease and desist letter from Cage’s Hollywood lawyer Jimmy J Sunset, prompting the group to call their latest EP’s opener ‘Jimmy J Sunset’. “We dream of having a kinship with Nicolas Cage,” Spencer recalls. “We were standing outside smoking saying, ‘We need to write a tune called “Nicolas Cage Please Get In Touch”’, because it’s the only way he could possibly get in touch.” “Then we went inside and instantly wrote it,” he carries on: “And went, ‘Oh yeah, that’s “Nicolas Cage Please Get In Touch’’.” “We’d go away to write tunes,” Jack laughs. “Play Tekken, GTA, then watch a Nicolas Cage film.” Sean interjects: “Needless to say, we were really high.” “I have to give a shout to the label Wolf Tone,” Spencer adds. “We said we wanted to hire one of those advert vans, and then put ‘Nicolas Cage please get in touch’ on the side of it, and drive around Bristol [Cage owns a property in the area].” “They were just like, ‘Yep, make sure you film it.’ We just tried our hardest to get Nicolas Cage in touch, it was just that really.” One more question from me. “Nicolas’ lawyer got in touch over this obsession… for serious?” But like Cage’s Edward Malus in the very good 2006 Wicker Man remake, I have perhaps seen too much. “Well, Cal…” Spencer replies. “No comment,” says Sean – but his eyes betray him. “We can’t say,” quips Luke. “Otherwise the next interview will be from Pentonville Prison…” “Not the cease…” cries Jack. “... And desist.”

Silvana Estrada WED 13TH JULSOLD OUT THU 14TH JUL ST PANCRAS OLD CHURCH

MIKE

Surf Curse

JW Francis

TUE 21ST JUN SCALA

WED 22ND JUN HEAVEN

TUE 5TH JUL BRIXTON WINDMILL

DIIV

John Francis Flynn

Ty Segall FRI 24 JUNE

WED 3RD AUG KOKO

WED 17TH AUG LAFAYETTE

TUE 23RD AUG TROXY

Cola

Chad VanGaalen

Les Filles de Illighadad

Skullcrusher

WED 24TH AUG MOTH CLUB

MON 29TH AUG OSLO

SOLD OUT WED 31ST AUG EARLY SET ADDED MOTH CLUB

WED 31ST AUG OMEARA

The Magnetic Fields

The Weather Station

Lael Neale

Jana Horn

WED 31ST AUG EVENTIM APOLLO

TUE 6TH SEP UNION CHAPEL

WED 7TH SEPSOLD OUT ST PANCRAS OLD CHURCH

THU 8TH SEP ST PANCRAS OLD CHURCH

Wu-Lu

Hurray for the Riff Raff

Lola Kirke

Rose City Band

SOLD OUT FRI 9TH SEP LAFAYETTE

TUE 13TH SEP MOTH CLUB

TUE 13TH SEP STUDIO 9294

Homeshake

Sunset Rollercoaster

Jaga Jazzist

SAT 17TH SEP ELECTRIC BRIXTON

SUN 18TH SEPSOLD OUT TUE 27TH SEPSOLD OUT ELECTRIC BRIXTON

MON 19TH SEP ISLINGTON ASSEMBLY HALL

Charles Watson

Joep Beving

Destroyer

Angel Olsen

SAT 24TH SEP OSLO

FRI 7TH OCT UNION CHAPEL

FRI 14TH OCT EARTH HALL

TUE 18TH OCT O2 ACADEMY BRIXTON

Charlotte Dos Santos

Japanese Breakfast

Peaness

Sorry

TUE 25TH OCT ISLINGTON ASSEMBLY HALL

TUE 25TH OCTSOLD OUT O2 FORUM KENTISH TOWN

THU 27 TH OCT THE DOME

WED 2ND NOV ELECTRIC BRIXTON

Porridge Radio

Dustin O’Halloran

Aoife Nessa Frances

Anaïs Mitchell

THU 3RD NOV O2 SHEPHERD’S BUSH EMPIRE

FRI 4TH NOV QUEEN ELIZABETH HALL

TUE 8TH NOV MOTH CLUB

TUE 15TH NOV KOKO

Yard Act

Alice Boman

Aldous Harding

WED 7TH DEC THE LEXINGTON

FRI 28TH APR SAT 29TH APR BARBICAN HALL

THU 8TH SEP VILLAGE UNDERGROUND

Ólafur Arnalds FRI 16TH SEP SAT 17 TH SEP EVENTIM APOLLO

TUE 1ST DEC O2 FORUM KENTISH TOWN

A DAY OF MUSIC & RIDES BY THE SEA

DREAMLAND,MARGATE

MITSKI CLAIRO SOCCER MOMMY NILÜFER YANYA SORRY L’RAIN CMAT LÉA SEN HIGHSCHOOL SOCIAL SINGING CHOIR

DAY RETURN COACH TRAVEL AVAILABLE FROM LEISUREFESTIVALS.COM

Σtella Putting Athens on the indie map through sheer persistence, by Max Pilley. Photography by Dimitra Tzanou

Everything that Σtella has, she has earned the hard way. For years, she spent every spare moment firing out messages to faceless addresses on the other side of the world, striving for the breakthrough that common sense might have led her to believe was impossible. “I think I’ve emailed everyone in this world. Apart from God, I couldn’t find God’s email,” she says. “I would schedule them so I was sending them while I was sleeping. I really wanted to get outside of Greece.” Σtella, born Stella Chronopoulou, could not be prouder to be Greek, she hastens to add, but she recognised from day one that in order for her ambitions as a musician to be fulfilled, she was going to need to break free from the bubble that exists around not just Athens, but the great majority of non-Englishspeaking cities in the world. “My songs were in English,” she explains, “and I knew what that meant for Greece. You see the ceiling really fast here if you’re doing the kind of music I do.” She says these words now with the advantage of hindsight. The incessant, optimistic determination that kept her flickering dream alive for several years in the early 2010s, when progress was glacial at best, eventually bore spectacular fruit in late 2018 when her phone pinged with the email reply that she had been waiting for. Now, a beaming grin of triumphant satisfaction crosses her face as she discusses it: her fourth album Up and Away is set for release on the great Sub Pop Records, the first record by a Greek artist in the label’s history. Words like ‘dream’ and ‘insane’ fall from her mouth as she reflects on her teenage years when she would listen to Nirvana’s Sub Pop releases, but it is not hard to see why the American label saw fit to sign her up. There is an enchantingly vintage pop sparkle to Σtella’s music, epitomised by the new album’s superlative title track, its spritely, 1960s chanson airiness evoking the spirit of France Gall or Francoise Hardy, while the bouzouki-led backing arrangement lends the unmistakable flavour of Σtella’s home country. There was a time when even allowing this much Greek identity into her music made her baulk. “Coming from my country, I love the sound of the bouzouki,” she says. “But on previous albums, I was maybe recording guitars to make them sound like

bouzoukis. Coming from Greece, I would not dare, in a way, to record a bouzouki on one of my songs – I would find it too tacky.” Her conversion came after the producer Redinho (best known for his work with Riz Ahmed-led hip hop project Swet Shop Boys) approached her after one of her shows in Athens in 2017. He immediately saw beauty in the collision of the pop and folk elements in her music and by the end of the night they had resolved to make an album together, even if it took two more years for the two to find the time and space to make it become real. In the meantime, they honed the parameters of what the project would be, sharing musical recommendations back and forth, from obscure Iranian traditional singers to Khruangbin, via Christophe and Ata Kak. By the time they were in the studio together, the tracks came together remarkably quickly, so aligned were their musical star charts. They enlisted Christos Skondras to play bouzouki and Sofia Labropoulou on the kunun, a type of zither that one tunes while playing, and the formula was complete. “I used to tell [Redinho] that it’s really funny that someone British came here and made me record these instruments on my songs,” says Σtella. “In a way, he was making me more Greek. But I think it was something that I was craving for.” — Literally pushed onstage — It’s a craving that Σtella has felt all her life. Growing up in the suburbs of Athens in the 1980s between the mountains and the sea, her earliest memories are of being woken by the bells on the sheep and goats that would pass her window every morning. The split in the music she was brought up on mirrors the duality of her records now: one the one hand, there were the 1940s Greek pop singles that her grandfather would play on his burgundy gramophone (her favourite was Nikos Gounaris’ ‘Sousourada’, an impossibly classy song); on the other, it was the more modern and less Hellenic choices of her parents, which ranged from Ohio Players to Julio Iglesias. She was captivated. “My parents used to tell me that I didn’t ask for toys, I asked for instruments,” she remembers. “We would go by a little kiosk and I would be pointing at the little guitars that they had. I always loved music from when I was very young.” Her first attempts at creating her own music began when she was 16, but it remained a closely guarded secret. “I was very, very shy, extremely shy, I could not play in front of people, so that’s when I decided I should go to the Athens School of Fine Arts, because that was less exposure. You draw something, you put it on a wall, people stare at it, and you don’t have to do anything else.” While at art school, she started to play in bands, although when the inevitable prospect of live shows arrived, she would always find a way out. After her work editing magazines was curtailed by the financial crisis of 2008, however, she turned to songwriting as an alternative career plan, and by 2010, aged 30, she eventually relented and agreed to sing in front of an audience for the first time. “I was literally pushed on stage. I had so much stress about that show, I was counting for days, like I was going to be executed or something. I remember a half hour before the show, I couldn’t feel my body. And then, an amazing thing happened: I

remember stepping my foot onto the stage and everything went away. It was the weirdest feeling. It was like I was on fire and somebody poured a bucket of water on me. It was great.” Σtella’s career was finally up and running. After uploading her first songs to Soundcloud in 2012, she caught the attention of Inner Ear Records, one of Greece’s biggest independent labels, who released her first two albums, 2015’s self-titled debut and Works for You in 2017. The 80s synthpop inflections of those records quickly made her one of the stars of the Athens indie scene, but Σtella wanted more and her email outbox could prove it. When her near-constant hustling finally prompted a response from Sub Pop, it was initially hesitant, and she ended up with a one-album deal with Canadian label Arbutus Records (Grimes, Majical Cloudz) for The Break in 2020. By the time of that album’s wide acclaim, however, Sub Pop could not wait any longer. Up and Away celebrates Σtella’s love of the pop song (“A song is two and a half minutes, it’s insane how many things it has inside it”, she enthuses), whether it is the cool prowl of ‘Charmed’, the dusty soul of ‘The Truth Is’ or the manic, M.I.A.0-like energy of ‘Another Nation’, the song she describes as her calling card. Running throughout the album is a faltering love story, one that starts with the breezy hope of the title track, but ends with a track titled ‘Is It Over?’ “I was going through a really hard time at the time,” she says. “I was going through a breakup and a lot of things were happening. I was confused, but as I was writing the album, I was understanding what was happening to me. I was coming to a realisation, but it was too late.” Every song is sung in English, a language Σtella learned when a Canadian family friend named Jackie lived with them when she was young. She firmly believes that without it, such international success would have been inconceivable. “80% of the music that people in Greece listen to is in Greek. In Greece, you’ll fill a stadium with an artist who sings in Greek, but you won’t fill a stadium with a Greek artist singing in English. If you sing in English, you’re going to want an international label. And in the rest of the world, they only care about you if you sing in English.” — Find what you love and keep doing it — Every city has a bustling music scene of its own and Athens is no exception. A tight-knit, diverse cohort of musicians forms the core of the scene in venues like Romantso and Six Dogs, with current standout artists including the off-kilter, glitchy synthpop of Sillyboy’s Ghost Relatives, the Syd Barrett-tinged psych of Post Lovers, the rowdy folk traditionalism of Evritiki Zygia or the beautiful, stately, bedroom ambient compositions of Saber Rider. “All the musicians that I know work really hard,” says Σtella. “They’re really trying to make something better for themselves. Even if there are obstacles in their way, they don’t give up.” The primary obstacle, of course, is the short-sightedness of the music industry itself. Too often attention is focused on finding the new artist that can regurgitate what has already been shown to work, preferably based in one of the key US or UK metropolitan hubs, rather than seeking out new voices from

divergent backgrounds that might surprise an audience or break new ground. For young Greek musicians, there are too few templates to follow: Larry Gus has released a string of albums on DFA Records, Acid Baby Jesus have toured with Ty Segall and Mac DeMarco and Keep Shelly in Athens were considered a key part of the chillwave movement, but to this day if you ask most Western music fans to name a Greek musician, you will be met with either a blank expression or names from the past like Vangelis and Demis Roussos. “We’re not on the map, we’re just not. I’m not sure why – of course, it’s because of the economy and a lot of other things, and the centres are in London, Berlin, New York, L.A. and Paris – but at some point, what are you going to do? If you’re working all your life for something and nothing is happening, what are

“Some of the biggest talents in the world are playing for fifty people and it’s just our loss that we cannot see them”

you going to do? You will give up. It’s a problem. You can find talent anywhere, but no-one is searching for them.” Is there anything by way of support for artists at a government level in Greece? “ZERO!” snaps Σtella before the question is finished. “No, nothing at all. Nobody gives any money to the arts here. I have had to cancel tours in the past because there was nothing available.” Speaking to Σtella, it quickly becomes clear why her drive from the beginning was to establish herself internationally, and her current success is living testament to the fact that when initiative is matched with true creativity, the obstacles can still be obliterated, and a new clear path blazed in their place. She is too modest to agree, but it seems inevitable that her example will inspire others. That said, she is quick to point out that not everybody’s goals need to be the same. “It’s great if you play in front of a big audience, it’s a great feeling, but I think great talents that live in cities that we might not know, even if we’ll never get to see them and they’ll never get to play for us, if they keep doing what they’re doing, that is success. Some of the biggest talents in the world are playing for fifty people and it’s just our loss that we cannot see them.” She concludes:“For me, success is to have found what you love to do and to keep doing it.”

Going Eve mode, by Skye Butchard. Photography by Travys Owen

Sampa the Great

In the music video for ‘Lane’, the first taste of her new album, Sampa Tembo stands opposite the younger version of herself. This younger self, played by Keneiloe Moletsane, is precocious but unwieldy. At first, she pushes away the guidance and hugs from her older counterpart. By the end of the song, the two have found common ground and lie asleep, embracing each other. It was her favourite experience of making a music video ever. “Just visually seeing me interact with my young self, and going back to when I dreamt of doing stuff like this, seeing it coming into fruition,” she says. “We’d cut and all just look at each other. It felt pretty special.” In 2020, Sampa Tembo moved back home to Zambia during the forced downtime of the pandemic. She reassessed her career after a hectic few years of making a name for herself in Australia. This return home made her reflect on who she had been before leaving, and who she was now. “The younger Sampa was such a carefree girl,” she says. “I think when you’re met with your dreams, and the hurdles that come with your dreams, you put up a shell, because you don’t want the dream to die, or you may think you’re not strong enough to take on the challenge. I guess that simmered down some of the laughs the young Sampa would have had. She experienced life as it came. She is truly embracing where the older Sampa has taken things, but re-teaching the older Sampa how to achieve these things while including the fun and innocence that comes with creating art. That’s why the dream of being an artist was birthed.” Sampa has just finished a dance rehearsal for her stage show, An AfroFuture, at the Sydney Opera House when we call. Her conversation is energetic, passionate and thoughtful, but she still apologises for potentially sounding knackered. “I was very much reminded that I’m not in shape by these dances,” she jokes. This is the third time the AfroFuture shows have been rescheduled, and it’s finally come together. An ambitious mix of hip hop, dance and spoken word, the show has given Sampa the Great a chance to document her ambition on a new scale. Sampa sees herself as a storyteller first and foremost, and this new project has allowed her to incorporate her early love of poetry. It’s also a scary opportunity to share new music in a way she hasn’t before. “I love the vulnerability of poetry”, she tells me. “No flash, no music, no dancers, just you and the mic. I love how those moments are captured, and we all share the same emotions in that small space. Seeing people’s reactions live is always beautiful but always nerve-wracking, because it’s your art.” The show was inspired by another similarly ambitious project by Solange at the Opera House back in 2018. “At that time, I was living in Melbourne, and just remember a whole lot of people from Melbourne flying down, driving down, however they could get to the Opera House,” she says. “We all experienced that together. People of my community were hungry for something that’s different, something that relates to us to be done at a venue of that calibre.” Sampa shares this full-circle moment with her sister Mwanjé, who will also be performing. The two share a musical history, but Sampa can’t help but laugh at that history now being taken seriously.

“We started as kids. We were in the backyard performing to my grandmother. We are so used to performing together, so when people ask, it’s such a laugh because we know where this came from. It’s so natural to us. It’s an on and off stage situation. We send each other inspirations. It’s just now that it’s being done professionally, which in a way makes it sillier.” — Hybrid music — Sampa reflects on her childhood moments like this throughout our chat. She’s been in an introspective mode since her return home. “I realised that I’ve never been ‘Sampa the Great’ in my own country”, she says, with all the excitement and nerves that comes with it. “That was so wild to me, because that’s where the full inspiration comes from.” Like many artists, the pandemic created an unplanned shift in her life – a shift she now sees as well worth it. “It forced me to sit and stay put. I think after an album like [her 2019 debut] The Return, where it was really focused on returning to your roots and grounding yourself, it was the perfect manifestation to be at home and getting to do that. I got to rediscover a lot of dreams and hopes that I’d had as a kid that I don’t think would have happened had people not supported me from home and outside of home, and just knowing the privilege to have the resources and support that I have had in Australia, I try to pay it forward with artists at home.” With shows no longer an option, Sampa looked for other means of connecting with her audience. A series of recorded visual performances were the result. With her band back in Australia, her producer connected her with Zambian musicians she hadn’t met. “Now I’m there nervous because I haven’t seen them play,” she says, “and we play one virtual show together and they’re amazing. Had this not happened, I wouldn’t have met them, and we wouldn’t have seen how we perform together. I got to understand myself as Sampa the Great at home as a mentor to other people, because I still feel like I need my mentor. It filled the fears and the doubt of not truly being enough of an artist at home to step into my Zambianness. There are a lot of unfilled spaces in there just from not being here regularly, and this just brought it into a new beautiful direction.” While The Return was an act of translating her influences for a new audience, her upcoming project goes straight to the source. She tells of how her new bandmates instantly connected with her love of Zamrock, having experienced the same music with her as children. “This fusion that we call ‘hybrid music’ takes all our inspirations, even outside of Zambia, to bring forth music that we consider to be a new genre itself. It’s such a beautiful time and I don’t think that would have happened had I not relocated back home.” After working with her band for NPR’s Tiny Desk series, Sampa caught the attention of legendary songwriter Angelique Kidjo, even being shouted out in Kidjo’s recent Grammy acceptance speech. “Even now I’m just like ‘how did that happen?’

and those were the kinds of conversations he was having. ‘I’m not your typical hip hop artist, I love other things, I love rock.’ That was exactly me. Why should we only express ourselves in only one way?” — Full transparency —

That’s so wild. Mostly because she’s also a legend to my parents. Of all the things I’ve done, my mum has only been like ‘you got to work with Angélique Kidjo!?’ That’s the only thing that stands out to her. It’s beautiful to know that someone who inspired both our generations is someone I get to work with and pass the baton. She’s someone who opened doors for a woman like me – an African woman who’s kind of eccentric, and is interested in a lot of ways to express her art. That was Angélique for us.” As well as collaborating with Kidjo and her Zambian bandmates, Sampa has formed close bonds with contemporaries like Denzel Curry, who has also dealt with being boxed in as an artist. In this collaborative period of her career, emotion sits at the centre. “Whenever I step into the studio, whether it’s producer, artist, whatever, we start with ‘where are you in life? What’s going on with you? What are you feeling?’,” she explains. “That breaks it down into emotion, and what you’d like to talk about, what you’ve never expressed, and that seeps into the music.” She made ‘Lane’ with Denzel Curry after being inspired by those conversations. “[‘Lane’] is an acknowledgment that I recognise my talent as much as the next person. I may get overlooked or not seen, but that’s okay for me because I know how dope this music is. I don’t consider myself underrated. I know I’m dope,” she says. “I had met Denzel around the same time,

That self-confidence was something that Sampa wasn’t used to being so forthright about, but the ethos of showing her full range carries through onto the new project. “This new album means full transparency,” she explains. “Everything that’s within me, every element of myself is now going to be shown publicly.” While The Return was written based on the struggles of being away from Zambia and her adopted home of Botswana, she’s found that actually being there has changed her perspective once again. “There are stakes when it comes to representing people who aren’t normally heard,” she says. “As dope and emancipating as that is, it’s also a kind of music that requires a certain emotional and mental capacity to express. There’s a freedom and joy that comes from being able to express freely without having to defend [your position].” Though Sampa isn’t ready to share the name or concept of her new record quite yet, she can discuss one key character within it: Eve. Eve is a confident version of herself that we’ve heard before on ‘Final Form’. Eve is at the centre of what she is trying to achieve in this new era. “I’ve always tried to stay away from Eve from the standpoint of an alter ego or a persona. I’d summarise my ‘Eve Mode’ as being that version of myself that I think of in future tense. ‘Man, I can’t wait for me to be that confident. Man, I can’t wait for me to be free in how I walk, my sensuality…’ That future sense of self is the mode that you activate in your present. It means ‘the first of ’. This is the first time I’m going to show this side of myself.” As well as self-assuredness, the new album is coloured by uncertainty and openness. “I’ve benefitted so much from being a kid who had a diary around me,” she explains. “I had no option but to write what I truly felt. There was no use writing something that wasn’t true, or trying to compensate for something because you’re just writing for yourself. “That expanded itself into a music journal. There are definitely songs on the album where I’m like, ‘Why did I say this? This is too honest’. You’re going to see my vulnerability. You’re going to see weaknesses. That’s what makes for good music. The humanness is what people relate to. I’ve never had a struggle in expressing that humanness.” Within that vulnerability is a fear that the dreams of making music could have ended with the pandemic – something that now looks brighter. “I’m super glad that I’m still making music, and that people are connecting to it from all different places,” she says. “Yes, I am a Zambian, born in Zambia, raised in Botswana, but what a beautiful testament to music as a language that it has connected to people from everywhere.”

GUS ENGLEHORN DUNGEON MASTER “A fantastically weird record” - Under the Radar

PATRICK WATSON BETTER IN THE SHADE “A thing of rare beauty – intimate, evocative and absorbing. This is music to seep into your soul.” ★★★★ The Sun

JESSE MAC CORMACK SOLO ★★★ - Rolling Stone France ★★★ – Rolling Stone Germany

Katie Alice Greer It feels eerie to feel good, by Zhenzhen Yu. Photography by Emily Malan

In 2019, when Washington D.C. post-punk trio Priests announced they were going on an indefinite hiatus, frontwoman Katie Alice Greer found herself alternating between exhilaration and terror. “I loved what we did,” Greer tells me earnestly, Zooming in from her plant-filled Los Angeles apartment. “But it feels better right now, and feels more like where I need to be – exploring stuff on my own.” Amidst a late-2010s world of talkative British postpunk, Priests were a blisteringly, confrontationally American retort: across two full-lengths and three EPs, Greer drawled lines like “Barack Obama killed something in me / And I’m gonna get him for it” with a wryly dark anger, and viciously derided “The most interesting things about you / Was that you smoked Parliaments, the babiest cigarettes” at her ex, her rough-hewn voice wry and forceful over the band’s sun-dried sound. As all three members of the band went off to pursue their own solo ventures, Greer was left with an overwhelming feeling of being unmoored. Alone in L.A. at the beginning of the pandemic, stinging from the loss of the band she’d loved so fervently, Greer vacillated between extremes of freedom and claustrophobia: “It was either, ‘I’m finally alone,’ an exciting

feeling of possibility and space and silence and time to myself. Or, on other days, it was more, ‘Oh my god, I’m alone, like terrifying; it’s finally just me, facing myself.’” For an audience familiar with the acid-wash, gritted-teeth punk of Priests, Greer’s BARBARISM is not what they might immediately expect to hear. Its tongue is less barbed, its sound mutedly rich with fitful Mica Levi-esque landscapes. If you’ve listened to the lo-fi art-pop back catalogue on Greer’s Bandcamp, this might not have seemed the biggest jump, but she’s still cognizant about the degree of change: “I can totally respect people listening to this new stuff and being like, I don’t know if that’s for me; that’s completely fine.” But she still defends her decision to pursue a new direction: “Making the same record that would sound the same way with my old band, over and over again – that wouldn’t be for me, either.” Lead single ‘FITS/My Love Can’t Be’ features a selfdirected video by Greer: she plays both characters of the ranting reporter and disquieted co-worker trying to cut her off on the ‘Barbarism News Network’, the set’s pastel, retro aesthetic mirroring the record packaging’s Mulholland Drive-esque

imagery. In the song’s promotional material, Greer describes the experience of writing the song about a pandemic experience where, after weeks of isolation, she ventured out to Fairfax Avenue and was overwhelmed by the living cacophony: “Projectile shopping carts, strangers chanting, phalanxes of beige gun toters…” — I am entitled to something — Audibly a product of lockdown, BARBARISM is permeated by intense themes of isolation, reflected through a oneiric loneliness in its lyrics. It has the distinction of being the first record Greer recorded and wrote entirely in her apartment, and that claustrophobia threads through its tight, denuded sound. Across the record, Greer describes dreaming of communing with horses, dreaming of Jesus in the desert, dreaming about screaming for help while being glued to the floor. “It feels like I got hit by a freight train,” she confesses on ‘A Semi or a Freight Train’; “Got to lie down on the floor for two years or more.” Over the writing process of the record, Greer became enmeshed in Jungian dream analysis, deeply scrutinizing her own subconscious. “I don’t think you can take dreams literally,” she disclaims, “but I think a lot of times looking at the different symbols in my dreams or the feelings that I’m experiencing can give me a better, fuller sense of what I’m doing with my work, and where I’m at, and what I’m nervous about or apprehensive about that I’m not always conscious of.” When I ask her about the significance of the record’s ‘Talking In My Sleep’ intro in that context, she answers: “I liked the image because it’s a symbol of removing the ego from your work. We all have our ego, our outer face that we give to the world, our message of, ‘This is what I’m doing with my life; this is who I am; and I’ve got my shit together.’ But then there’s always the stuff bubbling under the surface that’s a little less finalized, but more true to what your full self wants. And a lot of this work, for me, was trying to get in touch with that, to strip away the conscious, awake person and hear what your dreams are saying.” Greer has always dwelled on perception: In 2019, she wrote about Taylor Swift’s Lover for NPR, penning a thoughtful essay that reflects on recognizing the push-and-pull relationship between artist and audience in Swift’s larger-than-life status: “As a songwriter, I am an introverted interior designer trying to install a curtain (a nice looking curtain, a compelling curtain) around the extroverted performer as she carries on (and on, and on, it sometimes feels like), telling everyone everything.” Three years later, BARBARISM’s ‘No Man’, the thematic crux of the record, further fleshes out Greer’s preoccupation with that complex mode of perception. On the track, Dorothea Lasky provides a guest reading of her ‘Pornography’, a bluntly evocative poem rife with powerfully lonely sexual imagery. Greer discovered the work of Lasky through the eccentric, nonprofit cultural website Creative Independent, where she first read the poem itself: “I just remember the first time I read that poem, I was floored because it was so explicit and funny and sad – it just felt like so many daggers cutting through a lot of stuff. I didn’t know why I felt so drawn to trying to incorporate that

song onto the record, but I just felt really emotionally compelled to do it.” When Greer sings on ‘No Man’, she examines her reason for being, looking for the answers in the legacy of America. “I know in my bones,” she intones, “I am entitled to something.” At the end of the track, Lasky, her voice uncanny-valley manipulated, intones: “I’ve only fucked seven guys in my whole life, but I’ve watched more porn than you ever will. I watch porn because I’ll never be in love, except with you, dear reader, but who’s to say this stanza is not porn?” Taking on a self-cannibalizing selfawareness, BARBARISM bares its desires and secrets to the surface, crushing externality and internality into one another. “I grew up in a family where, to some degree, I had to be aware of my appearance. My dad was a minister,” Greer explains. “There was always some sense of being perceived, in addition to my own perception of the world.” Greer is no longer in the confined headspace she was when writing BARBARISM. As she embarks on her first fully solo tour, still imbued with that exhilaration, she now looks back on the record’s conception with a time capsule-like quality. “I felt like I was pretty consumed with grief,” she says, “both about personal things going on in my life, and any time I was trying to stay in touch with the state of the world, there wasn’t really any good news, there was nothing to be optimistic about.” — At the crossroads — When I ask what the album’s title means to her, Greer immediately refers to a set of essays by Marxist philosopher Rosa Luxemburg, in which she discusses Friedrich Engels’ warnings in the 19th century that “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads: either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.” Luxemburg famously went on to use ‘socialism or barbarism’ as a pithy, declarative motto amidst the tumult of a World War One-era Germany teetering on the precipice of revolution. However, Greer doesn’t consider the record itself to be politically topical. “I think my life felt very emotionally barbaric to me a lot of times in the last couple of years. Maybe in some sense – on a personal level – it’s me trying to find that sense of individuation while still connecting with others, and finding that sense of socialness without getting lost in it.” But she speaks of the pressures surrounding the record with a certain measure of wistfulness – how, in isolation, she was fueled by the communally-helmed fury of those times. When she thinks, now, of that abrasive, anti-civil conception of ‘FITS/My Love Can’t Be’, she approaches it like a paradox, one that more closely nears the politics of community that Priests explored – DIY, grassroots, based on mutual aid and solidarity. “I was trying to be true to the spirit of what I felt in that moment; being around all these people who were so angry, and rightfully so. And we’re still able to come together and find some sense of not community, but communing,” Greer says. “That sense of just being together in that moment – it felt really good to me. And it felt eerie to feel good.”

Shovel Dance Collective Reclaiming the radicalism of traditional folk, by Patrick Clarke. Photography by Kathryn Wood

The Prospect Of Whitby pub on the banks of the Thames was once known as the Devil’s Tavern, such was its reputation as a meeting place for smugglers and cutthroats. A replica gallows and noose hangs by the window (overlooking a landscape once sketched by J. M. W. Turner), commemorating the custom of the legendarily ruthless ‘Hanging’ Judge Jeffries, in the 17th century; pirates he condemned would be executed nearby at Execution Dock. The pub has been burnt down and rebuilt more than once since its founding in 1520, but the original flagstone floor survives, feeling like a paper-thin barrier between present and past. Shovel Dance Collective’s cellist, guitarist and cittern player Daniel Evans has spent the hours before his bandmates’ arrival at the pub mudlarking. He places the handful of clay pipes he found washed up on the shore in the centre of the table as we speak – a particularly good haul.

It’s a fitting place to meet the nine-piece folk band, for whom the links between past and present are of utmost importance. They play traditional folk songs, but not as if they’re museum pieces. They take the emotion or politic at the core of a song and present it as still relevant. They do not base their arrangements on any previous recordings, and performances are dramatic and intense, more indebted to avant-garde drone or noise music than Fairport Convention or Pentangle. “It’s not attempting to replicate something,” says trombonist Tom Hardwick-Allan. “If you did that, you’d just end up with some half-baked revival thing.” As harpist Fidelma Hanrahan explains, the written words “are like our raw materials. In trad music there’s always been people trying to be weird, to entertain or surprise people with the little ornamentation you’ll use.” Some of Shovel Dance Collective had grown up with an interest in folk. A staunch Marxist, singer Mataio Austin Dean was immersed in the Guyanese stories and songs of his grandfather from a young age and later the role of folk songs in workers’ movements; Hanrahan grew up playing trad in her native Ireland, the rural village of her youth having had a particularly strong musical tradition; flautist Alex McKenzie had played in a church folk band growing up. Some came to it a bit later, like Hardwick-Allan, who played in brass bands in his adolescence before a communist friend showed him folk’s more radical possibilities, or violinist Oliver Hamilton, who was classically trained and encountered American folk traditions along the way. Others, however, had roots elsewhere. Jacken Elswyth was playing an experimental set at the outsider festival Supernormal when she first met members of the group; her interest in the banjo was primarily due to its capacity for droning. It was not until drummer Joshua Barfoot acquired a bodhrán and a hammered dulcimer as an adult that he started to explore how percussion could relate to folk, and Evans and organ player Nick Granata played in an indie band at college together. The diversity of their musical upbringings is one of their greatest strengths. “It’s really exciting when you’ve got people bringing their own rich and interesting musical past to the arrangements,” says Hamilton. “It’s not that I’m conscious of it, thinking ‘Well, that’s because of your drone background!’, but it’s certainly exciting.” It makes for ambitious and multifaceted instrumentation, and an inclination to experiment. “We have things on our cards that wouldn’t necessarily be the cards of Pentangle or something.” Even those who grew up on folk had long since branched out before Shovel Dance – Hanrahan was playing in indie bands;

McKenzie, Barfoot and Hardwick-Allan were all in the chaotic improvisational avant-rock band Gentle Stranger. All of them express variations on the phrase that it was Shovel Dance that ‘found them’, rather than any concerted effort at assembly. Beginning as casual jams between Evans, Barfoot and McKenzie, it evolved like an organic entity, growing over the course of casual improvisational gigs under placeholder names. Over time the collective picked up one member after another, until the band as it stands today was solidified in dramatic fashion – baptised by torrential rain that hit during a Christmas show in 2019 at the Lewisham Arthouse. The gig, their first as a nine-piece, was a few days after the general election that had seen Jeremy Corbyn – for whom many of them had canvassed – defeated in a landslide by Boris Johnson, and emotions were already running high. A smoke alarm had been set off by someone vaping in the bathroom, prompting an a capella set to the audience left waiting outside in the rain. Then, they were struck by a flash flood. With their harps and hammered dulcimers hauled above their heads, they led an exodus of fifty people through knee-high water back to McKenzie’s house to finish off the show. Coincidentally, their forthcoming release will be an EP of folk songs unified by themes of water – as if the flood has been following them ever since. It’s made up of medleys recorded in a series of different locations across London and beyond, from a ferry from London Bridge to the water that runs through tunnels under Elverson Road DLR station.

“A lot of folk songs are about going out to sea, going out to war,” Barfoot says. “And then there’s the Thames, an everpresent symbol.” “So many water songs are about ghosts,” adds Evans, citing ‘The Grey Cock’, about a dead person returning to visit their love who must traverse a Thames engulfed in flames. The EP, says Hardwick-Allan, is “about how to dwell with the dead in a way that doesn’t relegate them to history. It’s closer to the dead; the membrane feels much thinner. There’s a sense that you can travel right into it, and right back again.” For Shovel Dance, none of whom were raised in London but all of whom gravitated towards the capital in adulthood, the Thames is of particular importance. “It’s ancient and also always changing,” says Barfoot, which fits neatly with their view of folk music. Like an artery through the city, its water brings prosperity, labour, life and death. “We’re not just singing about the nice stream that goes round the back of your cottage. It’s a river that’s always worked. We’re singing about the big evil sea, people lamenting death and the hardships of work.” He gestures to the windows of the Prospect Of Whitby, toward the shells of former industry that surround us. “There’s a presence of working-class culture in the docklands that often just isn’t there anymore.” That Shovel Dance Collective look beyond the pastoral is of crucial importance. The ‘shovel’ in their name is designed to recall their music’s inherent ties to work, and ‘dance’ to the

“History is made up anyway by the ruling class. So why not make up history in response?”

release that workers found in music and celebration. The way folk music has always been tied to labour is the kind of thing often overlooked by lesser groups more concerned with conjuring a simple air of bucolic prettiness, and by embracing it Shovel Dance’s performances bristle with an extra depth. — Not linear, but circular — There has always been a transgressive potential when it comes to folk music, a platform for those so often written out of history to record their stories. For Dean, for example, “I’m really interested in the English folk song as a way of accessing black history in England.” His father’s side can be traced back through generations of Dorset farmers, whereas on his Guyanese mother’s side, when it comes to official records, “it’s slavery, then nothing. You might have the odd bit of record about people as property, but you don’t know what their names were, or where they were born. Oral history is really important because it’s compensating for the lack of any other kind of history. It’s an inherent response to grief.” The way in which the British Empire colonised the world, attempting to repress and subsume other cultures in order to impose its own identity, saw English folk song become diluted, Dean argues, whereas Celtic traditions were strengthened in the act of resisting those colonisers. Hanrahan says she “took it for granted” that there was so much trad music around her growing up in rural Ireland. “I kind of forgot that there would be a trad tradition here as well!” Reviving English songs as the songs of ordinary people, rather than of jingoism, Dean says, is therefore an act of decolonisation. “A way of taking apart this imperialist thing and thinking about what was there before,” he says. “And also looking at the forms of blackness and brownness in English folk song.” Sea shanties, for example, which are commonly held to have originated mainly from Black sailors in the 18th century, “are a form of Black music, but also the kind of thing that Cecil Sharp or Ewan MacColl would call ‘English’ music.” The same can be said of queer narratives. In folk music there has long been tradition of men singing from the perspective of women and vice versa, an inherent subversiveness that Shovel Dance are happy to pick up. In the songs’ words too, they seek signs of queerness. Whether or not the original authors were queer themselves is not that important, argues Granata, “because we know that there were queer people. The thing I like about folk song is that really, perhaps it’s more accurate to make it up.” When queer figures in folk songs are presented as figures of ridicule, the act of Shovel Dance – some of whom are LGBTQIA+ – singing those songs can be an act of reclamation. Picking and choosing, and filtering these ancient songs through your own lived experience, is what folk music essentially is, McKenzie

points out. “We’re reading it through our own lens. Authenticity is essentially impossible anyway.” As Dean surmises, “History is made up anyway by the ruling class. So why not make up history in response?” On first glance, there’s a paradox inherent in Shovel Dance’s work – taking the oldest and most traditional music, playing it authentically, but in doing so presenting music that is absolutely progressive and forward-thinking. Yet as Dean argues, “I just don’t think there’s a conflict between progressive and traditional. There are forms of class solidarity and lost liberties that are written into folk music, songs of the commons and songs of festivals that were part of a bigger culture of communality and solidarity that have been fractured by capitalism.” Experimental instrumentation is nothing new either. “When someone learns a song they become part of it,” says Elswyth. “They might make weird accidents when they learn that then become part of the song, things that are unmusical that become incorporated by the tradition.” Adds Hanrahan, “these songs and tunes are raw materials, there’s a lot of freedom within that. People are always trying to be weird, or entertain or surprise with the ornamentation they use.” Looking at folk tradition as a linear narrative – a song passed down a generation at a time – misses the point. “We’re trying to preserve folk music, but we’re also thinking about it laterally,” says Evans. “We’re going to the core of the songs, finding the essence of them, and then pushing that as far as it’ll go,” adds Hardwick-Allan. “It means that, somehow, we’re in communion directly with people stretching back a long time. That’s not linear; it’s circular.” It is a communion that, in keeping with the group’s political principals, is made open to all. There is no fixed hierarchy to the band. “It’s important that it’s always horizontal,” says Hamilton. Wherever possible, they remove the barriers between the songs and a listener – for whom inherent knowledge of folk tradition isn’t a given. Performing live, they’re theatrical and intense in a way that transcends the nature of the music they’re playing. They’ll provide a booklet for everyone in the crowd, featuring lyrics and contextual information that provides an air of inclusivity. “Everyone in the band is keen for it to be generous,” says Granata. They refer to the booklets as an ‘order of service’, which is fitting, Dean says. “Because it references this feeling of a congregation. We’re bringing in the audience to be a part of this conversation.”

cosmic

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t h e s o c i a l . c o m

THE THIRD ALBUM FROM

OUT 15TH JULY

Reviews

Albums

Viagra Boys — Cave World (year0001) Viagra Boys find themselves in a bind: on the one hand, they write songs that revel in the indulgences of yesteryear’s rock’n’roll cliché; on the other, they exist at a time when the romanticism of those supposed glory days has been overtaken by the clear-eyed reality check that such decadence was achieved at some moral and ethical expense. The Stockholm five-piece’s second album, 2021’s Welfare Jazz, dealt with the projections and connotations associated with the band’s choice of musical aesthetic with admirable directness. How to tackle issues of toxic masculinity and the unmanaged violence of the patriarchy while splashing around so gleefully in the waters of supercharged, lascivious, macho cock rock? Well, by talking about it. By exploring the themes, and gently untangling whatever confusions may arise for listeners that equate the two things. That album’s lyrical content tackled misogyny and personal responsibility head-on, while darkly pastiching the image of a feral, wildman rock persona, or, as frontman Sebastian Murphy put it at the time, “the art of being an asshole”. They became adept at holding up a black comedy mirror to themselves. The album expunged any lingering doubts about the group’s hidden intentions and with it behind them, the path is now clear on Cave World for Murphy and band to turn their artillery outwards. The same excoriating character work that Murphy previously applied to himself is this time around targeted at a very particular group in our society. They are personified in the track ‘Troglodyte’, which finds Murphy addressing the fact that without us realising it, our world has become overrun by a tribe of over-reac-

tive and under-considerate blowhards. “He says he don’t believe in science, he thinks that all the news is fake / And late at night he sits on his computer and writes about the things he hates,” sings a disdainful Murphy. His argument follows that if we were to trace these people’s lines of logic to their ultimate conclusion, they could only be made truly happy if society returned to its most elemental, basic form. And there, even then, goes Murphy’s dastardly punchline, the pre-hominids would spurn them too: “But if it was a million years ago and we were still living in caves / You would not be welcomed by the other apes, cuz you evolved a bit too late.” Murphy goes on to put some flesh on the bones of these troglodytes on the track ‘Creepy Crawlers’. Over a rumbling bassline that almost recalls the most paranoiac stretches of The Dark Side of the Moon, Murphy embodies one such meathead: “I can’t believe what I read last night...They’re putting microchips in the vaccines, little creepy crawlies with tiny little legs that creep around your body, collecting information,” he sings, with mock outrage. The ‘they’ in question, it transpires, are your lizard overlords and they are busy harvesting your children. Astoundingly original observations these may not be, but Viagra Boys’ full-blooded commitment to the absurdist satire is still an irresistible joy. If it seems like the familiar dirtbag misanthrope lead character of their previous albums has gone, though, tracks like ‘Punk Rock Loser’ are here to give you your hit, the song’s grinding, prowling spirit further sullied by Murphy’s surly, snarling delivery. ‘Baby Criminal’, which tells the story of the degeneration of a cute baby Jimmy into a tinfoilsuited, nuclear device-building adult Jimmy, bottles the energy that remains the band’s primary strength, driven as it is by the double prong of Tor Sjödén’s punchbag drumbeat and Oskar Carls’ chaotic, sprawling saxophone. Murphy’s vocals, meanwhile, sound more and more like what would have happened had Nick Cave come up through the Brixton Windmill scene, and one cannot help but

wonder whether the album’s title was intended to have a dual meaning. ‘Ain’t No Thief ’ is a genuinely laugh-out-loud funny tale in which our protagonist tells increasingly tall tales to get off the hook for the theft for which he is accused. There is a wild-armed abandon to the track’s structure, the band marching triumphantly as one maniacal beast, care-free and apology-proof, excited by their own hysteria, like an early Beastie Boys song. The same disregard underpins ‘Big Boy’, with Murphy once again turning the spotlight upon himself, hoping that an excess of feigned machismo might bulldoze its way through his insecurities. The track is mastered to sound like an old 1950s blues record, with rudimentary guitar lines and fuzzy production values. It also conceals in its final act the album’s one outside contribution: a guest verse from long-time Viagra Boys admirer Jason Williamson, whose acerbic, obstreperous addition only brings more unruliness to an already disreputable atmosphere. In terms of their place in the current pantheon of alt-rock iconoclasts, perhaps Viagra Boys could be said to lack the uncompromising bite of Williamson’s Sleaford Mods or the sharp fury of Benefits, and yet they present something more constructive and pointed than the cartoonish snowflake bravado of IDLES. ‘The Cognitive Trade-Off Hypothesis’, named after the theory that our human ancestors sacrificed their shortterm memory skills in order to develop complex language, returns the album to its recurring milieu of tree- and cavedwelling prehistory. Murphy’s falsetto over the chorus is an addictive listen, but for once the band exercise patience and restraint, and as a result the mood takes on a (slightly) more serious tone. The lyrics draw parallels with Murphy’s own real life (“But what’s all of this got to do with me / Is there some sort of connection to my ADD?”), and suddenly the jokes seem to have dried up. Later in the album, the subject returns. ‘ADD’ discusses, one assumes, legitimate matters familiar to the band, and we see the Swedes’ parodic, perfor-

Albums mative masks momentarily disintegrating. It could signify an intriguing evolution for the band moving forward, further convoluting their already deceptively complex interplay between the layers of fiction they present to an audience and their real selves. The band suffered an immense tragedy in October 2021 when their co-founder and guitarist Benjamin Vallé passed away at the age of 47; there is no obvious reference made to this here, but they are at the stage now where it would not appear entirely out of character for them to do so. Album closer ‘Return to Monke’ grounds us back in the literal cave world, subtexts now blooming into full and glorious technicolour. Even in the native land and time of the troglodyte, there are deep social divisions, the song contends: “Well, I’m afraid of my neighbours, they look much different from me / I think they’re planning something sinister with the global elite.” Perhaps our current blight is nothing new at all, Murphy asks us to wonder. It is one thing to ridicule the small-minded, badly-reasoned arguments of the people that now appear to wield power over us, but to draw an album-long metaphor for their bogus mindset that both laughs at their ignorance and offers some degree of insight as to how we might always have been destined to arrive at this point – well, that is more than you might expect from a band like Viagra Boys at first glance. 8/10 Max Pilley

Katy J Pearson — Sound of the Morning (heavenly) One moment can come to define a career. For Katy J Pearson it was donning a rhinestone

cowboy suit and line dancing very badly in the video for 2019’s ‘Tonight’. From that point on she was pigeonholed as a country or Americana artist, despite debut album Return having more in common with the classic rock of Fleetwood Mac. Praised for “finding humanity in every moment” (DIY) and being “an endearing, life-affirming ode to selfimprovement and resilience” (The Line of Best Fit), the 2020 release was written in response to both the pandemic and to breaking free from the major-label pressures of her early career with former band Ardyn. Its follow up, Sound of the Morning, shares its relatability and quality of aural balm. Yet while it’s likely to challenge the country label, her claim that “it’s not what people will expect from me,” isn’t quite true. In turning her attention to the world as it reopens and people once again expand their horizons, its eleven songs nonetheless show a marked development in their willingness to experiment with genre. That’s partly because the Bristolbased artist has opened herself up to new creative experiences. In the 18 months since her last album she’s guested on Orlando Weeks’ recent album Hop Up (he returns the favour on ‘Howl’), played live with Yard Act, and sung on tradfolk collective Broadside Hacks’ Songs Without Authors. She’s also reconsidered her ways of working, having been burned by her experiences with Ardyn. The indie band she formed with her brother were made to workshop songs with hitmakers. This meant that, “on my first record I was so against collaborating because I’ve been undermined so much as a female artist in the past, writing-wise.” Here she puts the past to bed and is assertive enough to choose who can bring out the best in her writing. Alongside Ali Chant, who produced her debut, she’s brought in Dan Carey, who she credits with introducing a grittier songwriting style that’s, “a bit more confident and in your face.” She also shares credits with the likes of long-time friend Oliver Wilde of indie collective Pet Shimmers (‘Float’)

and former band mate Ben Hambro (‘Game of Cards’). The change in tone isn’t immediately obvious. The title track is all folk guitar and flute, coming across like a more contented Nick Drake, while ‘Talk Over Town’ is the breezy indie-pop with which she made her name. It may address the bewildering experience of, “being Katy from Gloucester, but then being Katy J Pearson who’s this buzzy new artist” but musically it’s as comfortable as an old sweater. It’s not until four tracks in that her desire to push herself creatively is evident. ‘Howl’, which starts out with the brooding electronics of Depeche Mode, sweeps along with buoyant brass. The instrument returns, less experimentally, on the unexpected instrumental outro of ‘Game of Cards’. An otherwise sun-kissed track, the reflective ending captures its lyrical theme about “the vulnerability of a blossoming relationship and not knowing where it’s headed.” The outro moves neatly into the uncharacteristically downtempo ‘Storm to Pass’, on which the warm brass at the end signals a note of hope. Its mood is also captured on the folk lilt of ‘The Hour’. She claims it was written in stripped back form because her acrylic nails didn’t allow for anything more complex, but it’s the perfect backing for her vulnerable delivery and seemingly heartfelt lyrics (“Tell me something / I don’t understand”). The bittersweet note of those tracks is contrasted by ‘Confession’, which creates a sense of anxiety with its nagging bassline and slight post-punk influence. Inspired by the #MeToo movement, its lyrics reveal little concrete detail but build tension through repetition. “It was a very long time ago / When it happened / And not a lot of people know,” she confides. There’s also a post-punk edge to the bass heavy ‘Alligator’, on which she swaps her usual vocal approach,37 which evokes both Stevie Nicks and Belinda Carlisle, for the deadpan delivery of Cate Le Bon. The Welsh musician’s spirit recurs on the closing track, which is a cover of ‘Willow’s Song’ by Paul Giovanni. Taken from the soundtrack of The Wicker Man, she gives

Albums it a krautrock inflection that hints at her possible future direction. While Sound of the Morning undoubtedly develops her songcraft and expands her musical frames of reference, there’s a sense she wants to ease the listener along rather than produce a Kid A-style left turn. It’s this approach of gentle encouragement that makes her new album the ideal sound of an early summer morning. 7/10 Susan Darlington

Muna — Muna (saddest factory) ‘Silk Chiffon’, the lead track from Muna’s third album, quite rightly made many ‘best of 2021’ lists. The kind of euphoric pop that Taylor Swift recorded around the time of Red, it became a queer anthem with Katie Gavin’s buoyant declaration that, “Life’s so fun.” Its optimism marks the end of a difficult period for the L.A.-based trio. Dropped from major label RCA after the release of 2019’s Saves the World and stymied by the pandemic, they questioned the band’s continued existence. Salvation came in the form of Phoebe Bridgers, who signed them to her label and who features on the aforementioned song. Its musical brightness and selfacceptance are the album’s defining characteristics. On the Robyn-esque electro-pop of ‘What I Want’ Gavin signals her intention to grab life by both hands (“I’ve spent way too many years / Not knowing what I want”), while on the country influenced ‘Kind of Girl’ she embraces personal development and change (“I could get up tomorrow / Talk to myself real gentle”). The longing slide guitar on ‘Shooting Star’, which is reminiscent of Bridg-

ers herself, initially makes for a downbeat closing track. Yet when it blazes into life, its message of bittersweet empowerment couldn’t be more fitting. 9/10 Susan Darlington

Black Midi — Hellfire (rough trade) “There’s always something,” blurts Geordie Greep barely six seconds into Hellfire, all nasal, wild-eyed and frenetic. “An odd twitch, hearing loss, a ringing noise, new flesh,” he continues over an unhinged, Bach-style pipe organ, “A new bump, a weightlessness, a headache, a sore limb,” before drum fills, sax and strings sonically merge into a military march, and chaotic piano flourishes start to tumble in. This hammy, poetically fatalistic tirade takes a bewilderingly rapid minute and 25 seconds, at the end of which the unknown monologuer bellows “Enough, enough, come in, come in, thank you,” and the ding of a boxingring bell sounds to start the next track. It’s a contender for one of the weirdest, most turbulent openers I’ve ever heard, markedly more oddball than second album Cavalcade’s lead single ‘John L’. And it resolutely sets the tone for the rest of Black Midi’s extraordinary third album, Hellfire, which revolves around the disembodied third-person narratives of characters from a sinister band of wrong’uns. With these episodes, Greep can reel you in and take you away from it all as expertly as MF DOOM. It’s an album rife with indications that Black Midi have even further developed their impeccable skill for terminally wry, enrapturing lyricism. On tracks like ‘Eat Men Eat’, their art for making music that can swing with baffling ease between a heart-palpitat-

ing, pounding headbanger and a poppy acoustic guitar melody is evidently more evolved too. But it’s the moments like on ‘Still’, three-and-a-half minutes in, when there’s a kind of rupture in the album’s hellscape, that Black Midi’s power takes hold. Bird song, strings, flute, harmonica, and xylophone pool into a warm ray of light and weld together, before you’re thrown back into the hellfire, in the form of abrasive radio tuning, on ‘Half Time’. Bewildering and brilliant. 9/10 Cat Gough

Foals — Life Is Yours (warner) In some circles, ‘going pop’ is frowned upon. Elitist tendencies dictate that any swing away from the leftfield is to be punished. Most of the time this is complete nonsense, but every once in a while an album comes along that makes a strong case for the anoraks. Over the past decade, Foals have slowly but surely dismantled their sound, repurposing their chaotic math-rock for the scale of the main stage. This journey continues on Life Is Yours. The group’s seventh studio album sees them further their quest towards the nightclub, one Big Weekend groove at a time. The trickling, Prince-infused funk of ‘Life Is Yours’ opens things up, making it clear early doors that the new style is here to stay. This is cemented further with ‘Wake Me Up’ and ‘2am’; both are pleasant, inoffensive affairs that leave a distinct whiff of a group travelling down the wrong path. At times Foals almost break on through to the other side. The surreal sliding guitar towards the back end of ‘Flutter’ harks back to the band’s heavier days, while the Balearic beats of ‘Wild

Albums Green’ suggest that, when done right, this whole dance-rock thing can be a winner. Unfortunately these moments are few and far between. Before you know it you’re transported back to the dreary old dancefloor, craving the weird old days of yore. 5/10 Jack Doherty

Kokoroko — Could We Be More (brownswood) Of the acts featured on Brownswood’s increasingly era-defining 2018 We Out Here compilation of thenemerging London jazz, Kokoroko were the perhaps the biggest beneficiary: their quietly meditative ‘Abusey Junction’ exploded online, propelling the octet from relative obscurity to massive crossover potential. They’re also the last of the class of We Out Here to make an albumlength statement, and although the notinsignificant matter of a pandemic surely played a role in their delayed debut, it’s not hard to see a cause-and-effect relationship between the sudden storm of interest and Could We Be More arriving over four years after the band first blew up: after all, the 50 minutes here is as mass-appeal polished as London jazz has gotten – seemingly precision-engineered not to spook anyone and so perfectly composed, performed, and recorded that hip restaurateurs across Britain won’t be able to resist. And as background music, it really is the highest-class wallpaper you could hope for: the band play beautifully as an ensemble, locking together into the same rhythmic tics, and the first 25 minutes are so seamless in terms of dynamics and tempo that it virtually feels like a single cosmic track. Unfortunately, though, considered in the foreground, Could We Be More is over-rehearsed, over-

polite and under-threatening. Never do Kokoroko channel their Afrobeat leanings into the realm of the addictively hypnotic; never do they aim to throttle the listener with a solo, or shock them into attention with a change of pace or groove. Of course, that’s no bad thing – there are plenty of ways to make compelling jazz without such tricks, and indeed ‘Something’s Going On’ has a soulful enough ache to it to serve as an answer to Marvin Gaye’s original question, and the nostalgia of ‘Those Good Times’ is undeniably charming. Ultimately, however, little here rewards close listening – even if, for better or worse, Kokoroko are perfectly likeable to hear. 6/10 Sam Walton

Beabadoobee — Beatopia (dirty hit) Beabadobee is a voice of a generation, a multi-talented, multi-instrumentalist who has enjoyed success and connected across different audiences. Her native Gen Z may have found her via TikTok or her label Dirty Hit, yet the influences that make up her musical biota are niche enough to appeal to even the snobbiest musos. ‘Beatopia Cultsong’ opens her second album, and very much lives up to its name as a fantastical and forbidding portal into a different realm, penned by Bea and her closest friends one night when they were getting fucked up, chanting and playing bongos. It sounds pretentious on paper, but the joy that effervesces from the track is irresistible. ‘10.36’ follows, imbued with twee vocals and childishness, charged by clockwork guitars. The album’s core is built around sketchy ’00s pop beats, something that’s largely absent from the current landscape of commercial indie, which seems to prefer

either the squeaky-clean or the faux lo-fi. Bea is neither, instead sitting comfortably in between; written with immediacy in mind and focusing on the present rather than the past, Beatopia is understated in its execution and scrappy in its compositions. There’s notable sonic expansion on the stunning string arrangements of ‘Ripples’ and the bossanova ‘The Perfect Pair’, which sits next to the Latin lounge of ‘Broken CD’. On the opposite end of the spectrum, ‘Fairy Song’ features a demonic breakdown, and ‘Tinker Bell Is Overrated’ takes its cues from PC Music and hyperpop. It’s commendable that a record this varied feels so coherent, and it’s a credit to the songwriting itself, which is incredibly conscious and devoid of cliché. The work of a limitless artist, Beatopia is very much its own world – and its own league. 8/10 Jasleen Dhindsa

Moonchild Sanelly — Phases (transgressive) Over the last few years, albums have been getting very long, particularly in the hip hop and rap worlds. Several media outlets, including Complex and Pitchfork, have reported on the growing trend, and the simple answer as to why is that more tracks tend to mean more streams. Yet more often than not, to the listener, long albums feel excessive. Sanelisiwe Twisha’s second album under her musical guise Moonchild Sanelly clocks in at a mammoth 19 tracks, and its length is its greatest downfall. Phases is split into two halves, documenting various stages of a difficult relationship and the eventual breakup, but this structure creates an imbalance. The two halves feel disconnected and as though

Albums they should exist as separate entities, rather than forming one cohesive whole. Its second half is certainly its better half, and sees Twisha incorporating more sounds traditional to her birthplace of South Africa. Amapiano and gqom beats thunder through standout tracks like ‘Covivi’, ‘Jiva Jaluka’, and ‘Bad Bitch Budget’, and it’s here that Twisha really hits her stride. Even if the intention here is to uphold the album’s narrative of the before and after of a consuming relationship, its execution requires a bit of finessing. There’s a really great album in Phases that showcases Twisha as a hugely ambitious and creative artist. But, by overstretching herself, some of the tracks sound diluted and, as a result, parts of the album suffer where they should shine. 6/10 Nadia Younes

Chase & Status — What Came Before (virgin emi) Lasting in a climate where dubstep has come and gone, techno is flooding clubs and dance culture has expanded, it would be an achievement for Chase & Status to be producing albums that still fit with the times. On their new album, individual tracks sound like true contenders in grime and dance, but the genre-hopping that happens on What Came Before makes it hard to keep up with what Chase & Status want to achieve with this record. Pushing for that moment of euphoria only found between sweaty dancing bodies, the duo’s opener ‘Don’t Be Scared’ is an explosion of acid, jungle, and drum and bass. Hearing the warped melodies and squelchy bass brings a smile to your face as you’re reminded of the era in which Chase & Status first hit the scene. ‘Censor’

goes as hard as ‘Hold Your Ground’ goes soft. Throwing in a ballad in the mix alongside some dubby dance as you’re still trying to recover from a hard-hitting grime track does make your head spin. Being genreless is becoming more and more popular as music evolves and seeing Chase & Status undefined by dance, jungle or D&B is refreshing. They still capture the dancefloor energy that has been their brand since 2003. They hit a stride with the final trio of tracks as they focus on their speciality, D&B, starting with ‘Consciousness’, bounces along with tight beats, carving out a futuristic cyberpunk soundscape. It may feel like more of a mixtape, but the lack of cohesiveness on What Came Before can be forgiven. Chase & Status remind you of the true dance and D&B legends they are, with tracks worthy of any dancefloor interspersed between furious grime and vicious jungle. 7/10 Sophia McDonald

Vintage Crop — Kibitzer (upset the rhythm) On ‘Double Slants’, perhaps the best song on Aussie punks Vintage Crop’s new album Kibitzer, vocalist Jack Cherry observes in reluctant admiration: “His wit is as quick as lightning / His disapproving gaze is the thunder that follows”. Drawing an analogy with one of nature’s great one-two punches, it captures both the anticipation and the disorientating change of pace which, when sufficiently invested in, also characterise Vintage Crop’s best moments. While the band has peppered each release since their 2017 debut with quips about class struggle, capitalism and other highfalutin topics such as town traffic, they’ve yet to nail their style of intense

sardonic deadpan to quite the same extent as, say, Parquet Courts. Instead, their value largely rests in their dedication to packing as many fast turns and puncturing guitar lines in as possible. And in such a fashion does their latest album, Kibitzer, continue. Tracks like the aforementioned ‘Double Sants’, which rattles through a ruthlessly alternating verse/breather/ verse structure, and ‘Under Offer’, a nod to the inherent emptiness of splashing the cash coupled with low-end guitar lines reminiscent of Arctic Monkeys’ Favourite Worst Nightmare, capture the enthralling unpredictability Vintage Crop often exhibit so well. The effect is numbed somewhat however by a handful of songs laboured by dead, hollow choruses (‘Casting Calls’), tepid lyricism (‘Impact of Wisdom’) and lolling, expressionless performances (‘The Bloody War’). The closer, ‘Switched Off ’, another sadly dull and predictable entry, perhaps unintentionally calls out where some of the issues lie for Kibitzer. Not every swing is a miss, with tracks such as ‘Hold The Line’ and ‘Drafted’ sitting comfortably alongside ‘Double Sants’ and ‘Under Offer’ as showing Vintage Crop in their best light. However, on too many occasions the impression is that the strength is missing from the band’s punch, the result an album occasionally awkward in its apparent reservedness. An album slightly lacking in what, fundamentally, makes Vintage Crop tick. 6/10 Ben Lynch

King Promise — 5 Star (5k) King Promise’s R&B-heavy Afrobeats sound has steadily been making friends all over the globe these last few years. From collabo-

Albums rations with Nigerian singer-songwriter Wizkid to Chance the Rapper to London’s Headie One, 5 Star feels like the next push to go from Accra to the world. Recorded in Accra, London and across the U.S., whether King Promise considers 5 Star to be an album, a project or a mixtape (all three are mentioned at various points), it’s a sunny, breezy collection of tracks that pulls from across the diaspora of African sound, blending afrobeat, Ghanaian highlife, hip hop and R&B. At 15 tracks, it’s an album that runs deep. But with King Promise’s smooth vocals, upbeat melodies and slowjam after slowjam, it’s a runtime you can sit with, particularly when the tracks seem to melt into each other. From the mellow R&B of ‘Do Not Disturb’ all the way through to the big melodic spaces of ‘Ring My Line’, there’s a soft focus and a fluidity to King Promise’s sound that dispenses with brash bangers for anthems that don’t need to kick the doors down and that would still sound larger-than-life on a big rig. 7/10 Reef Younis

Harkin — Honeymoon Suite (hand mirror) Monotonous, but otherworldly. Tiring, but oddly thrilling. Lonely, but strangely comforting. Driving at night is weird. Honeymoon Suite, the second album by Harkin, attempts to capture the complex feeling of the dark, lonely road through the medium of dreamy, twisted synth pop. The delicate snares of opener ‘Body Clock’ get things going. The track’s subtle, slowly sweeping highway synths cruise past glowing street lamps and deep into the warmth of the night. From here the record continues on down the road of electronic cosiness. ‘A New Day’ and

‘(Give Me) The Streets Of Leeds’ build on the album’s early moments while upping the tempo, seeing Harkin slowly morph into St Vincent on a Horlicks bender. Whilst the majority of the album is filled with low-key optimism, at times Harkin drifts into the darkness. Ironically, it’s during these moments that she shines brightest. The unnerving guitar loops and hypnotic drums of ‘Matchless Lighting’ add a surreal edge to proceedings, suggesting that something sinister may be lurking deep within the shadows. Finale ‘Driving Down A Flight Of Stairs’ revisits this land of odd. Lynchian whooshes overlay ethereal synthesisers, helping us to pass through the remnants of night towards the first crackles of sunshine, bringing us rolling slowly towards the end of the road. With Honeymoon Suite, Harkin has proven that there’s beauty to be found within the darkness. You just need to know which direction to drive. 8/10 Jack Doherty

Bartees Strange — Farm to Table (4ad) Much has been made of Bartees Strange’s commitment to blending genres, but on his new album Farm to Table a lot of these genres – mainstream indie, hip-hop, folk – don’t so much blend together as neatly sit alongside one another. This feels less like genre fusion and more like canny sequencing: not necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes it can feel a little procedural, as on ‘Wretched’, which runs through chillwave, chart-pop, and even a spare acoustic arrangement within the space of a couple minutes, without really delving into any of them. Elsewhere, there are throwaways like ‘Cosigns’, which lacks the lyrical depth of the rest of the record

but makes up for it with charismatic flexing of Strange’s indie-icon friends and its faded, faintly surreal instrumental. It’s interesting, but not thrilling. That said, the wide-ranging approach to genre helps as much as it harms, and things really take off when Strange mixes things up a bit more. On ‘Mulholland Dr’, for example, what could be a relatively straightforward indie rock song is elevated by a brief foray into half-autocrooned delivery. The album highlight is ‘Escape This Circus’, which translates an uneasy sense of threat into an Orville Peck-like melancholy. Something is lacking, though, and the album that Farm to Table could have been only shows up intermittently. I feel that the tendency towards genre sprawl may have stretched Strange too thin; the album lacks a clear musical identity of its own. 6/10 Alex Francis

WARM — What Do The Stars Say To You? (night time stories) Can we just take a minute to talk about Ron Trent? The son of a disco DJ who came up alongside Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles, his most famous work is ‘Altered States’, a 14-minute hypnotic marathon he dropped in 1990. It strikes me as oddly ironic that a legend of Chicago house penned what’s widely considered one of the all-time techno classics. I bring this up because ‘Altered States’ casts a long shadow. Thanks to its legacy, it’s not widely known that Trent’s music has always been deeper and more soulful than posterity often gives him credit for. Over the past thirty years, his work as a record producer, remixer and label operator has been a constant force in underground dance music, boasting

Albums a body of work that leans as much into Afrojazz, blues and Latin pop as it does house, disco and techno. WARM, his new project, feels like the culmination of the journey. What Do the Stars Say to You is a crate-digger’s paradise that finds Trent deploying all the elements in his sonic toolbox. A kaleidoscope of jazz licks, sophisti-pop hooks, funky drums and smoothed-out yacht rock keys, this record often feels like a vast, open-world adventure game filled with weirdo musical callbacks and sly references to kitsch sounds of yesteryear. Packed with so many Easter eggs, it’s not the kind of thing you can listen to just once. 8/10 Dominic Haley

James Righton — Jim, I’m Still Here (deewee) James Righton led a double life during his pandemic days. As if in some modernised, parallel-universe music version of Upstairs Downstairs, Righton was fathering his two daughters whilst broadcasting himself online as Jim, an alternative showbiz personality. He describes this duality as “like living in a Charlie Brooker sketch”; the origins of Jim, I’m Still Here carry a slight air of Black Mirror’s constrained pop star Ashley O, but tracks like ‘A Day at the Races’ ground the record in harsher realities. The synth-fuelled record has a dreamy quality, and feels like it is inspired by the experimental spirit of Prince and Bowie’s forays into electronic textures. He does sprinkle in some of those legends’ swagger, living up to his status as an online entertainer for his following. Using a veil of funk, it would be more apt to compare James Righton to the likes of MGMT and Django Django, particularly on ‘Release Party’. They share the same

influences but have put a modern twist on an ’80s pop sound. Since Jim, I’m Still Here is a literal lockdown album, it already feels inextricable from a particular time. It has captured a very specific period of Righton’s life, and the spoken-word parts where he addresses himself do sometimes come across as indulgent. Yet on tracks like ‘Pause’, on which Righton embodies Major Tom, pushing past the basement boundaries and blasting off into celestial plain, and ‘Lover Boy’ is mystical with heartfelt groove, twinkling piano and Righton’s airy vocals, there’s enough to suggest that Righton’s Jim in top form, making him a perfect central character for a future Black Mirror feature. 7/10 Sophia McDonald

LIFE — North Eastern Coastal Town (liquid) There’s an admonition in the name: before pressing play, LIFE (allcaps) has the sound of a didactic band. With two studio albums under their belt that have had their hometown of Hull quietly breathing through every note, their third is ready to be more explicit in its gratitude. North Eastern Coastal Town is their love letter to the city; sounds from the Northern bank of the Humber Estuary that’s informed every aspect of their development thus far. To further the concept, each instrument used on the record is from within a 40-mile radius of their birthplace. But it’s tough to hear the city’s influence beyond that; a Fender Stratocaster bought in Hull sounds remarkably similar to one bought literally anywhere else. On album opener ‘Friends Without Names’, frontman Merrick Sanders-Green is all Charlie

Sheen in his delivery, then Yard Act on ‘Almost Home’, while ‘Shipping Forecast’ is a bare imitation of Fat White Familyesque surrealism which rhymes every word with ‘weather’. An album surely aware of the quicksand around the post-Mods age of Quietus-coined Landfill Sprechgesang carries a few dejected lo-fi highlights in ‘Duck Egg Blue’ and the slow-brawl singalong of closing track ‘All You Are’. But in trying to make a record that sounds both big and small at the same time, they’ve pulled off neither; that’s LIFE, but none of it feels particularly real. 4/10 Nick Tzara

Sinead O’Brien — Time Bend And Break The Bower (chess club) “The giants of time are turning tunes,” Sinead O’Brien repeats on ‘Holy Country’, the ominous highlight of her debut album Time Bend And Break The Bower. In her drawling delivery, it could be a threat or a celebration. Like many a modern buzzband from this part of the world, the Irish poet and multi-disciplinary artist is exploring post-punk sprechgesang that’s deadpan and politely political. Her eerie, time-bent lyricism and proggy dramatics are enough to make her stand out. Backed by veteran producer Dan Carey and striking while the sprech is sang, her debut is poised to make a splash. “Dance!”, she commands on ‘Like Culture’, even though she’s making no attempt to gel with guitarist Julian Hanson and drummer Oscar Robertson. Instead she aims to disorientate with a jarring semi-rhythmic delivery. Her poetry is arresting, but its power is occasionally flattened by a faceless approach to postpunk musicianship. Given the formlessness of O’Brien’s writing, these are songs

Albums begging for dynamism and energy, and the loose jam-band approach leaves them without satisfying structure. There’s rarely meaningful interplay between her vocal and her bandmates. While ‘Holy Country’ and a few others offer the wildness suggested in her unhinged delivery, the album’s idea of raucous is adding the occasional cowbell into the mix. The stiffness in these songs may well get shaken off as the band grows together. As it stands, her words are no more powerful on record than they are on the page. 5/10 Skye Butchard

Perfume Genius — Ugly Season (matador) The music of Perfume Genius has grown increasingly tough and physical in recent years, something that seemed impossible a decade ago. The bruised piano ballads of early records like Learning and Put Your Back N 2 It were almost anti-physical, their performer sinking into fog with a whisper. “Take everything away”, he implores on the latter’s ‘17’. “This gnarled, weird face / This ripe swollen shape… Tuck the whole thing / In the body of a violin… I am done with it.” Yet on 2017’s No Shape, Mike Hadreas found a way to reclaim his body through the power of abjection. On the swaggering and anthemic ‘Queen’, he danced for the first time. Now, his queer body was “cracked, peeling, riddled with disease”, but it also sashayed. He was an object of disgust, and proud of it. The records that followed became more muscular, more danceable, and more joyful. Sure, they were still ragged, painful offerings, as you would expect from Perfume Genius, but they were also explosive and visceral. Ugly Season is the

literal culmination of this era of physicality, and it’s also unlike anything he’s made before. Its songs originated in The Sun Still Burns Here, the 2019 dance performance Hadreas worked on with choreographer Kate Wallich. The resulting album is a half-formed thing, missing the visual it was clearly made for, but its looser structure allows for Hadreas to experiment with fresh ideas and satisfying genre fusions. ‘Eye On The Wall’ is among his best songs, a sprawling pitch-black disco cut from the netherworld, backed by evershifting percussion. Western guitars and witchy group vocals circle around each other before blissful pads light up the walls. It’s worth the price of admission on its own. Elsewhere, the title track is freaked-out dub reggae, with Hadreas rasping and contorting his vocal like a latter-day Scott Walker. Fittingly, it’s about as weird and satisfying as Bish Bosch. ‘Hellbent’ is another left turn – a harsh, droning piece that rides his occasional use of noise past the vanishing point. Ambient, baroque pop and neoclassical are the connective tissue on the album, though those experiments often fall into the background. ‘Teeth’ and ‘Harem’ especially read as soundtracks to performance rather than pieces that hold together on their own. Still, Ugly Season feels like a living entity. It’s fitting for an artist who’s finally found comfort and power in physicality. 7/10 Skye Butchard

Yaya Bey — Remember Your North Star (big dada) Yaya Bey’s third full length project is an exceptional feat of storytelling, as much for the ground it

covers as for the depths it shows to be lacking in commercial musical discourse. Sparked by a tweet Bey saw which read “Black women have never seen healthy love or have been loved in a healthy way”, Remember Your North Star furrows far beyond the subjects of love and Black femininity that inspired its doomscrolled beginnings. Deep into the caricatures of performance identity, family relationships and poverty trauma, it skirts the surface of competing conversations not yet given the space to evolve – what it means to be a daughter versus what it means to have a son, being broke while feeling yourself. Through these conflicts shines a manifesto of sorts, calling for self-love in a way that holds each other up. Bey’s musical footprint covers great spans, too, while still sounding completely focused. R&B bangers such as ‘Big Daddy Ya’ (“I could do this cool shit here all day”) melt into space-jazz ruminations on ‘Alright’, opposite the ska dub undertones of ‘Meet Me In Brooklyn’ through ‘It Was Just A Dance’. Bey is broken on ‘Nobody Knows’, masking her trauma with the stony-faced line “Nobody knows my troubles but me” as defeated as it is resolute. Just as the unfiltered swagger of lead single ‘Keisha’ makes for one of the year’s best pop songs, beneath the skin of its braggadocio moments (“Show me one thing that’s been worth risking me”) is the reality of the situation that she’s building her defences against. 8/10 Nick Tzara

XAM Duo — XAM Duo II (sonic cathedral) Yorkshire-based songwriters Matthew Benn and Christopher Duffin have been collaborating as XAM Duo since 2015. Although both are closely

Albums associated with the Leeds DIY scene that produced the likes of Hookworms and Yard Act, this project is far removed from the guitar-driven style of those bands; instead, its creators tinker with a style of electronica that echoes acts like Autechre and James Holden. Now with some years in the game, the pair are releasing their second LP, simply titled XAM Duo II, a concise listen whose six tracks clock in at less than 30 minutes. Made up of sweet synths, precise beats and some piano and sax, they create an atmosphere that feels as if it’s designed to accompany times of concentration and calm. The groovy opener ‘Blue Comet’ (playfully named after an episode of The Sopranos, like many of their songs), delivers a tight rhythm with wonderful percussion, making for one of the duo’s most addictive offerings to date. Elsewhere, ‘The Middle Way’ is reminiscent of Mort Garson, with its floaty melody feeling like the soundtrack to a transcendent underwater video game. Though self-described as “emotional computer music”, XAM Duo II doesn’t quite land an emotive punch, but still creates a soothing and focused vibe that is recommended listening for those who like their electronic music on the ambient side. 6/10 Woody Delaney

Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals — King Cobra (phantom limb) King Cobra is live and direct. It’s the sound of Ice Cube blasting out of a boombox before the police show up. It’s DatPiff mixtapes hastily ripped by pre-teens before getting pulled down for sample clearance issues. It’s grime MCs fighting against the static on pirate radio.

King Cobra is also the sound of the present. The duo Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals have tightened their longrunning partnership to create a sprawling album that’s unabashedly political and DIY. Ennals is a no-bullshit MC who uses energy and heft more than flashy flows or internal rhymes. He performs like he’s ranting off the cuff, but the lines are far too clever for that to be true. “Cruising up your block on DMT / We the postapocalyptic Run-DMC,” goes one line on ‘Coke Jaw’. Elsewhere, he’s partying to the sound of dead cops. Infinity Knives is the ideal confidant for such a charismatic and ballsy rapper. His production cobbles decades together out of whatever machine parts he has lying around. Roland TR-808s, horror movie synths and sheet metal appear alongside gorgeous pads and eerie found sounds. Like fellow Baltimore experimentalist JPEGMAFIA, Ennals and IK bring us into the cutting room, show their working and emphasise the message above all. In the middle of a classic bit of hip hop storytelling on ‘The Badger’, Ennals stops to deliver his demands. “Shout out to sex workers. Trans Lives Matter. House the Unhoused. Black Power. / I don’t give a fuck who just became a billionaire, I don’t give a fuck if they’re Black.” King Cobra is an unpolished tour de force, full of default presets and dodgy vocoders, and it’ll jolt you awake like few records can. 8/10 Skye Butchard

Wu-Lu — LOGGERHEAD (warp) Brixton producer and songwriter Miles Romans-Hopcraft has been a part of London’s many music scenes for the best part of a decade, but now is the moment

for his full-length Warp debut. Under his Wu-Lu moniker, Romans-Hopcraft has become synonymous with his genreless musical mutations – rich vignettes of abstract hip-hop coexisting with skatepunk, while DIY sound collages writhing beneath vigorous breakbeats. Early EPs hinted at a world wholly Wu-Lu’s own, and LOGGERHEAD unlocks a totally singular universe. Musically and emotionally, a lot of ground is covered throughout. Erratically, it darts from abstract textures, unfocused production daydreams, to wild-eyed instrumental escalations and visceral lyrical passages that tackle the issues at the very forefront of RomansHopcraft’s mind. Often his focus is on the communities he’s grown up with, which are rapidly being destroyed by a compassionless city, and how that’s affected the lives and minds of the youth – indeed, echoes of “I don’t want to see your mental health go to waste” run through the mind long after the album’s stopped spinning. In that sense, lead single ‘South’ remains Wu-Lu’s mission statement. A venomous anti-gentrification brawler, a grizzled acoustic stomp and screamo breakdown are complimented by a lightning verse by rising rapper Lex Amor. Amor is scathing in her bars and fiery with her tongue: “Ever seen a city burn alert? You learn to worship the dust.” Indeed, it is through collaboration that LOGGERHEAD comes into its own. A thunderous performance from Black Midi’s virtuoso drummer Morgan Simpson beneath squalls of ’90s guitar feedback gives ‘Times’ an epochal quality, whilst hypnagogic vocals from French singer-songwriter Lea Sén gives ‘Calo Paste’ a real Dean Blunt decadence. The whole album squeezes so many wild ideas into its grooves, but master scientist Wu-Lu pulls off every experiment with aplomb. The cluttered vortex of disembodied vocals and malfunctioning electronics on ‘Road Trip’ is a real highlight, and too is the vivid hauntological netherworld that Romans-Hopcraft finds himself wandering through on ‘Facts’. LOGGERHEAD is the product of a music obsessive skilled enough to work all

Albums of his favourite sounds onto one album, a crucial document of a special artist. 9/10 Cal Cashin

Hatis Noit — Aura (erased tapes) Japanese avant garde artist Hatis Noit has named this record Aura in tribute to the German philosopher Walter Benjamin, whose influential essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction discusses the idea of original artwork, and the sensation felt in its presence (or, its aura) compared with that of a reproduction. In this case, the reproduction is recorded music, as opposed to live performance, a medium which Noit has historically favoured. Of course, the past few years led her to confront that preference, exploring the ways in which a recording could communicate her incredible vocal artistry when live performance is no longer a possibility. The result, created with the help of producer Robert Raths (founder of Erased Tapes) and engineer extraordinaire Marta Salogni (Björk/Black Midi/ Anna Meredith), is a breathtaking work which showcases the dexterity of Noit’s voice, and of the human voice in general. No instruments feature in this recording – in fact the only sound other than Noit’s vocals is a field recording of the ocean near Fukushima. Not that you’d realise though; the level of vocal acrobatics she can conjure add as much depth as any orchestra. She can do operatic (‘Angelus Novus’), yodelling (‘Thor’), Ibeyi-esque chanting (‘A Caso’) or guttural growl (‘Aura’), each with equal mastery and sheer control over her instrument, and layered continually to build a rich tapestry of voice. Aura is truly global in spirit –

inspired by Japanese classical music, Gregorian chants, Bulgarian choirs, and folk music from around the world, and made in Berlin, London and Japan. The noises Noit makes aren’t quite words, but something more primal and instinctive – an incredible reminder of how much we can communicate with sheer, human, universal sound. 8/10 Jessica Wrigglesworth

Soccer Mommy — Sometimes, Forever (loma vista) If there’s one thing the music industry is oversaturated with right now, it’s prolific young female solo artists making confessional indie rock. As the exact target audience of this genre, I’m not complaining, but it can be hard for these artists to stave off the ‘sad girl’ tag and Phoebe Bridgers comparisons, and carve out a place for themselves as individuals. On her third album, 24-year-old Sophie Allison, aka Soccer Mommy, makes a valiant effort to hone the grungy style which won her plenty of fans on her previous two releases, 2018’s Clean and 2020’s Color Theory, and in doing so proves she can hold her own against Bridgers, Snail Mail, Julien Baker, et al. Allison enlisted Daniel Lopatin, aka Oneohtrix Point Never, to produce Sometimes, Forever, and his behind-thedecks wizardry brings an added depth and sleekness to this record which is particularly evident on ‘Newdemo’ and ‘Darkness Forever’. These tracks’ glitching synths and ethereal vocals call to mind Lopatin’s excellent Alex G collab ‘Babylon’, yet still feel true to the DNA Allison has created for Soccer Mommy – intelligent, well-constructed rock songs which are as vulnerable as they are detached. ‘Unholy Affliction’ epitomises this sound while

introducing an almost trip-hop drum beat, with Allison’s vocal reminiscent of Massive Attack-era Liz Fraser. There are lighter, poppier moments on the album too; recent single ‘Shotgun’ is a Cranberries-esque ode to summer romance, all catchy riffs and sweet ‘ooh’s. The more lackadaisical ‘Following Eyes’ is equally drenched in hazy nostalgia, and could almost be a cut from My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless. But although it’s easy to reel off the comparisons and potential references on Sometimes, Forever, Soccer Mommy has undoubtedly found a voice which is very much her own, and is only getting more accomplished with it. 7/10 Jessica Wrigglesworth

Hercules and Love Affair — In Amber (skint) Five albums in, and Andy Butler’s knack for picking and pairing the right vocalists remains a huge part of Hercules and Love Affair’s long-term appeal. On 2017’s Omnion he found unlikely, ingenious ways to pull John Grant, Sharon Van Etten and The Horrors’ Faris Badwan into his world. On In Amber, ANOHNI returns (after appearing on Hercules and Love Affair’s self-titled debut back in 2008) to become the album’s vocal lightning rod. Here, her voice is the dominant presence – a raw, intense foil for the dark grandeur of Butler’s production. Butler himself might not have the strongest voice (a point perhaps exacerbated by the strength of the vocalists he collaborates with) but on ‘Grace’, he finds a depth that isn’t a million miles from the understated beauty of The National. It’s a sombre opening and one that sets the tone for the solemn, meditative energy that pulls In Amber forward. ‘Who Will Save Us Now’ is stark

Albums and minimal, ‘You’ve Won This War’ is all monastic gloom and marching battle drums, and ‘Killing His Family’ lets ANOHNI’s quivering vocal shine and hang over industrial broken beat and lone sax. It’s an intense set of tracks, but another evolution of Hercules and Love Affair’s sound that turns up a few genuine highlights. 6/10 Reef Younis

GHUM — Bitter (everything sucks) GHUM can count themselves among a crop of bands who’ve been threatening the mainstream for a while. Forming back in 2017, the London-based punks have achieved a startling amount with not very little: with headline tours and the BBC, Dazed and The Fader all singing their praises on the back of just a couple of singles and EPs. Attention, combined with that global pandemic you might’ve heard about, means that the band has taken a while to get round to putting out a debut album. Finding success so quickly has meant that GHUM has had to write new songs while juggling a brutal schedule of back-to-back UK and European tours. It’s understandable then that Bitter has been constructed from old, half-written jams and sketched-out ideas. If this is the sound of a band being distracted, then it hasn’t spilt over onto the record. GHUM has made something of a trademark out of punchy, heart-on-sleeve post-punk, and everything on this record hits the mark flawlessly. The new single and album opener ‘Some People’ is a triumphant story of love gone sour painted with an air-punching bass line with cheese-wire thin guitars. Third track, ‘Bad Brain’, is another standout; building slowly from swooning vocals and echoing distortion

to stand like a golem assembled from assorted parts of Slaves, Garbage and Echo and the Bunnymen. It’s a bright start, but the problems jump out pretty quickly. As the record barrels on, it’s hard not to think that every song is a variation on a theme. That’s not to say that they aren’t exciting moments during mid to late portions of the record, ‘Perro’, in particular, effectively takes monolithic drums and a skeletal song structure and channels them into an old-school brooding post-punk number reminiscent of Magazine. It appears that GHUM’s intentions for Bitter have been to document the facets of their sound that got them to where they are now rather than put any markers down for the future. The result is an album that sometimes feels more like a Best Of compilation than a statement-making debut album. That said, when has predictability ever been that much problem for a punk record? After all, Bad Religion has basically made the same record since 1982, and they’re still making it work. It wouldn’t have hurt GHUM to sprinkle just a little pinch of variety over their formula, but that doesn’t stop Bitter from being a decent record. What it does, it does very well, and let’s be honest, no one can ask more than that. 6/10 Dominic Haley

Maggie Rogers — Surrender (polydor) There’s something impossibly intricate about making a good pop song. By nature it has to have a good hook. A catchy melody. A subject matter that’s sad enough to make you stop and think about your own doomed relationships, but not quite sad enough to make tears prickle behind your eyes. It’s a formula Maggie Rogers flirted

with on breakout single ‘Alaska’, and one she artfully locked down on her debut full-length Heard It In A Past Life. But if Rogers’ discography thus far has been a slow-burn relationship with the grandslam pop hit blueprint, latest offering Surrender is the messy divorce and the squabble over custody of the children. Perhaps falling victim to the second album curse, or maybe just losing itself under layers of overproduction and a mildly incoherent tracklist, Surrender makes several valiant attempts to establish itself as a pop album for the history books – but they never seem to land, at least not with any conviction. With too-loud instrumentals (‘That’s Where I Am’), convoluted and occasionally rambling runtimes (‘Horses’) and a handful of tracks that feel as though they are about to erupt into something bigger but never seem to push themselves over the edge (‘Symphony’), the album’s potential seems to get lost amongst the knotty and disjointed threads of its own over-embellished tapestry. While Rogers’ savvy and selfaware lyricism and ever-immaculate vocal performance does manage to shine through – “Anywhere With You” is an album standout with soaring synths and a melodramatic realism that encompasses all the cinematic touchstones of navigating an ill-fated love life, and “Overdrive” blends charming big anthem energy with an ethereal and detached air that is as stirring as it is sweet – the album seems permeated with an unshakeable sense that, while trying to do something a tad experimental, it’s really just overcomplicating a blend of sounds and stylings we’ve heard before. Take ‘Want Want’ for example, a track that’s opening few seconds sound like something plucked straight from Days Are Gone-era HAIM, or blearyeyed closer ‘Different Kind of World’ that features an emotive breakdown of cymbal crashes and cascading guitars that unfold like an underwhelming parody of Phoebe Bridgers’ gargantuan ‘I Know The End’. And maybe that’s where the problem with this album lies. For all its good intentions – and the impressive set

Albums of well-written melodies that lay buried under a tangle of over-produced synths and jarring instrumentals – Surrender feels a bit too much like a pastiche of a good pop album, rather than a record that can be counted as one in its own right. 5/10 Charlotte Marston

Working Men’s Club — Fear Fear (heavenly) Kicking out all your bandmates, transforming your sound and releasing an album that shoves a middle finger up at literally anybody who will listen seems like the move of a washedup rockstar trying to force their way back into the limelight, rather than that of a barely-18-year-old standing at the foot of his career. But it’s one the then-teenage Syd Minsky-Sargeant made during the making of Working Men’s Club’s eponymous debut. It came as no surprise, then, when that album emerged dripping in ego, its jagged industrial rhythms marred by the power struggles that had gone on behind its own lines. For all its merit it was a markedly narcissistic record: one that was agitated and impressive, but in a holier-than-thou sort of way. But with a couple of years’ distance, a clear sense of personal and stylistic growth, and a newfound focus on the sound rather than the self, the young Yorkshire four-piece’s second offering Fear Fear arrives as a nice, and slightly less hostile, surprise. Tracks like the anxiety-inducing ‘19’ and the mathematical wobbly-pop ‘Rapture’, with their skittering electropunk rhythms, steady drum beats and squawking synths, don’t stray all that much from the industrial-tinted alloy of late-night electro-rave-meets-punkyguitar-band mould, but the new set of

tracks glimmer with a certain cohesion and assured maturity that was absent on that 2020 debut. ‘Widow’, while featuring an omnipotent, booming vocal that is bound to render a few more comparisons to Mark E. Smith, perfects the art of sprechgesanginfused electronica, with a more refined and mildly less doomy take on the band’s warped synthy motifs. ‘Ploys’ features a similar foreboding voice interspersed over its shuddering beats, yet plays out more like a straight-up pop song that has been meticulously dissected and then put back together with meticulous ingenuity. ‘19’ takes on an ’80s quality, and the skittish, video-game esque ‘Heart Attack’ feels more like a piece of Lynchian performance art than a rave-ready anthem. So where the eponymous Working Men’s Club had all the trappings of a teenage band forging their way on an exciting – albeit slightly cocksure – path, Fear Fear is the sound of a more welloiled machine, and that of a fully-grown band all the more sure of their own identity. 8/10 Charlotte Marston

Robocobra Quartet — Living Isn’t Easy (first taste) Sometimes things aren’t always as they appear – and this certainly rings true for Belfast’s Robocobra Quartet. Ostensibly a band-cum-art collective, adopting a name seemingly steeped in bohemian irony, they peddle more material for the quotidian postpunk scene so fertile in the grassroots of Northern Ireland’s capital. More latently, however, the group of ex-students of Belfast’s Sonic Arts Research Centre (drummer and vocalist Chris W. Ryan, bassist Nathan Rodgers, mutli-instrumentalists Ryan Burrowes

and Tom Tabori, and saxophonists Peter Howard and Thibault Barillon) have been curating something altogether more holistic. 2016’s Music for All Occasions, and more recently Plays Hard to Get in 2018, saw the band germinate a signature sound of jazz-motivated, punk-informed, avant-garde spoken word that amassed expansive parallels ranging from Fugazi to Black Country, New Road via Charles Mingus. The band’s new album – and their debut on Deptford-based record label First Taste – Living Isn’t Easy follows a four-year fallow period, but firmly promises to build on the wide-ranging and well placed foundations of previous works. As the de facto spearhead and the band’s producer (his credits also include Just Mustard, NewDad, Junk Drawer), Ryan shines most prominently on lead single, ‘Wellness’. Here, his acerbic assessments of influencer health and wellbeing culture are cut out with sarcastic metrical readings of unfortunately very real ‘wellness’ articles, which sound not unlike James Murphy’s second self on LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Losing My Edge’ growing further into neurotic hypochondria. More of the same can be found elsewhere as poetic deliveries nestle aside imposing production and almost referentially encyclopaedic musicianship. These tracks tell a story loosely based around a central character, exploring themes of absurdity and mundanity of modern life, whilst also delving into deeper themes of abuse. Delivering the backbone here are lashing basslines straight out of the D.C. post-hardcore playbook (see ’Flew Close’ and ‘Heaven’), deft drum patterns that would sound at home on any of Mingus’ works (‘Flew Close’), are all housed together with galvanising saxophone and synth sections (‘Plant’ and ‘Chromo Sud’). Here, Robocobra Quartet seemingly operate in perfect balance: musically and lyrically serious, yet also comedic in their experimentation and droll in their delivery. As the recent crest of Irish postpunk bands rummage for a new sound, it seems as though this particular one has struck gold. 9/10 Tom Critten

Albums Live the following day – the bars better organised, water given away for free, and a one-way system introduced to the main arena during the change over between sets. A big help at the very least.

SHYGIRL IS GOING TO BE A CASUAL SUPERSTAR

Primavera Sound Weekend 1 of 2 Parc del Fòrum, Barcelona 2-4 June 2022

Each year we travel to Barcelona for Primavera Sound, and each year we wrestle with how to report on a festival of this size, variety and calibre without writing a book about it. It’s not been made any easier in 2022 by the festival doubling in size, lasting not one long weekend but two, with inner city shows happening in between. What a curse. At least this edition of Loud And Quiet went to print halfway through this enormous party, meaning what we have here are our (pretty instinctual) moments/headlines/sunbaked takeaways from Weekend One. The city showcases and Weekend Two (featuring mostly a refreshed line-up of ridiculously big names including Dua Lipa, Megan Thee Stallion, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Lorde), have been covered on loudandquiet.com in our ‘Shorts’ section. First, the bumpy and often thrilling ride of June 2-4. But actually first, what you need to know about Primavera Sound is this: since its first edition in 2001 (founded as a direct response to the then increasingly commercial indie festival

Benicàssim, attended largely by readers of Nuts magazine) Primavera has pulled together the alternative music lineup of the year with staggering consistency; it takes place on the eastern edge of the city, by the sea, on a 90% concrete site (all slopes, steps and monolithic structures); and in earnest runs from Thursday until Saturday night, from 4pm until either your feet give in or the sun comes up at 6am, when you will be asked to leave. We came away from Weekend One talking about the following:

Despite its bumpy start, day one was still when we saw the best music of the entire first weekend, peaking with Shygirl at the more relaxed end of the site, down by the beach where a lot of Primavera’s electronic and party music plays. The London based artist who’s done things her own way over the last couple of years – colliding UK garage, trap, PC Music, hyperpop, road rap and R&B on a number of standalone singles – smashed through an incredible set of slippery bass-heavy hits in a remarkably casual way considering how much everyone was losing it. Songs like ‘BDE’ and ‘SLIME’ went off, but no more so than an unnamed demo that she’d just written and never performed before, which makes you realise just how unstoppable she could be.

PAVEMENT HAD THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES

THE QUEUES OF DAY ONE

There’s nothing more boring than talking about queues, but if you had an eye on socials on the opening day of the festival you’d have almost definitely seen people reporting on this. Queues for the bars averaged 45 minutes to an hour, which meant no easy access to beers but also, more importantly, no easy access to water, with dehydration a real concern in the Spanish heat. The large volume of people in the site’s main arena compounded the issue, with overcrowding feeling pretty dangerous at time. Not the start anyone wanted, although to Primavera’s credit, they took the concerns seriously and acted quickly to rectify the issues from

Pavement don’t feel like the type of band to deny that they’ve got back together for the money. Not in part, at least. But when that’s the case (which it always it), you can usually feel it. Headlining the Thursday night main stage to something like a million people, the smiles and larks weren’t being generated by how much money they were making. They settled in quickly and had the time of their lives, especially Bob Nastanovich – the group’s percussionist, backing singer and hype man – who’d leave his station to hug his bandmates, give tiny tambourines to the crowd and step into the light to to scream into his mic and laugh his head off. The band played every song you could want to hear, as well as you’d want to hear it,

photograph by sergio albert

Albums Live as loose as you’d want it whilst being completely together. It went on for one hundred minutes but could have lasted forever. The perfect festival set from a band most surprised themselves that they had it in them.

THE STROKES CANCELLED 24 HOURS BEFORE THEY WERE DUE TO PLAY

It speaks to the amount that’s going on at Primavera that a band like The Strokes can cancel their show (it was due to positive Covid tests within their team) and it not be a festival-ending experience for large swathes of ‑the crowd. I’m sure it was devastating for some, but the prevailing opinion was that it was nothing more than a bit of a shame. As the deck was reshuffled, Caribou stepped up into the big spot (and proved he was ready for it by the time his band reached the euphoria of ‘Sun’) and Mogwai were flown in to plug the gap. Drummer Martin Bulloch worn a Strokes t-shirt; Tame Impala paid a less sarcastic tribute to the missing band by doing a good job of covering ‘Last Night’. At the time of writing, The Strokes are due to perform at the festival’s second weekend, where day tickets from the previous Stroke-less day are valid.

photograph by eric pamies

EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN DELIVERED THE VISUAL GAG OF THE WEEKEND

Watching the German avant-rock legends open the main stage on the final day of the weekend was to view their gothic industrialism through a different lens. It really is beautiful music, and forty-two years after they formed in West Berlin they remain one of the most inventive noise bands out there. Musical instruments included a set of plastic plumbing pipes of different lengths played with a decorator’s airgun, a laundry bag full of polystyrene, a grinder played with brushes, and a boring old guitar played with an electric blue vibrator. Where the band flexed their sense of humour though, was with their metal dinner tray, on which they’d stuck an Apple sticker. Oh how we laughed.

NAPALM DEATH MADE THE MOST EFFORT TO SPEAK SPANISH

defining career, the grindcore band from Birmingham thrashed through their set like a bunch of twenty-year-olds. When they did stop to speak, frontman Barney Greenway did so in Spanish and apologised when he needed to switch to English to get his point across. Typical for such a historically socially aware group, the message was always worth hearing: “At the moment, across an ocean, there are people who think it’s okay to tell other people what to do with their bodies,” he said. “I think that’s fucking disgusting.” One that occasion the band ploughed into ‘Suffer the Children’, a song about religion and small-mindedness interfering with human rights. Earlier, he spoke clearly about how people shouldn’t be classed as illegal and legal, yelling his support for refugees and jumping into ‘Contagion’. They’re messages that most of us can agree with, but hearing Napalm Death deliver them so succinctly between all that ear-bleeding metal on a hot night in Barcelona was quite something.

NICK CAVE ALWAYS DELIVERS It’s impossible to not admire a festival that follows Caroline Polachek with Napalm Death – the heaviest band of the weekend, and perhaps the most relevant. Forty years deep into a genre-

In only his second show since the tragic death of his son Jethro, fans showed up for Nick Cave in support, and to show how respectful they would be. The Bad Seeds’ set was unusually full of hits, with Cave noting of ‘Red Right Hand’ that, having performed it over 300 times, this was the first time he’d managed it in key. “I’ll tell my grandkids about this night.” His live shows in every guise are known for their sermonic nature, but that night Cave felt less like a priest and more like a person. In a particularly wrenching moment of a set that was full of emotion, he said: “I want to dedicate this song to my two boys, Luke and Earl, who are here somewhere… And they’re probably here somewhere,” he added, speaking of Jethro and his son Arthur, whom he lost in 2015. “They’re probably over there waiting for Bauhaus to fucking begin.” Primavera can be an overwhelming experience at the best of times, with big cries aplenty. Cave’s set was an easy match-up.

FilmAlbums and Books

All My Friends Hate Me (dir. andrew gaynord) I haven’t seen a film as uncomfortable as All My Friends Hate Me in years. Uncomfortable, tense, sinister and extremely toe-curling; a credit to its makers and a test of my low cringe-threshold that I’m not sure it passed. It’s a low budget British comedy horror that aims for somewhere between Inside No. 9 and Jordan Peel’s eternally haunting masterpiece Get Out, and does a pretty decent job of hitting its mark. The premise has nervous tension baked into it: Pete is traveling to an isolated house in the country to combine his 31st birthday celebrations with a university reunion. It’s not a normal-sized house, of course; it’s the sort of vast pile that’s been associated with horror since Dracula’s castle, dwarfing its five lonely inhabitants like peas in a beach ball. There’s Pete and his four old friends he’s lost touch with. They’re a horribly posh bunch, called Fig (!?), George, Claire and Archie. George owns the place; Archie is the biggest posh twat of all, who talks in that ridiculously over-the-top voice we all do when taking the piss out of Made in Chelsea or trying to accurately impersonate Jacob ReesMogg. He’s a harmless cokehead, but it doesn’t make him any less loathsome, both as a character and an unimaginative caricature, played by Graham Dickson. This is going to be a difficult watch, and things haven’t even got weird yet. They do once an outsider arrives – Harry, a bloke they found down the pub. Harry is a prick as well. In fact, he’s the worst of all and spends the rest of the film gaslighting Pete, who’s left to stew in his own paranoia while his friends roar at their new mascot’s outrageously common (and shit) jokes/insults. The film becomes an uphill psychological battle for Pete as he tries to work

out what Harry’s problem is and why he looks vaguely familiar. Dustin Demri-Burns has a history of playing overly familiar, highly combative dickheads (from estate agent wideboy Julian in Stath Lets Flat to lad DJ Danny Sinclair in Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa), and with Harry he slides effortlessly into his niche once again, perfectly playing off of his Stath Lets Flats co-star Tom Stourton in the role of bemused Pete (Stourton also co-wrote the film). Perhaps for the first time though, he’s surrounded by characters that truly challenge for the most unlikeable. Still, while All My Friends Hate Me certainly is an uncomfortable ride to be on, it’s also a genuinely unpredictable one. With a story that twists at a glacial pace, you never know where it’s going… or who you hate the most. There’s nothing for it, you’re just going to have to watch to the end. Stuart Stubbs

The Arena of the Unwell — Liam Konemann (404 ink) The first rule of fiction writing is to write what you know, and London-based Australian writer Liam Konemann certainly knows music. A prolific voice, Konemann’s name can be found in NME, Dork, and even your own dearly beloved Loud And Quiet. However, besides music, Konemann also writes perceptively about the challenges of identity within contemporary society, particularly for the LGBTQIA+ community. His first published work, The Appendix, was initially conceived as an ongoing record of transphobia in the UK that he came across in day-to-day life, before it swelled to wider questions about how to find joy within this hostile superstructure. In his debut novel, The Arena of The

Unwell, Konemann brings these two worlds together to mould an utterly addictive, exceptionally salacious slow-motion carcrash of a Bildungsroman, in which we follow 22-year-old narrator Noah as he sinks to ever greater depths to try and find genuine love within the worst of all possible backdrops – London’s indie sleaze era. Told in direct, soul-baring prose, Konemann dutifully charts Noah’s hedonistic descent through the crooked alleys of North London where he consumes mediocre indie, mediocre drugs, and armpit-warm lager, while contending with underfunded NHS therapy sessions, tenuous employment, and gnarly comedowns. While the book veers in different directions, including the cryptic return of mythic indie band Smiley Politely after a five-year absence, the central plot of The Arena of The Unwell concerns Noah’s pull towards barman/music writer Dylan, and Noah’s insidious tryst with Dylan’s civil partner Fraser. The novel plays in the shadows of the uncertain nature of Dylan’s relationship to Fraser. Noah’s insecurities and paranoia growing exponentially as he becomes more embedded in the middle of this toxic relationship, leading to engaging and honest passages of self-doubt, self-deprecation, and ultimately, self-harm. Yet this book is not a downer – it’s irreverently funny and uplifting. Konemann’s acerbic eye is never far away on any given page. His takes on the London music scene, being gay, and chronic loneliness are their own distinct brand of gallows humour that keep this book oddly light. The only minor critique that could be thrown at the novel is that it could be trimmer. The authorial compass can feel slightly off at times, with some passages putting a bit too much cutting agent in the lines. Ultimately, The Arena of The Unwell lends itself more to musical comparisons than literary, with 1980 punk album Los Angeles by X an apt analogue: it’s a rip-roaring ride full of frantic epiphany that’s soon clouded by narcotic revelry that is gaslit into relational yearning. A book of ma ny masks, a nd in ma ny respects, a Less Than Zero for Generation Rent. Robert Davidson

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DISTANCE

SKEWS After more than a decade away, one of alternative rock’s most cherished cult bands are back. Dominic Haley speaks to Pavement before and after their headline set at Primavera Sound in Barcelona, discussing time, TikTok and horse racing with a group who seem more comfortable than ever. Photography by Emil Ravelo

EVERYTHING 53

ight now,Pavement are all over the place, and it’s resulted in an interesting spread of Zoom backgrounds. There’s me, the sun slanting into my living room as a Friday draws to a close. Then there’s Steve West, basking in the mid-morning glow of his Virginia cottage, the wooden shades and bare stonework giving off a slight Little House on the Prairie vibe. And there’s Bob Nastanovich. The band’s percussionist and time-keeper is the most out of place, having just stepped off a seven-hour flight from his home in Des Moines, Iowa, to Portland. Considering he’s been in transit, he’s remarkably chipper, chatting with the easy, laid-back demeanour of a guest on a morning chat show as he fills us in on his movements so far. “We’ve gotten off to a great start!” he beams enthusiastically. “The lady sat on my right was a very polite woman named Cody from Chicago, leaned over and was like, ‘Holy shit, you’re the guy from Pavement? Oh my god, you’re like my friend’s favourite band’. So, yeah, that’s two tickets sold already!” It’s been over a decade since Pavement last played together, and the band aren’t leaving anything to chance. Once renowned as one of the most hit-and-miss live bands in the business, the band’s five members are gathering in Portland to spend an extended period relearning the songs, smoothing out the rough edges and figuring out a set that they can take to Primavera at the beginning of June. The next step is to fly down to Los Angeles. They plan to iron out their new stage show – which Nastanovich half-jokingly describes as a “Gorillaz-style audiovisual experience – so that you don’t have to look at our old asses” – by playing a warm up at the city’s Fonda Theatre. Speaking strictly for myself, it makes sense that you wouldn’t want to step out in front of 90,000 people without doing at least a little bit of rudimentary prep work. However, the pair are deadly serious when they stress that this is anything but ordinary for Pavement. “You need to realise that Pavement is fundamentally about winging it,” Nastanovich tells me, dropping his tone and adopting a ‘we-ain’t-shitting-you’ look. “I actually think that having this much prep time is really excessive – in the past I can literally remember regularly having to jot down notes on my setlist to remind me of what instruments I need to pick up before the next song, so compared to that, this is us being really thorough.” Live shows are probably the best barometer we have to measure this band by. When the camp is harmonious, they’re one of the most effortlessly natural live bands out there, able to miniaturise enormous festival sets into small, intimate club shows. However, their gigs can be downright acidic when things aren’t so good. To find an example of their self-destructive tendencies, you only have to return to 2010 and the infamous Las Vegas show at the Palm Casino as part of Matador Records’ 21st birthday celebrations. Besides sound problems, Pavement were not in a good place, managing to limp through an 18-song set while barely acknowledging each other. The show came to a sudden halt when guitarist Scott Kannberg smashed his guitar

and kicked over his amp in sheer frustration. Stephen Malkmus suggested that this might be Pavement’s swan song. NME reported that he sadly told the crowd: “It’s great that Matador organised this event – I think it’s going to be important that you came.” When I ask the pair about this show, West and Nastanovich exchange knowing glances and chuckle. “Yeah, we sucked,” admits West. “We didn’t play many bad shows that year, but that was one of them.” History tells us that Pavement’s spats never last for all that long. Even after the disaster in Las Vegas, the band jetted off to Brazil and played two club shows without any drama. Looking back now, the 2009 reunion was just another example of the band flying too close to the sun. Even in their ’90s heyday the band could be erratic. On the one hand, they had a remarkable run, releasing five well-regarded albums in ten years and headlining Reading, Glastonbury, Lollapalooza and almost every other festival. Yet, there was always something about the limelight that didn’t sit well with Pavement. You just have to listen to the lyrics of cult classics like ‘Range Life’ and ‘Cut Your Hair’ to find both a deep sense of cynicism about the bombast of the music business and a slightly anxious undertone that a music career might not have been the best choice. Singer Stephen Malkmus, in particular, seemed to hold the music industry in disdain, and it made for some pretty decent copy, especially for people like me who spent the period between 1995 and 1999 sitting in school classrooms arguing about music. Hell, their long-running feud with fellow alternative rock darlings Smashing Pumpkins was right up there with the Blur-Oasis rivalry. 1999 turned out to be a pivotal year, both for Pavement and me. The summer that I got my GCSE results I can remember eagerly watching them play the main stage at Reading Festival a couple of days after my results, in what is still one of my top five live performances. I can also remember sitting in my college cafeteria a couple of months later, reading about the band’s implosion at the Brixton Academy, with bassist Mark Ibold moved to tears during the band’s encore performance of ‘Here’. It truly felt like the end of an era. In a typically sarcastic statement after the show, the band told the world that they were retiring to: 1. Start families 2. Sail around the world 3. Get into the computer industry 4. Dance 5. Get attention Twenty years on and apart from the computer industry bit, Malkmus is probably closest to achieving the complete list. He was already making music with The Jicks in the dog days of Pavement, and in the years since he’s made a name for himself as a well-regarded solo artist in his own right. Bassist Mark

Ibold, meanwhile, spent some time in Sonic Youth, tending a bar in New York and becoming a food writer, while Scott Kannburg makes music as Spiral Stairs, and with former Pavement drummer Gary Young in Preston School of Industry. “After we stopped, I dropped out of music altogether,” Nastanovich tells me when I ask about life without Pavement. Despite appearing on Silver Jews records, horse racing is the main passion in his life these days, and he’s eager to tell me that he knows the running at every British racecourse. “I’ve spent the last few years ensconced in several horse racing jobs; I own a slow horse near my house and mostly spend my time following the races.” “I’m a stonemason,” adds Steve West when I glance over. “I still have occasional conversations about the music stuff, but these days I’m constantly looking for fellow masons where I go. When I get to talk about mortar, lime and trusses: that kind of stuff really gets me going.” CACKLING AT THE BACK

“I tend to wake up at 6AM these days,” Stephen Malkmus tells me when we catch up. As a person who struggles to get out of bed by 9.30, my first thought is to offer sympathy, but he’s fairly forgiving. “It’s just something you

have to do when you have kids, I’m kind of used to it now.” A strange sense of synchronicity hangs in the air over this year’s reunion. Not only does 2022 coincide with the tenth anniversary of the band’s last get-together, it also marks the 30th anniversary of Slanted and Enchanted, the band’s debut album and the record that arguably set the tone for the band’s trajectory ever since. It means that this period drips with a weird sense of nostalgia, almost as if the band are sifting through a box of old photographs and letters and deciding what should and should not go into the scrapbook. “It’s really funny how the relationship with your music changes over time,” the singer observes when I ask him how it’s been going. “There are songs that we have to play that are, like, certifiable Pavement gold, but then there’s those deep cuts and curiosities that change over time, and it’s been fun to revisit those and see how we feel about them now. We’re just trying to figure out what we want to play based on what we can play; what’s unique and what songs go together tempo-wise.” It’s just been announced that Matador will be releasing an anniversary edition of Slanted later this year, and it’s a unique opportunity for the band’s past and present selves to interact simultaneously. Laid out side by side, it’s very clear that the Pavement of 1990 was a very different beast to the Pavement of 1999, let alone 2022. An exercise in spontaneity, vocals were set down in a single take and filled with obscure references and sly in-jokes. The guitar parts lie over the top like afterthoughts

“YOU NEED TO REALISE THAT PAVEMENT glued together by Young’s explosive yet complex drum patterns. This roughed-out approach meant that the band’s gigs were more like performance art when it worked best, an unpredictable force that often confounded as many people as it turned on. To get an idea, I managed to track down footage of an early incarnation of the band playing a 1991 show at the Middle East Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on YouTube, and it’s as chaotically brilliant as I expected. Even though the footage is all warped like an old VHS tape, it nevertheless captures the band’s early years perfectly, from the louche energy to the blissful pop hooks of ‘Box Elder’ and ‘Summer Babe’. The performance is also a window into the chaotic energy that filled the band’s stage show and led to the band’s less than stellar reputation as a live band having to constantly wrangle Gary Young back behind his drum kit between songs. You can see why people labelled the band ‘slacker rock’. All these years later, it’s a moniker that Malkmus still slightly rails against. “I guess if you pushed me, I’d have to say that we were just embracing what we thought was mainstream. At the time, if you could get signed to [legendary hardcore and DIY label] SST, that would be like being Bruce Springsteen

almost. Our music existed in this world of influences and signifiers that were revolving around Maxwell’s and the bands that were playing there. “It also helped that we had pseudonyms; it meant that we didn’t have to play any live shows and could do whatever we wanted without being held accountable,” he continues. “If we fucked it, we could just be like, ‘Yeah, that was nothing to do with us.’ I don’t even think the early releases had any of our pictures on them or anything like that, so it gave us the freedom to hop onto the next trend, like the whole lo-fi thing that was just starting to happen.” Slanted and Enchanted has long been held up as an album that both started and defined ’90s alterno-rock, so the revelation that Pavement half expected to crash and burn opens up some weird conceptual avenues. Don’t you wonder what would’ve happened if the record hadn’t caught fire? We could have had a Pavement that spun off into crazy directions, from Soundgarden rockers to Belle and Sebastian-style twee. Malkmus chuckles when I bring up the idea. “I know, right? Can you imagine? Bob used to get in trouble at Belle and Sebastian’s shows. Always. When they came

IS FUNDAMENTALLY ABOUT WINGING IT” to New York to promote If You’re Feeling Sinister people were so quiet and respectful, and he was just in the back of the bar going ‘Blah, blah, blah’, and people would just be giving him daggers right to his very soul for fucking with the vibe. I think it summed up the role we played: we were maybe the kind of band to cackle at the back; that whole fanzine culture of being pretty sarcastic. Looking back, I’m still amazed that a band as earnest as that managed to make it through the late ’90s.” When our time comes to an end, I’m curious how much the Stephen Malkmus of 2022 recognises and finds common ground with the Stephen Malkmus of 1990. After all, Slanted and Enchanted, for all its cult status, was still Pavement’s first significant piece of work, and nobody gets it 100% right straight out of the gate. Three decades represents a lot of personal growth, and it must be weird to have your musings, thoughts and feelings captured and persevered and picked over. “Looking back, I was kind of lucky it was 1988 and 1990,” muses Malkmus when I bring it up. “I think by that time I was getting a little bit cooler and starting to know that you had to be cool, but knowing how not to say too much or say anything that’s too cringe, so I sort of still recognise that person at that level.

I don’t recognise how I came up with all the lyrics – I definitely can’t do that anymore. Now, I’m sort of like, ‘What am I going to say?’ More doublethink, doubting yourself and stuff. Back then, I had more of a free jazz, poetry-like, just letting it flow [approach] – it’s hard to create that when you don’t have it.” “Do you think it’s a self-awareness thing?” I ask him. “After all, everyone gets a lot more self-aware as they get older.” “It’s definitely easier to be self-conscious now,” he agrees. “I tend to be more cautious because everyone knows who I am, and I’ve got kids at an age where they’ll read it. The internet doesn’t help either. I don’t want to fall back on that, but things are different now. People will just look it up if you try to be obscure and cryptic now. Being wilfully mysterious isn’t the ploy it used to be.” HARNESS YOUR HOPES

Roughly a week later, I drop in again to find that Pavement appear to be humming like a well-oiled machine. “I hope I’m not jumping the gun here, but think we’re sounding better than we ever have,” Mark Ibold says when I ask how the preparations have been going. “It’s helped that we’ve had this really great room with very good sound quality,” adds Scott Kannberg, before injecting a note of caution. “I mean, I still wonder if we’re just going to fall apart when we get on a big stage, but I’ll guess to see what happens.” In many ways, the motive force that propels Pavement comes from the relationship between Malkmus and Kannberg. Childhood friends, the pair of them started what would then go on to become Pavement when they both lived in Stockton, California. In the years that followed, Kannberg’s more grounded everyman persona and straight-up pop sensibilities anchored the more conceptual, high-minded effects of his bandmates. In the band’s later, messier days, Kannberg still had the most skin in the game, was the last to let go and the emotional wreckage still lingers. “Whenever I heard Pavement songs, I just didn’t enjoy them. It all just seemed so far away to me,” he confesses when we talk about his experiences reconnecting with the material. “It wasn’t until about six months ago that I realised that I would have to actually sit down and relearn all the chords and stuff. I went on YouTube and started watching someone play a Pavement song and just started playing along with them, slowly getting back into the chord structures, and even singing along like Steve used to. Then, suddenly, I was like, ‘Man, these songs are great.’ It’s kind of embarrassing to think it took some guy on YouTube to make me realise how great our songs are.” In the decade since the 2009 reunion, the whole world seems to have rediscovered and reclassified Pavement. But

while the renewed interest definitely has its rewards, with the band finally getting some of the love and attention they deserve, it’s also creating a distorted image of their back catalogue. The weird second life of ‘Harness Your Hopes’ is a case in point. A B-side recorded during the sessions for 1997’s Brighten The Corners that wasn’t released until 1999 when it snuck onto the CD-only Spit On A Stranger EP, it was a track known only to the geekiest, most dedicated collectors. But by some quirk of the algorithm, it’s become the band’s most popular song on Spotify and has gone on to spawn something of a dance craze on TikTok. It’s leaving the band more than a little bemused, with Malkmus writing the whole thing off to Stereogum, saying that the sudden rise in likes was because the track was “on a playlist or something… you know, one of those ‘Monday Moods’ or whatever the fuck they do.” Kannberg ushers a groan at the mere mention of the song or Spotify. For him, music streaming and social media appear to be necessary evils at best, and should be better kept at arm’s length. “I know that their reach is vast, and things like this have helped get Pavement out there to a bunch of new fans, but I still can’t help but think, ‘Man, we’re just giving this stuff away for free.’ It feels like it cheapens it a bit, you know?” Still, that hasn’t stopped the band from jumping on the craze. As part of the recent reissue of Terror Twilight, Pavement revisited ‘Harness Your Hopes’ by releasing a new video on YouTube, and the song, along with the Spit on a Stranger EP was finally issued on vinyl back in April. It’s a turn of events that still leaves Mark Ibold more than a bit confused. “I’m still a bit surprised by our whole response to this,” he says with a roll of his eyes. “First, we go and make a video because some fucking algorithm tells us to, and now we’re practising playing it live. That just doesn’t sound like Pavement to me.” “I know, man,” sighs Kannberg, understanding his bandmate’s frustration. “But what can you do?” I guess that’s one of the problems of having a legacy: the bigger it gets, the less control you have over it. As the years go by and the band’s cult status grows ever bigger, their place in popular culture belongs less and less with the creators and more and more with the fans. To me, Pavement felt kind of like a group of kids in the year above, and their music was a roadmap that would help you to figure out the world and your place within it.

But as that recedes into the mists of the past, the band’s output also begins to lose the specificity of its meaning, becoming just another star in a galaxy of alternative rock. “I find it really weird that people equate our band with the ’90s,” says Ibold as we discuss how the perceptions of Pavement have evolved over time. “I was there, and there was a lot of stuff that came out that made me think, ‘Fuck that shit, we shouldn’t have anything to do with that stuff,’ but lo-and-behold, as the years go by, people have attached our band with things that we actively tried to get away from. I guess time and distance skews everything eventually, and things make sense when it was so long ago.” “I don’t think we come up that much at all,” Kannberg says with a smile. “I mean, people show me new bands and go, ‘Don’t you think this band or that band sound like Pavement?’ but I can never hear us in anything. Yeah, maybe we sound new to these kids, but the only kid I know is mine, and she only really listens to k-pop.” WATER SPIRIT FEELING

Our last meeting feels a little bit like an exit interview. As we lounge around the rooftop pool of a hotel near the Primavera site, in Barcelona, the band are excitedly talking about the Mogwai set that they managed to catch last night. “I thought they were just brilliant,” Steve West tells me, bobbing enthusiastically like a kid who’s just caught his favourite band. “They just seemed to get louder and louder.” Pavement played their big comeback show a couple of nights before, and I’m glad to report that all the hard work has paid off. Backed by a simple set-up and playing the set of crowd favourites, rarities and curiosities that they’d promised, it was almost like they had never been away. My personal highlight came at the end, when Malkmus paid tribute to his bandmates before launching into a wonderful, almost ad-libbed cover of Jim Pepper’s ‘Witchitai-To’. “Water spirit feelin’, springing round my head / Makes me glad that I’m not dead.” “Soundcheck didn’t go too well,” says Kannberg as we discuss the gig. “But as soon as we launched into that first song, the sound was great, so I knew it was going to be fine.”

“IT’S KIND OF EMBARRASSING TO THINK IT TOOK SOME GUY ON YOUTUBE TO MAKE ME REALISE HOW GREAT OUR SONGS ARE” 60

Pavement Primavera Sound, Barcelona 02 June 2022

“I thought it was pretty good by our standards,” agrees Steve West, before putting the show into some perspective. “Of course, we always want to be good, wherever we were, but for whatever reason, whether it’s an individual person or the way it sounds, we sometimes end up failing miserably. It’s just that the bad shows have ended up checkering our entire history, so I think it was really great that this one went well.” The sense of collective relief is palpable. Drinking their coffees and chatting happily with one another, the various members of Pavement look as comfortable with each other as they ever have. With the gig out of the way, the band’s priorities are switching to ways to make the most out of their time in Barcelona. West and Kannberg are planning to take their families to see the Sagrada Famila and visit Antoni Gaudí’s home in the Park Güell. Malkmus has already taken off to play some tennis on the outskirts of town and Ibold hasn’t really planned anything. Nastanovich, as always, has horse racing on his mind and is excited to watch the Epsom Derby later in the day. “That’s just my routine,” he says as an explanation. “Back home I’d be grilling, drinking beer and listening to the radio – it’s a pretty easy routine to stick to.” With the big comeback show in the rearview mirror, the obvious question is what’s next? The band already have a huge international tour announced for the end of the summer, and they’re determined to see Primavera as a jumping-off point to get even better. “Ideally, you want to get to a point where you don’t have to worry or think too much about every song and add a little bit more each time,” West explains when I ask them about their ambitions for the autumn. “When I go and see a band, I want to see them enjoy themselves and get a little bit creative with the material, and with the rate we’re improving, I think we’ll get there pretty quickly.” Spending time with the band over the past few weeks, it strikes me that Pavement has been through too much and seen too much to take anything for granted. “I mean age isn’t really a factor in this band, and we’ve added a lot to the mix this time that makes it different,” says Kannberg when the conversation inevitably turns to the future. “Who knows? Maybe, we’ll just be a better band this time?”

Opening the show with a back to back salvo of ‘Frontwards’, ‘Silence Kid’ and ‘Gold Soundz’, the crowd greet the playful guitar licks that introduce each number like long-lost friends. Bassist Mark Ibold patrols the centre of the stage with a face furrowed in passion and Scott Kannberg delivers a high point of the show. Hoiking a towel around his neck across the stage and clutching his guitar close, he delivers a heart-wrenching rendition of ‘Kennel District’ that drips with pathos. The final refrains of “why didn’t I ask?” are roared out with a mixture of stoicism and regret, and deliver the first really touching moment of the festival. Bob Nastanovich, in particular, looks as if he’s having a great time. To be fair, as Pavement’s in-house percussionist, hype man and relief lead singer, it’s kind of his job to get the crowd worked up, but tonight he bounds about like a man on a mission. From the first song, he injects a feverish level of energy, skipping across the stage with a tambourine and grabbing Malkmus in a warm embrace, but he grows into it as the show goes on. His big moment comes when the band transitions from crowd pleaser ‘Cut Your Hair’, through a rare performance of ‘Zurich Is Stained’ and into a spiky version of ‘Two States’. Nastanovich is like a man possessed, leaping down to the front row to hand a tiny tambourine to a girl clutching the railings and leading the assembled masses in screaming “forty million daggers!” into the misty Barcelona night. After a solid 90 minutes, the band finish their set by wheeling out the big guns. ‘Harness Your Hopes’ is followed by ‘Stereo’, ‘Folk Jam’, ‘Shady Lane’ and ‘Range Life’ in rapid-fire succession. From there, Pavement slowly spin down to the end, with in a wistful take on ‘Major Leagues’ and a version of ‘Summer Babe’ that strays into full lighters in the air territory. Malkmus finally gets round to introducing the band, which leads into a wonderful, almost ad-libbed cover of Jim Pepper’s ‘Witchi Tai-to’. It’s a lovely, subdued and genuinely emotional climax to an evening spent with old friends.

Seeking solace With new album Tresor, Welsh experimental pop artist Gwenno is once again turning to the language and folklore of Cornwall for creative and emotional inspiration. She speaks to Tristan Gatward about mythology, symbolism and judging which stories are hers to tell. Photography by Phil Sharp

There might be ghosts in this piece. When I first spoke to Gwenno Saunders on a warm May afternoon in North London, it wasn’t that the evidence of our conversation was deleted or corrupted, so much as it felt somewhat intercepted. Captured by unknown hands. Long stretches of static greeted me as I played back the recording later that evening, the near silence interspersed occasionally by the clear sound of her laugh, or a Cornish word coming into brief focus, unbound from context. While there’s surely an easy explanation as to why the first attempt at this interview would be resigned to some unsalvageable scrapheap – one that (probably) doesn’t involve the supernatural – it really sounded like a fragment from a low-budget folk-horror film. We try again shortly after Sea Change Festival in Totnes, where Gwenno’s stripped back set at St. Mary’s Church was the weekend’s highlight. “Everything happens for a reason,” she laughs, reassuringly. “Seriously, this whole record has been really fucking weird.” Tresor is Gwenno’s third full-length studio album, her first in four years and second to be written almost entirely in the Cornish language of Kernewek. It’s one of her many mother tongues, an endangered dialect deep in a revivalism that her last album Le Kov had a strong hand in shepherding. It’s a language innately her own, but her relationship with it is still that of a foreigner’s. As her music nestles into a steady drift of selfdiscovery, meandering through blissful psych-pop and gentle synth-based ambient that whispers with the intrigue of sounds heard through an open window, she’s aware that her presence is a welcome intrusion, but an intrusion nonetheless. Gwenno’s journey to St. Ives in January 2020 felt different to the times she’d been before, knowing that she wanted to document it somehow. “Normally I have a reason to be there,” she explains, “you know, something to do with the community there, like if someone’s invited me to play a gig. But this time I was imposing myself with my own schedule. I’m quite sensitive to that. I wasn’t invited. “I was staying in an artist cottage; it was a pilchard’s loft at 3 Love Lane, which is down along,” she gestures instinctively to some illusory cartography of St. Ives. She speaks about it like home, with the warmth of familiarity and fondness of experience. “And this is the immediate contradiction,” she says. “St. Ives has an issue with being turned into an artist colony. It hit me when I was there that I was only visiting. I have the Cornish language, but I’m Welsh. I wanted to write in Cornwall and see how I felt about it. But so much of my exploration of the language is to do with trying to get to know the people and the place better; here I was turning up unannounced.” — Searching for connections — The first song on Tresor is a direct picture of 3 Love Lane. ‘An Stevell Nowydh’ directly translates to ‘The New Room’; it’s the opening scene of a record that’s almost totally grounded in time and place. “It’s really an existential crisis to go into a community and say “I’m here now!”, when there’s a stark realisation of the responsibility that your role carries.” Gwenno

laughs, “you’re not going to find answers by swanning in saying “it’s me!” You’re on your own, especially with regards to your own identity. You’ve got to work that out for yourself. And Cornwall’s also a really tough place. People whose only experience of it is going on holiday see it as relaxing and pleasant, but I’ve never felt like that. It’s a tough life. The landscape kind of grabs you, it doesn’t offer you a warm hand and invite you in. The love you can find there isn’t kind; it’s quite arresting, it raps you on the shoulders.” But for all her feelings of misplacement, as soon as Gwenno arrived in St. Ives she ran into some old friends, spending her time writing music in between all-dayers at the Sloop Inn. “I feel like I had a super classic, creative week. You know, [the] local artist being kicked out every night at closing time, getting fresh sea air in the morning, having existential cries over breakfast,” she smiles. But it was an overwhelming time for her, too, acutely aware of her need to genuinely interact, greet the place and its histories on a level. “It really felt like there were a lot of spirits around,” she explains. “When I’m in Cornwall creatively, I’m really conscious that I find the masculine and feminine energies really extreme. More so than in Wales. Wales is obviously a very industrial landscape, with a history of very clear gender roles, but as a whole I feel like there’s an effeminate element to art and collective conscious identity there. When I was writing in St. Ives I felt like there was quite a masculine energy that I was really interested in, but that clashed with a really feminine one in artists – Monica Sjöö would be an example, Ithell Colquhoun – who were really interested in the Earth mother, the spirit, the divine feminine, which seems to come out more from people in Cornwall. “I felt like every ghost [of each place] was saying ‘What do you want?’ I don’t know. I’d just made this decision: I brought everything and the kitchen sink in a massive red suitcase to this place. I felt very insecure and lost, so a lot of my time there was spent working through those emotions. This pursuit I have in the Cornish language is entirely emotional,” she concedes. “I dress things up academically to hide the reality that I’m just searching for emotional connections. And obviously in January 2020 in St. Ives when no one was there, there wasn’t anyone to connect with.” Tresor is remarkably more conversational than Gwenno’s previous work. If Le Kov was a flag-in-the-air statement of a renaissance in the Cornish language, Tresor makes Kernewek sound like something you’d overhear on a train platform amid

converging sounds of bustling strangers and communities. The translations are desperate and searching at times (“How many hours until you understand me? / Is this place real?”) and thoroughly mundane at others (“Fancy a cuppa?”) “I’m such an introvert,” Gwenno says, pragmatically, “it’s why Cornish is absolutely perfect for me. There’s something I can lose, and I become more vulnerable in it. I can disappear into the language sometimes. Your ego’s not important here. Music is a useful thing for everyone. When you’re younger it can all be very ‘I’ve got something to say! I’ve got something to say!” but as you get older,’ she shrugs, “I just want to create and not try and do a hard sell.” In not pushing its didacticism (bar one song called ‘N.Y.C.A.W.’, translated in full as ‘Wales Is Not For Sale’, that still – would you believe – sounds like a song about Cornwall and the housing crisis), Gwenno has created a Cornish album that’s really just an album. She tells me about Phoebe Proctor’s Kernewek poem about fancying a boy in Penzance. “She wasn’t going ‘Save the language!’ She was just saying ‘I really fancy that boy over there, I wonder if he’ll notice me.’ For me, those intimate moments are much more powerful than any big slogans. The domestic, the everyday, noticing the value in small things, especially now we’ve been home so long and those domestic things feel bigger… that’s what I really love in songwriting.” — My stark record — “I do keep thinking that this is going to be my stark record,” she says, addressing how accessible the album feels despite its language barriers, “barren like the moors. I’m a huge fan of Nico; her kind of expression, the austere minimalism, is still something that I absolutely love in art. But Tresor obviously wasn’t supposed to be that record. It started off like that before the pandemic, but once the pandemic came, we were all seeking comfort. It became more important for me to seek beauty and a celebration of imagination in a non-confrontational way… To seek solace. It would have definitely been a starker album sonically if the pandemic hadn’t happened.” The starkness instead comes in the form of a 22-minute film and companion piece to the album, written, directed and produced by Gwenno, complete with the same name. “The album and the film are as important as each other,” she says. “Getting to do the soundtrack for the film was so much fun, too. It sort of feels like a home movie – an experimental film from the ’30s. A lot of times 8mm film gets used as a mood

thing, like in music videos there’s a distorted or wobbly scene to try and be vintage rather than precise, but I liked the idea of using Super 8 to film something properly. I was just trying to celebrate the humour and ridiculousness of life; it’s not too serious. Life is really serious but you’ve got to be serious about enjoying it as well. The film is full of joy. It’s ridiculous, really. Life is ridiculous.” The film follows Gwenno as a young girl watching the miners’ strike in her living room to scenes steeped in surrealism, yet totally grounded in Cornish mythology. She stains her lips blue with wode, smears it as warpaint under her eyes, across her cheeks and follows a red-hatted imp she calls her ‘instinct’ in copycat costume and dance. Through the woods. Up barrows. She ballets a stilted jig on Bryn Celli Ddu by drone-noise and sparse percussion, until they reach three doors – an image taken from The Mabinogion – where two are closed and one faces Cornwall. Even when there’s no direct collaboration, it feels like there’s a spiritual kinship between Gwenno and her friend, the filmmaker Mark Jenkin. There’s a physical and spiritual disconnect on Tresor between what’s seen and heard; the overdubs track it like a silent film scored in its own language. It’s similar to how Gwenno feels in Cornwall: she’s there, but not to stay. It’s not her story, and yet it’s one that she has an absolute right to tell. Martin Ward is a fisherman in Jenkin’s own film Bait – which Gwenno recently scored – played by Edward Rowe, angered by the easy commodification of his coastal village. His in-film lookalike – an archetype of modern Cornish masculinity – lingers over a few seconds of Gwenno’s film, superimposed on a shot of the waves crashing shoreward, as if to warn her that he’s watching her portrayal of Cornwall, there to call out any mistruths. “The song that I was playing in that scene is called ‘The Fisherman’,” Gwenno adds. “I haven’t put it on the record but it’s a seductive thing. A ghost of this man comes in through the window, disappears, and then the female character turns into a fish and vanishes into the night. It comes back to mythology and shapeshifting. I want people to laugh at it. “There’s also less symbolism in Wales because of the reformation and non-conformism,” she says. For her, the film has become an act of almost nationalising an image-based culture. “There’s just this idea of a blank space before you reach God,” she says. “Human beings are very visual creatures. And it’s the same with Methodism in Cornwall, where you get rid of all the superfluous unimportant parts and just do life – do it

austere and do it well. But you need that stuff. You have to claim these images before capitalism sells them back to you. Capitalism is bombarding us with images because someone decided we didn’t need them.” Among the bigger pop moments on the album sits room to explore this wealth of Cornish symbolism and imagery. The standout tracks lean into a willfully indulgent, hallucinatory space, where ambient sprawls through questions of identity through postcards home – Tintagel, the Smugglers’ Coast. ‘Mênan-Tol’ is haiku-esque in its brevity, but has a four-line translation that leaves you breathless with Gwenno’s helplessness, even once reverted to its original Kernewek: “It’s completely obvious / That I’m incapable / Of escaping / From this.” “I’m constantly pulled between two spaces in wanting to explore more ambient and abstract ideas sonically and really loving songs,” she says. “There’s always a clash in those two things.” She adds that while she’s contributed found sounds to the last couple of records, her partner and musical collaborator Rhys Edwards applied more of the landscaping. “It just naturally happened on Tresor that I was a lot more hands on in the studio,” she says. “Particularly with ‘Mênan-Tol’, it feels like my landscape. I’m there but I’m not trying to be there. There’s a bit more space. I’m trying to reach something quite instinctively.” “What I love about Cornish is its robustness. I think that because of the way it sounds, because of the way it reflects the people who use it to live on that landscape, and because of its history it somehow gives me this parallel world to explore that’s both got the depth of human experience and is floating on top of it at the same time. It gives me huge freedom, and because it’s so attached to my childhood and imagination and creating other worlds…” she trails off, looking upwards for the words to come, “you can dig deeper into your unconscious when you use it for many practical reasons, because I have that faraway-ness to it. There’s a huge mystery to it as well as it being a practical thing that I use every day. “Of course,” she finishes, “it is also really important to me that Tresor is seen as a Cornish album. It’s an experience that I had within the language. Music is for lots of reasons. You need to work out all the different ways a language can be used. Can you feel stuff in it? Can you long for something? Can you be frustrated? Can it be everyday?” Gwenno sighs. “It’s an odd thing trying to work out where within it you feel most comfortable. You’re always trying to have a conversation but it’s trying to know where you sit within that conversation. There are big pop songs on Tresor, but I like being the wallpaper too.”

Time travel with David Keenan Art is magic and magic is memory. Spend enough time with evangelistic, Airdrie-born author David Keenan and you will be convinced of this. “Belief in art is what moves me because I know it changes people’s lives,” a fervent Keenan says with a glint in his eye as he sets off on another passionate monologue. “It’s truly magical, that’s why people fell in love with This Is Memorial Device, because it trades on memories of every small town we grew up in. If you cared about art and you transformed your life to do it, that was actually bolder and braver than Iggy Pop doing it.” Keenan is talking about his debut novel from 2017, the now-cult-classic This is Memorial Device, a transformational piece of work that hurtles deep into the fictionalised post-punk music scene of his hometown in the late 1970s and ’80s. Three dizzyingly brilliant books from Keenan followed, but only now do we return to Airdrie for a Memorial Device prequel set in the 1960s. “Ever since I was a kid I was reading critical rock books, fanzines, comics, sci-fi films…” says Keenan. “The DIY thing came out of that and got me into underground music and it’s still where my heart is. This is very much what Industry of Magic and Light is about – the cultural heroism of partaking in the moment.” Why, then, is the novel set in the 1960s, before Keenan was born and long before he began engaging in such heroism? “I have always collected original ’60s albums and poetry, so I decided to write my own version,” he says. “Even my novel, For the Good Times, set in Belfast in the ’70s, was an alternative take on the past, engaging with history on a micro-level. I use the ’60s setting to reveal primary artefacts of the time and create an inventory. I own original letters from the American poet Jack Hirschman and I was gifted an entire collection of hand bound early Rolling Stone magazines so I was reading these as I was writing. The personal ads were so evocative. I realised the thing that was advertised the most in Rolling Stone were waterbeds – waterbeds were so big then, man – so they became part of the story. Just like Memorial Device, you are using fiction to get deeper into what really happened and I believe you can do that, that’s one of the great powers of fiction.” Keenan relishes the hippy life. Aside from when he satisfies his voracious reading habit, he tells

me he’s never been happier than when growing his own veg or building wooden huts in his backyard; the spiritual connection to the ’60s doesn’t seem far-fetched. “People like [philosopher and counterculture icon] Alan Watts changed my life, and psychedelic music is everything to me. I wanted to write a hymn to what a magical moment in time that was and also a requiem for its passing. We are moving away from that amazing point in time where, much like Memorial Device, small towns were temporarily transformed by culture. Now these places, even the Airdrie that I love, are not the same, culture is not there anymore and if it is happening behind closed doors you don’t see culture on the streets like the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s when the tribes were there to be recognised.” Before fiction came a career in music journalism, and Keenan felt compelled to return to that world for Industry of Magic and Light, turning his critical gaze to one of his own characters’ record collection. “I wrote reviews for the weirdo records he had, whether it’s Alice Coltrane or Moon Blood by Fraction. It was all in my high-energy review style and I loved it. The revelation for me was that it’s the same thing – a similar evangelism in everything I do. Music writing teaches you to write in a psychedelic way; I think you have to step up to the plate and write something that lives up to the music, reads like the music, feels like the music. I realised that my novelistic mission is exactly the same.” Looking back through Keenan’s work, you can trace this musicality, whether it’s in the construction of his sentences or a more literal approach to song. “Take my book Xstabeth: you can hear guitar chords at some points where I try to turn literature into music. It’s one of my favourite books and it remains inexplicable to me.” — Memories of memories of memories — A key influence on Keenan’s dedication to subculture was American rock critic Lester Bangs. “[He] changed my life. I know his writing off by heart and I listened to every record he recommended. I wasn’t into critical analysis as I wanted to read people who could write as good as my favourite records [sounded]. I like Lester Bangs writing about Lou Reed as much as I like listening to Lou Reed.” If it wasn’t for Bangs, Keenan would never

With his new novel Industry of Magic and Light, the Scottish author and DIY music evangelist is embracing the cosmic potential of small town subculture, by Ian Roebuck. Photography by Heather Leigh

have published his own fanzine aged just 16 – “We were into a lot of good indie music at the time, like Orange Juice, The Pastels and Josef K, but we were also into stuff like A Guy Called Gerald; it was a really exciting time” – or written to Spiral Scratch and Melody Maker. “[Those publications] liked my writing and it went from there. I moved to London, as my girlfriend at the time got a job producing the John Peel show, so I got to hang out with him quite a lot. I was really into experimental music and I wrote a piece for Melody Maker about Keiji Haino, which [The Wire editor] Tony Herrington loved. He left a message on my answer machine saying would I like to come and write for them. It was a dream come true; the next day I had to go in and meet Tony, and he

never fucking turned up. But after that I wrote for The Wire for 25 years.” It was at The Wire where Keenan found his voice, helping refocus the influential publication away from its initial exclusive emphasis on jazz towards a wider range of experimental and psychedelic music. While writing for the magazine in 2009, he coined the term ‘hypnagogic pop’ to describe a group of musicians who resembled “pop refracted through a memory of a memory”. A maelstrom of hate followed, labelling ‘h-pop’, as it was sometimes known, “the worst ever genre created by a journalist”. “People get annoyed about anything, don’t they?” says Keenan. “All I am doing is writing about things in an interesting way. To me James Ferraro and Spencer Clark were just fascinating artists. It was a discussion with James, where we were comparing his music to the sound of disco filtering through a wall and he said it was like his dream memories of growing up inside the pop culture of the time. I just thought it was so original and brilliant what they did, pop music in the periphery of articulation. I still love the idea of it, approaching pop in a very dubbed-out, mugged-up, psychedelic way. It ties into my books, memories of memories of memories.” The power of remembrance resonates through Keenan’s work, an artist himself who arguably trades in nostalgia, just like hypnagogic pop. “I think it’s different as I keep it alive, my books are not about those eras, they are presentations of those eras. For the Good Times [set in 1970s Belfast] isn’t about the Troubles, it takes you to the Troubles and you experience it. There is not one stance on anything, otherwise it would be mere nostalgia; what I do is present the era in all its complexity. I still believe that literature can travel through time, can put you there completely. It feels even more real than it was, you can go to a place in Airdrie where something didn’t happen but get closer to what actually did happen in those times. It’s mad but true. In a way that’s what great music journalism does; it takes you to Ludlow Street in 1965, where Tony Conrad is living with Lou Reed and Angus Maclise – it takes you right there.” That, we can agree, is pure magic.

Black Midi

and the Holy Grail We sent London’s weirdest rock band to a Da Vinci-themed escape room with Oskar Jeff, obviously. Photography by Jonangelo Molinari

When I was told I was going to interview London experimental rock group Black Midi in an escape room in Shepherd’s Bush, I’d be lying if I said that the Vice-meets-Partridge character of the prospect didn’t occur to me. But considering that the previous idea had been ‘Wild Swimming with Black Midi’, and myself and at least one member of the band are barely able to swim, it seemed the better option. Although I maintain that ‘Drowning with Black Midi’ does have a ring to it. Regardless, the LARPy thrills of an escape room perfectly fit the band’s off-kilter approach, and upon being locked in the small room with bassist Cameron Picton, vocalist/guitarist Geordie Greep and drummer Morgan Simpson, the mission is taken head-on and in good humour. The infectious enthusiasm of our Games Master (aka, the guy working at the escape room that day) is also notable; he’s bemused yet intrigued by the proposal of an interview taking place in one of his rooms. The ‘Da Vinci Room’ itself is decked out like an office with eerie, cultish inflections. Robes adorned the walls alongside replica academia and certification. A typewriter sits on the desk. A wardrobe looms large. The task at hand is to find the Holy Grail, and along the way, find out a little about the group’s new record, Hellfire. There are codes to be cracked, and questions to be answered. — “There’s robes and shit you can try on!” — Hellfire, the group’s third outing, expands on the oddball quirks and unashamedly accomplished musicianship that has long set the group apart from a U.K. music scene that’s increasingly resembling some sort of backwards-looking, post-punk revivalist wasteland. Where some contemporaries may be guilty of a lack of imagination, satisfied to cash in on the rehash industry, Black Midi continue to persevere with a blinkered drive, beguiling and alienating in equal measure. The new record is a collection of tall tales about low-lifes, soundtracked by an anything-goes approach that, more often than not, veers on sheer musical theatre at its most nauseatingly accelerated. Though not narratively coherent by design, the tracks certainly feel that they inhabit a world, with a firstperson perspective that vividly narrates its revolving rogues gallery. I’ve sat with the record for a week or so before entering the escape room, and truth be told, I’m still not entirely sure what to make of it. As we begin searching the office for clues, I question lead vocalist Geordie on his notable shift in writing style, which sees him embodying characters rather than observing them. “A lot of the last album was third-person because at the time I felt it was an easier method, it felt like it could be much more stylised. Writing in first-person, there’s more potential for scrutiny of the veracity of it, it feels like it needs to be more true to life. Now I feel more comfortable playing with it.

“I was always hesitant to be upfront with what the songs were about, to make their meaning too evident,” he continues. “But then, when something is more abstract, you realise you can’t underestimate the audience’s ability to come up with the naffest meaning possible, something you absolutely didn’t intend. So I just thought, ‘Enough of that, I’m gonna make it extremely clear what it’s about.’” With this shift has come a more pronounced fleshing-out of characters, making ample use of Greep’s signature animated vocal style. His approach on the opening title track brings to mind Tom Waits at his most rousingly sodden, a good fit for the sleazy disposition of the many denizens of the record. “I do like Tom Waits,” he acknowledges, “but really the first track is almost a direct rip-off of [authors and playwrights] Thomas Bernhard or Samuel Beckett, as well as Richard Yates. People like that.” As the album takes its deep plunge into the theatrical, more surprising influences rear their heads. I suggest that there’s a strong element of Frank Sinatra to tracks like ‘The Defence’, with its grand, stirring tension and release. Greep nods, adding, “For sure, stylistically it sounds like that, but the subject matter is not something you’d typically hear in one of those songs. I really like the short stories of Guy de Maupassant – ‘The Defence’ is inspired by one of them. ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ is really inspired by the short stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer, a Jewish writer, who did all this work about people being possessed by the devil, making deals with the devil, or women having affairs with the devil, but with good humour. But also that track owes a great debt to gangster movies, hitmen, true crime, all that.” Mentions of the literary and filmic influences seem to provoke a more keen and concise response from the singer, but he goes on to acknowledge a variety of musical touchpoints that contextualise the sonic direction of the record, while explaining the inherent juxtaposition of the lyrics and music as the driving force. “The cabaret songs of Kurt Weill from the 1920 and ’30s, loads of musicals, Rodgers and Hammerstein. Singin’ In The Rain, and all that,” he says. “I also love Barbara Streisand. But it’s taking all that stuff, and giving it dark humour, a sense of the macabre. What they wouldn’t usually be talking about in that kind of music.” — Finding clues — Elsewhere on Hellfire, Greep’s love of boxing is a clear inspiration for ‘Sugar/Tzu’, a track that stems from one of the group’s earliest jams as school children. While Geordie and Cameron attempted to crack a reverse riddle using a mirror, I ask Morgan about the track. “That’s probably six or seven years old,” he reveals. “Me and Geordie used to just jam, and it’s one of those bits that’s

“You can’t underestimate the audience’s ability to come up with the naffest meaning of a song possible, something you absolutely didn’t intend”

always stuck with me. We’d probably tried to shoehorn it in before, but this time it just felt right.” He goes on to explain how the album’s recording continued to develop the band’s focus on traditional songwriting, rather than the jamming that had characterised much of their earliest work. “It’s definitely a continuation of the second album compositionally. We realised the success we had working in that way. Also, time-wise, it’s less excessive.” I ask if the group have moved on from explorative jamming as it has outlasted its purpose of allowing them to understand each other musically; now they are so used to one another, they can afford to be more direct. Morgan responds, “Yeah, maybe. I’ve never thought about it that way. The jamming felt like the only thing we knew at the time, not that we did it to understand each other musically, that’s just what was going on then.” “It was an intense recording process,” adds Cameron. “Besides two tracks we did in June, the rest were recorded in 13 straight days, and we were the only ones constantly in the studio.” That last sentence suggests a certain confidence; three albums in, that seems to be the prevailing theme. “Essentially, it’s just being less afraid of doing something because it’s too ‘naff ’, or not coherent with the general sound,” asserts Geordie. “Just being more open to doing stuff that we actually like. A lot of the music that I like has that campy sense, and that kind of fearlessness in putting disparate sounds together. So, it’s just being more open with that, and working with, not necessarily pastiche, but incorporating unlikely things in an interesting way.” The group have now robed up in the Knights Templarstyle garments that were in the room when we entered, and which hold further clues when examined using U.V. torches. “For me personally,” Morgan says, “it’s a meeting of the first and second album. We’ve brought back the claustrophobic energy of Schlagenheim in a way that we didn’t with Cavalcade.” There’s certainly a claustrophobia to the density of the record, but overall there’s an expansive theatricality to the album. Both sonically and compositionally, it drips with big band bluster, asserting itself with knee-jerk stage-show tonal shifts and vocal spotlights, allowing Greep’s characters to grapple the pace of the record to their individual needs. “The lyrics were done in a very short period of time,” he explains, “I just kept coming back to the same stuff. At first, I thought it was a bit cheap to be harping on the same subjects so much, but it was just what was naturally coming out and it made sense together.”

For all this, it certainly still sounds like Black Midi, but with a bigger hat on. And maybe a cane, waved intermittently with expressive bravado, helping to pull the whole thing along. It’s difficult to explain, not least for the band themselves; yet when I ask if this was intentional, Morgan straightforwardly replies: “100%.” “Even live,” Cameron adds, “the performance itself is very theatrical, lots of coordinated dancing, lots of stupidness, for lack of a better word. Not that different from a cabaret show.” This doesn’t feel like an artistic shift, rather an expansion of the camp showmanship that has cast the group as anomalies in whatever scene people seem to have placed them in. — The grass is always greener — I ask the group if they ever worry about alienating their fanbase with their seemingly nonchalant approach to stylistic left-turns. “I think we’re actually trying to grow that,” Cameron retorts, “When we go to the U.S., there’s no expectation from the crowd as to what we do, they’re just happy to see what it is.” I’m taken aback by the unanimous verdict on the difference between U.K. and U.S. audiences that follows from all three band members. “In the U.K. and Europe there’s much more of a specific type of performance that you are expected to put on, or certain songs you are expected to play, or play in a certain way, or whatever,” Cameron expands. Could this simply be the predictable fallout of the level of hype the band saw initially in the U.K.? Geordie counterposes that “it’s cos the audiences here are a bit entitled, with the legacy of British music, the attitude is a bit like ‘you’re lucky you’ve even got a show, you’re lucky we are even coming to your show’, where as in the U.S., you’re just a foreign band coming over, they are just happy to see some music. It’s the same in Eastern Europe, Russia, Japan. They are just happy to see a show.” Interestingly, it’s almost a cliché of American alternative artists from previous generations to say the reverse, comparing a lack of reception at home to adulation in Europe. “Maybe it’s just a grass-always-greener thing,” answers Geordie. At this moment, the combination lock on the wardrobe is cracked, and a rush of genuine exhilaration washes over us as a secret second room is revealed. As we continue onward, I return back to the group’s earlier years. Much has been said of Morgan’s childhood playing in family church bands, or the band’s forma-

tion at the infamous BRIT School, but I wonder what music it was that they first felt they’d discovered on their own. “Frank Zappa,” says Geordie. “My dad wasn’t a huge fan of Frank Zappa, but I got really into him. All of the bands I got into when I was younger, like AC/DC, was stuff he wasn’t really into.” Morgan zeroes in on a later influence. “I think for me, it was when [D’Angelo’s] Black Messiah came out, that was a game-changer. That was the first record where I was just in that world for months. It’s always cool when you have a point when you realise you can have your own taste. You realise you don’t have to listen to what your parents or mates are telling me to listen to. “The thing I love about D’Angelo is that he’s not afraid to pay homage to his forepeople,” he expands. “Be it James Brown, Funkadelic, Sly and the Family Stone.” The idea of paying homage rings true for the group, who are known for their at-times-unexpected covers (Taylor Swift’s ‘Love Story’ a recent example). While there’s certainly an element of humour to some of these renditions, it would be foolish to ignore that they’re still driven at heart by the band’s sheer enthusiasm for music. “It’s just songs we really like, like ‘let’s just do it’, just playing homage,” says Morgan. “Songbook vibes. The Black Midi songbook, coming soon…” With that, the timer goes off. Our hour is up. We didn’t find the Holy Grail. We didn’t escape. “Now we’re not gonna get

on the Wall of Fame,” I hear a slightly dejected voice mutter. “When the secret door opened though, that was an epic moment,” says Geordie with a genuine smile. — Enter the barrage — Later that night, they announce an impromptu gig at The Lexington in Islington. The group made clear earlier that they see the live and recorded components of what they do as two different entities, and as they came on to the stage, many of the things we had spoken about came to mind. Opening fan favourite ‘953’ is prefaced with a sixth form-like interpolation of Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’. Joined by a keyboardist and a saxophonist, the newer tracks meld seamlessly into the setlist, a cacophonous barrage, where songs rarely seemed to begin or end in any coherent manner. It’s now clear that my question about alienating the audience was a non-starter, as the crowd is hysterically engaged throughout. What strikes me most is the myriad of literary influences that Geordie mentioned earlier. For all the frenetic energy that the tracks gain from the live performance, the storytelling is understandably cut adrift in the wall of sound. I feel a latent appreciation for Hellfire, eager to return to its nightmarish showtunes after having experienced its full extension of on and off-stage mutations.

Final Third: In conversation Neneh Cherry is determined to keep moving forward. Feeling hardcore and acknowledging how much work there remains to be done, she speaks with Jessica Wrigglesworth

photography by iñigo viñas for indie magazine

Allergic to nostalgia Few people have had a cultural impact like Neneh Cherry. The Swedish-born, UK-based artist started her musical career in The Slits, and went on to gain global recognition as a solo artist with her 1988 single ‘Buffalo Stance’, which she famously performed on Top of The Pops whilst seven months pregnant. Always irreverent, unpredictable and supremely stylish, she has released five studio albums, collaborated with Peter Gabriel, Massive Attack, Michael Stipe, Lenny Kravitz, Geoff Barrow and Four Tet, and recently starred in a campaign for Italian fashion house Bottega Veneta. After re-issuing her debut album Raw Like Sushi in 2020, Cherry began work on The Versions, a project which sees some of her best-loved songs reimagined by other musicians. Robyn, Sia, Kelsey Lu, ANOHNI, Jamila Woods, Sudan Archives, Seinabo Sey, Greentea Peng, Honey Dijon and Cherry’s daughter TYSON have all contributed. This eclectic lineup represents the breadth of genres which Cherry’s back catalogue spans, and how wide her influence has spread. I met Cherry at the home she shares with her husband (and longtime collaborator), the producer Cameron McVey, to discuss her reaction to the cover tracks, the importance of creative innovation, and unapologetic femininity in the music industry. Sat in her garden with her two greyhounds Imani and Tahini curled under her feet, Cherry is warm, funny and thoughtful – utterly at ease with herself but by no means an egotist. She’d much rather talk about the women who have contributed to The Versions, and how invigorating and nourishing the project has been for her. Jessica Wrigglesworth: I’ve been listening loads to The Versions – they’re so good! Are you excited for everyone to hear them? Neneh Cherry: They’re like gifts! Each one is a different present. For me it was about the actual women, asking the different people that I love, and of course just wanting them to do it because of who they are. Then hearing what they’ve done, it’s just mind-blowing. JW: It must be so special hearing these things that you put out in the world coming back to you in a different form. When did you first have the idea?

NC: When the Raw Like Sushi reissue came out [in 2020], we – me, Cameron, and Robin [Pasricha, Cherry’s manager] – were thinking, “What else would be a fun, creative thing to do, rather than a so-called greatest hits record?” I’ve always loved remixes and the idea of re-doing things, so I guess the first idea was like, getting one song re-done. I think the first thing that came up was ‘Buffalo Stance’ and that maybe Robyn would do it and from there it was like a penny dropped. I’ve said a million times I’m kind of allergic to nostalgia. There’s a room where if you stay in it too long, it can almost start to feel a bit karaoke, you’re just re-using old matter because you can. I can never quite get my head around the fact that even now younger generations would say, “Oh, ‘Buffalo Stance’ is a really cool tune”. I’m always like, “Oh, wow, really?” So I think there’s also been a focus with the whole project to work with the new crew that are out there. JW: Did the list of artists come together organically? Did you already know that you wanted it to be all women when you started or did that just happen? NC: I think that that was one of the definite threads, to make it a female-identifying, women-led project, it felt right. And then we just made a wish list, and sent it out to the allocated creatures in the universe. Pretty much everybody, which I couldn’t really believe, wanted to do it. JW: Were there any tracks that particularly surprised you when they came back, or made you see the song in a different light? NC: ANOHNI’s version of ‘Woman’, to me, was how I’ve always dreamt that the song should be. There’s an aspect of it that I find quite… maybe slightly pompous? And I’ve always had a bit of a battle with it, and when I’ve done it live, I’ve tried to reinvent it, or break it down and make it a bit more rugged. And ANOHNI’s version has that, it’s got more kind of Nina Simone blood and guts. And I love Seinabo [Sey]’s ‘Kisses on the Wind’. I think actually it’s the songs that maybe I didn’t like so much at the time that surprised me most. I had a bit of a weird relationship with ‘Kisses on the Wind’ because I never thought it should be a single and in America, it became a single because the label wanted more pop hits. In Europe, we put out ‘Manchild’ which was like the perfect kind of contradicting balance to

Final Third: In conversation

“I have moments where I think I’m fucking hardcore, and then two days later, you wake up and you feel weird”

‘Buffalo Stance’. It’s not that I don’t like ‘Kisses on the Wind’ but I never quite believed it at the time as a single, it always felt like a bit of a sell-out. So I think Seinabo’s reinvention makes it a much more interesting and kind of deeper song in a way, maybe because it was a bit more throwaway. But also I like Greentea Peng’s ‘Buddy X’! and ‘Sassy’! Tyson’s ‘Sassy’. Sia doing ‘Manchild’, Kelsey Lu, Jamila Woods, Honey Dijon, Sudan Archives. It sounds stupid, but actually, each one of them and I think a really cool part of the whole journey is that each one has come at different times. It wasn’t like, “Here you go, this is the full package” – they’ve all just kind of plopped in. JW: What was your relationship with the artists when they were doing the covers, were people in touch with you about it? Or did you leave them to it and just wait for the tracks to arrive in your inbox? NC: I had some conversations, not many. And I didn’t really want to, the point wasn’t that I should influence them in any way. Robyn had some questions about ‘Buffalo Stance.’ I love her because she’s absolutely from the heart, and there’s always an injection of her full self inside her songs which to me is why she’s a great songwriter. Within that, there’s also a lot of thought, so she needed to talk through certain things. The same thing with ANOHNI. My only real instruction was just to do with it as you feel – you don’t owe it anything, if you just wanted to use one word, or half a sentence that’s fine. Because that’s the magic of music, we all interpret and hear things differently depending on what our life story is; a tune might represent a place you’ve been, or something that you’re thinking about. So I wanted to leave it open, a blank sheet. JW: Has it led to any further collaborations, are you writing any new stuff at the moment? NC: I haven’t started writing new stuff yet, but this has also been really inspiring, so I feel ready to go. If I look at the whole of The Versions, I feel like I’ve reconnected to the songs, and also that I’ve reconnected or connected with each of the individual women, in a very special way. I’ve thought a lot about seeing everybody individually, and it could be fun to get everybody together, to gather the whole posse and do something. But I think [The Versions] pulls at some very beautiful threads internally for me, in a [particular] time in my life. I mean, by no means do I feel like I’m done, but also, I can’t deny it, I’ve

passed through a lot of things. It would be weird if I didn’t sit back and reflect on a certain amount of that journey, and where it’s taken me and what that means, so I think it’s a really great time to harness, to pull these things in and have something like this happen. It brings new life to it, it kind of brings [the music] out in front rather than behind. JW: There’s so much about female energy and femininity within the songs themselves, as well as the fact that you chose to use all-women in this project. How much has changed, do you think, especially as a mother to two female musicians [TYSON and Mabel], for women in the music industry? NC: I mean of course, things have changed. If you look at festival lineups, way too often there’s still a male dominance, but I think that if you look at the underbelly of change, so much has yet to come. But we’re doing it, I feel like we’re actually talking about what needs to be changed, and I think that as a woman and as a kind of elder to a lot of other women, I’m so proud and touched by the female community in their determination and the intention to not take any more shit. But there is this kind of mass thing that weighs on all of us, not just in music. Every fucking shop window I walk past, I look at the size of my bum. I have this thing in the front of my head where it’s like, “Fuck it, I am who I am”, but I still struggle with feeling insecure about my body, and also going on a kind of personal riot against those feelings because I fucking hate them. JW: There’s this soft power thing that seems to be a running thread in your work – it’s being unapologetic and not feeling like you have to make any excuses, but doing it in a way that’s very gentle at the same time, not stepping on anyone’s toes or having an ego but just doing what you came to do. NC: Yes, and doing it in the way that you do it. And of course the women that have been before us, that fought for change, that had to roll into higher places to be taken seriously, had to maybe be hardcore in a different way, and I’m not saying that that wasn’t important but I think we’re coming to a place of genuinity. It’s so important for us to be inside ourselves, to feel that you’re worthy – because each and every individual is unique, and your way matters. I haven’t had a day in my life where I didn’t feel awkward JW: I would never have expected that! NC: We’re all sensitive – it just depends on how you process your sensitivity. Just being human, it’s quirky, it’s weird. I have moments where I think I’m fucking hardcore and I feel great, you come home from a holiday and you’re like, “Oh yeah, I’ve got it now”, and then two days later, you wake up and you feel weird. But I think that’s ok. We’re coming to a place where it’s ok to feel a bit weird, or to have a day where you don’t feel that good at talking to someone. And as weird as the world is right now, I’m also super interested and intrigued by all the amazing work that’s coming. There are so many important conversations about women, race, gender, and it’s a fragile thing – we’re having the conversations but we have to remember to also listen, because we have to hear the fine tuning to be able to reach what you were saying – to be gentle and powerful at the same time.

A monthly record club from Loud And Quiet and Totnes record store DRIFT 10 new LPs with 10% off for L&Q Members in June’s collection

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Final Third: My Place

Seaweed, wrestling and one very strange kids’ film you’ve never seen Lead Pig and Box Records mastermind Matt Baty shows us around his home in Newcastle, by Luke Cartledge. Photography by Liza Stockport

Like a lot of scary-sounding heavy musicians, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs frontman Matt Baty is much less intimidating in real life. His Lemmy-esque bellow is softened, his stage grimace eased into a goofy smile. He’s even got his top on. Another thing he shares with many of his fellow metalheads is a fascination with the esoteric, and enough of a collector’s impulse to give this interest an impressive physical form. His Newcastle home is bursting with stuff – artwork (much of which was made by his partner), wrestling memorabilia, records, kitschy ornaments, DVDs, weird furniture – the latter of which is about to come in handy. “Fucking hell!” Two minutes into our conversation, he lurches sideways without warning. “Ah man, my chair’s broken.” He produces another from somewhere. “Sorry about that.” For over a decade now, Baty has been at the heart of a fertile DIY scene in Newcastle, as a musician himself and as the head honcho of his label Box Records. He’s best known as the lungs behind the aforementioned Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, the behemothic doom band who’ve spent the past few years slowly but surely becoming cult heroes to audiences way beyond dedicated metal circles, mainly through being one of the most viscerally fun live acts in the country. Baty has also served as experimental folk singer Richard Dawson’s live drummer – something he describes as “a real honour, he’s one of my favourite musicians in the world” – and, through Box, was an early champion of artists like Thank, Gnod, Italia 90 and Lower Slaughter. When we speak, Baty is in the middle of a break between tour stretches with Pigs – he’ll be heading over to the Netherlands in a couple of days. “It’s looking really exciting,” he says. “We’re kind of getting the ball rolling with gigging again this year.” With an as-yetunnamed new album in the pipeline, pencilled for early 2023, the band are gearing up to go full steam ahead now the restrictions are lifted, so it’s good to catch Baty at home while he’s still got the time to show us around.

1 Boxing gloves I’ve been going to kickboxing classes for a year and a half. The place is really close to my house. I was really unfit before the pandemic – I hardly did any exercise whatsoever – but I used the lockdown time to work out, go on runs, do loads of yoga at home, stuff like that. It kept my sanity levels in check, I suppose. And I walked past this place, and it caught my eye, and I thought, “I’ll give it a go.” I’ve never done martial arts, I’ve never been in a fight in my life, I don’t class myself as an aggressive person at all. But I’ve absolutely loved it from the very first class, and I’ve got a bit obsessed with it. It’s a really nice environment – if I’d walked in there, and it was a really competitive, macho place, that would have put me off straight away, but it’s much the opposite. It’s been really good for me to have something outside of music to kind of get obsessed about. Music is incredible, it’s everything to me, but it’s also tiring and stressful. Having something else to divert my attention in times is invaluable. 2 Kaftan This was our bass player Johnny’s dad’s. His mum made it for his dad in the ’70s. During early Pigs gigs, I would wear a kaftan, but it was just like a really cheaply made one, in this kind of plasticky material, and then Johnny’s mum produced this when we were rehearsing. I wore it for a good while, maybe a year, through the first Pigs gigs, but I stopped wearing it for a couple of reasons. There was a defining moment we were playing in Glasgow, and I got the mic lead completely tangled up in the hood. It tangled in a way that left my arms suspended in the air, and I couldn’t untangle the lead from behind, and I remember thinking, “Oh my god, I’m completely stuck like this.” So it got retired. It’s really thick material as well, so it’s really hot. It’s a beautiful garment though.

Final Third: My Place

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Final Third: My Place

“We take the Gary Numan mirror down at Christmas, because we reckon Gary Numan doesn’t like Christmas”

3 Painting by Roberta Louisa Green My partner did this. I see her as an outsider artist – she’s got no real ambition to exhibit her work, but I think it’s brilliant. She uses it as a way to process traumas she’s been through in her life, so quite often the pictures are kind of macabre – she’s big into mythology, so she’ll draw characters that are like deities but they’re of her own creation, giving her own meanings to them, and it’s all part of this healing process. Our house is full of paintings and drawings, but that one’s a particular favourite. They’ll often be a juxtaposition between the macabre atmosphere and the colour palette she uses – lots of pinks and yellows, so at a glance it’s quite a fun thing to look at, but when you start to unpick it there’s more serious things going on there.

4 Gary Numan mirror This has pride of place in the living room. It’s pleasant looking at a mirror and seeing Gary Numan staring back at you. We’ve got this tradition where at Christmas we take him down and put him in a cupboard, because we reckon Gary Numan doesn’t like Christmas. We put him away for the whole of December, and put up a really tacky, tinselly Santa in his place.

5 The Adventures of Mark Twain DVD I had this on VHS when I was a kid, and nobody in my family knows who bought it. It’s really, really weird – especially for a kids’ film. It’s a stop-motion clay animation – the quality of it is mind-blowing. The animation is just superb. It came out in 1985, the year I was born, and I was watching it nestled amongst like Disney films at home. I watched it a lot. The premise of the film is that Mark Twain is on this blimpslash-spaceship, and he’s chasing Halley’s Comet, because he thinks that he has some sort of destiny with it. and the whole thing. It’s got this thread of human mortality to it. These three kids sneak on board the blimp, and explore these fantasy worlds where they start to incorporate some of the Mark Twain stories. There are two Mark Twains on it – one that’s a bit more approachable, and another who looks exactly the same but dressed all in black, symbolising the shadow side of his personality or something, he’s more morose. And there are some really, really intense scenes in there – there’s one in particular where they step out into space basically, and on a small planet. And there’s this being on there that describes itself as an angel, and it says its name is Satan. Then it creates this little medieval town on the planet, and they’re observing the little townspeople, trading with each other, having ceremonies, there’s a king and queen, and then the angel starts shooting thunder and lightning at them, causes an earthquake, they’re all perishing, and all the kids watching are just beside themselves. And there’s a line where he says, “I can do no wrong, for I do not know what it is.” I was watching this at, like, five years old.

Final Third: My Place 6 The Magic Bridge by Richard Dawson Richard is one of my favourite musicians in the world. It just so happens that he lives in Newcastle. I was fortunate enough to see him early on. The first time I saw him play was about 12 years ago, if not a little bit more, in a Spanish restaurant that’s right next to St James’ Park. The first Sunday of every month they would use the first floor as a little venue space, and it would run an open mic night. It was kind of leftfield – me and Sam from Pigs used to go and do improvised ambient drone stuff. At one of these shows was Richard, and he came on and played a really long song, like nearly ten minutes, about the cats that he’d had growing up. It was basically a song about mortality, and I remember sitting at one of these tables and I was crying. Since that moment, I’ve been completely besotted by his music. This record, The Magic Bridge, is the Box Records pressing. I’d only ever done one release then, and I didn’t know what I was doing. There were no releases for about two years after that because I thought, “Releasing records is really difficult. It’s expensive, it’s time consuming.” And at the time I was on the dole. But then I moved back to Newcastle. I’d seen Richard a bunch of times and he put out The Magic Bridge and I remember him saying it wasn’t on vinyl, and I just thought that was a shame. We’re still friends. We’re making it a bit of a tradition of having Richard on each Pigs album. He was on [2018’s] King of Cowards. And he was on the last one [2020’s Viscerals]. He played one cowbell hit on the last album, and the next album has also got one very, very important cowbell hit from him.

7 Laverbread This is a Welsh delicacy. It’s a delicacy in the sense that I think only a small percentage of people will actually enjoy it. Most people with normal tastebuds will just think it’s horrific. It’s seaweed, that they boil down for ages. Most people would probably describe it as having a very slimy texture, whereas I prefer to say it’s silky.

8 Wrestling annuals I’m a bit of a closet wrestling fan – I still watch it – but these have survived since I was a kid. And they’re just one of those things that elicit that weirdly wonderful nostalgic feeling. You get in your brain when you look at something from a childhood that was fun. When I think about it, like, I know it’s a really daft universe, the whole wrestling thing, but it’s possibly the earliest form of entertainment that elicited real emotion from me as an art form, if you want to call it that. I remember quite vividly hiding behind the couch in tears, as this guy called Crush was beating ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage. It was the first time I’d ever seen like any of the wrestlers draw blood – he had a cut on his forehead, so it all seemed very real and serious. And I was crying behind the couch because I had so much concern over the welfare of the Macho Man. I have a bunch of old retro wrestling figures too, from between 1992 and 1996. Oddly enough, the only one worth any more than like £10 was this Barber Beefcake one. I was telling my partner, “This one’s worth like £50,” and then I put him on the table, sat down to watch TV or something, and then I heard a clunk on the floor. He’d taken a dive off the table. I took it as some sort of sign that there’s no way I should even think about profiteering from these sacred things.

Liam has always been the best Gallagher brother. In 2018, at bucket hat festival Benicassim, someone threw a fish at him. His response was: “Which dickhead threw the fish here then? Fucking stinky, smelly fish, man. Now listen man, it really ain’t that fucking bad, man. Don’t be throwing fish on stage, mate. I’ve seen a lot worse than this shit. Alright?” After pacing around for a bit he said: “I can’t be fucking singing while there’s a fish there, man.” A roadie cleared the fucking stinky, smelly fish from the stage and Liam performed ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’. You couldn’t imagine Noel doing that, could you? The fish would have killed him. The fish would have won. Liam doesn’t overthink things like Noel does, or you do, or me or anyone over the age of three. Life’s too short. So he’s called his new album C’mon You Know – a title he came up with between mouthfuls of sausage and mash and The Big Bang Theory – and decided on this cover without the need to look at a second option. Why would he? It’s absolutely fucking perfect – Liam, smoking in a crowd of fans who are almost definitely called Johnny (bottom left – unlucky, Johnny), James (above Johnny), Dan (front curtains), Dan (front right curtains), Topless Scott and, the poor bugger looking the wrong way, Spud, or there abouts. Noel doesn’t get in with his fans, does he? Perhaps due to his phobia of seeing too many mod targets in a confined area clouded by the smell of farts. But this is another blow for the older Gallagher: no messin’, the album is called C’Mon You Know and we can all see how good it is.

Hip hop superstar Snoop Dogg (85) is rumoured to have had enough of fans requesting he perform the Just Eat rap at his shows. A recent survey of fans entering a Snoop show in Basildon, Essex, apparently recorded that 73% of the people there were most excited about hearing “the one from the telly about takeaways”. The 87-year-old rapper has continued to refuse to perform the track live despite pressure from fans, some of which have started turning up to shows dressed as chicken wings and hamburgers. Sources say that if anyone now says “did somebody say ‘Just Eat’?” in Snoop’s company he can often be heard muttering, “no, they didn’t” under his breath.

Puzzle: Can you guess the 1000-piece jigsaw in one piece or less?

illustration by kate prior

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