THIS MONTH
DORK readdork.com
Editor: Stephen Ackroyd stephen@readdork.com Deputy Editor: Victoria Sinden viki@readdork.com Associate Editor: Ali Shutler ali@readdork.com Contributing Editors: Jamie Muir jamie@readdork.com Martyn Young martyn@readdork.com
Sub Editor: Poppy, the office cat (meow@readdork.com) Events: Liam James Ward liam@readdork.com Design: El Coxo Writers: Alex Bradley, Alex Thorpe, Ben Jolley, Ben Kitto, Chris Taylor, Claire Biddles, Dan Harrison, Daniel Jeakins, Danny Randon, Heather McDaid, Jessica Goodman, Josh Williams, Lily Beckett, Rob Mesure, Steven Loftin Photographers: Corinne Cumming, Phil Smithies, Poppy Marriott, Ryan Johnston, Sam Nahirny, Sarah Louise Bennett
‘INFINITE’ #CONTENT 4 UPDATE
4 READING & LEEDS 12 QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE 14 DORK LIVE! 16 SELF ESTEEM 17 BLOODY KNEES 17 RAE MORRIS
26 HYPE
New bands, eh? In the park? Jumpers for goal posts? 26 ALEX LAHEY 27 BAD NERVES 28 YASSASSIN 29 SEA GIRLS 29 CASSELS
30 FEATURES
Lots of words and pictures about bands? Yeah, we got ‘em. 30 INHEAVEN 36 THE HORRORS 40 NOTHING BUT THIEVES 44 SLØTFACE 46 REVIEWS
Or ‘how many stars can Dork get away with giving the new Wolf Alice album?’ 46 WOLF ALICE
48 DEATH FROM ABOVE 49 FOO FIGHTERS 50 GIRLI 52 LCD SOUNDSYSTEM 53 LIAM GALLAGHER 54 THE KILLERS 56 LOWLANDS 57 VISIONS 60 ‘THE BACK BIT’
Where other mags are too scared to tread. 60 ACTIVITY CENTRE 62 ANY OTHER QUESTIONS WITH… DREAM WIFE
EDITOR’S LETTER
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t’s no secret that Dork bloody well loves INHEAVEN. We’ve been raving about them since our first issue hit the streets. Last month, we gave their debut album a full five star review. That’s why we’re absolutely bloody delighted to bring them to the cover for the first time. It’s been a long time coming. As the big beasts of Q4 approach, we’re saying hi to another of our faves, too.
Wolf Alice have been teasing us with 14/10 bangers for a couple of months now, but now they’re back with their second album ‘Visions of a Life’ quite probably our most anticipated record of 2017. Spoiler alert, it’s absolutely amazing. Yeah, we know you could have guessed. There’s a huge review in this issue
just to make sure, though. With Reading & Leeds out of the way, there’s loads to get your teeth into this issue.
From our massive review of the festivities to chats with The Horrors, Nothing But Thieves, Orlando not-from-
P U B L I S H E D F RO M
THE BUNKER
W E LCO M E TOT H E B U N K E R.CO M
Photo: Phil Smithies
You’d think that ‘news based content’ would be a bit ‘old hat’ in a print based environment, wouldn’t you, Dear Reader? But no! Because - erm - reasons!
18 ORLANDO WEEKS 20 PHOENIX 21 BANGERS 22 CALENDAR 23 NEWS FEED 24 CONNECTION
Illustrators: Rhi Lee Cover photo: Phil Smithies
All material copyright (c). All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form, in whole or in part, without the express written permission of The Bunker Publishing Ltd. Disclaimer: While every effort is made to ensure the information in this magazine is correct, changes can occur which affect the accuracy of copy, for which The Bunker Publishing Ltd holds no responsibility. The opinions of the contributors do not necessarily bear a relation to those of Dork or its staff and we disclaim liability for those impressions. Distributed nationally.
The-Maccabees-anymore and loads more, we’ve got your essential guide to keeping boring at bay. Enjoy!
WIN!! A SUPER LIMITED TEAL VINYL PRESSING OF PARAMORE’S AFTER LAUGHTER
W IN S TUFF
We’ve been waiting for Paramore’s album of the year contender to arrive on glorious wax since the day it came out, Dear Reader. So, when it happened, we nabbed ourself a copy of the most limited edition - a teal marble pressing limited to 1,000 copies. And then it sold out. And we saw loads of you missed it. Seeing as we’re lovely, we’re giving you ours. Enter at readdork.com now.
!
UPDATE IF IT’S NOT IN HERE, IT’S NOT HAPPENING. OR WE FORGOT ABOUT IT. ONE OR THE OTHER.
READING 2017 TAKE COVER! IT’S
WORDS: ALI SHUTLER, JESSICA GOODMAN, STEPHEN ACKROYD, STEVEN LOFTIN. PHOTOS: CORINNE CUMMING, RYAN JOHNSTON, SARAH LOUISE BENNETT.
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GLASS ANIMALS ARE IN OUR HEADS Pineapples. Pineapples are banned at Reading Festival. Did you know? Did you hear about the pineapples? Yeah, pineapples! Banned! At Reading Festival! That’s the conversation leading up to Glass Animals’ appearance at this year’s Reading & Leeds. A thinly veiled joke from the festival organisers has launched a great band into a circus of international news, as outlets around the globe pick up on the fruit based fun. It’s attention that the band don’t only deserve, but thrive under, even if it is a little – y’know – weird. Then again, weird is what Glass Animals do best. Like Everything Everything before them, they do pop music, but not quite as we know it. ‘Life Itself’ is stickier than
superglue, packing more hooks than an industrial length of velcro, but it never once feels conventional, boring or expected. ‘Black Mambo’ slithers and slides, while ‘Youth’ stalks, occasionally breaking cover to explode in blinding light. There’s always a feeling that Glass Animals are a band operating off a plan we all enjoy, but only they can ever truly translate. Of course, there’s only one song that’s ever going to bring their set to a climax. With ‘Pork Soda’ come those contraband pineapples. As their giant king fruit shimmers on stage, giant inflatables appear from the crowd. They’re everywhere. Pineapples! At Reading Festival! Turns out you really can’t keep a good band (or pineapple) down.
DOWN WITH BORING
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E P Y H . W BANDS E N L A I T ESSEN
“WE’RE ALL DEALING W THE SAME S ITH H IT ”
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he first song I learned to play on guitar was ‘Everywhere’ by Michelle Branch,” Alex Lahey recalls with a grin, “which still stands to be an amazing song.” No stranger to an addictive guitar hook, since the release of her debut EP last year the Melbourne musician has been stirring up quite the storm. Having made music her day job, toured half a world away from her home with Tegan & Sara, and now readying to release her debut album, there’s no shirking the excitement that surrounds Alex Lahey right now. “I started writing music when I was maybe thirteen,” she details. “I was formally learning the saxophone at school, and I had been for a while, but I wanted to teach myself how to play the guitar.” Picking up the instrument through her favourite songs, writing her own music was something that came naturally. “I was just kind of making up my own shit and not really thinking twice about it,” she laughs. “It was just something that I did. It just made sense.”
X E L A Y E H LA -P O P O O D FU ZZ BS U RD LY G A S N PE H EY E’ S A LE X LA S: JE SS IC A M EL BO U RN N TH . W O RD T TH IS M O U O S T’ U D H ER D EB G EM S - A N
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GOODMAN
.
Sense is something Alex Lahey has in droves. Her straight talking lyricisms and knack for a snappy pop hook never fail to prove accessible to anyone who wants to hear it. “For people to come back and be like, ‘How are you so relatable?’ It’s like, it seems so candid and it seems like we can all connect with this because we’re all the fucking same,” she laughs. “We’re all dealing with the same shit, at the end of the day.” “I think it’s really funny that people are like, ‘No one talks about it’,” she continues. “I don’t think I’m breaking any new ground. I’m like, ‘Yeah, but it’s happening to all of us’.” Citing “the world of LimeWire and season one of The OC” among her inspirations, Alex Lahey’s writing is driven by simply “wanting to express myself and how I genuinely feel about the world and what’s happening around me.” That’s exactly what her debut album offers. “It’s this collection of songs about relationships of all kinds that we encounter in our lives,” Alex describes. “Whether that’s with your family, or with someone that you’re madly in love with, or with someone
that you like who doesn’t treat you right, or with a friend, or whatever. It’s the multifaceted nature of those different relationships.” It’s a dynamic that echoes through the record’s very title. “I really like the duality of that line ‘I Love You Like A Brother’,” Alex considers. “In the song itself, it’s very literal.” Written about her own brother, and the changing dynamics between siblings as they grow older and come to understand loving each another like a sibling, it’s an innately felt notion that can resonate with anyone. “I really like the line,” Alex enthuses. “On the one hand, telling my brother ‘I love you like a brother’ is such a breakthrough for us, given that our relationship hasn’t always been the most solid thing in the world. But if someone I was in love with turned to me and said, ‘Hey, I love you like a brother’, it’d be the worst thing in the world to hear,” she explains. “There’s something in the line that’s almost like a sick joke,” she adds, laughing. “For what it means to me, that’s actually a really nice thing.”
Drawing from her own observations, emotions, and experience, ‘I Love You Like A Brother’ has been a long time in the making. “I’ve been playing shows for about eighteen months now,” Alex states. “If I was just playing songs that I’d recorded in that time I’d have a set of five songs,” she laughs. Instead, drawing together the strongest of her capabilities, the album is an instinctive portrayal of the world that anyone can relate with. With the release finally imminent, excitement duels with expectation at an all time high. “It’s hard not to get too reflective and start second guessing things,” Alex admits. “Not in an ‘I want to change this guitar part on the record’ type thing, but being like ‘Are we doing this in the right way? Are we rolling this out in the way that we should be? Is the record getting listened to in the right way?’” “That’s definitely something that’s on my mind, but now that the wheels are in motion, it’s kind of like ‘Whatever happens, happens,’” Alex shrugs. “It’s almost like the stages of grieving – eventually you
end up at acceptance,” she laughs. Relinquishing control as her debut album sees release, the result is now whatever you choose to take from it or make of it. “Maybe there is a sense of grieving of losing that control,” she confesses. “You are seeing that cliché of the person who’s owned the dog for years and is letting them run off into the wild,” she laughs. “It is nerve-wracking, but it’s exciting,” she concludes, before questioning “if I was making records and putting them out and I didn’t feel a thing, then why would I do it?”
HEE TH O NT ON E NE VIIN EV PE AP G RA GR
“The only thing I can really right about in this project, the only thing I want to express, is just me as an individual,” she explains. As character driven as her writing is, what makes Alex Lahey’s music so special is the universal recognition that fuels it. “I’m really not that different to anyone else,” Alex portrays, affirming, “it’s not about me. It’s about people connecting to the songs in their own way.” P Alex Lahey’s debut album ‘I Love You Like A Brother’ is out 6th October.
TWO-M I N UTE C HU N KS OF
GARAG E-ROCK? YOU’RE
G R AC E L A N D E M B R AC E F LOW E R P OW E R
Are you familiar with Norwich newcomers, Graceland? They’re very good. The fuzz-pop four-piece have teamed up with artist Sophie Michael for ‘Flowers’’ new video, featuring a teeny miniature garden and a flower with better moves than most. Watch on readdork.com.
When we caught up with Dead Pretties at Latitude, they had – y’know – a lot to say for themselves. That included promising new music. Titled ‘Confidence’, the trio’s latest offering is a swaggering slice of bombast and certainty with its gob set to stun. Listen on readdork.com (where else?).
I N TH E RI G HT PL AC E.
BAD NERVES LOVELY. WHAT FIRST MADE YOU WANT TO START A BAND? I’ve always been into music. I wasn’t brought up on much of what I now consider the good stuff though; it was mostly just Meat Loaf and musicals, but that was enough to get me singing at least - even if it was to the tune of Mary Poppins. I first wanted to be in a band after hearing Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ at the beginning of high school. I’d just started playing drums,
Fresh from crooning hearts all over the place this summer, Matt Maltese has announced details of his biggest UK headline tour to date, rolling its way around the country from 7th November.
D E A D P RET T I ES D E L I V E R T H E G O O DS
RI D ICU LOUSLY I N F ECTI OUS
HEY BOBBY, HOW ARE YOU? I’m doing okay. I just ate a large handful of pickled onions.
M AT T M A LT ES E I S O F F O N TO U R
and that record really sparked my middle-class teenage angst.
HOW DID YOU GUYS MEET? Me and Will Power have known each other for years but we never really got along. We figured the best way to remedy that situation would be to start a band. We still don’t get along, but we dig the sounds we make together. The music would be shit if we were best friends. WHAT’VE BEEN THE HIGHLIGHTS OF BAND LIFE SO FAR? Just playing music this fast is a
constant highlight. It’s so much fun. But it’s been really cool getting support from BBC Introducing, and Radio 1 etc.. We really didn’t think people would get it, so that’s been a nice surprise. TELL US ABOUT WHAT YOU GUYS ARE WORKING ON RIGHT NOW. We’re just writing non-stop. I guess we’re working on an album really, but our main focus right now is to nail some decent singles. ARE THERE ANY OTHER NEW BANDS AROUND AT THE MO WHO
YOU PARTICULARLY LIKE? The Cavemen, Fat White Family, Eat Fast, Uranium Club, Lumpy and the Dumpers, The Lemon Twigs. WHAT INSPIRES YOU, MUSICALLY OR OTHERWISE? Anything trashy that sounds like a crisp packet is always inspiring. Love that awful messy sound. WHAT DO YOU DO FOR FUN? Mainly just write music, to be honest. But I like making videos and stuff too, so I do that a fair bit when I’m stumped for song ideas. I made the last two videos we put out actually. I’m no Spike Jonze, but it’s fun to pretend. WHAT’S THE BEST SONG OF YOURS FOR NEW LISTENERS TO START WITH? Just start with ‘Radio Punk’, the new single. P Bad Nerves’ single ‘Radio Punk’ is out now. DOWN WITH BORING
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W WITH THEIR DEBUT ALBUM FINALLY HERE...
LD
... INHEAVEN ARE READY TO WATCH IT ALL BURN.
WORDS: HEATHER MCDAID. PHOTOS: PHIL SMITHIES.
I
I N H E AV E N
NHEAVEN ARE SITTING IN AN ABANDONED FACTORY. James Taylor and Chloe Little have a hard day of work planned, finding ever-more work to do, even with their self-titled debut recorded and ready to go. Why relax? It’s a waiting game, but a productive one.
“Chloe and I are this weird factory,” explains James. “I was obsessed with counter-culture. I guess we wanted to create our own Warhol type scenario where we are our own factory; we are our own studio, we are our own designers. We write music, then Chloe and I discuss the visuals right there, and a lot of the songs spark of video ideas. And it goes from there.” The South-London foursome are completed by Jake Lucas and Joe Lazarus, and their DIY ethics are welllauded by now – no one knows the ideas floating around inside their heads better than themselves, and so they set to work. They do it all. ‘Regeneration’, their first hazy blast into the world, was written over a collage of thousands of images Chloe had compiled – it became a catalyst for all to follow. “We started feeding everything out onto the internet on a weird website that had all this cool stuff,” he says. “Back when we were called Blossom, you’d click on the letter O, and a secret video would pop up of one of the songs, click somewhere else, like on the flower that was on the tongue, you’d find another.” That unique approach caught the attention of The Strokes’ Julian Casablancas and Cult Records (“Probably my number one day ever,” notes James. “That’s a big claim,” laughs Chloe), and a bunch of self-made videos, zines, touring and around a hundred songs later, it was time for their debut album.
F
IVE YEARS IS A LONG TIME FOR SOME PEOPLE TO GET TO THEIR FIRST FULL- LENGTH ALBUM, BUT FOR INHEAVEN IT FELT JUST RIGHT. “We wanted it to be solid from start to finish,” explains James. “We already kind of know what we’re going to do for the second record, and we already sort of have an idea down and a few songs for the third. We always wanted to release a trilogy of albums.” “I think the reason it’s taken so long is that we spent a lot of time touring for two years and getting really good as a band,” continues Chloe. Honing their craft in a live setting has built their confidence and capabilities as musicians. “Now just feels the right time to put out our debut record. If we’d have done it before, it would have been too early for us. If we had waited
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“I HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE SAY STICK TO THE MUSIC” any longer, it would have felt stale. We feel like now is the perfect time for us.” “I think, for bands especially, there are no shortcuts,” James notes. “You have to get into a van. When no one’s heard of you, you have to get in a van for three years and tour up and down the country until people know who you are what your songs are about. It’s not like the pop world where you can release one song and suddenly play Shepherd’s Bush Empire - you have to put in the work, you have to put in the hours, and you have to play as many places as possible. Now we have that solid foundation, it feels like the perfect place to start building on this.” INHEAVEN’s album feels like one of two halves, the personal and the political. ‘Stupid Things’ twinkles and soars declaring, “I don’t wanna grow up, I just wanna be with you”, where ‘Baby’s Alright’ stomps to life taking clear focus: “Lonely kids of the USA, fight a war in a foreign state […] Pull the trigger now or face your fate, in a messed up place where hate breeds hate”. These two distinct strands thread around one another into an album
that combines decades of influences effortlessly. ‘Treats’ viciously spits on the state of the world, ‘Velvet’ lulls you angelically into other realms. Drift away and relax, channel frustration and anger, INHEAVEN navigate the dichotomy flawlessly. “I always loved those albums where you listen from start to finish, and it takes you on a journey,” says James. “We wanted to have those breaks in the middle with ‘Do You Dream’, and we wanted to end it with a more atmospheric, cinematic song like ‘Velvet’ where you just fall into the world which we invented. The best albums have diversity on them. The worst is where people just do the same song ten times – I hate that. We wanted to show what we were capable of. We wanted to show all the different angles of how we feel.”
HOLD YOUR NERVRE
IT’S A FRAUGHT TIME, BEING IN A NEW BAND. James: We’re just 24/7 nervous about everything, all the time. I think most new bands are because there are so many barriers to break through that you’re kind of waiting for that plateau period of, ah, this is it now. But then you speak to bands on their second album, and it doesn’t feel like anyone ever gets to that plateau. They’re always nervous about something. You just play a show and see people singing and starting circles and shit, that’s when you feel like you’re doing something that means something to people. We’re usually nervous most of the time. There’s always something to worry about. Chloe: Crossing the road, North Korea, there’s a lot going on.
THE HORRORS
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"WE COULD HAVE EASILY QUIT” A NEW HORRORS A L BU M I S ALWAYS AN E XCITI N G PROSPECT. W HAT WI LL FARRI S AND C O. HAVE C OM E U P WITH THI S TI ME? TH E F RO NTM A N L I F TS THE LI D ON ‘V’.
F
aris Badwan may be severely jet-lagged, having just returned from a festival performance in Tokyo, but the forthright frontman speaks with conviction when he considers just how much was riding on his band’s new album, ‘V’.
“If this record hadn’t turned out right it could easily have been the end of the band. We could easily have quit, for sure.” Even for a group as self-destructive as The Horrors, drawing a line under a decade in which they have successfully mutated from a bunch of oddball goth rockers to one of the most exciting British guitar bands around today sounds, on the face of it, a tad dramatic. But Faris and his bandmates simply don’t do safe. At any cost. Even if that cost is the very thing holding them together. “The fact is we’ve been in the band for eleven years, have been releasing records for ten - I guess the thing I’m most proud of is, firstly, that we’re still releasing records at all and, secondly, that I
still feel creatively inspired,” Faris says. “With this record, it had to feel like we could all be creatively fulfilled at the end of it. If I was in a band where I thought what I was making was getting repetitive I would hate it. I wouldn’t be able to do it.” He adds: “When you’ve been working together with the same people for that amount of time it’s hard to keep things exciting and fun. I think if I felt like I wasn’t having fun I would probably just quit. We all felt like that.” This restless, do or die attitude towards making music together has been burning away under the surface ever since The Horrors came screeching onto the scene in 2007 with their debut album, ‘Strange House’. It just hasn’t burned quite so fiercely before. In the four years after ‘Strange House’, the Southend-on-Sea quintet took huge strides towards indie rock’s big league by shifting their taut, lo-fi garage punk sound of their first record to the more expansive and diverse palette of ‘Primary Colours’ in 2009, before releasing the lush, melodic psych of ‘Skying’ two years later. Both albums received much praise from the
WO RDS: A L E X THORPE. DOWN WITH BORING
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N OTH I N G BUT TH I EVES
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WO RDS: JAM IE MU I R. PH OTOS: CO RIN NE CU M M ING.
HAVE CO M E BAC K KI CKI NG.
FO R AL BU M NU M B E R T WO TH EY ESCA PE D TO A ME RICA, AN D
TOURIN G A LL OVE R THE PLACE, AN D IT N EA RLY B RO KE THE M.
NOTHI NG BUT TH IEVES HAVE SPE NT TH E PAST F EW Y E A RS
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE
DOWN WITH BORING
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REVIEWS
WOLF ALICE VISIONS OF A LIFE
eeeee
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o break through the barriers, every reaction needs a catalyst. While that may be a slightly mangled metaphor, when it comes to music scenes, it has a grain of truth. No matter how much exciting stuff bubbles beneath the surface, there’s always a point where one band has to break through in order to give the others confidence that actually, anything is possible.
album that really set the wheels in motion. Only losing out due to Florence’s last minute Glastonbury headline appearance, Wolf Alice always were the glue that held a multitude of bands together. Carrying their other worldly buzz easier than most, they were a band in the best sense of the world - each with their own personality bringing something unique to a living, breathing machine. A band’s band, a lighting rod for the creative energy swarming around them, when they made it big, everyone else saw the way.
That was Wolf Alice’s role on their debut album ‘My Love Is Cool’. While peers had seen success around them - from The 1975’s fangasm provoking self-titled full length to the lesser victories of Peace, Swim Deep, Palma Violets and co - it was their narrow miss on a Number One
Since then, the UK underground has blossomed. Bands that were making their earliest steps back in 2015 Black Honey, The Magic Gang, The Big Moon and more - have sprung forward with the confidence that this world can be theirs. Others - Dream Wife, King Nun, Pale Waves - have
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appeared, eyes blinking into a postWolf Alice world - one where, for the first time in years, being a guitar band wasn’t seen as raging against the dying light. Excitement, energy, having something to say - all things that started to work again. Youthful rebellion hung heavy in the air. To say all of this was down to one band would be folly, but it was Wolf Alice who struck that first killer blow. And so, two years on, they’re back. Still the most convincing light to lead their tribe, there’s a degree of pressure. If the mighty Wolf Alice were to fall, what would that mean for the rest? But nobody - not even the band themselves - seem to think there’s much chance of that. What they built first time around wasn’t made of faddy trends or paper thin intent. They’ve always been a band of steady hand and sure mind, creating
their own world around them. With ‘Visions of a Life’, they’ve expanded into the universe beyond. In many ways, it’s an album that could only be Wolf Alice - and yet at times it still has the ability to shock. While the first two tracks to see the light of day from the record - the inflammatory, spitting fury of ‘Yuk Foo’ and the woozy, punch drunk stream of consciousness ‘Don’t Delete The Kisses’ - may sit at opposite ends of the spectrum, in between there are moments that prove that this is a band still refusing to pick a single cookie cutter outline. ‘Beautifully Unconventional’, for example, does exactly what it says on the tin. A strutting, retro, almost cinematic left turn - it’s not that it pushes boundaries, so much as the kind of move that’s previously
REV I E WS
ALBUM OF THE M ONTH
ARCANE ROOTS
MELANCHOLIA HYMNS Easy Life
eeeee
WOLF ALICE ARE QUITE PROBABLY THE MOST IMPORTANT BRITISH BAND OF THEIR GENERATION not seemed part of the Wolf Alice lexicon. And yet, by the half way mark, it’s definitely them - Ellie Rowsell’s trademark melodic stamp firmly placed. It’s the kind of creative evolution which runs through ‘Visions of a Life’. While ‘My Love Is Cool’ was populated by songs that had bedded in over a couple of years of slow building hype, this time round Wolf Alice are bringing a record at us completely cold. There’s no safety in the riffs of ‘Giant Beach’ or the hearttugging brilliance of ‘Bros’. Rather than repeat what’s gone before, they’ve tried new ideas. There are choruses, but at no point do they feel like a band tied down to structure. The rulebook isn’t shredded, but it’s certainly laying in a corner, watched with a look of barely concealed contempt. For most bands,
it wouldn’t work. For Wolf Alice, it really, really does. By freeing themselves from the shackles of expectation, their particular talent for weaving wonder takes hold. ‘St. Purple & Green’ almost audibly winds its way through four and a half minutes of wide eyed fascination, twinkling, sweeping and swaying from front to back. By the time Rowsell’s spoken word refrain hits, its hypnotic trance is unbreakable. The folky, ethereal ‘After The Zero Hour’ sparkles with magical dust, while ‘Sky Musings’ builds with a glimmering, diamond clear sheen. There’s the odd moment where Wolf Alice prove they can still hammer those more base instincts - the final 40 seconds of ‘Space & Time’ offer up an indie romp that The Vaccines
have spent years trying to perfect, but it’s done with such flippant ease that, for them, it’s no big deal. It’s the textured groove and siren call of ‘Sadboy’ that follows which represents Wolf Alice 2.0 - a fresh iteration running on a whole new level. Because true leaders don’t just blindly charge forth. Wolf Alice have shown their peers how to run free - but as the pack follows them through the hole they blasted in the mainstream consciousness two and a bit years ago, they’ve no intention of thundering towards the slings and arrows that await. They’re smarter than that. With ‘Visions of a Life’, Wolf Alice have taken flight. As the world beneath them shrinks to tiny, insignificant dots on the horizon, watch them soar. Yet again, they’re showing us the way. Stephen Ackroyd
Arcane Roots are a band who don’t do things by half measures. Celebrating ten years together in 2017, ‘Melancholia Hymns’ is only their second full-length record, touching down no sooner than four years after their impressive debut, ‘Blood & Chemistry’. Although this is a far less unhinged effort than its predecessor, the London trio have emerged from a cloud of mid-recording setbacks by taking everything they can do and running with it. The first cut that was aired, ‘Curtains’, serves as a bombastic statement of intent that they are no longer content with being a mid-tier technical rock band. Arcane Roots are heading all the way to the top, and with an album like this, nobody is in any position to stop them. It’s taken a full decade, but Arcane Roots have finally delivered on the goods and soared light years above their stratospheric ambitions. Shining with cosmic charm, ‘Melancholia Hymns’ declares that the time has come to rejoice at this mindbendingly brilliant band. Danny Randon
BLACK KIDS
ROOKIE Self-Released
ee It’s been ten years since Black Kids’ debut came out amongst the throng of indie landfill back in 2007, and they’ve been extremely quiet since. Sadly ‘Rookie’, only their second outing, is little more than a cheap throwback to that time. While the pop sensibilities that spark out carefree fun are there, they feel hollow, like a facsimile of the past. There are hooks a plenty, but lyrically everything falls short. Sickly sweet lines that talk of virginity (‘V card’) and unrequited love (‘Iffy’) all feel the opposite of where Black Kids should be in 2017 should be. While the titular track refers to defiantly growing up, there’s little else to prove this has actually happened. Steven Loftin DOWN WITH BORING
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