m k.co do r read 019 Feb ruar y2
ONLY IN DREAMS
The Japanese House + Fall into one of 2019’s most anticipated debut albums
Fall into one of 2019’s most anticipated debut albums.
The Japanese House.
If it’s not in here, it’s not happening. Or we forgot. One or the other.
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KING KING OF THE OF THE DUDES DUDES They finished 2018 by dropping one of the best tracks of the year. Jamie MacMillan catches up with Sunflower Bean’s Julia, Nick and Jacob to find out more about their exciting new step, the ‘King of the Dudes’ EP.
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ecovering back home after the triumphant finale to their ‘Twentytwo in Blue’ tour, one of our favourite New York trios, Sunflower Bean, are showing no interest in wasting time. Despite it being less than a year since that release, they have made sure that 2019 is going to get off to a flyer with their new EP, ‘King of the Dudes’. Four bangers for the price of one, it is the sound of a band taking off into the stratosphere - the exact moment where Sunflower Bean realised just how good they can be. For some bands, it would have been tempting to keep four songs of this quality back for album number three. But Sunflower Bean aren’t hanging around, and with themes of gender equality and empowerment in the mix, these songs are so relevant now that it would be crazy not to let them fly the coop. “We wanted to philosophically go in the opposite direction to some old-school single roll-out plan,” explains singer-slash-bassist Julia Cumming. “Thinking about how technology works, we want to get them into peoples’ ears however they want it. After all, why can’t we write about now, and what we want now, and what we want to do about it now, and have it come out… now?” Following a tour which wrapped only a few
days previously, the band still took a little time to think about where they had come from. “That was probably one of the most historic and important tours that we’ve ever done,” reflects Julia. “We toured with really strong, powerful women and it was momentous to wrap up ‘Twenty-two In Blue’ in the UK of all places.” For all that album (and their 2016 debut ‘Human Ceremony’)’s strengths however, these new songs show it was all moving towards something bigger. The title-track exudes the New York cool that The Strokes used to be guardians of, all swagger and bravado as Julia asserts her authority. “Being called the king of the dudes started as a bit of a joke from Nick, he perceived what I think of as just being friendly backstage with guys in other bands as actually being me coming to conquer,” she explains, laughing. “Which isn’t essentially wrong…” Exploring that sense of female empowerment and male entitlement, the singer continues by admitting: “I disliked the nickname initially because I felt it was a misunderstanding of who I am, but through the writing, I realised it actually disempowers the powers of a king and brings it into a space where anyone can play with the strength. If ever there was a time
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to play with that word and claim it in your own way, that time is now.” Best of all, ‘Fear City’ will take some shifting from the top of the bangers lists come year-end, it’s that good. “We were working with that for a little while, then one night we had this weird conversation about politics and culture, and I got this sick feeling in my stomach and just wanted to get on my bike” explains Julia. “It’s the first time that I’ve spoken about it… I wouldn’t say falling in love,” she hesitates, “but certainly an interaction with an addict and that kind of experience that a young person in New York City has, in a way that we haven’t covered on any other record.” As well as a growing confidence in their songwriting ability, another big factor in their levelling-up is producer Justin Raisen (Charli XCX, Angel Olsen, Sky Ferreira).
“IT’S AMAZING WHAT YOU CAN DO IN SOMEONE’S GARAGE THESE DAYS” “We were in Justin’s garage in LA in the middle of the summer, exploring intent and purpose,” explains guitarist Nick Kivlen. “Every idea with him is outlandish, you never just do something in an orthodox way. He was piecing together all these tracks; it was really elaborate and crazy.” With all the instruments in one room, the spirit and energy of a garage rock band transferred easily into the recording. “It’s amazing what you can do in someone’s garage these days; he made us sound like a punk band playing in a stadium, all in his garage,” he continues. That relationship sparked up in a suitably modern way, Raisen getting in touch via Julia’s Instagram account. “He doesn’t hesitate, and I think that quality of not being afraid is like the spirit of the EP,” ponders Nick. Whereas the three preceding tracks take an existing Sunflower Bean sound and develop it further, ‘The Big One’ sees them in a whole new light. “We were thinking about hardcore, that
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sort of Jesus And Mary Chain sound, wanting to sound tough in a way we hadn’t before,” reveals Nick about a track that ends with a full-blooded thirty-second scream from Julia. Primal and raw, like much of the EP, it was literally the final moment of a whirlwind recording. “After you’ve let it out like that, what more can be said?” laughs Nick. Plenty, it would seem. These songs may land at a ridiculously turbulent period for the world, but the messages contained within still demand to be heard. “So much of our existence is online; there really is a general feeling of women feeling fed-up all over the world. We are tired of how things have gone,” explains Julia. “This EP is for our times, but also of our times. These conversations that are being had, the fundamentals of gender and humanity, they are questions that we are going to have until the end of humankind. I hope that culturally, its the sign of a shift that we are trying to make, amidst fear and hatred and the things that really prevalent in American culture today. And it never ends, but that’s the beauty of human conversation.” That conversation may never end, but this one sadly does as the band head off for a wellearned break after months of touring. With UK shows already planned for 2019, get ready for the return of the king (of the dudes). P Sunflower Bean’s EP ‘King of the Dudes’ is out 25th January.
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COVER STORY
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After four exceptional EPs and a truckload of promise, the debut album from The Japanese House is one of the most anticipated records of 2019. As Amber Bain reveals to Jamie Muir, it’s also one of the most open and honest. Photos: Jennifer McCord.
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YAK
Oli Burslem pulled himself back from the brink to create Yak’s second album ‘Pursuit of Momentary Happiness’. “There’ll always be chaos,” he explains. Words: Martyn Young.
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ak thrive on chaos and disruption. Ever since they emerged with their 2016 debut ‘Alas Salvation’, Oli Burslem and co. have made a career of living on the edge. As they came to make their second album though, the band threatened to spiral out of control. Remarkably they channelled their upheaval into one all-or-nothing document of two years of calamity and have ended up with an album that is pure Yak in sound, spirit and attitude. “We probably did lose control,” admits a reflective Oli as he looks back on the creation of ‘The Pursuit Of Momentary Happiness’. Despite everything that was going on, it gave the frontman a feeling of clarity as he had no option but to just write songs. “It’s quite honest and open. It came to a point where I was like, fuck it. Just say it how it is.” In many ways, it’s a miracle that Yak are still here. The story of the album’s genesis is one of confusion, mishap and flying by the seat of their pants. It was recorded and written in fits and starts across the world as Oli flitted from idea to idea ultimately ending up back here, homeless,
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WHITE LIES
White Lies have battled their share of industry bullshit to reach what they describe as a mile stone record - fifth album, ‘Five’. Words: Josh Williams.
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ALIVE
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ndie almost-veterans White Lies have returned with their fifth album appropriately titled ‘Five’, and in a North London pub, Harry McVeigh and Charles Cave are in unanimous agreement that the last track on the album, the epic ‘Fire & Wings’, is their favourite from the album. “It’s a good achievement for us, that song. It’s a departure a little bit from stuff we’ve done before, and it’s kind of got a great complexity and depth to it and atmosphere to it,” Harry explains. “It’s a track I’ve gone back to a lot since we recorded it and I’ve enjoyed it much more than I thought I would.” Charles, unsurprisingly, agrees: “When we were working on it in a demo stage, I was a bit wary of it. It’s one of those songs that requires to be executed properly and quite professionally. It’s not a song that sounds very good as a demo cos I think when you’re recording or writing a song with really distorted heavy guitars, you need really good distorted guitars otherwise everything just starts sounding like shit! “When we were listening back to the demo I was like, is this tasteless? But we managed with
the help of our trusted engineer and obviously Alan Moulder as well to make it sound amazing. I can’t think of any better mixer in the world to mix that specific song, but then again I don’t think anyone could do a better job than him so luckily we had him on board!” After 2016’s ‘Friends’, the group found themselves without a label. “I guess there was a little bit of pressure, we self-funded it so after we recorded the record we were thinking, ‘Oh fuck, are we actually going to get a record deal?’” Harry explains. “It was all a bit weird,” Charles believes. “We didn’t get too involved with it, we kind of didn’t get dropped in a way. BMG were like, ‘We have to drop you cos the German investors that own our company say we have to drop acts that don’t break even, but then we wanna re-sign you!’ We were like, ‘Well how does that work?’ But we just didn’t pursue it. We knew it would take too long to sort it out, so we just went elsewhere.” However, while the group weren’t worried, they felt lucky they “were able to find another label who are great, PIAS.” Seven-minute epic ‘Time To Give’ was the first taster from the record, and Charles insists: “It was
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never intended to be that long! We wrote a four-minute version of it, the demo that we made, which had that chromatic kind of passage in the middle, and again at the end. But when we went to work on it with [producer] Ed Buller, he was like, ‘I really like this section but what you could do is you could keep changing key. Basically, you could keep going up then after four or three repeats you then go back. You’re back where you began, but it doesn’t sound like that because people’s brains don’t remember where you started’. “The way it started was we got our little four-part sequence for the outro, and we just copied it like eight times or whatever. The idea was we just fade out on this cool outro, and then when we started recording it we hadn’t programmed a fade out at all, and we were all recording and playing, and playing, and playing. “Jack just kept playing like, ‘I’ll just play to the end whatever’, and then at one point I said, ‘Y’know we should really figure out how this song is gonna end because at the moment we don’t have an ending’, and Harry was like, ‘Let’s just do the whole thing! Just leave the whole thing’. We really never ever planned it.” “One of the last things we did in
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the studio was record the vocals on the outro,” Harry advises, to which Charles admits: “I was writing the lyrics for that outro at like 10pm on our last night, it was the last thing we wrote and the last thing we finished.” Harry explains: “Live that song is gonna be a challenge! We actually played it the other day on Dutch radio and even doing it that way was quite difficult. God knows how long it’s gonna take us to learn!” As Charles continues “I’d like to open the set with it when we start touring just so it’s out of the way. It’d actually be a very good opener, but also we could all just relax after we play it. Like, if that goes well, then the rest is gonna be a breeze. I don’t want to save that for the encore, like the whole I’m just gonna be like, ‘Fuck! Gotta fucking play that! Gonna fuck it up.” Charles believes the song is “a great achievement and the fact that, yes albeit in Holland, it’s been playlisted on their national radio in the way that a Dua Lipa song is playlisted here just speaks volumes about it.” “Without an edit as well” Harry interjects. “Yeah! Bands and artists that are working with any kind of manager or label are told if you
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Incoming. Your New Music Fridays, sorted.
18th January - 8th February 2019
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Incoming 18th January 2019 FEVER 333
MAGGIE ROGERS
STRENGTH IN NUMB333RS
RELEASED: 18TH JANUARY
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Heard It In A Past Life
Maggie Rogers’ debut album sees her shoot straight for the alt-pop A-list.
eeeee LABEL: POLYDOR RELEASED: 18TH JANUARY LISTEN TO: FALLINGWATER, GIVE AT LITTLE, ON + OFF, LIGHT ON
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n her major label debut album, Maggie Rogers plays a nice game of ‘find the flaw’ with the listener. Spoiler: we all lose. She’s a master storyteller, and this record is a novel, with no cliffhanger. The story really starts with the album’s first single ‘Fallingwater’ (a genius move releasing that first BTW), the earth-shattering, tempochanging, reflective track that sits comfortably in the record’s second half. Change is a common theme on ‘Heard It In A Past Life’, translating most acutely on the title(ish) track ‘Past Life’ – a Regina Spector-ish piano ballad – and the closer ‘Back In My Body’. The latter is a kiss-off to a particularly rough patch, and the perfect climax of an otherwise cathartic record.
MAGGIE IS EXPLOSIVE, EMOTIONAL AND VULNERABLE. SHE’S NOT THE FOLKSY NATURE GIRL SHE WAS ONCE KNOW AS, SHE’S A STAR TO WATCH WRITING CONFESSIONAL POP THAT COULD RIVAL THE BIG LEAGUES That’s not to say there isn’t bangers on here though. ‘Burning’ is a jittery, cowbell infused bop, ‘Say It’ is a slow dance heartbreak anthem, ‘Give A Little’ is a bright and hopeful opener. While we’ve heard a fair few of the tracks before – ‘Alaska’, the song she whipped up in 15 minutes for her viral NYU master class, and ‘On + Off’ – they slide into the tracklist perfectly. “Take me through this wild ride” she sings on ‘On + Off’; funny how that already mimics her fast-rising career. She might spend most of this record looking back, but she still sounds like the future. On ‘Heard It In A Past Life’, Maggie is explosive, emotional, and vulnerable. She’s not the twee folksy nature girl she was once known as, she’s a star to watch, writing confessional pop that could rival the big leagues. Taylor, Robyn, Lorde – Maggie’s here to join you. P Abigail Firth
BRING ME THE HORIZON
Amo
RELEASED: 18TH JANUARY
eeeee On 2015’s ‘That’s The Spirit’, Bring Me The Horizon cast off the shackles of expectation. Long held as British radio’s mainstream heavy band of choice, the Sheffield five-piece supersized their evolution, creating a record that punched through the ceiling and sent them spiralling to the steps of festival headlining nirvana. For anyone still hoping to see Bring Me ‘return to their roots’, look away now. Though that grit still shakes underneath ‘amo’, it’s mostly restrained, replaced with a modernist sheen with few boundaries. ‘Ouch’ glitches and bubbles like a broken radio, almost as much Chase and Status as Bring Me The Horizon, while ‘Medicine’ cruises down the pure pop lane. It’s ‘Nihilist Blues’ where the most attention lies, though. Teaming up with the once sacred Grimes, it’s a song that’s possibly skewed more towards her end of the musical universe. Initially a shiny banger, it’s only when the Canadian polymath truly arrives in a creepy whisper that it descends into the darkness. Skulking in the shadows, it transforms into something far more sinister. Combine the rawness of their past with the musical scope of their present, and Bring Me The Horizon’s future could be very bright indeed. P Stephen
Ackroyd
Rock isn’t dead, but it has been having a crisis of confidence. In an era of streaming where, statistically, louder bands haven’t been hitting the big numbers, some have chosen to reinvent themselves in a more genre-fluid guise that, while scoring success, lost some of the fire within. There’s no such identity crisis for FEVER 333. Formed around the charismatic lightning rod of former letlive. main man Jason Aalon Butler, they’re a pocket rocket revolution. ‘Prey For Me’ thunders, while ‘Burn It’ is a collar grabbing attention stealer. ‘One Of Us’ might start like Panic! At The Disco dragged from beyond the grave, but quickly descends into something far more visceral, while ‘Am I Here’ flirts with melody. FEVER 333 are an undeniable force. P Stephen
Ackroyd
PEDRO THE LION
Phoenix
RELEASED: 18TH JANUARY
eeeee No one tells a story quite like David Bazan. ‘Phoenix’ – his first album under the Pedro The Lion moniker in nearly 15 years – is a powerful return, filled with sketches of still life frozen in time. Much of ‘Phoenix’ sees Bazan in quiet contemplation and exercising past demons. ‘Yellow Bike’ tells the story of a childhood Christmas and the freedom granted by a little yellow bicycle. Elsewhere, Bazan’s gravelly tones sound like they’re carrying the weight of the world’s problems. ‘Lived in’ doesn’t do it justice, but considering Bazan already sounded like a weathered soul back in 1998, there’s little doubting the authenticity of ‘Phoenix’s intimate stories. Indeed, it possesses all the marks and scars of life’s mistakes, abandoned dreams, and crushed desires. And yet ‘Phoenix’ feels like an appropriate title; a rebirth and a fresh new start. P Rob Mair
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ANY OTHER QUESTIONS?
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MAGIC GANG
Asking about the usual stuff is so boring. Why would you want to do that, when you could ask about dinosaurs and Nandos? What was the first record you bought? The Marshall Mathers LP. I heard it in the playground and was drawn in by the swearing. How tall are you? 6 ft 1 to the press, but a humble 6 ft in reality. What strength Nandos sauce do you order?
Medium.
I’ll say yes.
Have you ever had an imaginary friend? Nope.
If you won the lottery, what would you spend the cash on? I’d take all my friends on holiday.
What was the last thing you broke? I broke my glasses on tour while playfighting our tour manager.
What’s the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to you? I fell off stage at a festival last summer. That was quite bad.
What’s your biggest fear? Falling from a great height, closely followed by loneliness If you could bring something extinct back to life, what would you choose? A diplodocus. Or if Diplo ever went extinct, then him.
What have you got in your pockets right now? Nothing... really, nothing. Have you ever been to a showbiz party? Yes, they’re not all they’re cracked up to be.
Do you believe in aliens? What would you do if you were Prime Minister
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for the day? I think it’d be quite a rough day to be prime minister. Probably run and hide. Get on a train somewhere nice and just stay out the way for a bit. Tell us a secret about yourself? Never. What’s your fave TV show? I really like this show called Pawn Stars. It’s a reality show about a pawn shop in Vegas. Have you ever written a fan letter? I haven’t. How punk are you out of ten? What even really is punk anymore? I think that’s quite a punk answer. Have you ever sold your own CD or merch on eBay? No, but someone sent me a link to a signed one for £50 which got me thinking. Do you have any interesting scars? I have a big scar on my knee, from the stage thing. Have you ever been thrown out of somewhere? Yes, there’s a bar in Brighton where I’m on first name terms with the bouncer. Why are you like this? Blame the parents, as they say. P The Magic Gang will play the Slacker tour in Southampton (20th February), Reading (21st) and Margate (22nd).
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