m k.co do r read 019 Jun e2
d e t _1 a c i d e D Pop emergency! Carly Rae Jepsen is back! Back!! Back!!!
MAC DEMARCO HERE COMES THE COWBOY
“Mac’s masterpiece” Q magazine “Mac DeMarco’s “jizz jazz” continues to hit the sonic sweet spots” MOJO H H H H “Devastating songcraft” Uncut
OUT MAY 10TH
InDEX
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June 2019 | readdork.com | Down With Boring
Ø4
Ø4 Update 24 Hype
ED’S LETTER THE AMAZONS It's back to the future as Reading's favourite sons unleash their second album.
3Ø
CARLY RAE JEPSEN
The queen of critically acclaimed pop is back! Back!!! Back!!!
42
YONAKA
Rock stars aren't always born with that attitude but Yonaka are learning how to strut with style.
3Ø Features 5Ø Incoming
CARLY RAE BLOODY JEPSEN IS ON THE COVER OF DORK!
HAYDEN THORPE
Yeah, we're a bit excited about that. HRH, the Queen of our Pop Dreams has blessed us with her presence as she prepares to drop one of our most anticipated albums in yonks, 'Dedicated'. That's the highlight of our 2019 sorted. No, we have no chill.
S tephen
The former Wild Beasts frontman has returned.
18
SAM FENDER
The hottest property in indie rock is announcing his debut album.
CALPURNIA
No, we don't need to talk about Netflix.
AMYL & THE SNIFFERS The must-see live act with the killer debut album.
4Ø
LOYLE CARNER
He's a man in demand, but he's not trying to be famous.
48
WHENYOUNG With their debut album finally here, Whenyoung just want to keep busy.
EDITOR @STEPHENACKROYD
ON THE DORK STEREO THIS MONTH... LAUV
Drugs & The Internet With a new album on the way (more on that later this issue - Ed), our Lauv's latest single sort of sums up Dork's modern condition. Apart from the drugs bit. Basically, we spend
too much time online, listening to this. Not sorry.
HATCHIE
Keepsake We've told you Hatchie is very good at 'the pop music' before, so consider this a refresher ahead of a debut
53
Loyle Carner
Alfie Templeman
27
Lucy Lu
28
Mabel
28
Mac DeMarco
50
Marika Hackman
23
Arlo Day
28
Bastille
23
Beck
23
album due in the next magazine publishing window.
HOT CHIP
A Bath Full of Ecstasy We're not sure 'the Chip' have sounded this good since their initial breakthrough bangers. Which is nice.
40
Middle Kids
55
Mysie
28
Nilufer Yanya
23 23
Better Oblivion Community Center
46
No Rome
Black Pumas
28
Panic! At The Disco
13
Penelope Isles
28
6
Blaenavon
20
Calpurnia Carly Rae Jepsen
2Ø
36
Alex Lahey
Amyl & The Sniffers 36, 54, 58
8
Dear Reader. I think there's only one thing to say this month.
** BAND INDEX ** BAND INDEX **
30, 52
Cate Le Bon
7, 55
Charly Bliss
10, 51
Petrol Girls
55
Pip Blom
56
Rachel Chinouriri
24
Sacred Paws
56
Sam Fender
18
14
Sea Girls
23
City Calm Down
28
Slowthai
Courtney Barnett
23
SPINN
58
Crumb
28
Squid
27
Ezra Collective
19
Stormzy
14
Feet
28
Swim Deep
13
FKA Twigs
12
Swimming Tapes
55
Guru
29
Tame Impala
23
Childish Gambino
11, 52
14
The 1975
Hayden Thorpe
8, 55
Holly Herndon Honeyblood
51 16, 55
IDKHow
17
Just Mustard
28
King Princess
6 11
Lauv
The Amazons
4, 54
The National
52
The Rhythm Method
28
Trudy and the Romance
22, 55
Two Door Cinema Club
6
Lewis Capaldi
52
Whenyoung
48, 54
Liily
26
Yonaka
42, 56
DORK
NEW MUSIC. NO ALGORITHMS.
RADIO TUNE IN 24/7/365
readdork.com/radio
READDORK.COM
Update
IF IT’S NOT IN HERE, IT’S NOT HAPPENING. OR WE FORGOT. ONE OR THE OTHER.
MAY 2019
DORK
CH-CH-CHECK OUT
HAYDEN THORPE
Symbolic coats and retracted horns - the former Wild Beasts frontman is back! p8
HONEYBLOOD
Stepping out on her own for the first time, Stina Tweeddale is taking charge. p16
CALPURNIA
Put the elephant in the room back in its box Calpurnia are fucking brilliant. p20
ON THEIR FIRST ALBUM, THE AMAZONS KICKED DOWN THE DOOR TO THE MAINSTREAM. WITH THE FOLLOW-UP, ‘FUTURE DUST’, THEY’RE READY TO DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN. WORDS: STEVEN LOFTIN. PHOTOS: SARAH LOUISE BENNETT.
READDORK.COM
5
THE AMAZONS ARE A ROCK’N’ROLL BAND. IN A WORLD
seemingly inundated with solo artists, you might think being in a group in 2019 would be a bit of a struggle, or even feel like an uphill battle. “I fucking love it! I love it. I love what we do,” drummer Joe Emmett says animatedly. Singer and guitarist Matt Thomson quickly backs him up, while tucking into some pizza. “Because no one else does it. I’m like, ‘Fucking hell, listen to this - it’s a fucking solo!’ D’ya know what I mean? And it might be that people don’t like that, but I love it.” While the idea of ‘rock’n’roll’ might actually seem, well, a bit boring, what The Amazons are doing isn’t. Ever since their debut was let loose upon the world back in 2017, garnering positive critical support and more importantly, barging its way into the top 10 of the Album Chart, they managed to breathe fresh life into something that was turning stale. “I think the 80s, categorically, killed the guitar solo,” guitarist Chris Alderton says, with the whole table bursting into laughter. “Seriously, I was watching ‘Now 80s’. I feel like that’s when the horrible guitar solo started.” Matt chimes in: “It’s like guitar wanking. It completely changed everybody’s view, and they haven’t got over that yet!” Indeed, the showboating and glam-filled 80s are still paying reparations for their wildly inappropriate time, but The Amazons are here to fix that, more so than ever on their second album, ‘Future Dust’. “The first record felt like the end of something, I always felt like…” Matt pauses tentatively. “I said this to the boys. It was like the end of this; starting a band, doing all the things you do - getting a deal, writing all these songs, and it’s almost like they come in dribs and drabs over a four year period. Then you do the album, and it just felt like the end of a particular chapter - a process. After we toured it, we were like, ‘Okay, what do we want to do?’” “This album felt like a bit of a… not brick wall, but it was something we needed to get over,” he continues. “It was
TOP TEN
UPDATE
THE THINGS DOMINATING THE DORK CINEMATIC UNIVERSE THIS MONTH
"It’s a magic power to turn something that is fucking you up into an explosion" Eva Hendricks
1 AFTER SIX YEARS OF BEING A
band, one EP of bubblegum perfection and one scrapped fulllength, in 2017 Charly Bliss finally released debut album ‘Guppy’. A pop record littered with nods to the alternative, it saw the band hold
JUNE 2019
DORK
CHARLY BLISS
ARE BACK WITH A NEW ALBUM. IT’S BLOODY BRILLIANT TOO.
WORDS: ALI SHUTLER.
high their love of catchy melodies, big choruses and that quiet but persistent voice in the back of their own minds filling them full of selfdoubt. There was darkness in the glittery shine. Uncertainty as the confetti rained down. And a fullbodied connection with the world that embraced it. “We had high hopes for what the album would accomplish,” starts Eva Hendricks. “But actually achieving any of those goals… It continues to blow my mind when I
think about it.” Not wasting any time, the band started writing for album two before the release of ‘Guppy’. They knew they wanted to dive further into the world of pop, “adding different textures and reaching different emotional moments,” she explains. “‘Guppy’ is high octane. It just goes, and it was right for that album, but with this one, we wanted songs that felt like they had more space to them. We wanted a more diverse range of emotions, and wanted to
challenge ourselves beyond just going 110%, 100% of the time.” Tuning out the noise of success, the band focused on themselves. “I feel lucky that we are all able to just write and write for ourselves and write to make ourselves proud. I think of us as a very ambitious group of people, but I don’t think we’re competitive with other bands. We’re very competitive with ourselves, and we hold ourselves to a super high standard. Going into this album, it wasn’t about making anyone else happy.” “I think of this album as about growing up, liking yourself more and more and trusting yourself more and more,” Eva explains. “That was the also the narrative for me writing this album as well. I’m always extremely hard on myself. I often default to being full of self-doubt and assuming I can’t do anything. For my whole career, I always felt like I was stumbling into doing this. ‘Oh, how did I end up in a band?’ ‘How did I write this song? I doubt I’ll be able to do it again’. “When ‘Guppy’ came out, it forced me to snap out of it and realise, I’m good at this. And that at some level, I’m built to be doing this, because its how I process everything that happens to me so I might as well just be confident in what I’m already doing instead of constantly finding ways to put myself down.” That self belief wrestles its way through the album. ‘Young Enough’ is a record that sparkles. From the end of summer loving explosion of ‘Blown To Bits’, through the twitching, twirling carousel of ‘Capacity’ and the jubilant snarl of ‘Chatroom’ until the slow-burning march of the title track, all deliberate vision and total control, Charly Bliss become the heroes they need to be. The record is surrounded by destruction, but there’s always something that follows. At times, it might feel like the end of the world, but it’s never the end. “I
Charly Bliss’s album ‘Young Enough’ is out now.
3
LAUV’S DEBUT ALBUM IS COMING!
SLOWTHAI
WITH HIS NEW ALBUM ‘NOTHING GREAT ABOUT BRITAIN’ MAKING WAVES, HERE'S 3 THINGS WE LOVE ABOUT THE GENRE-DEFYING NORTHAMPTON EXPORT WORDS: JAKE HAWKES.
HE ISN’T AFRAID TO SPEAK UP ON STUFF THAT MATTERS We wouldn’t normally condone getting naked in public (it tends to attract the wrong kind of attention), but when Slowthai is stripping off on stage to make a statement about male vulnerability? We’re on board with that. Add in the video for ‘Ladies’, which is basically a massive critique of toxic masculinity, and you can’t deny he’s doing something positive with his platform.
HIS DEBUT ALBUM KNOCKS IT OUT OF THE PARK Political without being preachy, grimy without being grime, ‘Nothing Great About Britain’ is a masterclass in balance. It’s full of energy and bounces from topic to topic, but always keeps the underlying theme of working-class, council estate pride. Slowthai’s been tipped for big things for a while and his debut still manages to be better than expected, which is no mean feat.
If you’re in any way observant, Dear Reader, you’ll know that Dork is ‘rather a fan’ of the big pop banger. That’s why we’re delighted to get something new from Lauv, who has just dropped a brand new single. Titled ‘Drugs & The Internet’, it’s the first taster of his much anticipated debut album, ‘~how i’m feeling~’. His first offering since January’s Troye Sivan collab ‘i’m so tired’, Lauv explains: “I wrote “Drugs & The Internet” at a time I was struggling with feelings of extreme emptiness and depression. I wrote it as a sort of self-analysis for my obsession with the way I wanted to present myself to the world — a commentary on the world we live today. It is as much selfdeprecating as it is serious and sad. It flew out of me in an hour. It felt more therapeutic than any song I’d written before. As the first song off of my album ~how i’m feeling~, it is the perfect entrance into the next phase of my life and music. I am more proud of this song and video than anything i have ever created in my life, and I’m so excited that it’s yours now.” So there we go. We’ve no firm release date for ‘~how i’m feeling~’ yet, but there are two new shows at London’s O2 Kentish Town Forum on 4th and 5th November on the books.
HE’S NOT TIED TO ONE MUSICAL SCENE Slowthai isn’t afraid of playing the musical field – how many other artists can say they’ve supported Slaves and Dave on tour within a few months of one another? Hardly anyone spends all their time listening to just one genre, so the idea of artists ‘staying in their lane’ doesn’t make sense any more. Long live an artist willing to play to whichever crowd wants to see him, and maybe even a few that don’t.
READDORK.COM
11
think of ‘Young Enough’ as an album about growth. And about strength. And perspective.” “The lyrics and the story of an album always feel like a total mystery to me until I finish it,” Eva continues. “Then I look back on it, and it hits me like a ton of bricks. ‘Chatroom’ is a song that is about sexual assault and being in a very manipulative and abusive relationship. When I was writing it, I really didn’t give much thought to the fact that that’s what I was writing about, it just felt good to say those things. There was this powerful moment where I made the decision to get angry at the right person, instead of blaming myself. “I feel like I wrote about this stuff, not thinking about it. I didn’t realise what I was doing but looking back clearly I needed to do it. I wrote these songs before I was able to talk about with anyone. It felt like writing these songs taught me how I felt. I was working through something that I hadn’t even found the words or the courage to talk about with even my closest friends and family, and this was an exercise for me to purge all of this stuff clogging my thoughts.” “It feels like a magic power to turn something that is completely fucking you up into something that feels like an explosion, and a celebration and a massive release,” she continues. “Hearing other women talk about what they’ve been through and realising that so many women have been here and experienced this, has helped me so much. Shame comes from thinking you’re the only person that’s experienced something, or that it’s something you need to hide or that if people knew this about you, they’d think differently. “I’m just so blown away by other women who have come forward about this and been so brave. I know that it’s helped me and I feel really lucky that I’m growing up in a time where those sort of conversations are happening because it’s beautiful to see women coming together over something that used to be very isolating. If anyone hears our songs, and feels less alone or ashamed or embarrassed or it gives them the courage to talk to someone else about it instead of keeping it inside, then that is the best thing I could ever imagine our music accomplishing.” P
UPDATE
In 2015, Carly Rae Jepsen released an album that quickly became the stuff of legend. It's not that before that point she hadn't made a significant impact, far from it, but 'E•MO•TION' picked up critical acclaim at every step, crowning a new queen on the pop throne. Now, four years, a b-side collection better than most of her peers' best endeavours and an earth shaking mega-hit later, she's finally back on her beat with the follow-up. 30
WORDS : ALI SHUTLER. PHOTOS: MARKUS&KOALA.
i de
31
d e t _1ic a
36
You’ll hear of other ‘must see’ live acts, sure. But - as they drop their debut album - Amyl & The Sniffers are more than just that. They’re a force of nature. WORDS + PHOTOS: JAMIE MACMILLAN
IT’S A SUNDAY NIGHT IN BRIGHTON. NEARLY
"I like songs that are fast and punchy, ones that make you wanna kick something" Amy Taylor
37
400 people are crammed into the basement of The Haunt, but any illusions that they are going to take it easy on a school night are soon put to rest. Melbourne’s punk sensations Amyl & The Sniffers are in town, and by the end of the first song their irrepressible singer Amy Taylor has thrown herself deep into the crowd - surfing perilously close to the lighting rigs just millimetres above her. Pinballing back, she crashes back to what should be the relative safety of the stage, landing awkwardly on her head. Cackling wildly, she bounces straight back to her feet and continues with a ferocious set of frenetic bangers that thrillingly merge punk and hardcore into one breathtaking concoction. This is their world, contained inside a whirlwind that is still only gathering speed. Their forthcoming self-titled debut album confirms what many have discovered over their startlingly rapid rise. Just three years after starting life as a band in their shared flat, Amyl & The Sniffers have lit a fire around the world. “Melbourne was always a pretty fun scene,” Amy explains en route to causing more chaos in Köln. “When we started, we thought we would just be playing house shows and stuff. We were listening to a lot of garage music, bands like Drunk Mums, Cosmic Psychos were a really big influence and AC/DC too. But we were heavily into the Sharpie scene (a 1970s Australian sub-culture similar to skinheads) as well, lots of raw and rough punk music.” As big now as it ever has been, the punk movement seems to be unstoppable once more. “I think there’s always been a bunch or people who loved punk, but it just comes in waves. Like low tide and high tide.” Those influences bled into the recordings.
42
fire
d up 43
Rock stars aren’t always born that way, but as Yonaka debut their first album, they’ve finally reached their destination. WORDS: STEVEN LOFTIN.