** PLUS **
YANNIS & THE YAW
DOWN WITH BORING.
ALFIE TEMPLEMAN
SWIM DEEP
THE MYSTERINES
Porter B I G SPECIAL LAUFEY LEIGHA N N E M A Y A H AW K E
GOAT GIRL
ORLANDO WEEKS
+ LOADS MORE
ISSUE 88 · JUNE 2024 · READDORK.COM
Robinson
English Teacher ThisEnglish CouldTeacher Be Texas The New Album This Could Be Texas Out Now
DIY
9/10
Loud and Quiet
NME
9/10
Uncut
Record Collector
Rolling Stone UK
Rough Trade “Album Of The Month”
Sunday Times “Album Of The Week”
Jo Whiley BBC Radio 2 “The fantastic and the everyday collide on this landmark debut - an adventure in sound and words”
INDEX.
BACK ISSUES! Want to complete your collection and grab Dork covers with all your faves? Get ‘online’ and head on over to shop.readdork.com and find our complete back catalogue, available while they last.
Issue 88 | June 2024 | readdork.com | Down With Boring
Hiya, Dear Reader.
June is busting out all over, and so is this month’s issue of Dork. We’ve got a veritable smorgasbord of musical delights for you, from the introspective musings of Maya Hawke to the genre-bending experiments of Porter Robinson, the raw power of BIG SPECIAL, the solo debut of Little Mix’s LeighAnne, and the jazz-pop fusion of Laufey. It’s like a sonic picnic, and you’re all invited. Leading the pack is the inimitable Maya Hawke, whose upcoming album ‘Chaos Angel’ finds her grappling with the complexities of love, fame, and the human experience. Maya’s not afraid to embrace the chaos and let her creativity run wild. Then there’s Porter Robinson, the electronic maestro who’s never content to rest on his laurels. His new album ‘SMILE :D’ is a giddy collision of 00s guitar and hyperpop attitude, proving that the most exciting music often lies at the intersection of the unexpected. BIG SPECIAL are redefining what it means to be a punk band in the 21st century. With their debut album ‘POSTINDUSTRIAL HOMETOWN BLUES’, the Black Country duo are shining a light on the trials and triumphs of workingclass life with unfiltered honesty and a healthy dose of humour. Fresh off her stint in one of the most successful girl groups of all time, Leigh-Anne is ready to make her mark. Her upcoming record promises to be a raw, vulnerable exploration of love and relationships – a far cry from the glitz and glam of her Little Mix days, but no less thrilling. And let’s not forget Laufey, the Icelandic-Chinese wunderkind who’s been winning hearts and blowing minds with her unconventional blend of jazz, classical, and pop. She’s proof that staying true to yourself can take you to some pretty incredible places. But that’s not all, folks! We’ve also got the scintillating sounds of Alfie Templeman, the mesmerising melodies of Goat Girl, the triumphant return of Swim Deep, the raw power of The Mysterines, the enigmatic Yannis & The Yaw, and the poetic prowess of Orlando Weeks. It’s a feast for your eyes and ears. So, Dear Reader, whether you’re a fan of introspective singer-songwriters, genre-defying innovators, or straight-up rock ‘n’ roll rebels, we’ve got you covered. Dive in, and let’s embrace the beautiful chaos together.
readdork.com Editor Stephen Ackroyd Deputy Editor Victoria Sinden Associate Editor Ali Shutler Contributing Editors Jake Hawkes, Jamie Muir, Martyn Young Scribblers Abigail Firth, Alexander Bradley, Ciaran Picker, Dan Harrison, Dillon Eastoe, Emma Quin, Finlay Holden, Neive McCarthy, Rebecca Kesteven, Rob Mair, Sam Taylor, Steven Loftin
Top Ten. 6. 8. 9.
FEET INDOOR PETS LAMBRINI GIRLS
10. 12. 14. 16. 17. 18. 20. 20.
YANNIS & THE YAW OPUS KINK ORLANDO WEEKS THE MYSTERINES EVERYONE SAYS HI TEENAGE KICKS: ORLA GARTLAND A DAY IN THE LIFE OF... NIEVE ELLA FONTAINES D.C.
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GLASTONBURY 2000TREES
24. 25. 26. 27.
SUNDAY (1994) BEA AND HER BUSINESS NICE SWAN AZIYA
Intro.
Festivals.
Stephen Ackroyd ‘Editor’ @stephenackroyd
Hype.
28. 29.
LEXIE CARROLL NXDIA
30. 36. 40. 46. 50. 56. 58. 64. 66.
BIG SPECIAL ALFIE TEMPLEMAN MAYA HAWKE TALKING HEADS PORTER ROBINSON SWIM DEEP LEIGH-ANNE GOAT GIRL LAUFEY
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DUA LIPA TAYLOR SWIFT WILLOW A.G. COOK
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CAITY BASER
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HOTWAX
Features.
Incoming. Get Out.
Backpage.
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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.
READDORK.COM 3.
COVER STORY
30. DORK
BIG
BIG SPECIAL
From the Black Country to the world stage, BIG SPECIAL’s debut album ‘POSTINDUSTRIAL HOMETOWN BLUES’ is a raw and honest reflection of the band’s journey and the universality of working-class struggles. by CIARAN PICKER. photography by DEREK BREMNER.
B
lack Country punk poets BIG SPECIAL are a bit of an anomaly in today’s music biz. Separately and together, the lads have been making music for the last sixteen years, so they know better than anyone that it’s not every day you feel like you’re on to a winner. Since the release of their debut single ‘SHITHOUSE’ almost a year ago to the day, life’s gone just a little bit weird for Joe Hicklin and Cal Moloney. Their debut album, ‘POSTINDUSTRIAL HOMETOWN BLUES’ isn’t some flash in the pan; it’s the peak of decades of dedication and tireless work that now sees them ready to not only take on the world but take it over completely. “We keep catching each other’s eye and going ‘What are we doing?’” Joe grins. “I’ll be sat on the sofa, look at my phone and go, ‘Oh, I’m on the cover of Rolling Stone!’” Cal agrees. “It’s the first time we feel that we’ve made a step on the right path for a long time.” Just home from tour, fans across the country turned out in their droves to watch the band. “We never thought we’d get out of the Birmingham scene, to be honest,” Joe reveals. “Like, people in the South understanding what we’re on about just never occurred to me.” “I never thought we’d reach Sheffield,” Cal laughs. Even more baffling for the boys was the reaction from fans during their support slot for emo-rock behemoths Placebo across South America. “We were in an airport in Mexico, and this guy came up to us and asked us to sign stuff,” Cal remembers. “I was just thinking, ‘What the absolute fuck is going on?!’” “We got recognised in a Brazilian mall too,” Joe giggles, “but then you come back and walk around Brownhills Market, and nobody knows who you are.” It’s impossible to separate BIG SPECIAL and their work from the wider national and global context in which it was built. For Joe, it was a shimmer of light in an otherwise pretty bleak period during the pandemic. “I sort of fell out of love with music; just as lockdown hit, I was ready to start releasing stuff, so it was like, ‘Fucks’ sake, now the world’s shut down to stop me from making music!’” At this moment, Cal came through with the idea that would ultimately morph into BIG SPECIAL, giving Joe the opportunity to get onstage and finally perform the words that he’d been harbouring since his teenage years. This time, though, he was afforded the opportunity to not only
READDORK.COM 31.
FEATURE
36. DORK
ALFIE TEMPLEMAN
A ALFIE TEMPLEMAN’s sophomore album ‘Radiosoul’ is a kaleidoscopic journey through his musical mind, as he embraces collaboration and pushes the boundaries of his sound. by ABIGAIL FIRTH. photography by JESSIE MORGAN.
lfie Templeman wants you to know he’s more than an indie pop boy. Yeah, he says it directly in our chat, but a spin of his second album, ‘Radiosoul’, is proof enough. “It’s not that I don’t want to be seen as that; it’s that I don’t want to be limited to that,” he explains, after joking he doesn’t resonate with being a pop star or rock star and instead wants to be a Philly soul boy. Still, with his sophomore record scratching nearly every itch in Alfie’s full-to-bursting brain, Philly soul isn’t miles from what he’s capable of. ‘Radiosoul’ pinballs around as many genres as possible in eleven tracks without it feeling like you’ve got whiplash when the song changes. “The whole idea of it was to essentially make a double album in a single album,” says Alfie of his motive this time. “Just make as many different kinds of songs and piece it all together and make it sound somewhat cohesive. I always said it was incohesively cohesive, even though that makes no sense whatsoever. I had so many different genres in my head that I wanted to go to.” Kicking off the cycle with ‘Eyes Wide Shut’, a pop bop that recalls early Scissor Sisters, dropping the sultry, groovy title-track early on, and recently releasing ‘Hello Lonely’, which he calls “the definition of indie-pop, a hybrid of Dua Lipa and MGMT”, it was clear he was hinting at losing the label. A proper music nerd, his encyclopaedic interest in every corner of music lends itself well to the album’s mood board. He goes for Beck-style slacker rock on ‘Beckham’, the chorus evoking the British mundanity of ‘Parklife’ as he reels off places in London he wanted to live; he nods to A. G. Cook’s peppy production and autotuned vocals on ‘Drag’, ‘Switch’ aims for a spacey, Alex G sound, while ‘Run To Tomorrow’ rounds out the record with 90s Jeff Buckley flair. His years of ripping off Nile Rogers’ guitar style also pay off, as the legend himself appears on ‘Just A Dance’. “That’s how working with him came about,” Alfie says, explaining the link up. “It just happens, and I subconsciously start playing like
READDORK.COM 37.
COVER STORY
“I was listening From witch therapy to musical mantras, MAYA HAWKE’s ‘Chaos Angel’ is a journey
back through
of
self-discovery,
breaking
patterns,
and
learning
in
front
of
everyone.
the audio of the by ABIGAIL FIRTH.
witch therapy session...” 40. DORK
photography by ANDREW LYMAN.
A
MAYA HAWKE
s a child, Maya Hawke paid a visit to a witch therapist, who was supposed to help her work through some early depression. The series of sessions concluded with a selfactualisation ceremony that set out to remove the shield that had hardened across young Maya’s chest and then replace it with a golden bubble. “Just to be clear, I’m not entirely that woo-woo,” says Maya. “It was an experiment to see how to make a kid not depressed. It was a lot of talking and mythologising, and you’re talking to your spirit animals and your spiritual guides. It was really quite intense, actually.” The hour-long session was recorded, the audio of which was unearthed to be used on Maya’s second album, 2022’s ‘Moss’, but she couldn’t find a place for it. It did, however, sit perfectly at the start of her upcoming third album ‘Chaos Angel’. “I knew that this record was going to be called ‘Chaos Angel’ from the time we started recording it, and I was listening back through the audio of the witch therapy session, and I found her say, ‘You become an angel in human form, does that make sense?’ I was like, oh, that’s how I’m gonna open my record. And there’s a little voice that goes, ‘Yes’. That’s me as a little tiny kid.” It opens ‘Black Ice’, the delicate folk number that encapsulates much of ‘Chaos Angel’’s ethos. While the start draws directly from her past, it winds up firmly in her present, where, inspired by the ‘Wise Up’ scene in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, her various close friends repeat “Give up, be loved” to close it. Its central lyric pulls from an old Hawke family expression – “Why do it right when you can do it yourself?” – bringing in her mission statement for the album, that of learning to break out of your usual patterns. “I wanted to make a record really intentionally, and rather than it being one random, full throttle gush of a particular emotion, to zero in on a lot of different kinds of relationships and point out the weak spots in them, or the mistakes that I felt that I’ve made. In order to carry myself through that with a little bit of a narrative structure, I created this myth of the Chaos Angel, which was kind of reverse-engineered from the song, which is the final track on the record, of this Amelia Bedeliaesque guardian angel, who was always coming around trying to do the right
READDORK.COM 41.
Start Makin Nonsens FEATURE
With a bunch of buzzy contributors from Paramore to girl in red to Blondshell, brand new compilation ‘EVERYONE’S GETTING
INVOLVED: A TRIBUTE TO TALKING HEADS’ STOP MAKING SENSE’ is a celebration of one of the best and most influential albums of all time. by JAKE HAWKES.
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ng se
F
TALKING HEADS
ew bands are as influential as Talking Heads. Emerging from the New York punk scene and iconic venue CBGB, the group quickly cemented themselves as one of the best and most inventive in a field crowded by the likes of Blondie, The Ramones, and Television. This reputation only increased once they started working with everyone’s favourite pioneer of ambient music, Brian Eno. The resulting run, ‘More Songs About Buildings and Food’, ‘Fear of Music’, and ‘Remain in Light’ still stand up as some of the best, most genre-defying albums around. Mainstream success, ‘Burning Down the House’, a song which gave Radiohead their name (yes, really), and ‘Stop Making Sense’, one of the greatest concert films of all time, followed before they went on hiatus then officially split in 1991. Aside from an onstage reunion at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, the band have never reformed. Cut to the present, and you can barely swing a cat without hitting a band who proudly proclaim Talking Heads as one of their biggest influences. London’s MOTH Club even hosts a semi-regular ‘David Byrne’s Night’, where everyone from Shame to Sports Team has taken a turn at a Talking Heads cover or two. Judging by the night’s addition to this year’s Wide Awake Festival, it’s been quite a popular idea. “So what?” we hear you cry. Well, Dear Reader, this isn’t just a history lesson to fill a few pages. If you’d only stick with us for a little bit longer, we’ll reveal what it’s all been leading towards. A 2023 IMAX remaster of Stop Making Sense by everyone’s favourite indie film company, A24, sent the rumour mill about what could come next into overdrive, especially when the band all took part in a Q+A to celebrate the re-release. Even more exciting for us here at Dork HQ was the announcement of ‘Everyone’s Invited’, a cover album featuring the songs from ‘Stop Making Sense’ as reimagined by the likes of Miley Cyrus, Teezo Touchdown, Lorde, The Linda Lindas, Blondshell and more. If any more evidence was needed that everyone on the planet loves Talking Heads, this was it. Well, maybe not quite everyone. Teezo Touchdown’s take on ‘Making Flippy Floppy’ may be an album highlight, but the Texan rapper hadn’t even heard of the band before A24 reached out to him. “They had to send
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YO 50. DORK
PORTER ROBINSON
URPorter Robinson’s ‘SMILE :D’ is a testament to the power of creative liberation, as the artist fearlessly explores new sonic territories and confronts uncomfortable truths with unbridled enthusiasm. by ALI SHUTLER. photography by GEORGE MUNCEY.
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COVER STORY
“MY
NUMBER ONE GOAL NOW IS TO BE HAPPY” After 11 years with Little Mix, LEIGH-ANNE is
embarking on a solo journey of raw honesty and selfdiscovery, stripping away layers to reveal her most authentic self. by ALI SHUTLER. photography by ADAMA JALLOH.
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LEIGH-ANNE
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COVER STORY
LAUFEY’s unconventional blend of jazz, classical, and pop has taken the world by storm, encouraging fans to embrace what they love and chase their dreams, no matter how niche. by ALI SHUTLER. photography by GEMMA WARREN, FRANCES BEACH.
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LAUFEY
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POSTINDUSTRIAL HOMETOWN BLUES
PRE-ORDER THE DEBUT ALBUM NOW ALBUM OUT 10TH MAY
**
BIGSPECIAL.CO.UK