Dork, March 2019

Sigrid.

Top of the pops.

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DON’T FEED THE POP MONSTER THE NEW ALBUM OUT NOW

March 2019 Issue 30

Ed’s letter.

There’s nothing better than a proper pop star, Dear Reader, and that’s exactly what Sigrid is. Long before winning 2018’s BBC Sound of poll, it was obvious to anyone with even the slightest imagination that she’d eventually take over the planet. Now, on the eve of the release of her debut album, it looks like that destiny is about to be fulfilled.

That’s why we’re so delighted to bring her to the cover of Dork for the first time. As a magazine more enamoured with the banger than most, it’s where she belongs.

She’s not the only long term fave you’ll find in this month’s issue. In fact, we’re packed with them. From Drenge to Indoor Pets to Sundara Karma, the next few weeks are a who’s who parade for our corner of the musical universe. There are old friends and new mates, from Rebecca Taylor of Slow Club’s new project Self Esteem and her brilliant debut album, to the Aussie relativenewcomer Stella Donnelly, who’s making equally fascinating moves. 2019 is already hotting up nicely.

Index.

UPDATE 6. THE 1975 10. JULIA JACKLIN 12. ‘FYI’ 14. FEVER 333 15. ZUZU 16. SELF ESTEEM 18. BANGERS 20. FESTIVALS HYPE 22. THE MURDER CAPITAL 23. MIXTAPE 24. FIRST ON 24. SISTERTALK 25. ON THE GRAPEVINE 25. IN THE KNOW 26. RECOMMENDED: THE GREAT ESCAPE 26. SO YOU WANNA BE A POP STAR? 27. LADY BIRD

FEATURES 28. SIGRID 36. STELLA DONNELLY 38. DRENGE 42. INDOOR PETS 46. SUNDARA KARMA INCOMING 50. SWMRS 52. DRENGE 54. THE JAPANESE HOUSE GET OUT 56. THE WOMBATS 60. THE GUIDE BACK PAGE 62. ANY OTHER QUESTIONS: SPORTS TEAM 62. DORKSVILLE

S tephen

Editor / @stephenackroyd

DORK

Editor Stephen Ackroyd Deputy Editor Victoria Sinden Associate Editor Ali Shutler Contributing Editors Jamie Muir, Martyn Young Events Liam James Ward Scribblers Abigail Firth, Chris Taylor, Ciarán Steward, Dillon Eastoe, Dominic Allum, Jake Hawkes, Jamie MacMillan, Liam Konemann, Samantha Daly, Steven Loftin Snappers Corinne Cumming, Frances Beach, Jamie MacMillan, Jennifer McCord, Patrick Gunning, Sarah Louise Bennett Doodlers Russell Taysom PUBLISHED FROM

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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. Message sent with concern that will never be addressed.

On The Stereo Foals Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost Part 1 Oh boy, this one’s a bit special.

Oxford’s other favourite sons are back with a new album - the first of a two-

parter across 2019 - that sees them manning the banger barricades like never before.

Strapping on those dancing shoes, it’s a thrilling turn from their recent festival headlining form that still plays to the masses, but does it with a swagger in its hips, and a glow stick between its teeth.

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Ten Tonnes Ten Tonnes

Our Ethan’s debut full-length is due this April, and it’s the indie powerhouse we’d hoped. He might still be looking up to the worldwide megastardom of big bro George, but if he keeps on doing it his own way, he might catch up before long.

Sigrid Sucker Punch

She’s on the cover, so you can draw your own conclusions of what we think about our Sig’s debut. You’ve already heard the title track - a banger if ever we heard one - and it’s not without company. Already a star, now Sigrid’s going supernova.

If it’s not in here, it’s not happening.

Or we forgot. One or the other.

GREATEST 6

Words: Stephen Ackroyd.

Photos: Sarah Louise Bennett.

They’ve dropped one of the standout albums of the past twelve months, and are preparing to deliver a second, but with their new live show, The 1975 may be more impressive than ever before.

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The 19 ade a playlis 75’s se t of tlis the co de in S t. Scan potify!

FROM BEFORE THE DOORS OPEN, THE O2 IS BUZZING as security tries to get 20,000 wide-eyed devotees into the capital’s premier enormodome all at once. Half empty plastic bottles and discarded blankets lie piled at the barriers - that determination to make it in, usually reserved for the front few rows, is transmitted to the whole audience before even getting inside the venue.

That’s The 1975’s base level - borderline euphoria. It’s still two hours before they’ll even hit the stage, and the anticipation is palpable. It’s an atmosphere that doesn’t only envelop the headline act. Collaborator and current muse No Rome might well be giving one of his first major live performances on one of the biggest stages in the country, but he’s far from an unknown. Dirty Hit increasingly feels more like a family than a record label, and it’s that kind of loving embrace that greets a short but sweet set that marks out a definite Future Pop Star.

Pale Waves, on the other hand, remain a phenomenon all of their own. Turns out, big, dark sheds suit them perfectly.

Pulsing with red and white lights and an over-order of dry ice, they cut effortless shapes so sharp they should require help from a grown-up. Like the house band at the biggest school prom on the planet, the highlights of last year’s debut ‘My Mind Makes Noises’ grow ever more strident and confident with every outing, their intrinsic wide-eyed naivety more a superpower than a barrier to overcome. By the time their breakout ‘There’s A Honey’

fades, you’d be forgiven for asking if there was any chance of a bit more.

Even an exceptional support showing doesn’t prepare for what follows. The 1975 have never been slouches when it comes to big moments. On their last album, 2016’s ‘I like it when you sleep...’, the staging was far from an afterthought.

Compared to tonight’s fireworks, it feels positively minimalistic. From the moment the repeating, piano-led ‘Love Theme’ that first echoed the arrival of their Music For Cars era cuts, this is showmanship on the grandest scale. The latest instalment of pseudo-title-track ‘The 1975’ blasts large onto a gigantic, several story high set of screens, every lyric delivered in massive, bold white type.

They’re not even on stage yet, and every hair in The O2 is stood to attention.

What follows is nothing short of a masterclass. The scrappy guitar of ‘Give Yourself A Try’ and the pop bop of ‘TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME’ become a gloriously messy release - a screaming, shouted back cacophony of noise transformed into an all-out dance party with one gloopy synth-led power up and more than a splash of brightly coloured light. Each track sees the stage around them reconfigure - their iconic box twisting and shifting while three multi-sided cube-like super screens dip up and down.

A changing set is nothing new in the pop arena, but this is beyond even the greatest bubblegum

SPOT Y O URSE Me ss a ge us kind of on Twitter @re LF?

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L

ive music, eh?

It’s brilliant, but sometimes not as brilliant as it could be. Often visceral, there’s always the occasional work-a-day band of box tickers, happy to just play the songs and get out of Dodge before the lights come up. It’s especially true when the lesser-spotted ‘bunch of indie boys’ manage to drag themselves up to major arena status. A bit more smoke, a louder sound system, an oversized banner for a backdrop - that’ll do, right?

The 1975 are not that band.

Not even close.

There are probably hard facts and figures that would disprove the notion that they’re de facto the biggest band on the planet right now, but there are few that could discount the assertion they might be the most important to the greatest number of engaged, enthusiastic fans.

From before the doors open, The O2 is buzzing. Queues surge

After the first night of the 1975’s big tour in Belfast, we asked a bunch of fans to let us know what they thought of the show...

The entire show was a spectacle of surprises and a lot of energy from Matty. It was really amazing to see him back on stage, because he truly is, by far, one of the greatest showmen there is in current music.

The 1975 are literal geniuses. I was blown away by the entire performance. @Tomm1975 They took their set from a light show to an entirely immersive, 3D, almost simulation-like experience. The 1975 are hands down the most creative, influential, caring band that exists today. Their talent and passion for their artistry and their love for the fans is unmatched, and it’s what keeps me coming back time and time again to see them live. @sugarcoatedpiIl The first The 1975 show of the tour was a truly cinematic experience. ‘I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)’ was a personal highlight of mine; it was a moment which induced many fans into tears. This show was faultless it can only be described as a spectacle definitely one for the books! @MaryxSSS We knew the visuals for the new songs were going to be off the charts, seeing them close up however completely took my breath away. Huge fans of the opening acts as well, a beautiful night to remember and a must-see for every music lover and human being out there. @parisaIina

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** THIS IS HAPPENING ** THIS IS HAPPENING ** THIS IS HAPPENING ** THIS IS HAPPENING ** THIS IS HAPPENING ** THIS IS HAPPENING ** THIS IS HAPPENING **

THE 1975 ARE HEADING STRAIGHT FOR THE HALL OF FAME

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dreamer’s wildest imagination.

‘Love Me’ is every bit the bratty but brilliant banger, while an onstage treadmill makes a showing for a recreation of the video for ‘Sincerity Is Scary’, backpack, rabbit hat and all. ‘It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)’ keeps the visual link up in place, as the multicoloured blocks from ‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships’’ cover art dance around like a giant game of Snake. Six songs in, and The 1975 are already punching for the championship belt.

It’s not just a set of greatest hits, though. The idiosyncrasies that run through The 1975 remain - from the rainbow glow of ‘Loving Someone’ into ‘The Ballad of Me and My Brain’, to the jittering, positively transcendent ‘How to Draw / Petrichor’, there’s as much movement in their musical styling as there is from the stage around them. And that includes the point where Matty Healy ascends then appears to physically step into the screen behind him, leaning against the frame of a giant iPhone - a genuine moment that goes far beyond the usual pyros and confetti cannons.

If the front half of the set is the ascent, then the second half is nothing short of a full release.

A triumphant ‘Robbers’, a sea of phones for ‘fallingforyou’ and a sweaty ‘UGH!’ push all the buttons, while ‘I Like America & America Likes Me’ lends credence to the theory that ‘ABIIOR’ is a jukebox of arena-sized moments. ‘Somebody Else’ still sounds like a timeless classic, while ‘Girls’ will always have that sugar-spun taste of a band bashing down the door. It’s current album closer ‘I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)’ that gets to draw a curtain on the main set, though its anthem status assured as tears stream down Healy’s face. He’s not the only one, either.

We’re not done yet, though. While saving big moments for the encore is hardly unique, The 1975 have an arsenal stacked like few others.

Returning to the rallying call of ‘Love It If We Made It’, the sound is both deafening and defiant.

Though Healy may paint it as a track that draws no conclusions, when backed with shots from its accompanying video it remains one of the most affecting musical moments of recent memory.

Placed alongside two of the band’s earliest hits, ‘Chocolate’ and ‘Sex’, and the post-ironic messages of ‘The Sound’, and it’s nothing short of a four-song mic drop.

In terms of sheer spectacle, it’s without comparison, but The 1975’s live performance is much more than a couple of motorised screens and some blue sky thinking. A band that thrives off its relatability, it’s the connection with their audience that makes the difference - a two-way transaction of raw energy, each feeding off the other. Every moment saturated to the maximum possible hue, and only halfway through a blockbuster album one-two that’s already changing the way their peers think about what it means to be a band in 2019, it’s a show that defies all expectations, but one: The 1975 are heading straight for the hall of fame.

Live music, eh? Sometimes it’s positively spectacular. P

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Cage The Elephant

have announced their fifth album, ‘Social Cues’.

It’ll arrive on 19th April, preceded by new single ‘Ready To Let Go’, which you can check out online now.

The Regrettes are going to support Twenty One Pilots on their upcoming UK tour. The massive run hits the UK on 27th February and includes three nights at London’s Wembley Arena - 7th, 8th and 9th March.

White Denim have

confirmed their eighth record, ‘Side Effects’.

Out on 29th March, it comes preceded by two new singles: ‘Shanalala’ and ‘NY Money’.

Lucy Dacus has unveiled

a new holiday-themed song series. The tracks - which kick off with a cover of Edith Piaf’s ‘La Vie En Rose’ to celebrate Valentine’s - will land throughout the year to honour Taurus season and US Mother’s Day, American Independence Day, Springsteen’s Birthday, Halloween, Christmas, and New Year’s.

Hop Along are going to

play a few UK and Irish shows this June. The band are bringing over their new album ‘Bark Your Head Off, Dog’, for six shows, including a night at Islington Assembly Hall.

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ongs about heartbreak are not exactly thin on the ground. Let’s face it, amongst all the bangers on your Spotify playlist, there are a few tucked away that always drag your thoughts back to someone in particular. But what if you’re the one who walked away?

Julia Jacklin found herself struggling with that very human experience as she went through the relentless cycle of the two-year tour that followed the success of her debut ‘Don’t Let The Kids Win’. Allied with a sense of claustrophobia and a very literal struggle for personal space while on the road, the daily entries into the journal that she had kept for nearly her entire life became full of thoughts and ideas that have led to a stunning follow-up.

Written largely on tour, ‘Crushing’ is a candid window into life on the road.

“It was kind of my first time touring, and it was a bit like a baptism of fire I guess,” explains the Australian singer over the phone, deep in the middle of a New York winter. “You just say yes to everything, you put up with a lot because you’re just so happy to be there.”

Such was the success of ‘Don’t Let The Kids Win’, Julia only had brief breaks for the entire time, something that undoubtedly

affected her as time went on.

“As a solo artist, you’re doing all of the talking, all of the ‘face-toface’ work, all the performing and you’re also running the band. It’s like running a small business, y’know?”

Exacerbating the issues, as a woman performing largely alone throughout that time, she regularly faced a subtle form of sexism.

“It is a different experience for women, just in terms of most of the time, you are the only woman in the room. And y’know, the way that people interact with you is different. It just is. Even the way that people touch you when you meet them is different.”

Finding herself often talked down to by people in venues, “People just kind of assume you don’t have knowledge of sound for example. Not all of the time, but a lot of it. And if you don’t have any other women around to reflect and talk about that experience with, you do feel like you’re going a bit crazy.”

For Julia, these feelings began to internalise and solidify into much of the material that ‘Crushing’ is built on.

“I stopped talking about it because I didn’t want to seem ‘hysterical’ about it. I felt isolated and voiceless, because the music world is 100% a boys club. It’s changing, but on the ground it still is.”

In a tactic familiar to women all around the world, Julia ended

With her second full-length ‘Crushing’, Australian singer-songwriter Julia Jacklin delivers a poignant break-up album filled with hope; it’s a masterclass in storytelling. Words: Jamie MacMillan

“I FELT ISOLATED AND VOICELESS, BECAUSE THE MUSIC WORLD IS 100% A BOYS CLUB” up “trying to be the funny girl, laughing it off.” ‘Head Alone’, with its lyrics of “I raised my body up to be mine” came from a combination of general music industry types wanting her to be a ‘personality’ rather than giving her the space she needed, as well as relationship issues that she is understandably reluctant to discuss too much.

“It’s quite hard to talk about it specifically, it’s quite personal,” she explains honestly, before describing songs like the jaw-dropping closing track ‘Comfort’ as part of her mission in showing a different side to a familiar subject.

“There are so many songs that you can hear that are all about being broken up with or wanting someone back, or telling someone to go away,” she reflects. “I just found myself struggling to find songs that talked about how, maybe, if you ended the relationship then you don’t get much sympathy or understanding because people just

assume that you made the decision so you must be happy.”

When she’s asked how she feels about bringing these songs out into the open in front of a roomful of strangers every night, she pauses.

“It’s funny; I just didn’t think about it honestly for a second.

At all. It was only when we were re-learning the songs for tour that I was like, okay, this is going to be intense.”

With most songs scaling untold emotional heights, there is a realisation that these shows are going to be powerful but tough on Julia.

“The way that shows are, you can’t take five minutes in between each song, you just have to finish and go, ‘Great, here’s the next song!’”

Having overcome everything the world can throw at one person in the last couple of years, however, there is no doubt that she is more than up to this challenge.

“I’m so much more confident now; I am ok with just having a minute after a song. I used to feel like I have to entertain for every second of every show, but I feel like the crowds that come to my show are really respectful of that.”

As her UK tour draws near, it’s time to steel our hearts before Julia Jacklin steals them away.

P Julia Jacklin’s album ‘Crushing’ is out 22nd February. She tours the UK from 26th March.

Photo: Sarah Louise Bennett

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MUST WATCH

Gerard Way’s

Umbrella Academy is on Netflix!

After recently jolting back into musical life with a series of seemingly (for now, anyway) one off track drops, former (and hopefully one day not-so-former) My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way is about to see his mega comic book series Umbrella Academy make its way onto Netflix. Streaming now, it even stars proper film types like Ellen Page.

Rose Elinor Dougall has announced her new album, ‘A New Illusion’.

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Rose Elinor Dougall is back with a new record. She’ll release her third full-length ‘A New Illusion’ - the followup to 2017’s ‘Stellular’ - on 5th April.

NEW !

MUSIC

Interpol have dropped a new track.

Vampire Weekend are

Interpol have dropped a surprise new track, ‘Fine Mess’, and announced two new shows. The Manhattan group will perform at Leeds’ O2 Academy on 25th June, followed by Brighton’s Dome on the 26th.

back! Back!! BACK!!!

They’ve finally returned! Vampire Weekend have confirmed that their new album - ‘Father of the Bride’ will be released this spring.

In the run up, they’ll be dropping pairs of tracks, twice a month from the 18-song-long full-length, starting with ‘Harmony Hall’ and ‘2021’, which you can stream now. Read more about certified banger ‘Harmony Hall’ on page 16.

Florence + the Machine has shared a new single, and its b-side. ‘Moderation’ was initially given an airing during her recent Aussie tour in support of latest album, ‘High As Hope’. It arrives backed with ‘Haunted House’. Listen to both tracks now on readdork.com

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The greatest band in the world Muna will be releasing music this year. We know this because they said so, in a tweet. “The greatest band in the world Muna will be releasing music this year,” it reads.“They will be taking no further questions,” they conclude.

Stephen Malkmus has unveiled a new solo album, ‘Groove Denied’.

Florence + the Machine has dropped a new surprise single.

Muna are releasing new music this year, BTW.

Stephen Malkmus has confirmed details of a new solo album. ‘Groove Denied’ will be released on 15th March, preceded by new single ‘Viktor Borgia’. “I was thinking things like Pete Shelley’s ‘Homosapien’, the Human League, and DIY synth music circa 1982,” says Stephen, “and also about how in the New Wave Eighties, these suburban 18-and-over dance clubs were where all the freaks would meet – a sanctuary.”

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No Name is playing some UK live dates this March.

Chicago’s Fatimah Warner, aka Noname is coming to the UK. Touring in support of her new album, ‘Room 25’ - the follow-up to 2016 mixtape ‘Telefone’ - she’ll play four shows in March, visiting Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham and London.

Find the full dates and details now on readdork.com

New releases on the horizon...

8TH MARCH Foals - Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 1 Indoor Pets - Be Content Stella Donnelly - Beware of the Dogs SASAMI - SASAMI ​Sigrid - Sucker Punch 15TH MARCH Benjamin Francis Leftwich - Gratitude Karen O & Danger Mouse - Lux Prima Stephen Malkmus Groove Denied

22ND MARCH American Football American Football (LP3) Anteros - When We Land Avey Tare - Cows On Hourglass Pond Crows - Silver Tongues Ex Hex - It’s Real Lucy Rose - No Words Left Nilüfer Yanya - Miss Universe 29TH MARCH Brutus - Nest The Xcerts - Wildheart Dreaming EP

5TH APRIL Circa Waves - What’s It Like Over There?

The Drums - Brutalism GIRLI - Odd One Out JAWS - The Ceiling PUP - Morbid Stuff Ten Tonnes - Ten Tonnes 12TH APRIL Band of Skulls - Love Is All We Love 19TH APRIL Fat White Family - Serfs Up! Jade Bird - Jade Bird Ryan Adams - Big Colors 26TH APRIL SOAK - Grim Town

** COMING UP ** COMING UP ** COMING UP ** COMING UP ** COMING UP ** COMING UP ** COMING UP ** COMING UP ** COMING UP ** COMING UP **

COMING UP

Wallows’ debut album ‘Nothing Happens’ is coming this March

Wallows have announced their debut album,

‘Nothing Happens’.

Weezer have released a

covers album. Obviously.

Not content with dropping their self-titled Black Album on 1st March, perpetual musical trolls Weezer have also delivered a second colour-coded full-length, Teal.

Consisting of cover versions, it’s streaming now. Listen now on readdork.com

The full-length will arrive on 22nd March preceded by new single ‘Are You Bored Yet?’ featuring Clairo. They’re coming over for their first ever European tour this spring, including dates in London, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and Glasgow.

Employed to Serve will drop their new album, ‘Eternal Forward Motion’ this May.

Employed To Serve have announced their new album. ‘Eternal Forward Motion’ will be released on 10th May .

The Big Moon are probs going to drop new music this year.

The Big Moon have taken to Twitter for some teasing. Posting a behind-the-scenes studio pic, they revealed: “Working hard on new songs. 2019 gonna be a big one.”

They’re currently working on the followup to their 2017 debut ‘Love in the 4th Dimension’.

Band of Skulls are going to release a new album this April.

Band of Skulls have announced their new album, ‘Love Is All You Love’ will be released on 12th April via SO Recordings, preceded by the single ‘Cool Your Battles’.

Lizzo has announced a brand new album.

Lizzo has announced her new album, ‘Cuz I Love You’. The

news follows the release of her ridiculously good megahit ‘Juice’ earlier this year, with the record arriving in full on 19th April. Since her 2016 EP ‘Coconut Oil’, she’s also dropped ‘Boys’, ‘Fitness’, and ‘Truth Hurts’. The album will be accompanied by a US tour that kicks off on 24th April in San Francisco

Flight of the Conchords are releasing a live album.

Flight of the Conchords have announced a new live album.

Recorded at the Eventim Apollo during their UK tour last year, ‘Live in London’ will be released on 8th March. The record features seven new songs: ‘Iain and Deanna’, ‘Father and Son’, ‘Summer of 1353’, ‘Stana’, ‘Seagull’, ‘Back on the Road’, and ‘Bus Driver’.

Fickle Friends are a person down.

Fickle Friends are a band member down, with guitarist Chris Hall leaving the group. “Change is never easy,” the band explain. “We have had the most amazing 5 years working with Chris, it’s with great sadness that we have decided to part ways. He is a true talent and amazing guy and we wish him all the best with his next project!”

Anteros are heading out on tour this April.

Anteros have announced a brand new UK tour. The band kick off their latest headline run in Norwich on 7th April, before heading off to Southampton, London, Birmingham, Leicester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Newcastle, Manchester, Nottingham and Leeds.It comes ahead of the release of debut album ‘When We Land’, released on 25th March.

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The Antlers have announced some ‘Hospice’ anniversary shows, and a double vinyl reissue.

The Antlers are going to reissue their album ‘Hospice’ to celebrate its 10th birthday. The record will be available on vinyl from 22nd March, and sees them play four shows in April.

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Ali Shutler catches up with Fever 333’s Jason Aalon Butler to find out more about how they’re kickstarting a revolution with their message of hope, acceptance and change.

F 14

ever 333’s debut album ‘Strength in Numb333rs’ is a rage-infused, forward-thinking riot of acceptance, power and progression.

On the surface, they’re a political rock band who want to tear down systems and stages, but it’s 2019 - there’s more to them than blood-pumping destruction.

Built around a mantra of community, charity and change, this band is about creation.

From the moment Jason Aalon Butler, Stephen Harrison and Aric Improta played their first show in a Californian parking lot in the summer of 2017, Fever 333 have been speaking loudly, proudly and with conviction.

They aren’t waiting idly by for people to find them and their message. They’ve hit the road hard, including lengthy jaunts across Europe and North America supporting Bring Me The Horizon.

A new band playing arenas and preaching change has got division written all over it, but Fever 333 was born from struggle.

“It’s most important to speak with those people who have diametric and opposing beliefs to show them that you’re not a conspiratorial fucking freak, which is what they think,” explains Jason. “You’ve got to go

in and create an area where you can talk to those people, and not just say, ‘Fuck you, get out of my face, you’re dumb’.”

‘Strength In Numb333rs’ rages with emotion. Rather than pointing fingers or painting crosshairs on ‘The Man’, Fever 333 find similarities and encourage empathy. It’s feelings first, from the twisting autobiographical epic of ‘Inglewood’ to the uniting romp of ‘One Of Us’ that proudly welcomes you in. “Now you’re one of us,” it promises.

“I wrote that line for my solo project that hasn’t seen the light of day yet,” says Jason. “I wrote that line when I was walking with my dog and listening to Bon Iver. He was suffering from some trauma after being attacked, and I realised my dog truly is the canine version of me in the way that he acts, feels and reacts to the world because of what has happened to him in his past.

“My dog Louie has taught me so much about myself. This animal that can’t speak to me taught me something or showed me a part of myself that made feel less alone. When I wrote that line, I was hoping to offer people a sense of belonging that my dog Louie offered me.”

In everything the band do, they offer empowerment, representation and hope. It’s

not about thinking the same; it’s just about finding a way to work together.

“I know it sounds so fucking cliché, ‘we are all one person’, but honestly the truth is that we can find a way. I’m not a misanthropic man; I really believe we can find a way. Take away all the bullshit, and look at the person for who they are, who they want to be or who they can be. You’ll see there’s more similarity than you assumed.”

It’s not just in their lyrics that Fever 333 offer challenge, confrontation and the hope.

Musically, ‘Strength In Numb33rs’ takes the idea of a subversive rock band making protest anthems and updates it. Across the album,

“MOTHERFUCKERS NEED TO STOP BEING SCARED TO TAKE CHANCES” DORK

D OWN WI T H BO RI N G

they blend the expected with the surprising. Soulful, brutal and constantly exciting, it moves with furious, unapologetic speed.

“What happened to being the movement that scared people into wanting change? What happened to being the movement that came out of subversion and adversity and struggle? When did we start packaging danger? Motherfuckers need to stop being scared to take chances in a scene, in a world built on pushing the envelope.

“Unfortunately there’s always going to be something to react to; even if it’s just music becoming stale again, we’re gonna react to that as well.” P Fever 333’s debut album ‘Strength in Numb333rs’ is out now.

tour. Following the surprise digital release of their selftitled debut album - set for a physical release on 22nd February - they’ll be in the UK this May for a trio of shows in Bristol, London and Manchester.

Fat White Family are taking their third album, ‘Serfs Up!’, out on the road this spring. Out on 19th April, it’s their first for new label Domino, home to Arctic Monkeys, Anna Calvi, Blood Orange and more, and it saw them relocate to Sheffield for writing sessions. They’ll head out on tour this May, kicking off on the 1st in Southampton. The band have also not long played two sold-out nights at the Lexington in London.

These New Puritans

have announced their fourth album. ‘Inside The Rose’ is set for release on 22nd March, and is billed as Jack and George Barnett’s “most innovative work to date.”

Ten Tonnes has

announced a new UK headline jaunt. The tour will be in support of his upcoming debut album: the self-titled record has been in the works for a while now, and will be released on 5th April via Warner Bros. Records. It features recent singles ‘G.I.V.E.’, ‘Cracks Between’, and ‘Lay It On Me’. Kicking off in May, you can find the dates on readdork.com now.

** THIS IS HAPPENING ** THIS IS HAPPENING ** THIS IS HAPPENING ** THIS IS HAPPENING ** THIS IS HAPPENING ** THIS IS HAPPENING ** THIS IS HAPPENING **

Better Oblivion Community Center, the new project from Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst, have announced a

Get a hobby

TALKING COMICS WITH...

Musicians are real people, you know. They do stuff other than just create nice songs - like read and illustrate comics and cartoons.

Hey Zuzu, what first introduced you to comics?

Probably Cartoon Network! I got the comics for my favourite shows.

Are you a purist?

No, definitely not. I just like what I like, old or new.

How extensive is your comic collection?

My personal collection isn’t huge, I’ve got a few DC comics, and I

“I GET SUPER INSECURE ABOUT MY DRAWINGS WAY MORE THAN I DO MY MUSIC” have had a subscription to the Adventure Time comics for a couple of years now. My boyfriend’s dad is a massive comic book fan, and I’ve got my hands on his amazing Marvel collection from the 70s, I haven’t even read through them all there’s that many!

Do you have a favourite issue, series or character?

Maybe it’s because I love the show so much, but I cherish my Adventure Time comics. The characters translate so well into that format; they use the same language as they do in the show to really bring the individual characters to life. Marceline the Vampire Queen is my favourite, she writes songs and plays an Axe! She’s Math!

What do you make of the current slew of film and TV adaptions?

I haven’t really watched the new Marvel stuff, except the Guardians of the Galaxy films, which I loved!

The new Star Trek on Netflix is

unreal also I LOVE the new SpiderMan game, got my first platinum trophy with that one!

Do you go to conventions and stuff?

I’ve not been to any yet, but this year I really hope to get to ComicCon! When did you start drawing comics yourself?

Not long ago! Maybe for about a year or two, I get super insecure about my drawings way more than I do my music. I started drawing as another creative outlet when I’m done with music for the day.

Do you have a favourite illustration project that you’ve worked on?

I’m so far from being professional, so I have only ever done things for fun. I started drawing people as a way to say thank you for the amazing things they do for me. So apart from my own little projects I’ve not done much! I drew a logo for one of my friends Lauran Hibberd who’s using it on all her stuff now, that makes me proud!

What is something about comics that most people don’t know?

Michael Jackson wanted to be Spider-Man and tried to buy Marvel comics in the 90s! Also, our universe is actually in the Marvel multiverse; we are Earth-1218! P Find Zuzu at Live At Leeds (4th May), and The Great Escape (9th11th May).

Zuzu’s comic strip for her song ‘Deep Blue’.

DORK

RE AD D O RK. CO M

15

“I HAD TO DO THIS FOR ME” T Rebecca Lucy Taylor - aka ‘Rebecca out of Slow Club’ - has moved out on her own to make pop hits under the moniker Self Esteem. “I have this joke where I’m the people’s pop star,” she tells Martyn Young.

16

he last time Dork spoke with Rebecca Lucy Taylor she had just released her first single as Self Esteem and was making her first musical steps out from her former band, Slow Club.

Now, 18 months later, her multimedia project Self Esteem has taken on a life of its own, and her debut album ‘Compliments Please’ is the culmination of everything she’s always wanted to do.

Rebecca had been making music for over ten years with Slow Club, but with Self Esteem everything is a little bit different; the ambition is ramped up like never before.

“The difference compared to everything else I’ve made in my career is that I feel so 100% about it,” explains Rebecca. “You can’t fuck with it. If you don’t like it, that’s fine, but I made what I wanted to make.”

Self Esteem is a project that amplifies all the endearing and idiosyncratic sides to Rebecca’s personality that make her such a wonderfully daring and outspoken artist. Finally given free rein to pursue her own vision, she has taken the ball and firmly run with it on the 16 track pop tour de force of ‘Compliments Please’.

“This is way more in my comfort zone,” she says. “I’m not like an actress any more. I’m myself. I definitely want people to like it. I naturally think quite businessy, and that music needs to make sense. People need to understand the aesthetic and what you’re saying. I’ve done all the things that naturally come to me; for my piece of mind and my mental health, I had to do it. I had to do this for me.”

The process of making the album was one of the most joyous periods on her career as she set out bringing Self Esteem to life in the balmy coastal paradise of southern England.

“I made it in Margate which is where I’m living,” she says.

“There was quite a bit of beer. The summer was so hot, and the studio was by the beach, so it was an idyllic lifestyle. I was waking up, sauntering to the studio, making my

album the way I wanted to make it, then clocking off and having cold Fosters on the beach watching the sunset. Then, waking up and doing it all over again. It was wonderful.”

Awakening from her hazy summer slumber, Rebecca was again inspired by her lifelong obsession with Drag Queens.

“The advice that Joan Rivers gave a drag queen called Bianca Del Rio echoes around my head: ‘If you can lay down at the end of the day and feel absolutely exhausted, then you’ve worked’. So I’d be sunbathing on the beach drinking a beer thinking, oh you’ve not worked.

“I suddenly had an epiphany around September where I thought, right let’s go. That went hand in hand with touring and making the artwork; it’s been quite intense. It was all quite lovely. Lovely in a way I can’t sustain though, or I’d just become a total wasteman.”

The album that she created during that long hot summer is an amalgamation of all her tastes filtered through a pure pop prism.

It might’ve been easy to just stick a trap house beat under the tracks and follow a contemporary pop formula, but Self Esteem is far too subversive for that.

“I came at it with my taste. I know the sounds that get me off, and it was about finding those,” says Rebecca. “I naturally write pop songs; that didn’t change too much.

I haven’t made a conscious decision to make it wonky on purpose. If something sounds beautiful and catchy, you should leave it. With my gut reaction and taste as an amalgamation of things I’ve loved over the years, it turned out alright.”

With Self Esteem, Rebecca is making music for people who share the same love, desires and sounds like her.

“I have this joke where I’m the people’s pop star because I’m not really young and skinny, posh or American,” she laughs with typical self-deprecating charm. “I’m a disgusting and gross person that happens to make this music. I’ve always thought there’s room for that.

“As a pop fan, you’re used to big American stars or polished UK

DORK

“IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT, THAT’S FINE, BUT I MADE WHAT I WANTED TO MAKE”

X Factor stuff. There’s not really anything else. I’d look around at crowds in indie gigs I was playing thinking, I bet these people here put Little Mix on when they go home on the bus, I know I do. That was the idea, and that was what I set out to do. I feel I’ve made a good start to it.”

Her work as Self Esteem is characterised by ultra-strong confidence in herself as an artist and a desire to never take a backward step.

“That’s something I’ve learned,” she explains. “At the beginning of making this album, I was a bit like, ‘Yeah, what do you think?’ with producers, but I’ve learned not to hedge my bets and be more concise with what I want and how I communicated it. If I hadn’t done that I doubt I’d be so confident about everything.”

The songs themselves are a perfect balance between celebratory pop bangers like the playful ‘Girl Crush’ and the lead single calling card ‘The Best’ and the kind of slow jam heart stoppers that Rebecca has always loved. On the great bangers vs slow jams debate Rebecca can see both sides.

“I need to write bangers, but nothing is more fun for me than writing an emotional slowie,” she confesses. “I’ve got over ten years of making songs like that. I’ve always felt more comfortable in that part of the tempo world. They are the songs that mean more to people, but, I’m a real banger convert since I’ve been allowed to make them the way I wanted.”

D OWN WI T H BO RI N G

Perhaps the strongest impulse behind Self Esteem is the liberating freedom of exploring your own vision and not worrying what anyone else is thinking.

“I want to renounce the worry of being called a bitch or a diva or all that shite,” exclaims Rebecca.

“I’ve never been called that, but I’ve certainly felt like that’s what’s going to be said about me behind my back. That not being there anymore has been a nice change for me in my life.”

Once the album is out in the world, Rebecca has big plans for her videos and aesthetic.

“I plan to do this for a bit, then do a Rebecca Lucy Taylor record, then you can just lay me on a piano and wheel me around,” she laughs. “It’s like Jane McDonald cabaret style, and I’ll be a national treasure by then, so it totally works. I want to be ‘on Strictly Come Dancing’ level of national treasure. That’s the next plan.”

It’s been a long time coming for her to have this level of freedom, and she’s going to make the most of it.

“I feel like I’ve never been taken seriously and had an ordeal convincing people of my ideas, but now I’m being trusted to make my ideas come to life. There isn’t any feeling better than that.”

The next big milestone for Self Esteem is her next London gig at the Village Underground in March. It’s a landmark gig.

“I’m going to make it a bit of an extravaganza. If that comes off the way I want it to it will be great.”

In many ways, this first big solo London show is an occasion she’s been waiting for her whole career.

“I’m obsessed with how I’m not getting married or having kids,” she says. “I once had a note in my phone that just said, ‘Your career is your kids!’ On its own, it’s the saddest thing you’ve ever heard, but I feel like the Village Underground is my first marriage. That’s the most important date in my life, so I’m finally going to get my cisgender, straight women white wedding feeling.” P Self Esteem’s debut album ‘Compliments Please’ is out 1st March.

** THIS IS HAPPENING ** THIS IS HAPPENING ** THIS IS HAPPENING ** THIS IS HAPPENING ** THIS IS HAPPENING ** THIS IS HAPPENING ** THIS IS HAPPENING **

Soccer Mommy has dropped two new songs to coincide with her massive US tour. ‘Blossom (Demo)’ is an early version of the song from her not-longreleased debut album ‘Clean’, while ‘Be Seeing You’ was the b-side for her ‘Last Girl’ 7”.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are

back with a new single.

‘Cyboogie’ marks their first new material in over a year, since they released a ridiculous five albums in 2017 - ‘Flying Microtonal Banana’, ‘Murder Of The Universe’, ‘Sketches Of Brunswick East’, ‘Polygondwanaland’ and ‘Gumboot Soup’.

17 Empress Of and Perfume Genius have dropped their previously teased ‘collab’.

Teased as a Perfume Genius cover of Empress Of’s ‘When I’m With Him’, it features the latter on backing vocals, with the original’s co-producer Jim-E Stack also in on the action. You can check it out on readdork.com now.

Confidence Man have

announced details of their biggest London headline show to date. The band will return to the UK this May, when they’ll play Brixton’s Electric. They say: “We’re coming back London and we’re takin’ it so far that you need to be fluent in body language to even understand it. So for those in the know, we’ll see you at Electric Brixton for our biggest show ever on the 2nd May. For those who ain’t got the moves yet, you best study up or someone else will be takin’ ya mumma home that night.”

18

Foals Exits

Foals do comebacks well.

Remember the whiplash of ‘Inhaler’ and its rock stance, or the quaking thunder of ‘What Went Down’? Those first impressions matter.

‘Exits’ isn’t the route one megabanger of those previous two first offerings, but it’s no less fascinating. Delightfully odd, it sees Oxford’s other favourite sons rediscovering their quirky side once again.

While that spirit of musical adventure never really left them, Foals spent their last couple of albums laughing intercontinental missiles at festival headline slots to glorious results. With that top billing assured, though, there’s the opportunity to get a little weird, and they’re grasping it with both hooves.

Vampire Weekend Harmony Hall

Praise be, Vampire Weekend are back! After what feels like an unfairly long wait, the nowthree-piece’s first taster of new material has arrived, and it’s nothing short of euphoric.

While the first half of their double drop, ‘2021’, may be a low key affair - essentially

a minute and a half of build up - it’s ‘Harmony Hall’ which is the definitive main event of the band’s big reveal. A shifting slice of come-to-Jesus, arms aloft worship, it skips from duelling guitars to Songs of Praise in a bucket hat. Stamped throughout with Vampire Weekend’s iconic DNA, it’s also jam-packed with that playful energy that’s made their absence so keenly felt. Like Black Grape after rehab doing ‘Greensleeves’, it’s big, brash but not unfamiliar with the concept of beauty either. With a swagger and a sway, ‘Harmony Hall’ is Sister Act. 3: Cape Cod Goes Madferit. Praise be!

Sports Team M5

Pop those driving gloves on, those lovable Sports Team scamps are leaving the Margate seaside for a trip down the motorway with latest banger ‘M5’ - an ode to the joys of life on the open road that is as much fun as you would imagine being stuck in a car with Alex and the gang for hours is, complete with a big-budget video. With a ridiculously catchy ‘oohoooooh-oooh’ bit that you won’t get out of your head for days no matter how hard

you try, as well as yet another banging chorus, it’s another sign that this lot are one of the most exciting new bands in the country right now.

Blaenavon Catatonic Skinbag

S Get the latest bangers at readdork.com, or follow our Brand New Bangers playlist on Spotify.

Check out all these tracks and more on Dork Radio now at readdork.com/ radio.

DORK

Blaenavon haven’t had it easy during their time away - as a recent update from frontman Ben attested, but as they return in the run-up to their second album, they don’t sound like a band retiring from the fight.

Channelling the best of late 90s Brit Rock, Blaenavon have shifted up a gear.

Billie Eilish Bury A Friend

It’s impossible to overstate just how impressive the rise of future megastar Billie Eilish has been. Already rising above the level of more established peers, ‘Bury A Friend’ is much more than just a hype building taster for possibly the most anticipated debut album of the year. With echoes of Marilyn Manson’s ‘Beautiful People’ (no, really - Ed), and operating in a register that’s close to fullblown ASMR, there’s nobody else even remotely like her.

Read all about Billie Eilish’s debut album on p.25.

D OWN WI T H BO RI N G

** THIS IS HAPPENING ** THIS IS HAPPENING ** THIS IS HAPPENING ** THIS IS HAPPENING ** THIS IS HAPPENING ** THIS IS HAPPENING ** THIS IS HAPPENING **

The best new tracks.

ALMA has announced her debut album. Titled ‘Have You Seen Her’, the full-length will drop on 5th April. It comes alongside a brand new track, ‘When I Die’, which is streaming online now.

Martha have confirmed

details for their new album.

‘Love Keeps Kicking’ will arrive on 5th April via Big Scary Monsters, preceded by the title-track, which you can check out online now.

Rosie Lowe has

announced her second album, ‘YU’. The record will be released on 10th May, and is preceded by the single ‘Birdsong’ - a song about “lust and desire, but with the lingering sense of insecurity and longing” - which features backing vocals from Jamie Woon, Jamie Lidell, Jordan Rakei and Kwabs.

Demob Happy have dropped a new track. Titled ‘Less Is More’, it comes as the band prepare to hit the road. They’ll kick off the new run in Manchester on 24th February, then move on to play Birmingham, Edinburgh, Newcastle and London, before finishing up in Brighton on 2nd March.

Catfish & the Bottlemen have announced a new album. ‘The Balance’ will arrive on 26th April, followed by a UK and Ireland headline tour that kicks off two nights later.

ACADEMY EVENTS by arrangement with UTA presents

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Festivals What to see where.

23rd-25th August 2019

CHVRCHES, Royal Blood, Charli XCX

and loads of others are playing this year’s

Reading & Leeds.

A

20 18th-21st July 2019

Lana Del Rey, George Ezra, Sigrid and loads more are playing Latitude 2019.

T

he first acts for this year’s Latitude festival have been announced.

George Ezra, Snow Patrol and Lana Del Rey will headline this summer’s event, with Underworld performing a special set to close the Obelisk Arena on the Sunday.

Other acts playing the festival’s biggest stage include Loyle Carner, Sigrid, Cat Power, Tom Grennan and Pale Waves.

The BBC Music stage, meanwhile, will feature the likes of Primal Scream, Parcels, Julia Jacklin, Rolling Plackouts Costal Fever, MØ and Nadine Shah.

The initial bill also includes many of the non-music attractions, including a packed comedy line-up including Michelle Wolf, Jason Manford, Nish Kumar, Tom Allen, Rachel Parris and Lolly Adefope.

Latitude takes place between 18th and 21st July. P

DORK

nother batch of new bands has been added to the line-up for this year’s Reading & Leeds festivals.

The bumper collection of names includes the likes of CHVRCHES, Royal Blood, Charli XCX, Blaenavon, Frank Carter and The Rattlesnakes, Peace, current Dork cover star The Japanese House, No Rome and The Wombats.

There’s also room for Alma, You Me At Six, Ten Tonnes, Circa Waves, Bloxx, Enter Shikari (who will play four sets across the weekend!), Twin Atlantic, Slowthai, Mura Masa, The Night Café, Bloxx and The Hunna, amongst others.

Acts already announced for Reading & Leeds 2019 include The 1975, Twenty One Pilots, Foo Fighters, Post Malone, Bastille, Pale Waves, Sundara Karma, Blossoms, Billie Eilish, PVRIS and The Amazons.

Reading & Leeds 2019 takes place between 23rd and 25th August. Tickets are on sale now. P

Latitude line-up: + George Ezra + Snow Patrol + Lana Del Rey + Underworld + Loyle Carner + Neneh Cherry + Sigrid + Tom Grennan + Cat Power + Khruangbin + Anna Calvi + Pale Waves + Baxter Dury + Walking On

D OWN WI T H BO RI N G

Cars + Primal Scream + Slaves + MØ + Gomez + Freya Ridings + Parcels + Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever + Nadine Shah + Sons Of Kemet + Julia Jacklin + more acts TBC

Florence + the Machine and Chvrches are among the headliners for Edinburgh Summer Sessions Festival.

The headliners for

Edinburgh Summer Sessions Festival have

been announced. The series of gigs takes place in August, and will this year feature sets from Florence + The Machine, Chvrches, James, Courteeners, Madness, Primal Scream and Johnny Marr, with more to come.

Slam Dunk has announced another batch of acts, including Employed To Serve, Lights and Plain White T’s.

Slam Dunk has announced

another batch of acts for this spring’s event. New to the bill, are Plain White T’s, Hellogoodbye, Touche Amore, Lights, Tigers Jaw, Microwave, Wallflower, Wage War, Employed To Serve and Our Hollow Our Home. They join All Time Low, New Found Glory, Bullet For My Valentine, I Don’t Know How But They Found Me, The Menzingers, Milk Teeth, Atreyu, WSTR, Seaway, Real Friends, Pagan, The Word Alive and Waterparks.

Slam Dunk takes place on Saturday 25th May at Leeds’ Temple Newsham Park, and Sunday 26th May at Hatfield Park, Hatfield.

Foals, Wolf Alice, Two Door Cinema Club and more are playing Truck

The first batch of bands for this year’s Truck Festival have been announced, with hometown heroes Foals, Wolf Alice and Two Door Cinema Club leading the way. The bill also includes the likes of Slaves, You Me At Six, Idles, Kate Nash, Shame, Sea Girls, Ten Tonnes, Fontaines D.C. and Spector, as well as East Life, whenyoung, Sports Team, Pip Blom, The Murder Capital, Lucia, Lady Bird, Swimming Girls, Zuzu and Martha. Truck takes place between 26th and 28th July at Oxfordshire’s Hill Harm.

announced loads of acts for 2019’s event.

Headlining the 29th August-1st September festival at Larmer Tree Gardens, will be Metronomy, Beirut, Michael Kiwanuka and Spiritualized. Also on the bill are: Courtney Barnett, Jarvis Cocker, Parquet Courts, Mitski, Cate Le Bon, Goat Girl, Case McCombs, Wire, Low, Fontaines D.C., Black Midi, Jade Bird, Kero Kero Bonito, Squid, Martha, The Murder Capital and loads more. You can grab tickets online now.

GRAB DORK’S 2019 FESTIVAL GUIDE FROM 12TH APRIL 2019*.

Drenge, Sam Fender, whenyoung

and more are ‘doing’ Live At Leeds.

L

ive At Leeds has announced a new batch of names, with over 80 new acts joining the bill.

Amongst the new additions are Drenge, Sam Fender, Kate Tempest, Confidence Man, The Sherlocks, whenyoung, VANT and Mini Mansions.

There’s also space for Bloxx, Indoor Pets, 404, Dan D’Lion, Ed The Doh, Fur, Hotel Lux, Lice, Pizzagirl, Spielbergs, Spinn and Swimming Tapes, amongst others.

“Leeds is one of the best towns in the world for live music and it’s always a pleasure to be in the vicinity of some proper tough northern bouncing crowds,” say Indoor Pets. “I’ll brew the Yorkshire Tea, you just get yourselves limbered up.”

They join a bill that already includes Sundara Karma, Metronomy, Black Honey, Dream Wife, Goat Girl, Swim Deep, Easy Life, Gengahr, Marsicans, Another Sky, Beabadoobee, Gently Tender, Thyla and Sports Team.

Live At Leeds takes place across various venues on Saturday, 4th May. Tickets are on sale now. P

Parklife festival has announced loads of acts for 2019’s event, including George Ezra, Christine & The Queens, Cardi B and Solange. Also playing, are The Streets, Migos, Khalid, Disclosure Presents, Blossoms, Mark Ronson, Mura Masa, Jungle and Loyle Carner. The event will take place at Heaton Park in Manchester, from 8th-9th June.

A new batch of acts have been announced for this year’s edition of Community Festival. The London event, based in the capital’s Finsbury Park, will take place on Sunday, 30th June. Joining the bill are Blaenavon, SWMRS, The Hunna and Don Broco.

They’re the latest acts on a line-up that also includes headliners The Kooks, plus the likes of Blossoms, Kate Nash, Sea Girls, The Amazons, The Night Café and Bloxx.

Over 100 new acts have been announced for this year’s The Great Escape.

A brand new batch of artists have been announced for this year’s edition of The Great Escape. With more than 100 acts joining the bill, there’s room for Dork faves Sports Team, Alfie Templeman, Easy Life, Chai, Girl In Red, Weird Milk, Big Joanie, Gently Tender and Viagra Boys. There’ll also be appearances from AJ Tracey, Mykki Blanco, Brutus, Life, Petrol Girls and a whole load more. The Great Escape takes place across Brighton venues between 8th and 11th May. With 300 acts still to come, tickets are on sale now.

Wolf Alice are headlining this year’s Standon Calling festival.

Wolf Alice are headlining this year’s Standon Calling festival.

The band will top the bill alongside Nile Rodgers & Chic and Rag’N’Bone Man, with the likes of Idles, Kate Nash, The Big Moon, Sea Girls, The Joy Formidable and Honey Lung.

Standon Calling takes place between 25th and 28th July. Tickets are on sale now. You can check out the full line-up online now.

Cardi B, Migos, Travis Scott and ASAP Rocky are headlining Wireless 2019.

25th May 2019

The Strokes are topping the bill at All Points East.

The Strokes have been confirmed as headlining All Points East. Their first UK gig in four years, the band will perform on Saturday 25th May alongside The Raconteurs, Interpol, Johnny Marr, Parquet Courts, Jarvis Cocker, Courtney Barnett, Connan Mockasin, Anna Calvi, Bakar, The Nude Party and Viagra Boys.

DORK

RE AD D O RK. CO M

Wireless Festival has confirmed loads of names for 2019’s event.

Headlining will be Cardi B and Migos (Friday 5th July), Travis Scott (Saturday 6th July) and ASAP Rocky (Sunday 7th July), with IAMDDB, Tyga, Bugzy Malone, Future, Young Thug, Stefflon Don, AJ Tracey, Rae Sremmurd and more also on the bill.

The festival is returning to London’s Finsbury Park from 5th–7th July. Tickets have already sold out.

21

* Unless we’re late for some reason in which case shhhh.

Headliners Two Door Cinema Club, Courteeners and Nile Rodgers & Chic are among the first acts confirmed for this year’s Tramlines. The Sheffield event will also host sets from Manic Street Preachers, Rag’n’Bone Man, Doves, Happy Mondays, Reverend and The Makers, Miles Kane, Circa Waves, Lewis Capaldi, Shame, Peter Hook & The Light, Sleeper, Sea Girls, Clean Cut Kid, Sports Team, Easy Life and loads more. The event will take place from Friday 19th – Sunday 21st July at Hillsborough Park, visit tramlines.org.uk for more info.

FESTIVAL NEWS ** FESTIVAL NEWS ** FESTIVAL NEWS ** FESTIVAL NEWS ** FESTIVAL NEWS ** FESTIVAL NEWS ** FESTIVAL NEWS **

End of the Road has

** FESTIVAL NEWS **

Green Man has made its first band announcement of 2019. Playing this summer’s festival will be Four Tet, Father John Misty (pictured), Sharon Van Etten, Stereolab, Broken Social Scene, IDLES, Amadou & Mariam, Big Thief, Car Seat Headrest, Julia Jacklin, Aldous Harding, Whitney and loads more. The event will take place from 15th-18th August in the Brecon Beacons. Tickets are on sale now.

4th May 2019

Hype.

ESSENTIAL NEW MUSIC.

MURDER CAPITAL

THE

There’s a buzz building across the Irish Channel. The Murder Capital are about to arrive.

Words: Jake Hawkes

I 22

t’s official – 2019 is the year we all finally embrace the bubbling Irish music scene, and judging by the first couple of bands to turn heads, a lot of that music sounds a bit like getting your head kicked in.

Enter The Murder Capital, although you could be forgiven for not knowing what they sound like at all as they sold out their first run of shows without having any songs officially released, Now they’re back in the UK for round two, this time with a solitary track on Spotify to whet your appetite.

“It wasn’t really intentional for it to happen this way,” explains frontman James McGovern, his voice crackling over the phone thanks to rural Ireland’s spotty phone signal. “I guess that was just the way the path led us, but it’s freeing for us to finally get something out there. The reception has been pretty humbling too, so we’re just trying to keep going and get back to writing rather than letting it overwhelm us. The accidental ‘more is less’ approach seems to have done us wonders anyway, maybe that air of mystery helped it all spread… or maybe it was just pure luck?”

There’s a real note of confusion in James’ voice when he talks about the incredible hype that’s built up around the band. His solution? Just keep pushing forward. “We just try not to think about it too much, to be honest, just take it as it comes and laugh at those mad moments. We do feel comfortable in where we are though because we’ve worked really hard to get here. Obviously, we haven’t been slogging it out for eight years, so we can’t come from that corner, but we take what we do seriously, and we work really fucking hard at it.” He pauses, before adding: “That makes it sound really extraneous, which it isn’t at all. We’re all really enjoying

touring and playing; I think we’re all kind of made for it. We’ve all travelled all over Ireland all our lives, I’ve spent my life on trains and buses and all of that shit, so to do that and then get to play a show at the end of every day? It’s a pure pleasure.

“At the moment we aren’t playing for all that long each night but getting up there and getting a taste of meeting people and building a sense of community around the music is incredible. It’s like the feeling of community we had playing at The Workman’s Club in Dublin, but on a global scale.”

As the conversation goes on, the links back to Dublin are never far away, and the city is a big part of what makes The Murder Capital tick. “The social climate in Ireland and Dublin has a direct effect on us, as a band and as people,” he says.

“The rate of gentrification is almost overwhelming at the moment in the city, I think pretty much everyone in the band is just scraping by the rent and the constant balance of having enough money for food, rehearsing, a social life, all of it.

“We’re lucky to be in the position we’re in though; there are people all over the place that have it worse than us, it’s just the nature of any capital city. I feel like they’ve all got this warped nature to them that runs alongside all the bright lights and shit.”

“Having said that, Dublin and Ireland influence us incredibly positively as well,” James adds. “I think everyone in the band has read some James Joyce for sure; those Irish literary influences definitely run deep in our DNA and in the blood of the band as well. We read extremely broadly though; I draw influence from writers like Murakami, John Keats, Ishiguro…

“Our music taste is massively

DORK

The Facts + From Dublin, Ireland + For fans of IDLES, Shame, Fontaines D.C., Slaves + Check out ‘Feeling Fades’ + Social @MurderCapital + See them live: They’ll support IDLES at the Electric Ballroom in London on 6th April.

“THE RATE OF GENTRIFICATION IS ALMOST OVERWHELMING” broad too. Obviously, we love Joy Division and The Fall, but we also listen to people like Phillip Glass and Bjork. We’ve been listening to a lot of electronic music recently too, and I think it’s affected how we write, arrangement and instrumentationwise. We really do take influences from fucking everything.”

As a band so tightly bound up with their home city, we wondered what the perfect day in Dublin looks like for The Murder Capital. “Oh we can do that, easy!” James laughs.

“Get up at 11am, go and get a creepy breakfast somewhere really shitty.

There’s a place called Roma 2, we’d go there and get a bag of chips at midday, then an afternoon pint of Guinness at Grogans – best pint of Guinness in the world. Spend the evening walking around St. Patrick’s Cathedral, steer clear of the Guinness storehouse, obviously, then end up in a bar on Essex street and dance your heart out to The Fall and LCD. That’s the absolute best day you can have in Dublin, 100%.” P The Murder Capital’s debut single ‘Feeling Fades’ is out now.

D OWN WI T H BO RI N G

** MIXTAPE ** MIXTAPE ** MIXTAPE ** MIXTAPE ** MIXTAPE ** MIXTAPE ** MIXTAPE ** MIXTAPE ** MIXTAPE ** MIXTAPE ** MIXTAPE ** MIXTAPE **

March2019

Mixtape There are so many new bands dropping so much new music, we’ve gathered the best of the last month together for you in one easy playlist.

FEET

ENGLISH WEATHER

WANT MORE?

Check out our Hype playlist on Spotify. Just scan the code below to listen.

Following up on the brilliant ‘Petty Thieving’ and ‘Backseat Driver’, buzzy five-piece FEET prove they’re more than just empty hype with their latest offering ‘English Weather’. Warning: this one will be stuck in your head for weeks.

no different. With a debut album due Really Quite Soon, they’re on the rise.

LUCIA

THE NIGHT CAFÉ

Echoing off the walls, Glaswegian up-and-comers LUCIA have the ability to subtly shift their vampish charms at will. ‘Blueheart’ is all smoke-filled rooms and shadowy drama. It’s bloody good, too.

Fresh off supporting The Wombats (more of that on p.56 - Ed), The Night Café have that indie throne in their sights. Their latest track walks that line between emotional and exciting perfectly.

NILIFUR YANYA

JOAN

You’d imagine few people are going to point out to Nilifur Yanya that the opening stabs of her latest single sound a bit like a Hard-Fi mid-00s lad-banger, but that’s where any such misplaced comparisons end. The first taster of a debut album that’s set to arrive soon, it’s another stamp of approval for one of our greatest talents.

Joan are becoming a perfect pop powerhouse.

As if their previous offering ‘All The Way’ wasn’t enough, follow up ‘Drive All Night’ is pure 80s dry ice brilliance.

BLUEHEART

IN YOUR HEAD

IDER

BROWN SUGAR IDER are developing quite the talent for the infectious slow jams, and their latest single ‘Brown Sugar’ is

ENDLESS LOVERS

DRIVE ALL NIGHT

404

FEARFUL If you’ve paid any attention to the Twitterings of the Dirty Hit family, you’ll have seen the hype job start for 404. With Theo from Wolf Alice waxing lyrical, we’ve finally got a first recorded track, and it’s not pulling any punches. Raw and pulsing with energy, it demands attention.

Hype.

Rachel Chinouriri A 19-year-old singersongwriter from Croydon, Rachel Chinouriri - newly signed to Marathon Artists - pens soulful, immensely personal tunes that’ll get you right in the feels.

Last year’s debut single ‘What Have I Ever Done’ is delicately powerful, and promises big things to come.

Talkboy

24

Leeds sextet Talkboy are a playful bunch, with harmony-laden indie-pop tunes that even crack out the occasional xylophone.

‘Over & Under’ in particular is worth popping on your fun times playlist.

Barny Fletcher

20-year-old Barny is def going to split opinions, but his new single/video combo for ‘Christ Flow’ is inexplicably addictive; it sees our Barns spitting out lyrics about pedalos and Snack a Jacks while whizzing around a corner shop in a trolley and sitting in a freezer. There’s a lot going on.

Hobby Club

Newly signed to Heist or Hit, London duo Hobby Club write about everyday boredom and shit house parties while sounding a bit like Joy Division or The Smiths. Their debut EP ‘Video Days’ is out on 8th March.

** FIRST ON ** FIRST ON ** FIRST ON ** FIRST ON ** FIRST ON ** FIRST ON ** FIRST ON ** FIRST ON ** FIRST ON ** FIRST ON ** FIRST ON ** FIRST ON ** FIRST ON **

New music is a constant search for something exciting. Here’s some of the fresh names that have been floating our boat this month...

SISTERTALK

Mysterious London bunch Sistertalk have been making waves due to their must-see live sets in the capital, and they’re about to break cover.

Words: Jamie Muir.

S

istertalk are sat downstairs at The Old Blue Last in East London. It’s a crisp January evening, the sort that makes you bristle the collars on your coat and pucker your lips together as you stroll down the street, all with that thought of where the windy nights and New Year can take you.

Sitting suited to a tee, these are the nights Sistertalk have made their own over the past year, becoming a word of mouth nod throughout London and scooping new band picks and shows across the board, all without a single song out in the world. Now, they’re ready to step out to something bigger.

“The sooner you get things out, the sooner the pressure is on you,” notes frontman Gabriel Levy, sitting alongside his brother Daniel as they gear up for another show to kick in their next chapter.

“We’ve had a fair bit of pressure but the good kind, one that’s more of an air of excitement as opposed to anything else. Up to this point, it’s been about getting the material together to be able to take this year and be as prolific as we like with everything. It’s been a long time coming.”

For those who’ve managed to catch a glimpse of Sistertalk, it’s understandable why the hype is high. Stepping on stage with

The Facts

“IT’S BEEN 18 MONTHS OF TRIAL AND ERROR” unbridled confidence and looking brimmed with the sort of sharp attire that makes you want to be in their gang from the very first note, that blend of menacing electro and snappy post-punk stamps its ground as a band unlike any other right now.

“It’s taken a while to get to the stage where we’re all happy with how we’re sounding and what we want to be going forward,” admits Gabriel. “It’s been 18 months of trial and error to get to this point where we’re completely fine, and we are confident going forward in what we’re doing and really, really proud, and that’s the most important thing.”

“We’ve always been a live band first,” states Daniel, reflecting on a run of incredible shows and crowing crowds flocking to have a peek at who Sistertalk are, “so it’s been nice in the last period to reverse that a bit. Actually focus on the songs that we know can fill a room and get them sounding good in the studio.”

Looking back at what they have recorded so far, it’s clear Sistertalk wanted to make sure they were ready - both in the studio and out facing the world.

“It’s been tricky because we’ve taken that ‘do it yourself approach,” notes Gabriel. “We wanted to learn how to produce

+ From London, UK + For fans of Crewel Intentions, Shame, Black Midi + Check out Their debut single is ‘coming soon’ + Social @sistertalkofficial + See them live: They’ve no dates in the diary atm and mix our own music as opposed to paying someone a flat fee to do a terrible job that we’d have to take.

“It was a long process but one that was really enjoyable. It comes from a place of interest and learning to do these things so that we can better the communication between ourselves and say, a producer or an engineer. So we can all come at it from a place of understanding and not coming across as something without any knowledge.”

No longer London’s best kept live secret, Sistertalk are bringing their unmistakable sound to the masses. As Gabriel and Daniel head back to the rest of the band, they’re commanding a space downstairs in the pub sharplydressed as standouts in the room, before blistering through another memorable set that proves why so many are talking about them.

“The suits are more of a reflection of our approach towards the process in a way,” details Gabriel earlier, “we all enjoy the work and want to embody that when we’re outside.”

“We all kinda enjoy looking at bands and feel like they give off unified images,” continues Daniel.

“You look at a band, and you think oh, that’s a unit there with a certain sound.”

Sistertalk are a different type of pack in modern music - now get ready for the ride. P

BILLIE EILISH HAS ANNOUNCED HER DEBUT ALBUM WHICH IS VERY EXCITING, ISN’T IT? The news came with a brand new track, ‘Bury A Friend’.

Buzzy London four-piece Black Midi have inked a deal with legendary label Rough Trade, and dropped a new EP. Titled ‘Speedway’, it was produced by Dan Carey, and is accompanied by visuals from bassist Cameron Piction.

Trudy and the Romance

have announced their debut album. ‘Sandman’ will arrive on 24th May, preceded by lead single ‘The Original Doo Wop Spacemen’. “It’s a coming of age tale about asking for your innocence back,” says singer Olly. “It’s a breakup album and loosely based on the hero’s journey.”

Absolute Dork fave and future pop ledge Billie Eilish has finally announced the details of her forthcoming debut album.

Titled ‘When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?’, the fourteen track effort will be released on 29th March, with pre-orders available now. It was written, produced and recorded entirely by 17-year-old Billie and brother Finneas in their childhood home of Highland Park, Los Angeles.

Alongside the news comes a brand new track - the brilliant ‘Bury A Friend’ (which you can read more about on p.18 - Ed).

“When we made ‘bury a friend,’ the whole album clicked in my head,” Billie explains. “I immediately knew what it was going to be about, what the visuals were going to be, and everything in terms of how I

“I MIGHT BE THE MONSTER UNDER YOUR BED” wanted it to be perceived. It inspired what the album is about. ‘bury a friend’ is literally from the perspective of the monster under my bed. If you put yourself in that mindset, what is this creature doing or feeling?”

She continues: “I also confess that I’m this monster, because I’m my own worst enemy. I might be the monster under your bed too.”

Billie, please don’t hide under our bed. That’s where we keep the bodies. P

Japanese four-piece CHAI have announced their second album: ’PUNK’ will arrive on 15th March via Heavenly. “’PUNK’ for us, of course, is not the genre of music,” say the band. “‘PUNK’ to us is to overturn the wornout values associated with ‘kawaii’ or ‘cute’ created up until this point.

‘PUNK’ is a word that expresses a strong sense of self. To be yourself more, to become the person you truly want to be, to believe in yourself in every instance!”

K E E P U P W IT H T H E L AT EST N EW B A ND N E WS AS IT HAPP EN S AT R EA D D O R K .C O M N OW !

** IN THE KNOW ** IN THE KNOW ** IN THE KNOW ** IN THE KNOW ** IN THE KNOW ** IN THE KNOW ** IN THE KNOW ** IN THE KNOW ** IN THE KNOW **

On the grapevine the latest new band news

In the know James Scarlett from &

2000trees ArcTanGent

There are always more bands the biggest question is who do you listen to when it comes to recommendations? Obviously Dork should be your first port of call, but there are others too.

This month we ask 2000trees and ArcTanGent’s James Scarlett.

Hi Dork. I’m here to tell you that the UK rock scene is in the rudest health it’s been in for a long, long time. It really is!

I think the best place to start is with Holy Roar Records, who are on absolute fire right now. It’s hard to pick highlights from their roster, but I must mention Boss Keloid (my No.2 album of last year is a wonderful melding of 70s prog and modern doom), Pijn (No.4 – like Russian Circles playing Godspeed You! Black Emperor) and Conjurer (No.6 – Mastodon vs Neurosis). All utterly incredible. If you like your music heavy and a bit weird, then Holy Roar is the place to go.

I’m also very excited about what my home town of Bristol has to offer. The ever-brilliant The St. Pierre Snake Invasion are soon to release their second album – if a hybrid of Mclusky, The Bronx and Slipknot sounds good to you then check them out. There is also great stuff coming this year from Sœur (alt-rock), Scalping (Factory Floor vs Nine Inch Nails), No Violet (grunge) and Memory of Elephants (math-rock).

I’ve also just discovered Delaire, the Liar who to me sound like Lonely the Brave jamming with At The Drive-In. Ones to keep an eye on for sure.

And in these Brexit-filled times, I wanted to give a shout out to some non-UK bands that I love right now. Holy Fawn’s Death Spells album got a US-only release last year but is coming out soon on (you guessed it) Holy Roar. They play stunning post-rock with sprinklings of post-metal. And I love Gouge Away who are really adding something different to the current wave of US hardcore bands – their latest album ‘Burnt Sugar’ is a banger. P 2000trees takes place from 11th-13th July at Upcote Farm; ArcTanGent takes place from 15th17th August at Fernhill Farm.

25

THE GREAT ESCAPE

SO OMG! HYPE! MUCH

Chappaqua Wrestling

Ed The Dog

Last year, Ed The Dog released ‘Shame’ an album that’s been relatively slept on, but packs the indie bangers tighter than most. After playing The Great Escape’s First Fifty event (on Dork’s very own stage, no less), 2019 should be the point the rest of you catch on. You’ve been told.

The lovechild of best mates Charlie Woods and Jake Mac, Chappaqua Wrestling have been writing together since they were 14. Brighton born, they may have moved ‘oop north’ since, but this is one homecoming not to miss.

Squid

Another Brighton band, Squid have released on Dan Carey’s much-lauded Speedy Wunderground label, and, in 2018’s single ‘The Dial’, dropped one of favourite new band wonky-indie-pop bangers of last year. Squids in!

Krush Puppies

South London’s Krush Puppies are a fuzzed out

Tropical Fuck Storm

Aussie upstarts Tropical Fuck Storm aren’t just in possession of an awesome name. Making not inconsiderate waves from down under, they’re set to hit the UK in May for a short tour which includes this TGE slot. Get introduced to the latest wonders from Down Under, and discover more on p.37.

delight. Perfectly prepped for the late Spring sun, last year’s ‘Passata’ has the kind of woozy daydream vibe that will have us involuntarily drifting down the sea front - and not just because of the wind.

Walt Disco

Combining just the right mix of flamboyance and menace, Glasgow’s Walt Disco make intoxicating post-punk with a pop flourish. Their live shows have been making waves for a while, and they’re sure to be in demand in Brighton.

Wooze

South London newcomers Wooze - that’s duo Jamie She and Theo Spark began recording together at Brixton’s Muddy Yard collective in 2017. Since then, they’ve picked up plaudits at pace, and even performed on actual telly.

Penelope Isles

A lo-fi four-piece from Brighton, Penelope Isles mix woozy harmonies and distorted fuzz, all fronted by the brothersister pairing of Jack and Lily Wolter. They’ve just signed with Bella Union and are poised to start playing much bigger venues in the near future.

Big Joanie London three-piece Big Joanie are the kind of DIY punk delight who thoroughly deserve a wider audience - and will grab it with both hands, given half the choice. From releasing music on their own imprint to getting nods from the likes of FADER and Pitchfork, they also pack a transformative cover of TLC’s ‘No Scrubs’ that’s enough to put Weezer’s recent effort down cold at ten paces. Essential.

THE GREAT ESCAPE 2019 TAKES PLACE BETWEEN 9TH - 11TH MAY.

**

Here are some acts to check out at this year’s

** SO YOU WANNA BE A POP STAR? ** SO YOU WANNA BE A POP STAR? ** SO YOU WANNA BE A POP STAR?

Recommended

** SO YOU WANNA BE A POP STAR?

** FESTIVALS ** FESTIVALS ** FESTIVALS ** FESTIVALS ** FESTIVALS ** FESTIVALS ** FESTIVALS ** FESTIVALS ** FESTIVALS ** FESTIVALS ** FESTIVALS **

Hype.

So you wanna be a pop star?

Pizzagirl Being a pop star is a serious job. You can’t just walk through the door and get started. You need to have a proper interview first. This month’s applicant is Pizzagirl. The board will see you now.

Why do you want to be a pop star?

I would LOVE for you to consider me for the role of “pop star” as I think I’d be a great asset to the pop world! I’m hunky in all the wrong places. I will exploit myself for fame and fortune at any cost!

I love to party (as long as my drinks are paid for) and I have no job! So when should I start!?

What are your best and worst qualities?

A quality I like about Pizzagirl aka ME is that I’d like to think I am quite openminded when it comes to music. I think always being open to change up your look and music is refreshing to me maybe? I could list a billion bad qualities but to pick one, I’d say that maybe I spend too much time on the internet and it hurts my eyeballs!

What is your biggest failure?

Dying my hair blue, I looked like Buzz Lightyear but not in an attractive or charming way as depicted in the big Toy Story films!

What accomplishment are you most proud of?

I’m quite proud of the fact that a lanky boy called Pizzagirl has managed to fool the internet into thinking my silly songs are worth listening to, that’s expert deception.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Hopefully playing a thousand shows and making some new friends and putting out as much music as my mushy mind can create!

What is your salary expectation?

As long as I can afford my dropbox and Netflix monthly payments, I should be okay. Maybe a lil extra for food, idk. P

The first signing to Slaves’ record label, Lady Bird are moving out of their pals’ shadow for what’s sure to be a landmark year.

Words: Samantha Daly

LADY BIRD K

label-bosses Slaves, becoming the ent trio Lady Bird are first signings to Girl Fight Records, going like the clappers: kickstarted something special. they’ve released their “The whole journey that we’ve debut ‘Social Portions’ had, both in 2018 and from when EP, signed to their near-lifelong we first started, it reached a point friends’ label in Slaves’ Girl Fight of wholesome reflection. When Records, and played some great we were playing at Ally Pally with shows at the likes of London’s Slaves, that was a real moment of Alexandra Palace. A headline gratitude.” tour of their very own is coming in Members of Lady Bird and Slaves March, and they’ve music ready pretty much grew up together. “We and waiting to be unleashed. were playing in bands throughout Stealing him away from his our teens for many years,” Sam ‘other’ job at a theatre company reflects. They’d watched Slaves go something he describes as “bit of a from strength to strength, catching different side of life,” but one that up with them when they would he “thoroughly enjoys” - frontman pass through their Sam Cox hometown, Tunbridge says it hasn’t Wells. When the duo always been so.

Lady Bird are heading off caught wind that Sam Looking back on tour this spring. You and co. had created on their early can catch them at... something new, they days, he reveals were keen to scope it took them a March them out. while to find 27 The Forum, Tunbridge “Isaac [Holman, their footing.

Wells drums] particularly, “I couldn’t 28 Mother’s Ruin, Bristol at first,” Sam recalls. sing, so Alex 29 Bodega, Nottingham “They started coming [Deadman, 30 Key Club, Leeds to our gigs. Isaac came guitar] was 31 Attic, Glasgow to so many at one doing all the time when he had six singing,” he APRIL weeks off, he came laughs. “We 02 Think Tank, Newcastle to every single gig, had strength 03 Hare and Hounds, travelling far and wide in our resolve Birmingham to watch us, by which regardless; we 04 Soup Kitchen, point, Laurie [Vincent, powered on Manchester guitar] came, watched through.” us and was loving it.

Their 05 Camden Assembly, Then they asked us relationship London to support them on a with their new

DORK

“PEOPLE ARE REALLY RESPONDING TO LIVE MUSIC, WHICH IS GREAT TO SEE” couple of shows in the summer.”

It was at their July 2017 show at the Forum where Laurie put forward his idea of starting a record label.

“Laurie is quite a visionary in that respect. He just makes things happen, which takes a great deal of courage and persistence. He talked us through his plan and then soon had the infrastructure in place.

“We’re happy with the creative environment that we’ve created with those boys, and obviously, there’s trust, which is important.”

Live shows have played an important role in their story so far.

“We hope to capture the energy that you get with our live show in our recorded material,” Sam explains.

“I’m noticing a shift, and I feel like there’s a great sense of consciousness within artists and the response in the youth.

We’ve had a lot of people sending demos over to us; people are really

RE AD D O RK. CO M

The Facts + From Kent, UK + For fans of Slaves, Hotel Lux, LIFE + Check out ‘Spoons’, ‘Reprisal’ + Social @ladybirdthisis + See them live: They’re on tour in March and April, find the dates over there <<< responding to live music which is great to see.”

He’s particularly a fan of London group Girls In Synthesis, Brighton’s Guru and, “beautiful bunch of lads” UGLY, who recently signed to Sports Team’s new label, Holm Front.

With their headline tour quickly approaching, Sam is keeping their plans close to his chest, but says there’s going to be “exciting content, news and art.”

“We’ve got enough material to put out a few singles or an EP, and we have a big summer of festivals after the tour, right through til September,” he adds. “Then we’ll get ourselves back into work mode and put out some more stuff.”

Hoping to play as many shows as possible, they’re keen to explore new territories and create music that can help people love themselves.

“The most important thing that can be taken from any music is to engage with a certain feeling,” Sam concludes. “Something that gives you the energy and the desire to do more.” P

27

COVER STORY

28

Last year, Sigrid could legitimately have laid claim to being the most hyped act on the planet, winning the BBC’s annual Sound of poll. Now, with her debut album ‘Sucker Punch’ about to drop, it’s time to deliver.

Words: Abigail Firth.

Photos: Sarah Louise Bennett.

F

or someone so busy, Sigrid is inexplicably chill. Actually, it’s probably what she’s used to. Since the release of ‘Don’t Kill My Vibe’ two years ago, she’s barely stopped.

Whether it be making her Glastonbury debut, or charming viewers at home on the telly, any audience she gets in front of, she impresses. Her straight-up talent for writing an honest pop banger is what led Sigrid to become the first nonBritish, non-American artist to win the BBC Sound Of prize in 2018, but the reaction video of her finding out she’s the winner is what best represents her.

“I had no idea! It was a huge surprise, and my team knew, but they couldn’t tell me because they wanted it to be a surprise,” she recalls.

Gobsmacked and immediately bursting into tears, there’s no clip that better demonstrates how humble the Norwegian 22-year-old is. She’s instantly likeable – as easy to interview as she would be to

29

COVER STORY

“I LOVE A GOOD POP BANGER” Sigrid take out for a pint – but underneath her amicable shell, she’s also fantastically honest, defiant and fearless. All traits that can be gathered from a quick spin of her debut album, ‘Sucker Punch’.

The record is filled with as much angst as a 90s teen movie, but as much relatability as a 2019 meme. Just have a look at her song titles; ‘Basic’, ‘Level Up’, ‘Don’t Kill My Vibe’, the last of which was written about being patronised in the studio as a young woman, and somewhat ironically became her breakout hit. The same “I’m going to do whatever the bloody hell I want, and no one can tell me otherwise” vibe runs through ‘Sucker Punch’, even if it’s not immediately obvious from her carefree attitude.

“I try to make it relatable,” says Sigrid. “If it’s about interactions with people, yeah it’s relatable. Everyone’s been in a situation where they wanna say it as it is, and just get to the point, y’know, and not run away from something that is obviously gonna be a good thing for both.

“If it’s about feeling not respected, or if it’s about a really close friendship, it’s something most people will have had happen to them. I try to write about things that people can recognise themselves in.”

She’s spent the past few years writing the songs that would become her debut album; a collection of tracks with not much in common other than how much they mean to their writer.

A short history of Sigrid pop bangers.

Before her debut album has even dropped, Sigrid has delivered more than her fair share of dancefloor destroyers. Here’s your pocket guide.

Don’t Kill My Vibe

Our first taster of Sigrid, ‘Don’t Kill My Vibe’ saw the birth of a blog-pop superstar with lofty ambition. Fresh and exciting, it still sounds like the perfect meeting point between aching cool and mainstream connectivity.

Plot Twist

Another early entry in the Sigrid banger lexicon, ‘Plot Twist’ was the confirmation this was no one hit wonder. With a cry of ‘shots fired’ and a chorus that marches at pace, it’s almost the template to Sigrid’s

unique style.

Strangers

Still her biggest hit to date, ‘Strangers’ has become Sigrid’s signature move.

Performed around the planet, it captures that hopeful, wholesome energy that’s made her such an identifiable, likeable force without ever coming across as boring or beige.

High Five

Coming as part of last year’s ‘Raw’ EP - a collection of five songs that helped keep the new album hunger at bay - ‘High Five’ soars

“These are old songs, but there are pretty fresh songs like from the last months of the past year. It’s everything and nothing, in a way. It’s kind of just my notes from these past two years. And it has been a ride, to put it lightly. It’s been fun. And there’s a lot of different moods on the record, but I’m really proud of it.”

Sigrid’s versatility is highlighted across the album. Vocally, sonically and lyrically, it feels like she’s just treading the weirder waters and has the scope to go way further left-field.

“It’s important that everything I write

has another meaning to it, another layer, and I love writing fun pop tunes,” she says when we mention her songs usually sound far cheerier than their subject matter, an art mastered by other Scandipop legends like Robyn. “That’s the music I grew up listening to. I love a good pop banger.

One of my favourite artists ever is Ariana Grande, and I love Taylor Swift, all the big powerful women up there. I’m really inspired by them, and I love a good pop tune.

“But I also like writing quirky songs and everything in between, and that’s

reflected pretty well in the album.

Everything from straight-up pop to more left-field pop, I’m both I think. I like both, and I don’t feel like I have to choose. The only thing I choose is that every lyric has to make sense to me and it needs to have a personal touch to it, because I have to sing it every night, I wanna recognise myself in it.”

When Sigrid starts reeling off her influences, it’s clear where that desire for authenticity in her own music comes from. The pop giants like Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift – both, of course, known

31

into the upper atmosphere. A promise for what’s to come, at times it almost feels like a full-on gospel song of praise. Hallelujah.

Sucker Punch

.SIGRID, READING FESTIVAL 2017 S

The title-track from her debut album, ‘Sucker Punch’ is Sigrid at her most ambitiously unique.

A bouncing bop that goes from sing-a-long to almost spoken word and back again, it’s a uniquely wonky banger that fits its name perfectly. By the time

that huge last flourish lands, it’s a knockout.

Don’t Feel Like Crying

On the eve of her first fulllength, ‘Don’t Feel Like Crying’ leaves nothing to chance. Diving headfirst into the chart-pop pool, it’s still run through with enough of her DNA to be definitively Sigrid, but it’s also fearsomely determined to deliver on that promise.

COVER STORY

SCANDI POP ‘TIL YOU DROP

for penning their own material – are joined by Adele, Ellie Goulding, Coldplay and more on Sigrid’s playlist.

“I grew up listening to British music, so to actually be a proper part of the British music scene with the Sound Of prize, I guess, is a really big deal to me. I can give you the list! So I started listening to a lot of HIM, the rock band. I had a quick turn into Oasis because of my brother, and I discovered Coldplay – and I’m still a huge Coldplay fan – then Keane, Northern Europe is a hot bed I was the biggest Keane fan, loved their of pop talent. Norwegian Sigrid music and their writing. isn’t the only one working that “Then the first female singer I really scandi-magic. Here’s a quick listened to was Adele, she’s great, I don’t history lesson on some of the even need to say anything about it, we just standouts. And Whigfield. know she’s a legend. And Ellie Goulding.

I’m such a huge fan of Ellie Goulding, and the thing about her that was so breathtaking to me was that it was the You might have heard of this lot. first time I’d heard someone make really, The ultimate in Scandipop, from really good songs, but the production a back catalogue of hits that’s was so pop, and I loved that mix. almost impossible to match to That the lyrics and the melodies two blockbuster films based were great and the production around their songs, they’re was amazing too, and it was so monsters. In a good way. inspiring to me.

“After that, Arctic Monkeys, I think Two Door Cinema Club and The Wombats are also 80s heartthrobs with British. Yeah, the list goes an iconic music on.” video in tow, ‘Take While there were no On Me’ is such dipop an Sc of y The stor pushy parents involved a classic that to fit us r fo ng lo is too t in when this star was born, even your nan this playlis here, scan e. or she was raised on some m probably loves it. r fo ify Spot legends and a solid heap of encouragement.

“My family’s big heroes are The quintessential Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. cool queen of My brother is a musician too, Scandipop, Robyn returned and my sister is a great singer from a lengthy album absence but she works in consulting, so last year. Her 00s banger it’s just a really music interested ‘Dancing On My Own’ remains family. No one pushed me to music. one of the best songs of the “It was never like ‘you have to century, too. do this’, or like pushing me to do contests or anything, it was very chill. The nearest I got to any During the mid-00s Scandipop competitions was when I was a kid, explosion, Robyn was matched like I was performing at the local blow for blow by Annie. With her theatre, or at like school events, 14/10 megahit ‘Chewing Gum’, nothing more than that, but I think she was the perfect pop star that’s great.” and it still holds up today.

In fact, there’s a video of her at primary school performing Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ floating around on the internet. That performance, she Former Dork cover star MØ is a says, must have sparked something, legit hit machine, with last year’s but it wasn’t until after she’d started ‘Forever Neverland’ proving a studying politics at university that her tour de force of modern pop. parents intervened, asking if she’d like to give music another try.

“I actually did go to uni, to study Ask your parents. Dee dee na politics, for like two months, then I na na! dropped out. But I also wanted to study law, I wanted to do a lot of things, but that didn’t happen, I went for music.

And my parents and my family are the most supportive of that. They were the ones who told me, if you don’t try music now, you’re probably gonna regret it, so you should give it a shot, you’ve got time, you’re just 19.

I was like ok, uh god.

“I wanted to be a teacher for a while, like still if

ABBA

A-HA

WE LOVE IT

32

ROBYN

ANNIE

MØ

WHIGFIELD

“SO I STARTED LISTENING TO A LOT OF HIM, THE ROCK BAND…” Sigrid music wasn’t to happen for me, in a couple of years – you know I don’t take this for granted – maybe I’ll become a teacher in history and politics and English, that’d be fun. But then again, I want to do music.”

Somewhere in between her ability to make a sad song sound like an absolute joyride and the fact that her teeth are rarely not showing, she’s often mistaken for being overwhelmingly positive (“I get that quite a lot, people think I’m so positive all the time, but that’s impossible.”). But behind the bangers, there’s a lot of heartache. The best demonstration being on ‘Don’t Feel Like Crying’, with it’s could-be Clean Bandit production and title that suggests it should be a carefree anthem, but it’s not all that joyous.

“It’s one of my favourites at the minute.

It’s actually really sad if you think about it. It’s a proper sad tune. But then again I love dancing to it. We had rehearsals for it, pre-production with the band, and it sounds really good. They’ve done such a good job transforming it from the [studio] production to the live production; I can’t wait to play that song live.”

There’s a moment on ‘Basic’ where all of the glammed up production cuts out, and we’re left with nothing, but Sigrid’s voice stripped back against an acoustic guitar.

It’s one of the more poignant moments on the album; at least more poignant than you might expect from a song titled ‘Basic’.

“Ah yes, that’s one of my favourite moments. I remember on ‘Basic’, when we were in the studio, we wanted like a special thing happening at the end, and we basically just recorded a chorus on Martin Sjølie’s iPhone while he was playing the guitar and I was singing, and we just synced that into the production. Really nice, serene moment.”

Then there are the actual celebratory songs, one of which is dedicated entirely to

33

COVER STORY

The new class

Everyone loves something new - which is good, because there’s loads of super exciting pop talent striving to break through right now. Here’s a few of the very best.

her touring band. ‘Sight Of You’ is just as lively as ‘Don’t Feel Like Crying’, but with a bigger, less heavy heart.

“There’s a song that is essentially ‘I love you, I love you band’, which is about my band, and how they make everything feel good. They’re some of my closest friends. I love that song; they’re so great. And I don’t think I could’ve done touring without them. I love them to pieces.”

The band play on ‘Business Dinners’ – ‘Sucker Punch’’s most interesting track.

It’s a got SOPHIE-esque bubbly sounds running through it, that are actually inspired by Studio Ghibli, and lyrics that detail Sigrid’s struggle to gain control of her own image.

“I love that business song too; I think it’s really funny.

That’s one of my favourites. It was written in Stockholm with Noonie Bao and Patrik Berger, Martin Stilling and then I. And the funny thing about that is that it was inspired by Studio Ghibli, you know the Japanese film company?

That’s my favourite film company. I love everything they put out, just an incredible world and I get lost in it all the time, I love it. I’ve been watching those movies so many times, all those sounds were stuck in my head, so ‘Business Dinners’ is an ode to that world and all those quirky sounds, so that’s fun.

“There are a lot of different themes on this record. That I guess all comes down to my favourite subject: human relations. How we interact with each other.”

Everything about Sigrid feels so real. It’s not just the fact that she wears her big heart on her sleeve, but that she doesn’t really care

“MY PARENTS TOLD ME, IF YOU DON’T TRY MUSIC NOW, YOU’RE GONNA REGRET IT” Sigrid

BILLIE EILISH

The future queen of everything, Billie Eilish is on the cusp of greatness. With her debut album due ‘shortly’, she’s that rarest and most precious of all things - a pop star fully in tune of who she is. Working alongside her brother Finneas, by the time 2019 is out, she’ll be a legit A list superstar.

NO ROME

Rome Gomez is a brilliant future pop star in his own right. Signed to Dirty Hit - home of The 1975 - he’s already

put out an EP of solid gold bangers.

Combine that with his role as muse to the aforementioned label mates, and he could just change the world.

MAGGIE ROGERS

Former Dork cover star Maggie Rogers is a force of nature we’re more than happy to let sweep us away.

Her debut album ‘Heard It In A Past Live’ is part Earth elemental, part pop superstar. An absolute Queen.

RINA SAWAYAMA

A British-Japanese pop powerhouse, Rina Sawayama has already dropped

what she looks like on stage. It’s candid seeing her pull faces and jump around, genuinely having fun.

“I love it. Honestly, it’s all credit to the band, and the audience, the mix of those two together makes it so much fun. And that whole tour is what ‘Sight of You’ is about, the way the band and the audience make me feel. Manchester was a proper example of how fun tour can be. I enjoyed those days. We had such a good time. I love that people give so much of themselves, we are not worthy of these nice people coming to our shows!”

There are also no stage costumes

an independently released mini-album. Eponymouslytitled, it marked her out as a true future force, and nothing she’s done since has done anything but strengthen that notion.

KING PRINCESS

Releasing one of last year’s standout tracks, ‘1950’, Mikaela Straus (that’s King Princess to you) has already clocked up hundreds of millions of streams on Spotify. If that’s not a pop star, we don’t know what is.

involved – even if she thinks she’s not doing anything groundbreaking, it’s refreshing to see a female artist hop around on stage (and various national TV appearances) in jeans, a white T-shirt and no makeup.

“I’m just incorporating the work uniform on stage! I love wearing dresses for photo shoots, like today I had something else on, but on stage, I need to feel comfortable and to be able to move around.”

The release of her debut is bringing even bigger things for Sigrid. She wrapped up an intense festival season and her own headline tour at the end of 2018, only to

WANT M ORE? Check

o Class p ut our New P Just sc laylist on Sp op otify. an the co to liste de below n.

get straight back on the road as soon as the album drops – this time in arenas with George Ezra in March, then Maroon 5 in June, followed by what is likely to be another busy summer while she takes every festival stage by storm (once again, mind).

“There are so many ways of doing this and no matter how you do it, it’s all about the way you feel. But I’m happy with the way I’m working, and I’m so incredibly lucky to be working with some really talented people, it’s been a good bunch on this album.” P Sigrid’s debut album ‘Sucker Punch’ is out 8th March.

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STELLA DONNELLY

“O

h, I still get death threats every day, all sorts of endless comments from trolls. But hey, I’ve learned that you’ve done something right when you’re pissing that sort of person off, y’know?”

36

Dog Days.

Death threats, rubbish exes and #metoo. Jamie MacMillan catches up with Stella Donnelly to find out more about her take-no-prisoners debut, ‘Beware of the Dogs’.

Life for, and conversations with, Stella Donnelly moves quickly.

Nestled into a freezing Shoreditch pub just hours after her arrival from the middle of a record-breaking heatwave in her native Australia, there are no signs of jet lag as she chats to Dork about the impending release of her debut full-length record, ‘Beware Of The Dogs’. A visceral, searing, emotionally raw takedown on society and the modern patriarchy, the album looks set to ruffle the same neanderthal feathers that the phenomenal ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ did, when its rage-filled blast at those pointing their fingers at the victims of sexual assault rather than at the instigators, first arrived.

Primarily written in the studio that she had booked after, by her own admission, bluffing that she had enough songs when in reality she was nowhere near, the album came together after life took a leftturn as her relationship fell apart.

Throwing herself into writing, a rush of songs came flooding out. “I think everything had been sitting there waiting to come out, but I hadn’t given it a chance?” she says about this hot streak.

The emotional ‘Allergies’ was written the day before recording, Stella’s voice noticeably wavering as she was “bawling her eyes out all day”. The tongue-in-cheek ‘Season’s Greetings’ pokes fun at family gettogethers, you know the ones, where that one extended family member that nobody really likes turns up (“I think families are good because you’re forced to be with people you don’t choose,” she laughs). As Dork asks her whether her family are nervous about becoming her writing material, she giggles. “Ha! You should talk to my exes, then.”

But for all the personal moments, it is the wider issues of patriarchy in the current society that Stella is known the most for. Fearlessly taking aim at the post (and current) Kavanaugh world, album opener ‘Old Man’ is savage in its cold fury.

“I had been riffing on it for a while, that chorus and the ‘China Girl’ guitar line, and then it came pouring out. I knew what I wanted to say because I got mad.” The trigger point, as it was for many, came with the #metoo movement. “I got to reflect on certain situations that had happened to me as a young musician, a teenager playing

in pubs and working with older men.”

Understandably not wanting to be drawn on specifics, Stella describes the song as “definitely hypothetical, I’m playing a character here.

It’s essentially someone I’ve created in order to make it easier for me to perform without directly having to go back to a certain memory.”

Being in the US at the time of Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation was an interesting time for the singer, with shows in Austin and Dallas proving to be the opposite to what she was expecting.

“You get fed so many stereotypes about certain places, but I had beautiful people, men, coming up to me and crying about that whole situation. It just restored my faith in humanity, y’know?”

Talk, as it usually does when discussing these things, turns to the likes of Piers Morgan (“Eurgh,” she grimaces), and the current furore over the Gillette advert (she hasn’t seen it, but is fascinated by the concept).

“It’s hilarious, my sister and I have this funny dialogue about people like that whenever we hang out.

WHAT’S NEXT? Marriage equality, actually. WHAT’S NEXT? DOGS MARRYING RABBITS OR SOMETHING??”

She dissolves into laughter at the insanity of it all.

Talk of the cavemen leads to ‘Boys Will Be Boys’, and the reaction to it. The one song to appear on both releases so far, it appears slap bang in the middle of the record. A deliberate move?

“Yeah exactly, I haven’t moved on, and we haven’t moved on. That song still needs to be sung, unfortunately.”

Targeted initially at female friends, the reaction from trolls shocked Stella. “Oh man, that was when I knew that I had burst the bubble of my inner circle of progressive-minded people.”

With her dad anonymously fighting trolls online (“I kept recognising these names as anagrams of his own name,” she laughs), she has learned

now to not read the comments.

“I just visualise them sitting in their mum’s apartment with greasy KFC fingers and writing this stuff; I felt a lot better about it!”

Another major target of her fire is the Australian government itself. “Australia has probably the most inhumane immigration policies, to the point where Donald Trump compliments us!”

With talk of offshore detention centres, the ongoing persecution that the First Nation are suffering, and the rumbling on of controversy around the date of Australia Day (a day of mourning for indigenous Australians), it’s clear that while we may be transfixed with Brexit and Trump, they have their own major issues down under.

“The dogs [from the album title] for me are the people in power, parliament and the media. It’s not a slight on dogs.

I love dogs. Make sure you put that in!” she smiles.

Stella’s ability to laugh and smile through all of the online abuse is staggering. Turning heartbreak into great song material is nothing new of course, but the no-bullshit delivery that elevates it into something else, something more powerful. Fearing writer’s block and burnout, she also suffered from a form of anxiety about leaving, a struggle to transition from the overstimulation of tour life with her quiet life in Fremantle, a city in Western Australia far removed from the music industry hubs of Sydney or Melbourne.

“I always struggle going home actually, because you go from this detached existence.

You put up walls to survive touring, especially as a solo woman, and coming home… It takes time to break them down again to let people I love back in.” With major tours across the globe booked for 2019, it’s going to be a while before she can retreat to those quiet spaces again. But in the meantime, those dogs better beware. Stella Donnelly is coming for them all. P Stella Donnelly’s album ‘Beware Of The Dogs’ is out 8th March.

** PLAYLIST ** PLAYLIST ** PLAYLIST ** PLAYLIST ** PLAYLIST ** PLAYLIST ** PLAYLIST ** PLAYLIST ** PLAYLIST ** PLAYLIST ** PLAYLIST ** PLAYLIST **

“It’s not a slight on dogs. I love dogs. Make sure you put that in!”

WANT? E own MckOouR t our D otify.

Che t on Sp low e playlis Under n the code b a Just sc to listen.

TAME IMPALA

We’re expecting new material from Kev and his chums later this year with festival headline sets already starting to stack up. Building to be one of the most beloved and influential bands on the planet, that rise shows no signs of slowing yet.

COURTNEY BARNETT

Former Dork cover star Courtney is The Best. That’s an official title, too. With two albums of solid gold under her belt, and an ability to put even the most raw emotional pressure points at ease, she’s a sensation.

KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD In the time it’s taken you to read this sentence, King Giz have probably already

AUSSIE MUSIC ISN’T ALL KYLIE, DANNII AND DR KARL KENNEDY. IT’S ALL THIS LOT TOO!

released three albums and recorded a fourth. One of the most prolific bands on the planet, they’re not about quantity over quality, either.

CONFIDENCE MAN

Two of last year’s breakout stars, Janet Planet and Sugar Bones are the faces of one of the most exciting, exhilarating live acts you’re ever likely to see.

Able to start a party in any space, once you pop with Confidence Man, you don’t stop.

AMYL AND THE SNIFFERS Amyl and the Sniffers keep up that tradition of all-out Aussie garage rock - and they do it with style. Even dubious haircuts won’t hold them back now they’ve signed with legendary label Rough Trade. 2019 watch out!

37

DRENGE

38

Drenge’s new album has been a long time coming. “We missed so many deadlines…” they tell Jake Hawkes. Thankfully, ‘Strange Creatures’ is worth the wait.

D

renge have been gone a while, releasing their last album in 2015 before disappearing into the wilderness to record some songs and find a new member. Having accomplished both of those tasks, the boys are back and ready to remind the world just how much fun they are. Did you miss them?

Catching up with the two core faces of the band, Eoin and Rory Loveless, is a bit like trying to interview two hyperactive kids who’ve had a whole packet of flying saucers each. They stay on topic for a minute or two at a time before grabbing at something new, with the first five minutes consisting of musings on beer brand Singha (“They should do an ad campaign with famous singers and claim it’s good for your throat,” Eoin jokes), how photoshoots make you feel excitable and how Dork should start a band (“You’d be guaranteed coverage from at least one magazine...”).

Once they’ve actually been steered towards the topic of music, they’re more reflective than you might expect.

“There’s an extra one of us now, so there’s four on stage when we play,” starts Rory.

“It’s good, and I think it ties into the idea that we’re always going to push ourselves...”

“No, no, no,” Eoin chimes in. “We don’t always want to be pushing ourselves, that’d be exhausting. We wanna push a bit, then relax a bit, then maybe push a bit more, a nice steady pace.”

“Ok, fine,” Rory continues. “Maybe we’ve just grown sideways a bit, especially thinking back to when we used to be a two-piece, which was just so different on stage compared to now.

For me, it’s a completely different way of playing, and musically there’s a lot more subtlety to what you do, rather than just

Photos: Sarah Louise Bennett.

39

DRENGE

40

going out and playing as loud as time to think about quitting and you can. It’s been interesting. getting a real job at Norwich Union “That’s not to say we were ever or something.” a two piece by choice though; it “We did spend a lot of time was definitely more by necessity. working on this one,” Rory adds, I think if we were easier to get on referencing the effort they’ve put with, or maybe had a few more in this time around. “We wanted to siblings, we would’ve had more take it somewhere and avoid making What was the thinking members from the start!” he the same record again. I think we behind the Dustbin laughs. “But it was just us two and made three different versions of this Robot? those were the limitations that album…” we had to work with. We had two “More than that,” Eoin says, Eoin: Still no idea really, it on the first album, three on the counting them on his fingers. “The just came to us. second and four on this one. Just original demos, then the rehearsals wait until album 27, we won’t all fit as a live band, then we recorded it, Rory: It needed to happen, on stage.” then we scrapped most of that and you know? Like a creative Despite their ever-expanding recorded it again, then we scrapped call of nature, you just find line-up, they’ve tried to keep the that and recorded it a final time. So yourself compelled to do writing and recording process that’s six versions, at least.” it. Have you seen that film pretty similar to when they first “I guess it was that many,” Rory ‘Close Encounters of the started out. “We still record with agrees. “We could see where it was Third Kind’? Where the mostly just me and Eoin,” Rory going right from the start; it was guy makes a monument explains. “It was only as we were just trying to get it to a point where out of mashed potato, making the new album that we it was fully realised that took time. it was like that. You find realised we’d need another person It was a new thing for us because yourself walking through B on stage with us, but at that point, the first album was just done in a & Q, buy yourself a couple we decided not to worry about few weekends and polished off in of bins and just have it too much and just to do what a couple of weeks, and the second at it in a metalworking we wanted to do in the studio. album was done almost as quick. studio, then at the end of The result of that is we have to This was the first time we’ve really it you’ve made a beautiful worry about it now instead, and slogged it out until everything little soul. A beautiful recreating it properly live is still was just right. We missed so many recyclable soul. something that keeps us up at deadlines…” night.”

“Rory’s worried it’ll be our Guns Eoin: I think on the face “This is our most considered N Roses ‘Chinese Democracy’ of it, our music and our album, but I guess you could say moment,” Eoin laughs. “But it isn’t sound is quite downbeat, that about every album you put like that, because we didn’t get lost quite loud and quite angry out, to be fair,” he muses. “It’s been in it, we just kept coming back to it and even though there a long time coming, we’ve been and working on it when we could. We might be some tongue in recording it on and off since the haven’t spent too long in the studio cheek humour in a lot of last one, but we’ve been Drenge the with it; it’s just taken a while to get it what we do, dressing up as whole time, there was no hiatus. It together.” a robot is your chance to was just a case of when the studio “I dunno, it’s just strange!” properly let it all out. was available and when we were Rory protests. “I feel this weird ready, it’s frustrating how long pressure for the first time to live it’s taken, to be honest. The preup to people’s expectations of us release part is hard too; I feel really nervous about as a band; I feel kind of insecure. Maybe it’s just everything, probably the most unsure of myself my little underplay, so when the reviews roll in, I ever in the band. Now that it’s finally done and can celebrate. It’s shit, just a terrible album.” He you’re ready to release it, you do start to worry.” pauses, struggling to keep a straight face. “No I’m “I went through a load of photos last night from kidding, I’m very proud of it, of course I am.” between when we stopped touring and now,” “I guess the thing is this is the first album we’ve Eoin chips in. “And you really notice how much stopped and thought about,” Eoin explains. “The we changed over the past year, we just both look first time you put out a record as a band you’re so much more tired! I was just trying to get some so caught up and lost in the uniqueness of the photos together because I thought it’d be funny, situation that you’re on this really weird sugar but I was kind of amazed at the difference. high. The second time, especially because it came “It’s what Rory said about feeling unsure out so quick afterwards, we were drilled into it of yourself. It’s how you naturally feel in the and thinking it was the same as the first time. circumstances, but when you get involved in the This time, we didn’t have any sugar, we just had music world, it’s easy to start living on this false to go in dry, which meant a lot more scope for selfconfidence cushion, where nothing really touches reflection. you because you’re so glued into what’s going on.

“Having said that, I’m not sure if there are “Then you step outside for a while and knock any themes behind the album, despite the on the door to come back in and you just kind of self-reflection. It’s more a collection of ten short realise that all the apprehension you’re feeling this stories, a little paperback book. You can pop it in time around is how it should feel because of course your top pocket, take it out and have a read. Up to it’s going to be scary putting your work out there, you if you read them all at once, or just wanna read it’s a real sacrifice.” one at school in front of the class.

Even with the exhaustion that comes with “If you want to record your own version of the writing and recording an album, Eoin is firm on it story and make an audiobook, you can do that never feeling like just another job. “I’ve got some as well. Little stories, creative writing by some rules on it, definitely,” he says. “The creative thing young adults that would appeal to… some people, isn’t the day job, that’s the luxury. The day job is all but not everyone. I guess you could say it’s a… the promo, the travel, the setting up for gigs, the strange creature,” he says with a grin, before interviews. [Sorry about that, mate…] adding: “That’s the name of the album, by the way: “When it’s fun, it’s really fun, and that’s ‘Strange Creatures’. That’d probably be a good probably the most important bit. For me, if I start joke to end the interview on.” P Drenge’s album thinking of it as my day job, that’s when it’d be ‘Strange Creatures’ is out 22nd February.

- EOIN LOVELESS

** PLAYLIST ** PLAYLIST ** PLAYLIST ** PLAYLIST ** PLAYLIST ** PLAYLIST ** PLAYLIST ** PLAYLIST ** PLAYLIST ** PLAYLIST ** PLAYLIST ** PLAYLIST **

“RORY’S WORRIED IT’LL BE OUR GUNS N ROSES ‘CHINESE DEMOCRACY’ MOMENT”

DRENGE BANGERS It feels like only yesterday Drenge arrived kicking and screaming - a fully realised duo capable of an unholy din.

From political nods and praise from Kanye West, they’ve done it all. Here are our top five Drenge bangers.

Bloodsports

Released some six years ago, ‘Bloodsports’ still feels like a galloping steed breaking from the pack. Riding a riff that’s capable of ripping eardrums from a distance, its youthful energy remains undimmed. As it careens through its final, thundering breakdown, it’s proof that Drenge have always been capable of raising the pulse.

We Can Do What We Want

Bursting into life like a jaunty do ‘round The Libertines’ Margate hotel, ‘We Can Do What We Want’, and its jangly intro soon gives way to a runaway train of pummelling beats and defiant energy. The first taster of second album ‘Undertow’, on release it was a gauntlet thrown down in the mud. Even now, it’s a challenge impossible to resist.

Fuckabout

“This song is a fuckabout,” starts this understated, slow-building banger, “not one to write home about.” Mistaken, much? An earworm disguised in the shadows, its languid stride will soon bury itself deep. Even in their early days, Drenge were a cut above.

Bonfire of the City Boys

If there’s one emotion that suits Drenge, it’s determined aggression. ‘Bonfire of the City Boys’ - the opening track of ‘Strange Creatures’ - spits forth white hot venom over an elastic band bounce, its chorus melting under its own furious weight. A continuation of what’s come before and an exciting new development, this is Drenge at their very best.

Running Wild

Through waves of guitar, ‘Running Wild’ is just one of many Check ‘Undertow’ o with m ut our playlis cuts that show best b ore of Dreng t ange e’s Drenge a band scan th rs on Spotify e code capable of a now. new level of maturity. But while they may develop, they never descend into the trap of boredom-inducing dirge. Still sharp as a knife, it’s the salt to a sugary treat.

WAN MORET ?

41

INDOOR PETS

P C S N O

Long time Dork faves Indoor Pets have always had an ear for a solid gold pop banger. Now inked with Wichita Records and about to drop a debut album, that potential is about to be realised.

ROM RA T I AT RS

Words: Jamie MacMillan.

ay 2017.

Everybody’s favourite indie-pop punksters Get Inuit have been doing what every fledgeling act does - gigging hard, building up a loyal fanbase show-by-show, revealing an unerring ability to craft a perfect banger with every new release.

But then, following a tweet from Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq pointing out that their chosen moniker was problematic, the band realised they couldn’t continue as they were, and Get Inuit were no more.

Now, less than two years later, Jamie Glass, Ollie Nunn and brothers Rob and James Simpson can finally celebrate as the renamed Indoor Pets reveal their triumphant debut album to the world. It looked for a while that

they might not get here.

“There was a point with the name change when the band was at its lowest,” frontman Jamie explains, “and we realised we had just undone a lot of work from the previous years.”

It came within a whisker of being curtains for the group.

“We thought, ‘Let’s just put an album out by ourselves, retire and then we could always say we did what we set out to do’.”

The name issue had rumbled on for six months before they announced their change of moniker in late 2017. It’s nothing new for bands to change their name of course, but doing it this late in the day was a particular blow for them. Overnight, it was almost like starting over. But in many ways, it proved to be the making of them - patience is a virtue, after all.

“We can’t take credit for that, we

“We’ve been the same as everyone else, asking when we can get our album out”

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INDOOR PETS

44

haven’t been patient at all!” laughs Jamie, with bassist Ollie adding: “We’ve been the same as everyone else, asking when we can get our album out!”

So why the long wait?

“We started the process two or three years ago,” Jamie explains, “but it was very staggered. We had PRS funding, then we were signed and dropped by a label, then the whole name change thing. We’d just add to it every weekend, every spare day we had.”

It was only when Wichita Recordings came on board that things changed, the London indie label promising the time and space for Indoor Pets to do things how they wanted.

“We were quite worried that it was going to be a voice that we’d, unfortunately, have to listen to.”

The truth couldn’t be further from that.

“We showed them our demos, told them that we wanted to keep working in the same studio with James [the band’s guitarist is also the co-producer], and then asked them what they wanted us to do.”

The label’s response was simple “Do what you wanna do, and come to us when you need money.”

That faith is about to be vindicated with ‘Be Content’. It is a record that is gloriously proud of its outsider status - shouting from the rooftops that it is okay to be different. When Jamie sings “I love being strange, it’s an easy fit for me” on ‘Being Strange’, it’s a clarion call to the introverts, the people standing on the edge of the party, the different.

“It’s definitely what I want the message to be; it’s appreciating that nothing’s perfect.”

Amidst all the joking around that help make Indoor Pets one of the most fun acts on the scene, there’s a serious side to them to them too.

“It’s very much an inner battle of understanding that I don’t fit in. I don’t think I’m smart, I’m terrible in relationships, and I wish I could get closer to people.

But actually, to do those things, I have to be happy with who I am.”

Ollie chips in to agree: “If we go out at a festival or something and someone says ‘Everyone’s going to the bar for drinks!’, we say we’ll be there, but then it’s just us standing in the corner for a bit.”

Even in the recording studio, Indoor Pets kept themselves largely to themselves, with James co-producing - Jamie laughingly describes it as “hell, a nightmare” while Ollie describes it as like a tennis game, with James’ little brother Rob regularly joining in arguments, switching sides like an extra player.

“It drives us on though,” he says, while Jamie admits, “I think it’s worth that conversation being

DID YO MY HIL U SEE ARIOU S TWEE T?

DORK’S TOP 5 INDOOR PETS * * not including indie pop sensations Indoor Pets, obv.

1. HAMSTERS Hamsters are really good, apart from when the boy hamsters like to get their absolutely massive balls out.

Which, if we’re honest, isn’t a sentence we ever envisaged committing to print. Every day’s a new journey.

2. GERBILS We’re not sure what the difference between a gerbil and a hamster is, but they’re probably good too?

Unclear on the testicle issue here.

3. GUINEA PIGS We have seen the documentary film ‘G Force’ and respect the work of our brave soldiers.

4. CHIPMUNKS Ch-Ch-Ch-Chip and Dale! Rescue Rangers!

5. IDK, FISH? We didn’t think this through properly.

(After commissioning important scientific research (a Twitter poll), 53% of those asked said a tortoise was an indoor pet, due to it always transporting its home.

However, I think they’re stupid and I’m in charge - Ed)

DORK

had, we might not have had it with a producer that you were afraid to say ‘fuck off’ to.”

Surprisingly for a band with so many bangers in their back pocket, one glance at the track listing shows some bold omissions. ‘So Soon’ is missing, as is ‘All My Friends’, victims to a ruthless streak and a need to keep pushing forwards.

“Essentially, you have to deliver an album’s worth of songs before someone says that they want to hear your album,” picks up Jamie.

“So by the time we came to record it, it was obvious to us which songs we wrote because we wanted them to be part of a bigger package, and which were written just as singles.

So we left them out as it would have been lazy to include them, even if it was maybe more… clever, to leave them in.”

Nearly everything was rerecorded, even older tracks like ‘Cutie Pie, I’m Bloated’ getting a spring clean and sounding a million miles away from the earlier EP version.

“It brought fresh life into it; it’s weird for us to see how we’ve progressed as a band. I mean, I can say words now, and most of the time you know what I’m saying!”

“Which I couldn’t do three years ago,” Ollie dissolves into giggles.

“I’ve been a fan of Jamie for a long time. He just had no enunciation though. Nothing at all.”

“I’ve got vowels now. People were saying about the new ‘ProProcrastinator’ mix, ‘Oh, I like that lyric!’ I haven’t changed them, they’ve been the same for five years!”

Ultimately, everything still feels that it could have come from the same writing session, a fact that

D OWN WI T H BO RI N G

Jamie attributes to “not having matured as a person at all over the years, at all. Which is good, obviously.”

Having previously told Dork that there is no point in writing a song that isn’t a banger, there is one notable exception on ‘Be Content’ with mid-album breather ‘The Mapping Of Dandruff’. It’s a song that Jamie admits was a little bit “twee” until James pumped it full of overlapping reverbs and delays in a My Bloody Valentine-style.

“That’s when I realised, oh, we might actually be a ‘hip’ band!”

That slower song is the exception on an album where nearly every track could easily be a single from the riff rampage of opener ‘Hi’ onwards. How did their new label react?

“They had one bit of feedback, unfortunately,” admits Jamie.

“They wanted the silence between tracks 12 and 13 to be two seconds longer. Of course, we told them to go to hell. How dare they?”

With the album wrapped, Indoor Pets took to the road with Bad Sounds late last year when disaster struck. In a tale that is getting more and more common, they had their van broken into following one of their shows and had around £15,000 worth of equipment stolen.

Heartbreakingly, every instrument (bar one guitar) that ‘Be Content’ had been recorded on was gone. Being a fiercely independent DIY band, they found it hard to ask for help.

“It felt very difficult to be in that situation, where we couldn’t move forward without a little bit of help,” confesses Jamie. “So we thought, let’s be British about this and go back to being tea-mad.”

Photo: Sarah Louise Bennett.

In a world of streams, downloads, radio a-lists and playlists but very little in the way of physical sales, it can be hard to define what an artist means to people, but the famous ‘I HELPED INDOOR PETS BUY THEIR GEAR BACK’ tea towel sale showed just how beloved the group had become.

An initial target of selling fifty soon went out of the window, and in the end, they estimate that they sold nearly a thousand - all lovingly packaged in their living room.

“Just being surrounded by all these boxes, it was nice to have a physical way of seeing how much people cared,” smiles Jamie.

The scene, often decried by some as not being supportive, rallied aaround too. Bad Sounds themselves lent the guys instruments to finish the tour on (“So many people said we sounded better than before,” laughs Ollie), as well as donating money. Many others followed suit; Fender helped out, even the BBC got involved. Both Jamie and Ollie are still noticeably stunned at the response.

“It’s so weird when we always spend a lot of time saying ‘Oh, why can’t we be better, why can’t we be bigger, why can’t we be the biggest band in the world’,” says Jamie. “Actually what we’ve got is

. THE GREAT ESCAPE 2017. S.

“WE’RE GONNA RELEASE EVERY SONG, WE’RE GONNA ED SHEERAN IT AND BLOCK OUT THE TOP TEN!” pretty amazing because it saved our asses.”

‘Be Content’ comes at an interesting time, when genres have never been so blurred - Bad Sounds being a perfect example of a group with their fingers in many pies musically. Indoor Pets too could easily sit on many different festival line-ups.

“I think that’s a good thing,” agrees Jamie. “It shows an evolution of these types of bands.

It’s hard to pigeonhole us because you can say that we are a pop-punk band but if we go on a tour with You Me At Six, do we fit in? Oh, we’re an indie band now? Put us with Pale Waves? Oh, we don’t go with them either?”

He pauses, and pulls his Edward

Scissorhands-style hair out even further in an uncanny Heather impression.

“Actually, we’d look very good together with our hair.”

On a serious note, he adds: “Potentially that means that one day there will be more bands like us, that just puts their hands together instead of being in a very small sub-genre.”

One act, in particular, have given them hope that they can achieve anything.

“I feel like everyone’s saying it, but it’s coming from a place of truth. I think IDLES have, in the last six months, shown that great music regardless of image, is always going to come out on top. Seeing them go for a BRIT Award is bonkers,

but at the same time they have absolutely broken through. They’ve completely obliterated everything in their path!”

Celebrating good music rather than good image is key for Jamie.

“I have to say that because we’re really fucking weird to look at. If we were good to look at, then maybe I’d have a different view. But we’re not!”

Now, with the album in the bag, what next?

“We’re gonna release every song, we’re gonna Ed Sheeran it and block out the top ten!” they laugh.

A headline tour and festivals are on the horizon too, with Jamie excitedly shouting: “We’re doing 2000trees. Did you see they put us on the poster in big-boy font?”

Album number two is already being thought about, although it seems that it will start from a clean slate this time.

“That really appeals to me, like literally wiping the hard drive and doing an album in two weeks. The first one took five years; we want to prove we’re not Guns n’ Roses!”

At long last, it looks like these Indoor Pets are ready to move out and start conquering the world. P Indoor Pets’ album ‘Be Content’ is out 8th March.

SUNDARA KARMA

46

CHANG

Sundara Karma made one of our fave albums of 2017. Finishing up at the legendary Brixton Academy at the end of that same year, they were a band going places fast. Rather that rest on their laurels for their second record, and rely on the template of what worked last time around, they’ve radically changed things up, returning an even more vital and exciting band.

Jamie Muir finds out more.

O

scar Pollock is feverishly working away in the corner of a South London pub.

Headphones on, laptop out, he’s firmly locked in on the next Sundara Karma music video. It’s just another element of their next chapter, answering that question facing every band following a debut album full of immediacy - after the years working up to it, what comes next?

For Sundara Karma, it’s ‘Ulfilas’ Alphabet’, the sort of album that doesn’t so much follow up on the glorious steps made before but throws it all into a blender with a stick of dynamite and flourishes in the scenes it creates.

For a band that have always hinted at something more, that have always been a step ahead, this is the album that proves their standing in glorious technicolour splendour. A conversation with co-producer Stuart Price sums it up for Oscar.

“He told me that the record always ends up sounding - and he was telling me this while he was quoting someone else - the record always sounds like the time we had making it, and I think that’s pretty true.”

A bold combination of different genres, eras and sounds, it’s the sound of a band having the time of their lives creating vibrant music that is primed to open up a whole new universe for Sundara Karma. What’s even better, is that it comes from a place of simply wanting to discover and create free of any restrictions.

“I’m going to be asked so much about why you think it sounds this way or that way and I can’t give a good enough

EOVER

47

SUNDARA KARMA answer to that, other than it’s just the sound of what was appealing to us at the time.”

This is Sundara Karma following their gut, and the results are spectacular.

S

48

undara Karma are built on connection. Since the early days playing in venues up and down the land, supporting every band under the sun and thriving with every early release, they’ve always been more than just another four-piece singing their songs. A pull that has seen thousands delve into their world, it’s why you can find Sundara Karma fan pages online that span across Korea, France, Brazil, Argentina, Italy and the Philippines amongst others.

With an unstoppable drive, they’ve taken themselves across the globe and back again, and that connection has remained at the core of everything. There’s a bond deep down that ties Sundara Karma to their fans, the sort of importance that can change lives and provide a light to so many - it’s why their return is as anticipated as it is.

Time changes things, nobody is in the same place for too long, and Sundara Karma find themselves now ready for more. This is a band who’ve gone through it all once, and now they’re enjoying the freedom of the future.

“I feel different to how I felt two years ago,” reflects Oscar. “I think this album is a reflection of that. You naturally change and mature, the things you like and the things you don’t like change. It’s just a nice feeling when you feel like you’ve been able to express yourself to the fullest of your ability and then being able to put that out for people to hear.”

Moments in time can feel like snapshots; in six months that person can seem a distant memory. It’s an inevitable reality of life, and in the past two years, Sundara Karma have evolved in front of our eyes. The frenzied devotion that saw crowds erupt - even when they were second on the bill for the likes of Circa Waves and Swim Deep - surged with the release of debut album ‘Youth Is Only Ever Fun In Retrospect’. It’s a chronicle of life’s ups and downs as a young person growing up to face what the world has to offer, and it took them to levels that seemed unimaginable only a few years prior.

A layered collection of tracks which pull at heartstrings with the immediately identifiable realities of being born in a new generation and peeking at the horizon of young adulthood is the sort of record that it’s easy to hold close.

“I noticed recently that I go through phases,” Oscar explains, “like really, really go through phases. When I was younger, I went through an emo phase and then I went through a hippy Woodstock phase where I was wearing sandals and tie-dye shirts and loads of beaded jewellery. I suppose our last album is a phase of going through something or another and this is the next one and what comes next.”

As the celebratory scenes reigned through London’s Brixton Academy in October 2017, Sundara Karma already had the vision for

their next step.

“It was clear by then,” remembers Oscar, “a lot of the songs had been written, and we’d already felt a new release of energy and passion that helped drive us.”

The waiting around and the quiet after 18 months of unstoppable momentum proved to be something the band weren’t prepared for.

“The hanging around,” Oscar pauses.

“That was something we had to deal with, and it’s not something you’re ever told. ‘Oh you’re going to be touring for a long time, and then you’re going to be doing nothing’. For like six months. It’s bizarre, but I’m not complaining.

We were very eager; we wanted to put the record out last year - we wanted to do it as quickly as possible.”

It’s an eagerness and vigour that comes across in bright font with ‘Ulfilas’ Alphabet’, a record packed with a myriad of styles and flairs that squarely places ambition at the forefront of Sundara Karma. The playful ‘One Last Night On This Earth’ for example, fizzes with the sort of stadium-taking power that never pauses for breath as a bonafide single no matter the decade, and that sort of fever carries throughout - always daring to do more.

“We’ve definitely noticed that it is bolder,” states Oscar. “I don’t know if we’ve been using the word fearless, but we didn’t want to hold too much back with this.”

That sense of adventure, of discovering the new and being open to exploring every facet and path before them, it’s the making of Sundara Karma - not being confined to boxes of preconceptions but bringing something altogether more vital to play. If ‘Youth Is Only Ever Fun…’ symbolised a band mastering the soaring indie anthem, then ‘Ulfilas’ Alphabet’ symbolises that they can truly do anything, a moment of glorious self-discovery.

“I don’t know,” ponders Oscar. “I feel happier. I haven’t felt depressed or anxious in a while; all that stuff seems in a good place.

I’m 23 now, when you’re 21 going into 22 it’s a tricky age, like a really tricky age. Nobody knows who they are or what they want to stand for or what their voice is, let alone what they want their music to sound like and what

DORK

D OWN WI T H BO RI N G

“WE WANTED TO PUT THE RECORD OUT LAST YEAR; WE WANTED TO DO IT AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE” they think will resemble them forever. Those are things I don’t even think I know now, but I feel closer to that.

“I don’t know if there is an end to your search for that. I don’t know. [Singersongwriter] Scott Walker, for example - I think he’s so admired by artists and music fans because he’s never really stopped searching.

He’s curious artist. That process of selfdiscovery is endless.”

It’s something Oscar has been interested in from a young age, that inquisitive nature of a creative force. Across ‘Ulfilas’ Alphabet’, there’s a tackling of modern-day issues, of coming to terms with maturing in the 21st century and all the challenges it throws at you while exploring the coming-to-terms of emotion and what each means. Not just artistically, but personally, it’s Oscar opening himself up.

“Anything that makes you feel good and makes you feel better, I think it’s worth pursuing,” he notes, “but I don’t want to sound preachy. What I would say is the best thing you can do for yourself is to get to know yourself more, to give yourself some quiet time and see what makes you feel happy, what makes you feel sad. Ultimately, do the stuff that makes you feel happy more often and do the stuff that makes you feel sad less.”

W

ith a vision in their minds of where they wanted to go next, Sundara Karma set about creating the environment that

would allow them to explore these new terrains, to grab their vast palette of influences and create their defining next statement.

Enter Kaines (aka Alex Robertshaw from Everything Everything) and hitmaker Stuart Price (who’s worked with The Killers, Pet Shop Boys and Madonna). It’s a combination that allowed Sundara Karma to reach the heights they’d been playing in their heads for a while.

“We’re huge fans of a lot of records that they’ve done individually and together,” explains Oscar, with one in particular truly standing out from Alex’s band. “They did [Everything Everything’s] ’Get To Heaven’ together, which is such a wicked sounding record, so complex and layered. I dunno, we saw that record as maybe coming from the same world that we wanted this record to come from. It felt like a perfect it.”

What followed was a time that Oscar describes as ‘wholesome’, spent in the studio brimming with ideas and the freedom to jump down any avenue they wished.

The sound of joy and fun you hear bouncing across ‘Ulfilas’ Alphabet’ captures a band ripping apart any boundaries, where every idea could be poured into and morphed as they wished.

“I didn’t feel the pressure of a second record at all, to be honest with you, which is good,” admits Oscar. “We knew more about the process, and we knew more about how to make the sounds the way we wanted them to sound. It was such a pleasant experience.”

A cocktail mixed with a range of styles and flourishes, it sees Sundara Karma extending their wings and flying high - pulling in genres and eras into a modern masterpiece that needed the time and experience of being in a band from a young age to produce the bright lights that ring from it.

“Where we felt freer was being able to embrace those variations in genre and not feeling like because we have guitars, it’s got to sound like a band. That idea of, if it’s got guitars, it’s got to sound like The Strokes.”

It’s an album Oscar openly admits simply wouldn’t have been possible, or even attempted a few years ago.

Take ‘Higher States’ - a propulsive electroclash ripper that sounds closer to Enter Shikari than it does any band stringing along with ripped jeans and Fred Perrys. Or the hypnotic title-track itself, taking a menacing 90s chime before unravelling into an open kaleidoscope of euphoria. Or the shape-shifting ‘A Song For My Future Self’ which shimmies and struts like a long-lost David Bowie anthem that practically demands

you stop what you’re doing and plug firmly in. Or the glorious ‘Symbols Of Joy And Eternity’ feeling like a track beamed from space.

The sheer breadth of styles that burst across ‘Ulfilas’ Alphabet’ is staggering, the coronation of a band not prepared to settle for average but instead primed with a modern classic in their back-pocket that nobody could have predicted.

“People will react how they’re going to react,” proclaims Oscar.

“I’m not scared of any kind of reaction because if you’re making music and you’re worried about the way people are going to react to it, then it’s going to suffer in some way. You’re going to change things, and you’re going to compromise,

and you’re not going to feel like you’re honest with yourself. I have faith in our fans; I do hope they’ll like it.”

F

or a lot of bands, the second chapter is tougher than the first. For Sundara Karma, it’s more of a nod that they can do anything they like and that nobody is doing what they do right now.

“I tend on a day to day basis to bring conversations to places you probably shouldn’t go with your average chat,” smiles Oscar.

“Just talking about life and death from a chat about the weather.”

It’s that which makes

him a unique and needed voice right now. A band emboldened by the journey that led them to this point, but revelling in the freedom of adventure and genre-bending power - Sundara Karma 2.0 are redefining what a band can be in 2019.

Is Oscar ready for what comes next as he leads them across the globe?

“I don’t know, but I’m willing to have fun with it.” P Sundara Karma’s album ‘Ulfilas’ Alphabet’ is out 1st March.

“WE FELT FREE; NOT FEELING LIKE BECAUSE WE HAVE GUITARS, IT’S GOT TO SOUND LIKE THE STROKES” 49

Incoming.

Your New Music Fridays, sorted.

15th February - 1st March 2019

I

SWMRS

Berkley’s On Fire

eeeee LABEL: FUELED BY RAMEN RELEASED: 15TH FEBRUARY LISTEN TO: BERKLEY’S ON FIRE, LOSE LOSE LOSE, HELLBOY

t’s hard to escape it, a lot of rock music feels like it’s stuck in a time warp. Not just stylistically - though there’s a more than persuading argument to suggest it is - but in its attitudes too. While traditional rock star tales and backstage behaviour may finally be seen as unacceptable, it’s a genre where many of the biggest names are still an overhang from an era that, to put it politely, didn’t have the values young people today may wish to hold their idols to.

To claim a group consisting of four men is a breath of fresh air might be a stretch - rock is a genre still way too obsessed with masculinity - but SWMRS feel like something different.

From a ‘zine given away at shows promoting safe spaces (“Pro tip: Abusers of all kinds - you should leave now, or you will be subject to severe punishment”) to tweets asking fans to stop them and say hi (“getting to shake your hand and know about you is a highlight”), they’re not a band

Incoming 15th February 2019 WOMAN’S HOUR Ephyra

RELEASED: 15TH FEBRUARY

eeeee It’s not often that a band’s comeback album is also their break up album, but it seems, for London trio Woman’s Hour, that transition was a wholly necessary thing. Then a foursome, Woman’s Hour arrived with a luminous cool in 2014 with their debut ‘Conversations’. Their clean, monochromatic aesthetic brought a real charm to their dream pop ways.

This wasn’t the light-in-the-dark movements of Beach House; it was more the minimal cool of The xx as seen through the eyes of Bat For Lashes, something where emotion made up for the sparsity of sound.

However, the period between then and now saw relationships in the band become strained, unofficially splitting during the recording of their second album. The weight of it all became too much but, rather than just let it fade away, Woman’s Hour reconvened a year later to finish it. ‘Ephyra’, then, becomes transformed into a record of that time. Written so openly as to have titles like ‘From Eden To Exile Then Into Dust’, it’s clear what Woman’s Hour want to say. But, where ‘Conversations’ felt intimate, ‘Ephyra’ puts up a wall. It’s hard to emotionally attach to it; such is the focus on each member trying to reckon with their emotions.

It becomes a cathartic therapy session for the band that keeps the listener on the other side of the door.

Luckily, Woman’s Hour are still able to compose some gorgeously sparse spaces for their sounds to sit.

‘It’s A Blast’ captures that feeling of trying to make sense of everything perfectly, the expected twisted ever so slightly, while opener ‘Don’t Speak’ twirls around Fiona Burgess’ ghostly vocals, before the synths give way to a beautifully serene and meditative state.

‘Ephyra’ very much feels like the product of a band on the verge of collapse, but also something they needed to put together, flaws and all, to move on. And when that beauty does shine through, it brings into focuswhat a pleasure it was to have Woman’s Hour, however brief it might have been. P Chris Taylor

ALBUM OF TH

E

WEEK

chained to the old ways either.

What does this have to do with the music?

Beyond the fact that separating art from the people behind it really doesn’t work, this is a band with far more than just words. Rarely found ploughing out earnest platitudes, ‘Berkley’s On Fire’ possesses an energetic freshness that swings open the doors to their big tent mentality. Inclusive, fresh and never not exiting, above and beyond anything else it’s almost impossible not to love SWMRS. And when we say love, we mean fall. Hard. While previous album ‘Drive North’ was a pouch of fizzing candy dropped into a sugary soda, ‘Lose Lose Lose’ is Mentos in Diet Coke levels of explosive. “2019 is a fucking disaster,” it proclaims, rattling along the tracks at a breakneck pace. Every picture is painted in bright, rainbow colours, stuck

together with scrappy paper and glue. ‘Too Much Coffee’ is defiant but melodic, while ‘Hellboy’ audibly rumbles. SWMRS’ brand of hedonism may have some of the pointiest corners rounded off, but only the ones that didn’t care for what harm they’d do to others.

While they may not be able to answer all of rock’s most difficult questions by themselves, that doesn’t mean SWMRS don’t have some of the solutions. Open, caring and considerate, sure, but also more than aware that doesn’t stop us having a great time too; by the time rock finally fully embraces the present, it’ll be grateful for bands like SWMRS - and the future creations of the creative, progressive fanbases that spring up around them - to point it towards a better future.

P Stephen Ackroyd

DORK

RE AD D O RK. CO M

RY X Unfurl

RELEASED: 15TH FEBRUARY

eeeee The quiet storm that’s hiding all across Ry X’s second outing evokes an intense passion. As each pulsating beat drums forward, building a level of sure-fire intensity, its tribal patterns can lead down an endless road, but Ry always makes sure to point the listener in the right emotional direction.

It’s when he kicks things into a more natural gear - stripping back to just himself and a guitar - that his emotional outpouring kicks to another level entirely. P Steven Loftin

METHYL ETHEL Triage

RELEASED: 15TH FEBRUARY

eeeee The brainchild of writer/ producer/ performer Jake Webb, Methyl Ethel has, in recent years, been met with a wave of success that has not only seen the band heralded back home in Australia, but also catapulted them to deserved recognition across the globe.

With third album ‘Triage’ following a similar formula to its predecessor (2017’s ‘Everything is Forgotten’), the record is once again driven by its synth-heavy approach, and confirms Methyl Ethel as a band consistent not only in the style of their output but in the quality also. P Dominic Allum

** PLUS ** Avril Lavigne Head Above Water Dear Seattle Don’t Let Go Homeshake Helium Jon Fratelli Bright Night Flowers Ladytron Ladytron One OK Rock Eye Of The Storm

51

Incoming 22nd February 2019

DRENGE Strange Creatures eeeee LABEL: INFECTIOUS MUSIC RELEASED: 22ND FEBRUARY LISTEN TO: BONFIRE OF THE CITY BOYS, AUTONOMY, THIS DANCE

JULIA JACKLIN

WOAHNOWS

RELEASED: 22ND FEBRUARY

RELEASED: 22ND FEBRUARY

Crushing

eeeee

ALBUM

OF TH For her E WEEK followup to her much-loved debut ‘Don’t Let The Kids Win’, Julia Jacklin delivers a masterclass in story-telling. A break-up album may be nothing new, but in her hands, ‘Crushing’ becomes something fresh and captivating, simple songs of a complicated human life that are at times heart-rending, yet ultimately triumphant in spirit. Like a movie told in flashback form, much of ‘Crushing’ details the doubts buried within the dying embers of a serious relationship. A hint of sad desperation lies within ‘Don’t Know How To Keep Loving You’, whereas the empowering ‘You Were Right’ signals someone moving on in their life with strength and resolve. Jacklin strides into new territory on each song. Sadly sighing “I can’t be the one to hold you when I was the one who left” on album closer ‘Comfort’, there is a brutal honesty that confirms Jacklin as one of the finest songwriters out there. P Jamie MacMillan

ADIA VICTORIA Silences

RELEASED: 22ND FEBRUARY

eeeee

W

hile their first two albums have thrived on their raw energy, Drenge’s latest offering has a tinge of being polished and neatened up around the edges. All of which helps make those rage kicks hit that bit harder, tearing the paper from the walls with reckless abandon and not a care for their security deposit.

That rampant physicality and drive that has seen Drenge blow doors right through across the land remain an ever-present.

Chaos reigns supreme in the power of the drums and the spiky edged riffs. There’s definitely a more mature edge to the music - and as the band themselves previously pointed out they’ve even started writing things like choruses.

Brothers Eoin and Rory Loveless have developed their

music-making skills dramatically since their 2013 debut LP and the composure they show on this intrinsically dark album highlights that they’re an outfit to be taken seriously.

This is a record for those nocturnal dwellers who lurk in the shadows, delving into the outer reaches in search of sounds that send shivers down the spine and start eyes rolling slowly back into the skull. Hints of old school blues do nothing but add to their songwriting credentials.

Drenge have an unbridled ability to curate grunge with an anthemic tilt, and there are few bands able to conjure the atmospheres they regularly produce. This is surely the next step forward though as they’ve produced a deeply psychological release that takes no prisoners.

Oh, and ‘Autonomy’ is a stonecold banger. P Ciarán Steward

We can almost guarantee you’ve not heard anything quite as enticing and strange as this second offering from self-professed gothic-blues mastermind Aida Victoria. There’s an assuming nature to her, but that soon dissipates as soon as you really start paying attention.

Kicking off with a song that talks about killing, it’s an record that’s dark its very core. While it may not be the most ‘banger’ sounding album, it instead holds a deep intensity that feels like a spectre hovering above, holding the listener hostage.

The whole ‘gothic-occult’ matter isn’t a recurring theme, though it does play its major role. Adia finds time to create a more personal approach that in itself is more universal, but it’s her ability to shock with her tales of devils and death where she truly shines in the shadows. P Steven Loftin

Young & Cool

eeeee Bright ’n’ breezy with a side order of vivacious indie, Woahnows’ second album is chockful of good tunes and good times that’ll feed have the inner party animal rollicking and rioting. ‘Young & Cool’ is an album that is just that - it’s fresh, slick and unabashedly self-aware. You’ll be hard pressed to find an album as tightly woven, and equally as loose. A Venn diagram of indie goodness and melodic madness.

P Steven Loftin

ROSES GABOR Fantasy and Facts

RELEASED: 22ND FEBRUARY

eeeee After years of notable guest vocals and sporadic single releases this full length debut is Roses Gabor’s first proper artistic statement. It’s an album full of immersive rhythms and heavy bass sounds. Flitting between banging hard and deep on the club ready ‘Turkish Delight’ to soft and tender on the dreamy ‘Stuff’, it’s an album of pleasing depth and variety. That gorgeous voice is accompanied by supporting turns from like minded contemporaries like Sampha and MNEK. A compelling long awaited debut from an artist ready to take the next step. P Martyn Young

** PLUS ** Blood Youth Starve Best Oblivion Community Centre Best Oblivion Community Centre (physical release) Du Blonde Lung Bread For Daddy Maximo Park As Long As We Keep Moving (live album) Sleaford Mods Eton Alive The Claypool Lennon Delirium South Of Reality

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Incoming 1st March 2019 SUNDARA KARMA

Ulfilas’ Alphabet RELEASED: 1ST MARCH

eeeee

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For Sundara Karma, there’s freedom in expression.

With jubilant hooks and enticing communal celebration, they’ve taken their place as a band who’ve grabbed hearts with a world of their own to explore. Across their debut ‘Youth Is Only Ever Fun In Retrospect’, they pointed to fizzing energy and a creativity that pushed the usual boundaries, and it saw them play bonafide huge stages because of it.

Reinvention and revolution is the key though, and they both pulse through ‘Ulfilas Alphabet’, a record that doesn’t aim to jump to the top but practically redefine what the top even looks like.

It’s a kaleidoscope of different flairs and styles, all done to the fullest with booming confidence and roaring intimacy. Whether it’s ‘One Last Night On This Earth’ and its arms in the air party-pop of indie heights, the frantic electronic-hits of ‘Higher States’ or the bopping pop shimmers of ‘Little Smart Houses’ - every turn on ‘Ulfilas Alphabet’ is one amplified and daring in its colourful joy. Capturing a band fully firing on all cylinders, it’s a record that takes every dream and vision and lays out it front and centre - layers of artistry brought to the fore. Almost 90s-esque arena touches on the title track rip and grow to a huge crescendo, ‘The Changeover’ pulling you in with a campfire gathering of warm reflection, ‘Rainbow Body’ throbbing with the underbelly of Queens Of The Stone Age. Every turn is undeniable, the sound of a band revelling in every second.

‘Ulfilas Alphabet’ isn’t just an exciting development on what came before, but a line in the sand. Adventurous, dazzling and rich with different flavours and flights - it’s Sundara Karma becoming the band they always promised to become. If you thought you knew Sundara Karma then think again, this is a band reborn.P Jamie Muir

WEEZER

Weezer (The Black Album) RELEASED: 1ST MARCH

eeeee Will Weezer ever stop playing with the hopes of their fans?

After a period of playing to the hardcore with their back-tothe-roots self-titled White Album, via a halfway house stop on 2017’s ‘Pacific Daydream’, comes the much anticipated Black Album.

Everything that White wasn’t, it sees Rivers Cuomo return to his chase for pop perfection. It won’t be what the obsessives want, but - with a song called ‘Zombie Bastards’ - it’s probably not for them, anyway. P Dan Harrison

SELF-ESTEEM Compliments Please RELEASED: 1ST MARCH

eeeee For those who haven’t heard Self Esteem’(aka Rebecca Taylor, formerly of Slow Club) and are expecting callbacks to her former band, think again. An incredibly personal record, her debut under her new guise sees Taylor let her emotions loose. This raw honesty is refreshing, the focus on firmly on the creator as she bares her soul. These songs have been a long time coming in Taylor’s mind. The manner in which she’s so able to channel any vulnerabilities into tools for her advantage is a real strength. To paraphrase Taylor’s own words, no one is going to mess with her now. P Ciarán Steward

LITTLE SIMZ GREY Area

RELEASED: 1ST MARCH

eeeee Little Simz is on a charge.

Not content with sticking inside rigid boxes, ‘GREY Area’ sees her grasping opportunity with both hands. Opener ‘Offence’ is a confident, defiant mission statement, while ‘Boss’ takes a single riff and makes it something far more. Hyper aware and with things to say, it marks Simz out as an important voice at a time when they’re needed more than ever. P Dan Harrison

THE JAPANESE HOUSE

Good At Falling

eeeee LABEL: DIRTY HIT RELEASED: 1ST MARCH LISTEN TO: MAYBE YOU’RE THE REASON, FOLLOW MY GIRL

T

he moment we first heard of The Japanese House, we knew there was something unique about.

The mysterious polaroids of shots and sights, the immediate sound that breathed distinctly to her own beat - it’s one that immediately had us hooked and in awe. In a journey that has slowly revealed more and more of Amber Bain, there’s been an undeniable statement behind it all. One of an artist creating distinctly unique and captivating music that has that knack of being able to transport listeners to a whole ‘nother world from the very first note. Now, after the blossoming growth seen across each EP, ‘Good At Falling’ stands as a debut album that captures exactly why The Japanese House is so special, with a frank and honest snapshot of life that’ll touch at the very soul of anyone who clicks play.

From start to finish, honesty and ambition capture a record that flows with a refreshing clarity full of confidence. Where before The Japanese House would wrap herself in lush sounds and blissful metaphor, ‘Good At Falling’ delves deep with incredible results. ‘Maybe You’re The Reason’ rips with infectious ease, ‘We Talk All The Time’ bounces with a potent directness and ‘Follow My Girl’ shapes into grooves of experimental flair with hooks galore. That unabashed openness creates its own world,

with ‘Lilo’ soothing with a cleansing pull at raw emotion, ‘Everybody Hates Me’ allowing itself to loop into a bubbling embrace before jumping to arena-sized pop wonder with ‘Worms’ and ‘f a r a w a y’ - and doing so with ease.

Nothing feels out of reach or too far, each having its own place on a record that demands to be played over and over.

It’d be a disservice to simply call ‘Good At Falling’ a great debut album. It’s a true and powerful journal of experiences and emotion that all of us go through, and a trip through the mind of an artist pushing the boundaries around her into mush. It strips away the barriers, and is all the more jaw-dropping because of it.

Accomplished, daring and warm even when looking at its darkest moments - it’s a vital record for modern times.

The Japanese House has laid a marker for anyone following her. P Jamie Muir

** PLUS ** Hozier Wasteland, Baby!

Skinny Lister The Story Is… TEEN Good Fruit Tom Walker What a Time To Be Alive While She Sleeps SO WHAT?

ALBUM OF TH

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THE WOMBATS + BLAENAVON, THE NIGHT CAFÉ THE SSE ARENA, WEMBLEY

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HELLO , WEMBLEY More than a decade on from the release of their debut album, an indie band is supposed to be struggling to fill ever smaller venues.

Not The Wombats. Wembley Arena? No problem.

Words: Liam Konemann. Photo: Sarah Louise Bennett.

S

omehow, the Wombats just keep getting bigger. Over a decade since they had broken-hearted indie kids everywhere dancing to Joy Division and contemplating a move to New York, in the last eighteen months they’ve played some of the biggest gigs of their career. Take, for example, this week; a massive show at Leeds Arena, and Wembley. Or, as frontman Murph has taken to calling it today, ‘Wombley’.

“It hasn’t really sunk in yet… I need to walk on the stage and have a little internal wobbler,” he says.

He is, unsurprisingly, hovering at the edge of total exhaustion. Gearing up to play Wembley Arena is hardly a low-energy situation, and Murph, drummer Dan Haggis, and bass player Tord Overland Knudsen have already had their diaries full to bursting for the last year and a half.

There’s the impression that this entire album cycle has been one surreal moment after another. The Wombats have gained popularity with every album they’ve released, drawing ever-increasing crowds since ‘A Guide to Love, Loss & Desperation’ with ‘This Modern Glitch’ and ‘Glitterbug’, but

DORK

D OWN WI T H BO RI N G

ON TOUR

IF IT’S ON STAGE, IT’S IN HERE.

BOOKING NOW!

FOALS

Manchester O2 Victoria Warehouse (11th, 12th June), Tunbridge Wells Bedgebury Pinetum (14th), Birmingham Digbeth Arena (15th, 16th), Glasgow Swg3 Galvanizers Yard (18th), Brandon Thetford Forest (20th), London Alexandra Palace (21st, 22nd), Bournemouth Bic (26th), Dublin Trinity College (2nd July)

TEN TONNES

Birmingham O2 Institute3 (7th May), Nottingham Rescue Rooms (9th), Leeds Brudenell Social Club (10th), Glasgow St Lukes (11th), Manchester Gorilla (13th), Norwich Waterfront (14th), Oxford Bullingdon (16th), London Heaven (17th)

ALMA

Dublin Academy (31st March), Manchester Academy (1st April), Brighton Haunt (2nd), London Electric Ballroom (3rd)

FONTAINES D.C.

Manchester O2 Ritz (19th November), Liverpool O2 Academy2 (20th), Glasgow Swg 3 (21st), Leeds Stylus (22nd), Sheffield Leadmill (23rd), Birmingham O2 Institute2 (25th), Oxford O2 Academy (26th), London O2 Forum Kentish Town (27th), Brighton Concorde 2 (28th), Bristol Swx (30th), Southampton 1865 (1st December)

VANT

Bristol Louisiana (12th April), Newcastle Upon Tyne Think Tank (13th), Glasgow Attic (14th), Manchester Night People (16th), Birmingham Hare And Hounds (17th), London Camden Assembly (18th)

DORK

RE AD D O RK. CO M

57

Get Out.

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‘Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life’ has seemed to surpass even that trajectory.

“It’s been fucking ridiculous, to be honest,” says Murph.

“I mean, it’s always been great for us touring the UK, but this album seems to have notched it up another level.”

During the first UK tour for ‘Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life’ in March of last year at Alexandra Palace, the Wombats just couldn’t seem to get started. It had nothing to do with them, though - a couple of songs in, the crowd surged forward and collapsed in on itself as fans fell against the barrier, a wave of people breaking against the stage. It took three tries before the band could even get through the first verse of ‘Kill the Director’, with Murph and Dan instructing the crowd to step back and pull each other up to avoid more casualties.

“We nearly had to do that at Leeds Arena too, because they all kind of fall on top of each other and if they can’t help each other get back up then that’s... not good,” Murph laughs.

“Leeds Arena was just insane. Someone managed to smuggle a flare in - that was pretty impressive.”

The response to this batch of new tracks has gotten more intense as time has gone on, he notes. “The reactions to ‘Lemon to a Knife Fight’ and ‘Turn’ especially have been… I don’t really know another word apart from ‘ridiculous’,” he says. “[‘Turn’ has been getting] the same kind of reaction as ‘Greek Tragedy’, or ‘Let’s Dance to Joy Division’, or ‘Techno Fan’.

“I didn’t see that coming, to be honest.”

This year has thrown up more than one curveball, by the sounds of things. From the way Murph tells it, The Wombats’ Indonesian

live debut in Bali on New Year’s Day almost never happened.

“I flew in just for 24 hours from LA, and my flight got cancelled on the way there. I sat on the flight for three hours before it got cancelled, so I had to queue up at the American Airlines lounge or whatever to be told about the next flight, but the next flight wouldn’t have got me there in time,” he says.

“So I had to get my bag off the plane, and that took seven hours. It was seven hours of me waiting in LAX for one guy to find the bag in the back of a plane. I finally got it, got a taxi home, went back to the airport hours later, flew to Bali, landed, went through immigration, got on a moped, went to the gig, did the show -” Hang on, hold up a second. Did he drive the moped?

“Definitely not.”

By all other accounts the show went well, but for Murph, who went back to the hotel and was straight on a plane the next day, stress and exhaustion overshadowed any triumph.

“It was insane. I’ve got this twitchy eye which still hasn’t gone back to normal, and it’s just from that one journey,” he says. “It’s a shame really, because the whole gig falls into nothingness really, when that amount of shit is going on.”

In the midst of all this acceleration, though, there have been moments that allowed him to take his foot off the pedal. In 2018 the Wombats moonlighted as a support band on the Weezer-Pixies double headline tour throughout the US, revelling in the opportunity to play short sets to someone else’s crowd. It was, says Murph, “literally a dream tour.”

“IT HASN’T REALLY SUNK IN YET… I NEED WALK ON THE STAGE AND HAVE A LITTLE INTERNAL WOBBLER”

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D OWN WI T H BO RI N G

“After you’ve been in a band for fifteen years like we’ve been doing, getting to do a thirty-minute set to people who aren’t your fans is just really nice because it can’t really go wrong,” he points out. “You can either win them over, or you don’t. And obviously, those two bands have been huge influences, so them all being really cool guys and getting to hang out with the Pixies and eat cheese and drink wine with Frank Black was very weird.

“They would just walk into our dressing room and do like, fucking magic tricks and stuff. We always do this hug and handshake before we go onstage and one night Frank Black joined in on the whole ritual, and that was crazy. I was walking on stage thinking, what is going on?”

There’s a good chance he’s feeling something similar this evening. Even before the Wombats stride on stage at half nine, the scale of all of this is breathtakingly apparent during support slots from the Night Cafe and Blaenavon. A pit forms early on during the Night Cafe’s performance and keeps churning, security already at odds with the teenagers climbing gleefully on each other’s shoulders. Blaenavon especially are giddy with the situation (“I’ve just had to tie my shoelace at Wembley, and it was the most nerve-racking experience of my life,” Ben

“LEEDS ARENA WAS JUST INSANE. SOMEONE MANAGED TO SMUGGLE A FLARE IN - THAT WAS PRETTY IMPRESSIVE” Gregory declares a little hysterically from the stage), but the stakes only seem to drive the set higher, and the double whammy of closers ‘Orthodox Man’ and ‘Prague’ leaves the room buzzing.

Somewhere backstage, the Wombats are doing their usual hug and handshake.

Then the lights go down, a roar goes up, and ‘Wombley’ Arena is christened with ‘Cheetah Tongue’. This is the Wombats’ party, and there’s no doubt it’s one of the best in town. Confetti cannons explode over the crowd, enormous balloons are set free from backstage, and just as Murph predicted, ‘Lemon to a Knife Fight’ and ‘Turn’ are met with just as much enthusiasm as ‘Let’s Dance to Joy Division’ and ‘Techno Fan’.

In the lead up to ‘1996’, with the lights down low, Murph steps close to the microphone. In fitting with the size of the occasion, now might be the time for reflection, to comment on how far the last fifteen years have taken the Wombats.

Murph looks out across the crowd.

“Let’s find our inner hoe and perform the slut drop of a lifetime, Wombley,” he says.

So maybe not. P

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THE GUIDE ALL THE SHOWS YOU NEED TO SEE THIS MONTH, AND SOME YOU PROBABLY DON’T. Coral, Empire SATURDAY 9TH MARCH Aberdeen, As It Is, The Tunnels Birmingham, Feet, The Bristol Pear Bristol, Wooze, Rough Trade Cambridge, Our Girl, Unitarian Church Hall Glasgow, Yungblud, Saint Luke’s Leicester, Kagoule, The Cookie Liverpool, George Ezra, Echo Arena London, Twenty One Pilots, The SSE Arena Stoke-on-Trent, The Coral, The Sugarmill .TWENTY ONE PILOTS. S.

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FRIDAY 1ST MARCH Bedford, The Orielles, Esquires Belfast, SPINN, The Outlet Building Brighton, Saint Raymond, Patterns Dublin, Twenty One Pilots, 3Arena Glasgow, Brix & The Extricated, Broadcast Leeds, Sea Girls, Key Club Leicester, Willie J Healey, Cookie Liverpool, Fatherson, Phase One London, Demob Happy, The Garage London, While She Sleeps, Roundhouse Manchester, Ider, YES Manchester, Villagers, Cathedral Norwich, The Coral, Waterfront Nottingham, Gus Dapperton, Rescue Rooms Sheffield, Feet, Leadmill Sunderland, Field Music, Steels Club SATURDAY 2ND MARCH Belfast, Twenty One Pilots, SSE Arena Birmingham, Billie Eilish, O2 Institute Birmingham, Gus Dapperton, O2 Institute Bridgend, As It Is, Hobos Brighton, Demob Happy, Concorde 2 Bristol, Ider, The

Crofters Rights Cardiff, Fatherson, Clwb Ifor Bach Dundee, Brix & The Extricated, Beat Generator Live!

Guildford, Willie J Healey, The Boileroom London, Saint Raymond, The Garage Manchester, Feet, Gullivers Newcastle, Villagers, Wylam Brewery Oxford, The Coral, O2 Academy Southampton, Art brut, The Joiners SUNDAY 3RD MARCH Guildford, Art Brut, The Boileroom Oxford, The Orielles, The Bullingdon MONDAY 4TH MARCH Belfast, As It Is, The Outlet Building Glasgow, Twenty One Pilots, The SSE Hydro Liverpool, Our Girl, Phase One London, Billie Eilish, Shepherd’s Bush Empire TUESDAY 5TH MARCH Dublin, As It Is, The Academy London, Billie Eilish, Shepherd’s Bush Empire London, Wyldest, Sebright Arms Manchester, Sea Girls, Gorilla

Manchester, Twenty One Pilots, Arena WEDNESDAY 6TH MARCH Bristol, Feet, The Louisiana Bristol, Saint Raymond, Thekla Cardiff, Sea Girls, Clwb Ifor Bach Dublin, Yungblud, Whelan’s London, Billie Eilish, Shepherd’s Bush Empire London, Gently Tender, Oslo London, Our Girl, Purcell Room Nottingham, LANY, Rock City

Brighton, Our Girl, Rialto Theatre Cardiff, Wooze, Clwb Ifor Bach Carlisle, As It Is, The Old Fire Station Coventry, Feet, The Tin At The Coal Vaults Glasgow, Kyle Falconer, QMU Leeds, George Ezra, First Direct Arena Leeds, Kero Kero Bonito, Belgrave Music Hall London, Sasami, The Lexington London, Sea Girls, Heaven London, The Hold Steady, Electric Ballroom London, Twenty One Pilots, The SSE Arena Manchester, Gus Dapperton, Academy Middlesbrough, The

THURSDAY 7TH MARCH Belfast, Yungblud, The Empire Bar Glasgow, Gus Dapperton, The Garage Glasgow, The Coral, Oran More Liverpool, As It Is, Arts Club London, Twenty One Pilots, The SSE Arena Manchester, Saint Raymond, Gorilla Newcastle, George Ezra, Utilita Arena Portsmouth, Sea Girls, The Wedgewood Rooms Salford, Our Girl, Sacred Trinity Church FRIDAY 8TH MARCH .SWMRS. S .

Belfast, LANY, The Limelight

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SUNDAY 10TH MARCH London, Mike Shinoda, The Roundhouse Newcastle, LANY, University Students Union Newcastle, Yungblud, O2 Academy Nottingham, Self Esteem, Bodega MONDAY 11TH MARCH Birmingham, SWMRS, O2 Institute Brighton, George Ezra, Centre Leeds, LANY, LMUSU London, Feels, MOTH Club Manchester, Yungblud, Academy Stoke-on-Trent, As It Is, The Sugarmill TUESDAY 12TH MARCH Birmingham, Self Esteem, Hare & Hounds Birmingham, Yunglbud, O2 Institute Glasgow, SWMRS,

Saint Luke’s London, LANY, O2 Academy Birmingham Margate, Feels, Elsewhere Record Store Newcastle, Feet, Think Tank? Underground Nottingham, George Ezra, Motorpoint Arena WEDNESDAY 13TH MARCH Cardiff, George Ezra, Motorpoint Arena Glasgow, Feet, Broadcast Manchester, SWMRS, Academy Newcastle, Self Esteem, Think Tank?

Preston, Marsicans, Roper Hall THURSDAY 14TH MARCH Belfast, Feet, Voodoo Brighton, Yungblud, The Haunt Bristol, SWMRS, The Fleece Leicester, As It Is, O2 Academy Manchester, LANY, Albert Hall Manchester, Self Esteem, YES Manchester, Woman’s Hour, Gullivers Manchester, Wooze, Soup Kitchen Nottingham, Emily Burns, Bodega FRIDAY 15TH MARCH Brighton, As It Is, Concorde 2 Glasgow, Emily Burns, Broadcast Glasgow, George Ezra, The SSE Hydro Glasgow, LANY, SWG3 Glasgow, Self Esteem,

Stereo Leamington Spa, The Coral, The Assembly London, Wooze, Off The Cuff London, Yungblud, Electric Ballroom SATURDAY 16TH MARCH Bristol, Yungblud, SWX London, SWMRS, Electric Ballroom Manchester, Emily Burns, YES Manchester, George Ezra, Arena Sheffield, Self Esteem, The Plug Warrington, The Coral, Pyramid & Parr Hall SUNDAY 17TH MARCH Birmingham, George Ezra, Resorts World Arena Bristol, Deaf Havana, O2 Academy MONDAY 18TH MARCH Glasgow, Sports Team, The Garage Southampton, Self Esteem, The Joiners TUESDAY 19TH MARCH Bristol, Woahnows, Exchange Bristol, Woman’s Hour, The Crofters Rights Leicester, The Wave Pictures, The Cookie London, George Ezra, The O2 Nottingham, Deaf Havana, Rock City Nottingham, Sports Team, Bodega

THURSDAY 21ST MARCH Belfast, Touts, Voodoo Birmingham, Sharon Van Etten, The Mill Brighton, Sports Team, Patterns Bristol, Self Esteem, Thekla Glasgow, Deaf Havana, SWG3 Leeds, Emily Burns, Hyde Park Book Club Leeds, NAO, LMUSU Leicester, Olafur Arnalds, Haymarket Theatre Manchester, Easy Life, Gorilla Norwich, The Wave Pictures, Waterfront FRIDAY 22ND MARCH Aberdeen, Deaf Havana, Unit 51 Birmingham, NAO, O2 Institute Glasgow, Olafur Arnalds, SECC Leeds, Self Esteem, Belgrave Music Hall Lincoln, Marsicans, The Engine Shed London, Sports Team, Electric Ballroom London, Woman’s Hour, The Dome Manchester, Sharon Van Etten, Albert Hall Newcastle, Sophie and the Giants, Think Tank?

Underground Sheffield, Emily Burns, Cafe Totem Sheffield, George Ezra, FlyDSA Arena SATURDAY 23RD MARCH Bristol, Emily Burns, The Louisiana Dublin, Sharon Van Etten, Vicar Street Falmouth, Ider, The Performance Centre Glasgow, Busted, The SSE Hydro Glasgow, Sophie and the Giants, The Garage Manchester, George Ezra, Arena

WEDNESDAY 20TH MARCH Brighton, Woman’s Hour, The Albert Bristol, Sports Team, Rough Trade Dublin, Touts, The Academy Glasgow, Easy Life, King Tut’s Hull, Deaf Havana, The Welly Club London, George Ezra, The O2 London, Self Esteem, .SPORTS TEAM. S .

Village Underground London, Woahnows, The Lexington Manchester, Sophie and the Giants, Jimmy’s St Albans, The Wave Pictures, The Horn

Margate, Sports Team, Elsewhere Record Store Southampton, Easy Life, The Joiners York, The Wave Pictures, The Crescent SUNDAY 24TH MARCH Exeter, Dream State, The Cavern Glasgow, Panic! At The Disco, The SSE Hydro Glasgow, Sharon Van Etten, Saint Luke’s Huddersfield, Bodega, Library Lewes, The Waves Pictures, Constitutional Club London, Childish Gambino, The O2 Manchester, Health, YES Middlesbrough, Deaf Havana, Empire Southampton, Sports Team, The Joiners MONDAY 25TH MARCH Huddersfield, The Wytches, The Parish Leeds, Health, Brudenell Social Club London, Anna of the North, Village Underground Manchester, Deaf Havana, Albert Hall Sheffield, Sophie and the Giants, Record Junkee TUESDAY 26TH MARCH Birmingham, Panic! At The Disco, Arena Bristol, NAO, O2 Academy Glasgow, Health, CCA Glasgow, Touts, The Garage Leicester, Sophie and the Giants, The Cookie London, Empress Of, Scala London, Sharon Van Etten, The Roundhouse London, Xiu Xiu, Islington Assembly Hall Nottingham, Orchards, Bodega Oxford, Sports Team,

.PANIC! AT THE DISCO. S .

The Bullingdon Plymouth, DreamState, The Junction Sheffield, Idles, Leadmill WEDNESDAY 27TH MARCH Birmingham, Sophie and the Giants, The Castle & Falcon Bristol, Health, Exchange Bristol, Julia Jacklin, The Fleece Bristol, Sharon Van Etten, SWX Cambridge, Bodega, The Portland Arms Cardiff, Idles, Tramshed Glasgow, Drenge, The Garage Hull, Clean Cut Kid, Adelphi Leeds, Touts, The Key Club Leicester, Sports Team, The Cookie London, Sam Fender, Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club Manchester, Empress Of, YES Manchester, Orchards, Jimmy’s Nottingham, Easy Life, The Rescue Rooms Sheffield, Deaf Havana, Leadmill Southampton, Dream State, The Joiners Tunbridge Wells, Lady

Bird, The Forum THURSDAY 28TH MARCH Birmingham, Deaf Havana, O2 Academy Birmingham, Drake, Resorts World Arena Birmingham, Julia Jacklin, The Castle & Falcon Bristol, Lady Bird, The Mothers’ Ruin Cardiff, Bodega, Clwb Ifor Bach Dundee, Estrons, Beat Generator Live!

Glasgow, Orchards, The Garage Liverpool, Sports Team, Sound Food and Drink Liverpool, Touts, Parr Street Studios London, Easy Life, Scala London, Health, Oval Space London, NAO, O2 Academy Brixton London, Panic! At The Disco, The O2 London, Sophie and the Giants, Camden Assembly London, Sorry, Dingwalls Manchester, Busted, Arena Manchester, Clean Cut Kid, Gorilla Newcastle, Drenge, Northumbria Institute Norwich, Idles, UEA Reading, Dream State, The Facebar FRIDAY 29TH MARCH Aberdeen, Estrons, The Tunnels Birmingham, Yak, The Castle & Falcon Brighton, Idles, Dome Cardiff, Health, Clwb Ifor Bach

Dundee, The Xcerts, Beat Generator Live!

London, Amyl and the Sniffers, Shacklewell Arms London, Panic! At The Disco, The O2 Manchester, Drenge, O2 Ritz Manchester, Employed To Serve, Rebellion Manchester, Julia Jacklin, YES Manchester, Touts, Night & Day Cafe Nottingham, Lady Bird, Bodega Sheffield, Orchards, Record Junkee Sheffield, Sports Team, Leadmill Tunbridge Wells, Dream State, The Forum SATURDAY 30TH MARCH Belfast, Deaf Havana, The Limelight Belfast, White Lies, Elmwood Hall Birmingham, Touts, Actress and Bishop Cardiff, Orchards, Clwb Ifor Bach Edinburgh, Clean Cut Kid, The Mash House Edinburgh, Estrons, The Bongo Club Leeds, Lady Bird, The Key Club Leicester, Easy Life, O2 Academy Manchester, Sports Team, Soup Kitchen SUNDAY 31ST MARCH Birmingham, Orchards, Sunflower Lounge Bristol, Are, The Louisiana Dublin, Deaf Havana, The Academy Dublin, Ryan Adams, Olympia Theatre Glasgow, ALMA, SWG3 Glasgow, Lady Bird, The Garage Leeds, The Xcerts, The Key Club London, Touts, The Borderline Newcastle, Clean Cut Kid, The Cluny

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BACKPAGE

ANY OTHER QUESTIONS?

Asking about the usual stuff is so boring. Why would you want to do that, when you could ask Alex from Sports Team about the Spice Girls and pants?

When’s your birthday?

20/09/1993.

How tall are you?

6ft.

What strength Nandos sauce do you order?

Don’t go very often but I reckon the strong one. Our loyalty brand at home is Bring The Pain.

Have you ever sold your own CD or merch on eBay? This is an odd one. We’d read about something called pheromone dating, so we made our own spray. I sweated into a t-shirt for three days, and we immersed it in oil for months. It sat in a pretty foul looking jar in the kitchen, which I think was once split in Oli’s room. We tried to sell that on eBay, but it was quickly taken down (still available under the counter at gigs though).

We’ve never sold a CD or merch there.

What was the last thing you broke?

We did a show at House of Vans in December.

Felt quite reckless so we invited everyone on stage midway through the set.

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“I SWEATED INTO A T-SHIRT FOR THREE DAYS, AND WE IMMERSED IT IN OIL FOR MONTHS” Bouncers shut down the whole gig, and all our stuff got destroyed. We left immediately to rejoin the Hinds tour in Munich.

Scala [in London]. Ben’s dad has a party trick where he puts a thick kebab skewer through his cheeks though, so it’s all relative.

Who is your favourite member of the Spice Girls?

Geri.

How punk are you out of ten?

Zero.

What would you do if you were Prime Minister for the day?

Wealth taxes.

What’s your biggest fear?

Being asked the question ‘You’re all called Sports Team, are you guys really sporty?’ in interviews.

Do you believe in aliens?

Look, we’ve all seen Ancient Aliens.

What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without changing your pants?

Really, really long.

If you could win a lifetime supply of anything, what would you choose?

Talent.

What’s your biggest accomplishment?

We were genuinely very heartened when we sold out

What have you got in your pockets right now?

Gum, passport, a guitar pick, dutch receipts, and a Eurosonic wristband.

Apparently, you can make an account online and get the money you topped it up with refunded. None of us have worked out how yet.

Have you ever written a fan letter?

I think Al wrote them to most of the early noughties United squad.

What’s the naughtiest thing you did at school?

Remember peanutting?

That.

Why are you like this?

I’d venture it’s a mixture of genetics and environment.

P Sports Team’s new EP ‘Keep Walking!’ is out 8th March.

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UK / IRELAND HEADLINE TOUR 2019 plus guests

march 2019 15th CARDIFF / Great Hall 16th PORTSMOUTH / Pyramids 17th BRISTOL / O2 Academy 19th NOTTINGHAM / Rock City 20th HULL / The Welly 21st GLASGOW / SWG3 22nd ABERDEEN / Unit 51 24th MIDDLESBROUGH / Empire 25th MANCHESTER / Albert Hall 27th SHEFFIELD / Leadmill 28th BIRMINGHAM / O2 Academy 30th BELFAST / Limelight 2 31st DUBLIN / Green Room myticket.co.uk / deafhavana.com top 10 album ‘Rituals’ out now via So Recordings A Kilimanjaro & Friends presentation by arrangement with X-ray and Riverman