DIY, February 2014

DIY

free / issue 26 / February 2014

thisisfakediy.co.uk

world of

warpaint

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B o m b ay B i c y c l e c l u b W i l d B e a s t s B r o k e n B e l l s M o g wa i 1

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GOOD

VS

evil

What’s on the DIY team’s radar?

Victoria Sinden Deputy Editor good 2014 is definitely starting on a high with the new St. Vincent album. evil Having to wait for albums to be released in the UK, when they’ve been around ages elsewhere. Rubbish.

EDITOR’S LETTER

Right. That’s the lists done. We’ve been through the albums of last year. And the tracks, the videos, the EPs, the best two songs released on a cassette between March and May. We’ve done the new bands that will be huge over the next twelve months. Now, finally, 2014 can get going properly. And what a way to start. Warpaint return, finally, with a self-titled album that’s worth the wait. Bombay Bicycle Club have been away for nowhere near the same length of time, but that doesn’t make their new long-player any less brilliant. And Wild Beasts? Britain’s best kept (not so) secret are better than ever before. It’s going to be a very good year.

Stephen Ackroyd

good St. Vincent. It’s all

evil How can

about St. Vincent. Check out ‘Digital Witness’ on the site now and prepare for more next month.

Paramore and Fall Out Boy touring together be evil? If you’re a magazine editor stuck in the UK.

3 277 4 48 20 People favourited Editor Stephen’s tweet calling himself a bore.

Whoops.

Hello 2014 shows.

Bottles of beer sent to DIY for Christmas.

Hooray.

Louise Mason Art Director good Acid Brass playing at the Tate - the happiest band on the planet. evil Still waiting for Charles Thompson to return my call re the job vacancy. Call anytime - 07973863221.

Jamie Milton Online Editor good Festival season is upon us and it’s more feverish than my perma-flu. Arcade Fire at Glasto will be momentous. evil Not being able to get through Morrissey’s book. I started something that I couldn’t finish.

LISTENING post what’s on the diy stereo this month?

this month IN numbers

Complimentary chocolate brownies consumed during our interview with Broken Bells.

Sarah Jamieson News Editor good There is going to be a tour where both Paramore and Fall Out Boy will be co-headlining. It’s like all of my teenage dreams come true. evil At the minute, it’s only taking place in North America. Anyone want to fly me out?

Years. 1994 was a great year for music: time to prepare for a spate of anniversary celebrations.

Real Estate Atlas

Laid back Brooklyn dudes are suddenly getting a little bit anxious - ‘Atlas’ keeps the lazy glow of their last record but it’s also an emotional beast.

The Men Tomorrow’s Hits

Let’s face it, the title’s probably a bit tongue in cheek and these guys won’t be going anywhere near the charts, but ‘Tomorrow’s Hits’ is a referential, maddening addition to the prolific group’s back catalogue.

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contents NEWs

6 Against Me!

10 Angel Olsen 1 2 H ow l e r

18

14 I Break Horses 1 8 B r o d y Da l l e 2 1 M a x i mo P a r k 2 2 A l b e r t hammo n d j r .

NEU

2 4 H o n e y b l oo d 2 7 J U NGLE

32

2 8 Pa i n t e d Pa l m s 30 Menace Beach

features

3 2 W a r pa i n t

“There’s no shortage of ideas”

40 Broken Bells “It’s personal, it’s very personal”

4 4 B ombay B i c y c l e c l ub

40

Go global

4 8 You M e A t S i x Back from the brink

5 2 M o g wa i

“My demos are always really shit”

5 6 Ch e atah s

Doing punk their own way

60 Wild Beasts Embrace their wild side

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reviews 64

a l bum s 78 live

Editor Stephen Ackroyd Deputy Editor Victoria Sinden Reviews Editor Emma Swann News Editor Sarah Jamieson Art Director Louise Mason Head Of Marketing & Events Jack Clothier Online Editor Jamie Milton Assistant Online Editor El Hunt Contributors Alex Lynham, Anastasia Tasou, Aurora Mitchell, Coral Williamson, Danny Wright, David Zammitt, Gillian Fish, Greg Inglis, Hugh Morris, Kyle MacNeil, Joe Price, Johan Alm, Matthew Davies, Michael J Fax, Sean Stanley, Shefali Srivastava, Tim Lee, Tom Doyle, Tom Morris, Tom Walters, Tom Watts Photographers Carolina Faruolo, Fraser Stephen, Mike Massaro, Phil Smithies, Sarah Louise Bennett For DIY editorial info@thisisfakediy.co.uk For DIY sales rupert@sonicdigital.co.uk tel: +44 (0)20 76130555 For DIY online sales lawrence@sonicdigital.co.uk tel: +44 (0)20 76130555 DIY is published by Sonic Media Group. 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 DIY. 25p where sold.

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 Sonic Media Group holds no responsibility. The opinions of the contributors do not necessarily bear a relation to those of DIY or its staff and we disclaim liability for those impressions. Distributed nationally.

T H E NE W AL B U M O U T 27 T H JANUARY I NCLUDES THE SING LES LIVED A LIE & FR ESH START FEVER

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NEWS

NEWS 6

thisisfakediy.co.uk

“I’m just a lady with a guitar.”

As Ag ai n s t M e ! r e l e as e t h e i r brand new album ‘Transgender Dy s p h o r i a B l u e s ’ , t h e b a n d ’ s f ro n t wo m a n L au r a Ja n e G r ac e i s h av i n g t o fa c e a l i f e changing decision in the p u b l i c e y e . Wo r d s : T o m D oy l e .

W

hat does it mean to be punk in 2014? Is it something moral?

Something political? Something personal? When Tom Gabel, lead singer of Against Me!, announced in May 2012 that he had decided to begin living openly as a woman it felt, for better or worse, like a watershed moment. An opportunity for punk to celebrate the tenets it so often inanely preaches – individuality, freedom, joy.

Water has flowed under the bridge since then.

The outpouring of positivity that has met Laura Jane Grace’s transition has been, even for the most casual of bystanders, a heart warming spectacle.

And now Laura and her band are back with a new record, the emphatically titled ‘Transgender Dysphoria Blues’ – the first full-length document of a great personal change. And yet, for the frontwoman at least, it feels as though some things remain the same as always.

“Unfortunately, what I’ve realised at this point is that the media at large rarely focus on the actual music,” sighs Laura, in a light Floridian drawl. “In the past, the focus has always been on what record

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NEWS

label we’ve been on – why we went to a major, or even from one indie to a bigger indie, and I spent every interview I ever did having to justify myself against the idea of being a sell out. So I came into the promotional process of this album knowing that a lot of the interest would be around transition and transgender issues because it’s hardly ever just about the music. But hey, I feel like that’s a lot more worthwhile thing to be talking about than what label we’re releasing the album on!”

It takes only the merest of conversational touches to uncover what a proud and dedicated musician she is, talking animatedly about studio gear, amps, guitars and craft. With that in mind, is there some concern that people will now be being drawn to Against Me! simply as a result of the publicity surrounding Laura? “If the music isn’t good enough then any interest someone might have in just my story will fall away very, very quickly,” she states with a firm determination. “You have to be a good enough band to warrant any attention you might get. ” Indeed, if there was ever a band whose music speaks for itself, then it is Against Me!. There has rarely been a moment when they haven’t bristled with fight, piss and vinegar. To that end, ‘Transgender Dysphoria Blues’ is a concise, ten-track emotional slug in the gut whose quality of song writing will come as a surprise only to those unfamiliar with the bands previous work. That said, by comparison to 2011’s ‘White Crosses’ it is lean and muscular, shorter in duration and coarser in feel but also more palpably Laura’s baby. “The past two records we worked with Butch Vig and Billy Bush who are people really at the top of their game. I looked at those experiences of working with them as the closest thing I’ll ever get to going to college.

I listened and learned as much as I could. Now we’re no longer on a major label and no longer have a major label budget I had to be creative in applying what I’d learned with Billy and Butch.

So, while some of the rawness comes from the limits of my ability, it is also true that these songs required a certain rawness to translate the emotion behind them.”

What emotional songs they are. From the album’s starkly confrontational name through to track titles like ‘True Trans Soul Rebel’, it - at first glance at least - seems clear that no punches are being pulled when it comes to dealing with Laura’s transgender status. Yet, she is quick to point out that “while on the surface level a lot of the songs quite blatantly seem to be about transition, the themes are universal. Feeling alone, feeling uncomfortable with your body, feeling like you’re alienated, feeling like you’re angry at the world, dealing with an overall sense of detachment with the people that surround you – I don’t think those are things that are exclusive to being trans.”

Nevertheless, the press and the public at

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large will view whatever Laura does now through a certain kaleidoscope; soul-baring of any form is not without its potential pitfalls and traumas, especially once the excitement of creativity has died down and an album is out there, in the world, for thousands of perfect strangers to hear. “In the past I’ve maybe wished I’d been even more direct with what I was saying.

The classic example is the song ‘The Ocean’ (from the band’s 2007 album ‘New Wave’ which features the prophetic line “If I could have chosen, I would have been born a woman”).

“I thought I was revealing a lot but no one really picked up on it and it went overlooked. But it is your job to keep pushing and to pour all of yourself into a record, otherwise I feel I would be rehashing old things and not being truthful,” she reasons. “You have to get yourself out of your comfort zone.” Does exposing herself emotionally in such a major way scare her?

“Of course. I don’t have a choice not to put on a strong face but at the same

time, I am very much scared of this whole thing.”

As anyone with even the most rudimentary understanding of gender transition knows, it is never a short and rarely an easy process. Nevertheless, Laura seems to have made her peace with both the ongoing shift and the relative limelight in which she will have to undertake whatever challenges come her way. “I’m basically going to have to undergo another puberty at the age of 33!” she says with remarkable lightness. “And I know with the nature of the internet there will be unflattering pictures and all that kind of stuff, but I just have to just keep pushing through.” Her prominent position is, of course, a double-edged sword and the important role she could play in raising the issues that transgender people face every day is not lost on her. “I don’t really see myself as a role model but I am aware I’m fairly visible,” she notes. “I’m taking it one day at a time though and in truth when I meet people who might be experience similar things I am looking for the same support from them as they are from me.”

Considering the quality of her recorded output, and her position as one of the most distinct and

“You have to get yourself out of your comfort zone.”

powerful punk voices of the last ten years, there is a humbleness with which Laura Jane Grace considers herself that is almost disarming. Sure, there are big, existential issues still to be wrestled with in her life but her philosophy is as simple and crystalline as you could imagine.

“I’m just a lady with a guitar,” she says calmly, “and you know what? I can’t even play guitar that well!”

It’s a refreshing outlook and one which is demonstrative of the clear perspective Laura has on her current situation. “Just because there is this one issue in my life that people have picked up, that doesn’t mean I’ve got everything else worked out. All the other worries and concerns still remain but people only want to focus on one thing.” Perhaps, then, ‘Transgender Dysphoria Blues’ is maybe most helpfully viewed as simply another Against Me! album, full of the same unflinching honesty that has always been the band’s calling card. “It’s not a perfect album,” she admits wryly, “but it’s all I had to give. At the end of the day you can’t rely on people to fix you, you have to try and make things work, move forward as yourself and hope that things are okay.”

And does Laura Jane Grace feel okay? “I’m working on it.”

Against Me!’s new album ‘Transgender Dysphoria Blues’ is out now via Xtra Mile Recordings. DIY

Laura Jane Grace

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TheFireBurns

A f t e r r e l e a s i n g ‘ H a l f Way H o m e ’ i n 2 0 1 2 , A n g e l O l s e n f i r m ly e s t a b l i s h e d h e r s e l f a s a p e r f e c t s o l o s t a r . N o w s h e ’ s b a c k w i t h t h e f o l l o w u p. W o r d s : S a r a h J a m i e s o n .

NEWS

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A

ngel Olsen’s second album garnered much critical acclaim and attention. Mostly acoustic, it was her voice that led the charge in captivating listeners.

Now, in 2014, she’s set to return with a different affair. Having used her last two albums to establish her delicate, folk-inflected sounds, she’s changing things up with her newest cut, ‘Burn Your Fire For No Witness’, to create a more full-bodied, band-orientated affair.

“It was more fun and it just made sense,” Angel begins, from her new home in Asheville, North Carolina, explaining how it was to begin writing songs as a band. “It felt like, after looking back on ‘Strange Cacti’ and parts of ‘Halfway Home’, ‘Wow, this makes so much more sense to play with a band’. I just didn’t know how to do it at the time that I was making those records. It was cool to finally meet the right people to work with, who understood when to be minimal and when to just bring it on; who weren’t just difficult to speak with. They’ve been very patient with me and very open. I think it was just up to meeting the right people.”

“I always try to write something that I would want to listen to.”

Angel Olsen

Having written the bare bones of the album’s lead single ‘Forgiven/ Forgotten’ ahead of even meeting her future bandmates, things fell into place very naturally thereafter.

Despite the, at times, extraordinarily personal nature of her lyrics, she felt at ease with presenting her work to other people. “For the most part, if I write something and I get to the point where I want to share it, I like it. I never feel embarrassed because I always try to write something that I would want to listen to. Then, a lot of the time, material might seem really personal but by the time I’ve shared it, I don’t even remember what began as the inspiration for the song in the first place.”

With this record, Olsen, her band and producer John Congleton have worked to create the perfect balance between her previous two records.

Where she was once melancholy, you can now hear visceral bitterness, enhanced more so than ever by their musical decisions. Her vocals soar and the instruments match her wonderfully. There’s a control and knowledge of when to amp things up, and when to play things down.

think that the way that John and I communicated, [we knew] there was a need to apply dryness in certain parts, and space in others. Instead of adding tons of reverb on the guitar, so that you expect the voice to be verbed out too, it’s actually really dry.

We went back and forth with that idea, and in the end, I look back on it and think about how this is kinda a mix of the last two records. ‘Strange Cacti’ is very lo-fi and kinda dreamy, reverby music, whilst ‘Half Way Home’ is quite dry and to the point. I think there are areas within the landscape of the album that reflect both of those previous situations.

“We recorded in this place called Echo Mountain, and it’s this old, desanctified chapel space that they use as a recording studio, and they have a dancehall next door. There was this open room as the live room that still had a lot of the original windows and carvings. We recorded a lot of the stuff as a live take, and then added my vocals later. That was the ideal space to do that. It was a really cool place and working with John was really cool.

“At first we started out really nervous because you never know what to expect when you go into a professional studio. Every producer is different, but we had always heard really good things about his work.”

His reputation wasn’t enough to have Olsen trust him entirely though, she laughs. “Even though we’d only heard good things, I tried to be as overbearing as possible. I gave him notes for every single song, sounds that I heard, what kind of sounds I wanted, what kind of parts I wanted to add after. He never really said, ‘No, you can’t do this’; he accepted what we had brought to the table. I really feel like he left it up to us in some ways.

“When we finished it, to me it was like, it’s cool if nobody ever hears it, because I’m satisfied as I really like it.

I don’t really have any high hopes for anyone else, I just hope that we can have a good time and we can all make something together again.”

Angel Olsen’s new album ‘Burn Your Fire For No Witness’ will be released on 17th February via Jagjaguwar. DIY

“Each song was its own vignette. I

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In The Studio:

Howler Words: Sarah Jamieson

W

hen the world first got wind of Howler, they were the new cool kids on the block.

Picked up by Rough Trade in 2011 thanks to their sneering but effortless brand of rock‘n’roll, the world quickly became their playground.

With the release of their swaggering, rough-aroundthe-edges debut, ‘America, Give Up’, they caused havoc.

The band are currently back home in Minneapolis, and have spent the previous few months working on album number two. So, what should we be expecting? Musical tales of what it’s like to be four young men on tour, with nothing but the open road in front of them? “No,” frontman Jordan Gatesmith says very definitely, before cracking up. “That was the whole selling point for this record. My least favourite thing is when second records

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become about tour, or how hard touring is: ‘Oh my god, I tour all the time, I go to all of these places, blah blah blah’. Right before we started writing this record, we said, ‘Right, no tour songs. That’s rule number one.’”

This is a band with something to say. While with ‘America, Give Up’ they teased with the youthful arrogance that makes rock‘n’roll so great, now they’re set on making more of a statement. “What I’m really excited about is that I feel we’re really doing something original. It’s definitely heavily influenced by ‘60s pop and psychedelia, but it’s also got some huge influences from ‘80s hardcore, and even just nu-wave, I would say. The Replacements, Husker Du, The Smiths… those bands have been a huge influence as well. It’s been a giant combination of all sorts of influences but I feel like we’re not regurgitating anything.

“We’re really doing something original.”

Jordan Gatesmith

We’re definitely just making our own right now. One thing I’m actually proud of is that I take influence from a lot of things - as any artist does - but I feel like I’ve actually written a couple of songs that are 100% mine, which I don’t think I’ve done before.”

The theme of their sophomore effort is also set to be a little more left-of-field. While Jordan assures us that it’s still set to bear a few of their bratty undertones, this album looks to portray a more satirical and dark narrative around the band’s home. “I think this whole record continues the approach of this overall dissatisfaction. You can’t write punk songs - you can’t write music - if there’s not something eating at you, that you’re conscious about. This time around, whilst it’s not overtly political, it is a kind of satire on broad themes like capitalism. I feel like this record is a painted landscape, kinda of America, and of this strip mall infested land. It’s about a schizophrenic society and fighting your way through it.

“I’ve been telling a lot of people that this is a - quote unquote - ‘mall goth’ record. I wouldn’t say that ‘mall goths’ are our target audience but that whole concept of that whole scene has definitely been something that I’ve been looking at.” He laughs. We assume he’s referring to teenagers rebelling by listening to heavy music, dressing in black, and congregating in public places to ruffle the feathers of onlookers. “Yeah! A huge influence on this record [has been] messing with the idea of capitalism and almost making fun of pop music quote unquote - ‘mall’ music, and twisting it, making it dark.”

Howler’s new album ‘World Of Joy’ will be released on 24th March via Rough Trade Records. DIY

NEws in brief

EN FRANCAIS, S’IL VOUS PLAIT?

We Are Scientists have announced the initial details of their fourth studio album, ‘TV En Français’. The new record is due for release in March 2014, arriving midway through the band’s world tour, which checks into the UK in the same month.

MONUMENTOUR

Summer Nights “Latitude is the perfect festival for us to be doing.”

- Sam Halliday

H

aving released their second album ‘Beacon’ in the latter half of 2012, Two Door Cinema Club’s diaries quickly filled up with shows around the world and festival sets galore.

Spending almost the entire year on the road was only half of the battle won though; their final hurdle was something else entirely, and it lay within their final set of last year.

“I didn’t want to get too worried or stressed out about it,” explains the band’s guitarist Sam Halliday, “but it just sort of hit me when we were there. I just couldn’t stop smiling for the first few songs, it was so overwhelming.”

He’s referring to their show at London’s O2 Arena. The humongous hall can hold up to 20,000 people, and – at first – the trio were skeptical that they’d fill it. Yet, as the date drew closer, their confidence grew.

“Obviously we’ve done festival slots and things where there’s a lot of people, but it means so much more to know that everyone there was there just to see our band.

“It’s just a really nice way to end this touring

campaign. It felt like we had worked pretty much non-stop for the last four or five years, so it really cemented all of that.”

Now they’ve got their sights set on something a little bigger: headlining Latitude.

“It’s so crazy that we’re already looking ahead to the summer, but it’s exciting to have something to look forward to,” he offers.

“Latitude is one of the festivals that we’ve not been lucky enough to play so far, but it seems to be our sort of place; the sort of festival we’d like to go to for recreational purposes. So, it sounds like it’s the perfect festival for us to be doing.

“It would’ve been even more special if we had done it a few years ago on the tiniest of stages, but we’ve not been there. It’ll definitely feel like a celebration because it’s our first [time] headlining a festival in the UK. It’ll just feel like a big party, I think!”

Latitude will take place at Henham Park in Suffolk from 17th - 20th July. DIY

Paramore and Fall Out Boy are teaming up for a co-headline tour of North America this summer. The two bands will head out on the huge thirtyfour stop tour in June, July and August, with the first show happening in Hartford, Connecticut on 19th June.

AROUND THE WORLD Sun-lounging Brooklynites Real Estate have announced details of their new studio album, ‘Atlas’. The record is due for release on 3rd March through Domino and will follow the band’s last full-length, ‘Days’, which came out in 2011.

ALL GOOD THINGS...

It’s sad news for fans of 4AD signings Efterklang, as they look to be starting a new chapter. The Danish band have announced details of their “final ever show”: performing at the Alsion Concert Hall in their home of Sønderborg, on 26th February.

GROWING UP Anthem-makers Foster The People have confirmed details of their “polarising” new LP as well as streaming its lead track, ‘Coming Of Age’. ‘Supermodel’ is due for release on 13th March via Columbia, and you can hear the lead track on thisisfakediy.co.uk.

The record’s been declared to be “organic and human” compared to 2011 predecessor ‘Torches’.

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T h e c r e at i o n o f I Break Horses’ newest album has been a bit of a rol l e r coas t e r , as Maria Lindén e x p l a i n s . Words:

“

Coral Williamson.

“

“

I had my highest highs and lowest lows.

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C

ast your mind back to the summer of 2012. The Olympics were still on and the weather might actually have been pretty decent. I Break Horses were writing demos for a second album.

Now, a year and a half later, ‘Chiaroscuro’ is ready to come out.

Well, it’s actually been ready for a while, as Maria Lindén explains: “It was finished in May [2013]. It’s always difficult for a label to schedule all these bands and releases, so I had to wait for a bit.

“But it doesn’t really matter; we’ve been doing some touring and I was able to start writing some new songs during this time, so I don’t think it was a bad thing to just wait a little longer. I think it’s almost always like that, you have your album finalised and mastered six months before release. It’s just that you feel the urge when you finish things, you want to release it immediately, but that never happens.”

was just a reaction to the first one. Now I find myself, having finished this really electronic album, wanting to create something really organic!”

She laughs. “I think it’s so important to me to keep the whole creative process exciting and fun.”

Compared to I Break Horses’ debut, this was certainly a different kind of adventure.

“I got stuck many times with ‘Hearts’ because I always started with a soundscape, and I created songs from endless hours of tweaking. I built a song on that soundscape and now I did the songwriting with a much more limited set-up.

That made the process much faster, I think.

“I had to know, ‘no, you can’t use the synthesiser right now’.

I forced myself to use a really limited set-up and I did the production afterwards, when I felt I had the song. That was one of the most difficult things with the debut album, it took me forever to finish things because I got so stuck in the production phase really early on. For this album it was different and it was faster.

“Maybe the album’s a bit darker than I initially thought.”

Maria Lindén

Never one to sit still, Maria’s already moved on to writing more songs. “I’ve always really admired artists that just go do whatever they want between albums, and not get stuck in one specific sound or genre. As ‘Hearts’ [the band’s first album] was… it had electronic parts as well but it had a warmer sound. I wanted to create a darker album, with this one, so it felt natural to bring in more electronic sounds. I think that

“I started recording for real in January so it was six months - a year from the first sketches, but six months of really intense work with finalising the album.

That was nice for me because I didn’t [feel] mentally... ill, like I did with the first one. It was so many details, and the first time... learning the technology, you know, the recording, and EQs, and everything like that. I had already gone through that learning period, so it was faster

as well.”

Swedish-born Maria sometimes stumbles over English grammar, so when she mentions mental health there’s an awkward moment; was she serious? “My last year was emotionally very much a roller coaster... mental health, I guess,” she graciously explains.

“I had my highest highs and lowest lows, and it was a very quick switch between them.

It was so many beautiful things that I experienced, with touring and meeting people, and at the same time I could fall down into being really tired. That led me a bit as well, when creating this album.

That’s part of the title, because it was real emotions that brought this album forward.

I let myself write the music I felt at that specific day. Now looking back on it, maybe it’s a bit darker than I initially thought.”

‘Chiaroscuro’ means light-dark in Italian, so the link to her emotions and the sounds of the new album makes sense.

Now, Maria says she’s “in a good place, actually. I’ve always been like this, I was a pretty sad child to be honest.

But I’ve learned to accept it.

Music is therapy, in so many ways. I’m really glad I have that in my life, because it’s really helped during those periods.

But I am in a good place now, so that feels good.

“I don’t have a diagnosis. I would probably if I went, but it’s never been so bad that I’ve gone to a doctor and asked.

I’m thinking that everyone has something, it’s just more easy to see it in some people I guess. I probably definitely have some combination, but I guess I can live with it. I don’t need medication, I think,” she laughs. “I’ve accepted my darker periods because I’ve always had them. I think I’ve learned from them.”

I Break Horses’ new album ‘Chiaroscuro’ is out now via Bella Union. DIY

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A Night To Remember “It’s

about

entertaining

T

he end of 2013 marked a pivotal moment in the career of A Day To Remember. Having spent the best part of the year pressing charges against their label due to an alleged breach of contract and unpaid royalties, things had begun to stall for the band.

However, in October, during one of their biggest shows yet – at Michigan’s 7,200 capacity Freedom Hill Amphitheatre - they were finally able to reveal that they’d won the right to self-release their latest full-length. Now, with ‘Common Courtesy’ officially on shelves around the world, the band are looking ahead to a brighter future in 2014, and their first stop is the UK. “I really enjoy playing the big shows because we’ve always been headed in this direction, but now we’re actually able to do it,” explains frontman Jeremy McKinnon, who is already eagerly anticipating their full live return. “We’ve always been headed towards becoming a big production band; we want to put on shows for people and this is the first

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people.”

-

time that we’ve actually be able to afford to invest in our show like we have been.”

“What’s cool,” adds guitarist Neil Westfall, “is that our band can play [an acoustic set] in a magazine office for twenty people and we still get to experience those really small and intimate shows and really do something cool and special for people. Then, we also get to go out and put on a real show. We’re interested in all of that, it just all feels different. I wanna feel it all.

“We’ll get to do all of our ideas, some of which were never possible before with the size of the rooms we were playing.

This is the first time that we’re actually able to do them. You have to almost re-learn how to be a live musician. You do things completely differently to say, playing the Barfly. There, you can rock out and move about as much as you can, but now, you can’t just do that.”

“That’s what’s cool about it,” continues Jeremy. “When you play those bigger shows, it’s not about being intimate anymore. It’s about entertaining people, and how do you do that? How do you get that many people to feel like they’re

Jeremy

McKinnon

not in a room that big?

“It’s fascinating to me actually, to be a part of a group that’s controlling how that many people feel at one time is pretty awesome. It’s pretty cool that we get to try that; every night, you’re really trying to build and grow and get better at doing that and be a better performer.”

They’ve also invited along Buffalo metalcore titans Every I Time Die, along with everyone’s new favourite pop punk band, The Story So Far. “It’s kinda cool that fans of our band like those bands,” Neil says, “because they’re the bands that we love too. With Every Time I Die, we grew up going to see them and listening to their albums. Then, The Story So Far are a new band that we really like.

It’s awesome.” DIY

LIVE

FEBRUARY 08 Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff 10 O2 Academy, Glasgow 12 Alexandra Palace, London 14 O2 Academy, Birmingham 15 O2 Apollo, Manchester

QUEENV

F

ollowing her recent project with David Byrne, St. Vincent has been burning the candle at both ends and is set to release her brand new self-titled album on 24th February.

Released through Loma Vista / Caroline, the record sees her once again team up with McKenzie Smith of Midlake, while enlisting the help of Dap-Kings’ drummer Homer Steinweiss for percussion duties.

ON

CLOUD NINE A

fter ceating quite a storm with their last album, Cloud Nothings return with their third effort in tow.

Following on from 2012’s incendiary ‘Attack On Memory’, their new record, ‘Here And Nowhere Else’, is due for release through Wichita Recordings on 31st March.

This time, the Cleveland group have teamed up with producer John Congleton, who spent a week with the band at Water Music in Hoboken, New Jersey, before mixing the record in his Dallas, Texas studio.

Spending almost eighteen months on the road following the release of their last album, the band’s Dylan Baldi admits that it did filter through to their new offering. “I’m pretty sure every song was written in a different country,” he explains. “It’s the product of only having a couple of minutes here and there.”

“It’s more subtle,” continues Baldi, of the record itself. “It’s not just an in-your-face rock record. There’s more going on.

You can listen to a song twenty times and still hear different little things in there that you didn’t notice before. Every time I listen I notice something that I didn’t even realise we did.”

Cloud Nothings’ new album ‘Here And Nowhere Else’ will be released on 31st March via Wichita Recordings. DIY

She’s also drafted in John Congleton for production, having previously worked on 2011’s ‘Strange Mercy’ and 2009’s ‘Actor’ together, honing the more visceral and dramatic sound that her last album began to touch upon.

Declaring that she wanted to create “a party record you could play at a funeral,” it’s clear that the eleven-track effort will be an album to remember.

St. Vincent’s self-titled new album will be released on 24th February via Lomo Vista / Caroline. DIY

James Mercer & Danger Mouse

BROKEN BELLS AF T ER

T H E

DI SC O

T H E N E W A L B U M F E AT. ‘HOLDING ON FOR LIFE’ & ‘AFTER THE DISCO’ ‘After The

‘Sorrow rarely

Disco stands

sparkles this

as impressive

wonderfully’

proof of their

HHHH

partnership’

Q

8/10 UNCUT

FEBRUARY 3RD 17

NEWS

Diary Of A Rock Star

B a b i e s , b r e a s t - f e e d i n g a n d l e av i n g t h e b a n d s ; B r o dy Da l l e i s o u t t o p r o v e t h at n o t h i n g i s g e t t i n g i n h e r way o f m a k i n g m u s i c .

I

was actually starting to make a record and then I found out that I was pregnant with my second child,” Brody Dalle laughs. But she isn’t one to let real life get in the way of her music - at least, not for long.

“That put everything on hold,” the exDistillers frontwoman explains. “When my son was about six months old, I started writing again, and then when

18 thisisfakediy.co.uk

he was a year old, I recorded the record.

“The first song I wrote was ‘Meet The Foetus’, and ironically I found out I was pregnant a week later,” she adds. “Psychically, I think I knew I was pregnant again.”

The gift of time wasn’t something bestowed upon her for her solo debut; she had to work when she could. “I have

music in my head all the time! I always have music in my head, so I heard and wrote a lot of it, then played it and recorded it and just kept adding.

“It was definitely made incrementally; whatever chance I could, I would go to the studio. It was just difficult because my husband [Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme] is always on tour or recording his own stuff, so timing is a

we can!”

Having cut her teeth with the Distillers as a teenage punk hero, before fronting Spinnerette until 2009, she’s now going it alone - but inviting along a few friends, too.

NEws in brief

“I have this incredible freedom that I didn’t really have when I was in a band. I had this song and I was thinking of someone who could add something great to it, and [The Strokes’] Nick Valensi is such a classic, cool guitar player.

“He’s so tasteful and he just happens to be my best girlfriend’s husband, so that helps too. So, Nick came over and played on a couple of songs. He’s so cool but he’s very self-deprecating, and he doesn’t realise how talented he is.

“I asked Shirley Manson and Emily [Kokal] from Warpaint to sing on a song because I wanted a really strong female element on the record, and backing vocals that weren’t just mine.

“Michael Shuman from Queens [of the Stone Age] added bass to two songs; he’s just a bad ass and his bass playing is so unique.

“I’m in the middle of this incredible musician melding pot where I can pick and choose; and it’s good that I’m not in a band because then I have the freedom to do so.

“Sometimes it can be lonely. I loved that feeling of being in a gang and having each other to rely on, making something together, but I’m not in the position in my life where I can really devote that kind of attention to it. It’s much easier for me to be on my own and do it when I can and want to do it.”

challenge, but you know, now that my son is older, it’s much easier.”

Dalle even managed to find inspiration in the more mundane maternal tasks, she jokingly admits.

“Even when I was breast-feeding, I was pumping milk for my son and with the beat of the pump, I wrote music to it! I can find music everywhere. We’ve gotta do it when

“I’ve decided I really like being a solo artist because you have so much more freedom,” she adds, “and you can age gracefully with your music! You can go anywhere: it’s unchartered territory. With most bands, they kinda burn out or they fade or they don’t have it anymore, whereas solo artists can keep trucking. You’re your own boss. I’m kinda really into it.”

Brody Dalle’s as-yet-untitled debut solo album will be released early 2014 via Caroline. DIY

LET’S GET MESSY

Liars will be dishing out another dose of weird but wonderful electronica this year with their new album, ‘Mess’. Due for release on 24th March through Mute, it’ll follow on from DIY’s 2012 Album of the Year, ‘WIXIW’. Hear their track ‘Mess On A Mission’ on thisisfakediy.co.uk now.

GOODBYE, GWIL

Gwil Sainsbury, alt-J bassist, has left the band.

Citing “a personal decision”, he departed the Mercury Prize winning group as they begin work on their second album. A tweet from the band confirmed the news. “With regret, Gwil is leaving alt-J,” it read. “This is purely a personal decision and as our best friend we support him completely.”

THE ROYAL BLOOD LINE

Class of 2014’s Royal Blood are off to a good start: the Brighton duo will head out on an eleven-date tour of the UK halfway through this month. Beginning the jaunt in Southampton on 13th February, they’ll end proceedings at Oxford’s Art Bar on the 26th.

For full details, head to the website.

SHAKE IT LIKE A POLAROID PICTURE

Outkast are back, and they’re out to celebrate their 20th anniversary. The hip hop duo, Andre 3000 and Big Boi, have reunited for what they claim to be a staggering forty festival appearances this summer. So far, headline slots at both California’s Coachella and New York’s Governors Ball have been confirmed.

THIS IS HER TIME

Having already unveiled her debut album in the US last year, Sky Ferreira has confirmed a UK release date. Her first full-length, ‘Night Time, My Time’ will be given a second release on 17th March through Polydor.

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NEWS

TrackByTrack

Temples Sun Structures The first of our Class of 2014 have turned in their homework early: Temples start the year by unveiling their psychedelic debut ‘Sun Structures’ this month. Guitarist James Bagshaw gives a little extra insight into each of its twelve tracks.

Shelter Song

The first song that we wrote as Temples.

That’s why we put it first: it’s where we started.

bringing round a demo, just on his laptop. I remember instantly liking it, and liking the sentiment of the lyrics.

Mesmerise

This one stemmed from having the riff on guitar, but we tried to make the guitar not really sound like a guitar; make it a bit more processed and synthetic.

Move With The Season

This track was my favourite to write and record. It shows Sun Structures ‘Sun Structures’ started a different side to us, as it’s probably the with the flute line slowest track on the that comes in on the record. intro. We wanted it to be hypnotic and Colours To Life thumping.

This track stemmed,

similarly to ‘Shelter Song’, from a riff we were building around.

The riff for this song The chorus was was originally on guitar originally a verse idea but it works really that was knocking well with the synth about. doubling it up. It gives it that edge.

A Question Isn’t The Golden Throne

Keep In The Dark

I remember Tom [Warmsley, bass]

Answered

Starting the song with claps felt like it

would really work: the repetition is hypnotic.

The Guesser

It started from having a drumbeat and looping it. The chorus really throws you off and we like stuff like that.

We never want to be predictable.

Test Of Time

We were getting really into Brian Eno. It was one of the hardest ones to sit right with us, but we got there in the end.

Sand Dance

This one for me glued together a lot of our influences; everything came quite organically.

Fragment’s Light

We wanted it to be a very eerie song that leads you off the album in a very subtle way, but leaves you thinking.

Temples’ debut album ‘Sun Structures’ will be released on 10th February via Heavenly Recordings.

DIY

DIY Teams Up With Bilbao BBK Live

DIY is teaming up with Bilbao BBK Live this year, with oodles of amazing acts set to descend on the Spanish city next summer.

MGMT, Crystal Fighters, Imagine Dragons, Jack Johnson, White Lies and Poliça are also playing.

The event will take place from 10th - 12th Heading up the current July. Three day early list of line up additions bird tickets (including are The Black Keys, Franz camping) are available Ferdinand and Phoenix, at a reduced rate until with many more big 4th February. DIY names still to come.

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Follow Your

W

Instincts

ith five songs written, Maximo Park headed to Sunderland to record a new EP with Field Music’s David Brewis; they were well on their way to creating a nice musical bridge between their fourth full-length – 2012’s ‘The National Health’ – and whatever was to come next. But things didn’t go quite to plan.

“We’ve never done an EP before,” explains the band’s frontman, Paul Smith.

“We had songs that were funky next to electro-songs and it was quite an eclectic mix, so we thought it’d make a good EP, and it’d mean we could start playing new songs pretty soon. That we could get it out there pretty soon and people would know the songs.

“So, we played the songs to people and then they started going, ‘Wow, you should make a record. They’re all good!’ We didn’t think necessarily that people would be into them, but management, the record company, friends, they all just said, ‘Write four or five more songs and you’ve got a record.’ So, we decided to do that.”

With half the songs from what-would-become ‘Too Much Information’ already penned, the band were good to go. “The writing process was going pretty well and there was a good buzz around it. We felt like we were on a roll. Because we had taken a bit of a break and done different things [following 2009’s ‘Quicken The Heart’], it took us a while to coalesce and find that common ground, but once we had done that, when we made [2012’s] ‘The National Health’, it was nice to go in and just do it.”

As the album began to take shape, the band decided upon some more solid themes and concepts. “It took a bit longer after that, because when you’re

making a record, you start thinking, ‘What more do we need?’ We didn’t want to have five songs the same as the last ones, you want to keep some of the themes going, maybe intellectualise it a bit more. The creative splurge became a lot more considered.

“We wrote a lot more songs; those first five were the first five that we’d written, and we were very happy with them which was unusual.

We assumed we’d be able to do it again, but in the end, we wrote quite a number of songs.

Some of them worked and some of them didn’t, but in the end, you’ve just got to go with the ones that work. We thought perhaps we could conceptualise it slightly.

“We knew we had some electronic songs and some more traditional band-orientated songs, so we thought we could divide it up like David Bowie’s ‘Low’, and use a tried and tested way of doing something different, but sometimes it just doesn’t work like that. It’s quite a varied record in the end, because of that desire to just write songs.”

Maximo Park’s new album ‘Too Much Information’ will be released on 3rd February.

Read the full interview in DIY Weekly. DIY

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NEWS

Albert Hammond Jr. has just released a new s o l o E P, B u t h e ’ s not doing it a l l by h i m s e l f. words & photo: e m m a s wa n n

Cult Records “T here’s nothing more fun than working with friends.” In October last year Albert Hammond Jr. released EP ‘AHJ’, his first solo release since 2008’s ‘¿Como Te Llama?’ via Strokes bandmate Julian Casablancas’ Cult Records.

“He’s a good friend, we’re always so creative together. We’d talk a lot about music and how we saw things. In some ways we’re so similar, and in other ways we’re different, and that combination was always fun as friends, so it really just felt like that. When I thought I was going to release something, I knew immediately it would be on his label.”

The five-track release is at once familiar and new, taking elements from both his debut and follow-up records. “There are things I liked on the first album, there are things I liked on the second. Hopefully there’ll be things I like on a third. I’m bound to make a mash of it all eventually.

Until I’ve mashed too much and everyone says I sound like shit and go back to the beginning again,” he laughs.

The decision to record an EP rather than a new full-length wasn’t, he explains, a conscious one. “It was no real serious thing, besides that it sounded good, and 22

thisisfakediy.co.uk

right, and we had the time, but didn’t know how long it’d take to finish a record.

So we thought, you know, a bit less pressure, depending on what I wanted to do with it. Everything just seemed right and easy with it.

“It was the first thing I’d done alone that was... I guess... sober.” Albert

of a re-birth, a new start. “It was the first thing I had done alone in a while,” he says, “and it was the first thing I’d done alone that was... I guess... sober.”

But the not-quite-self-titling isn’t, he explains, a direct reference to his emergence the better side of his well-documented struggle with drug addiction. In fact, it was accidental; the record already had a different title.

“It would be great to be like ‘yes, I thought of everything in so much detail’.” he laughs. “We had this artwork, and we were trying stuff with it, and Warren [Fu, artist] just wrote my initials in his writing and I was like ‘Wow, that’s super cool’.”

He’s also already started on new material – although tentatively, writing “a full song, but nothing complete,” after a “There was something great in getting short trip to upstate New York recently. excited about something, and then And he’s also keen to return to the UK. sitting with it and listening to it, and “There are plans to come back,” he says, trying other things on it. I wasn’t thinking “and there’ll be plans to do some festivals.

‘Should I do this?’ or ‘Should I try that?’, I’d It all depends on getting shows from just do what I wanted to do.” promoters! Which isn’t an easy thing.”

Hammond Jr.

And while he claims not to remember Albert Hammond Jr.’s new EP ‘AHJ’ is much more of the making of the EP (“I can out now via Cult Records. DIY be in the middle of a sentence, and forget what I want to say!”, he admits), he has previously described ‘AHJ’ as something

LETTERS COMING UP Come say hi at an upcoming DIY gig.

This month, you’ll find us at:

Dear DIY, Was Cav dressed up as Mary (Jesus’s mum) for his Indie Dreamboat of the Month shot (Dec 2013 / Jan 2014)? Very festive.

Tom, Oxford Dear DIY, Excellent cover choice

February

04 ASTR, The Social, London (FRUKT FIXERS present) 08 Forest Swords, Deaf Institute, Manchester 20 Speedy Ortiz, Green Door Store, Brighton 22 Dry The River, O2 ABC2, Glasgow

COMMENTS FROM THE SITE

From: Janne Re: DIY Readers’ Poll 2013: The Results “Where’s The Veils, Phosphorescent, The Strokes and Nick Cave?”

From: lanmanna Re: DIY Readers’ Poll 2013: The Results “No Phoenix? No Pure Bathing Culture? For shame!”

From: gatho

Dear DIY, Don’t you think Alex James should recruit N*Sync to record a new version of ‘Dirty Pop’ as the jingle for his new soft drink, Britpop?

No? Just me then.

Rob, York

Re: Radkey “Radkey are rad!”

From: Antony Re: Burial’s New EP, ‘Rival Dealer’ “I hope I wake up in the morning and this was all a nightmare.”

From: Michael Almond Re: The National, Apollo, Manchester “The Tuesday gig was amazing.

It was the first time I’d seen the National live. No way did I expect it to be as energetic and atmospheric.”

Dear DIY, I enjoyed your end of year coverage, but I still feel like you missed out one important award: Best Shoes. I saw some outstanding shoes in 2013.

Matt, Edinburgh Dear DIY, With Arcade Fire playing Glastonbury, does this mean everyone’s going to have to go to Worthy Farm in fancy dress? Can we ban Smurf costumes?

Hattie, Eastbourne

Visit thisisfakediy.co.uk for listings.

From: moonblue Re: Class of 2014 Fryars “A really terrific guy.” -

(Dec 2013 / Jan 2014).

Chlöe Howl is going to be huge in 2014, mark my words.

Zoe, Bradford

SEND US STUFF

Want to send us a letter, or some presents?

Here’s the address:

m

DIY, ARCH 462, KINGSLAND VIADUCT, 83 RIVINGTON STREET, LONDON, EC2A 3AY You can also email us on letters@thisisfakediy.co.uk, but it’s harder to send cake that way.

23

NEu

Honeyblood

T wo years to the go od and on the brink of something huge, these G l as g ow f r i e n d s s t i l l ar e n ’ t s ick of t h e s ig h t of e ach ot h e r .

W o r d s : J a m i e M i lt o n , P h o t o : F r a s e r S t e p h e n .

T

he best thing about making friends with other musicians, Stina Tweeddale claims, is that there’s always a familiar face in a scary new city previously unencountered. It’s also an excuse to talk to someone other than bandmate Shona McVicar. “Sometimes we get sick of each other,” Stina admits, adding a “no offence to Shona” for good measure. “A fresh face can help” in the slog of touring, she says, stifling a laugh.

Honeyblood couldn’t be blamed for having the occasional ominous hour of silence or shortly-lived scrap.

They’ve been writing and playing together for two years, right up until the point today where they’ve just finished off a debut album on Fat Cat Records. “We always had a good groove, which really makes a difference,” says Stina, speaking from Glasgow immediately after the band return from studio time in Connecticut.

“I’ve played in bands before and I just feel like no matter how good a musician is, it means nothing unless you connect with the people you’re playing with.” She claims her

24

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collaboration with Shona was “instant”, bar a tragic “first half hour” of practice.

Entering into their third year as a band, today the pair stand stronger than ever, fresh-faced from sessions with Peter Katis, a producer who’s had a helping hand in The National’s ‘Boxer’ and Interpol’s ‘Turn on the Bright Lights’, for starters. “Peter was a really good choice for us,” Stina beams. “We lived in the house with his family - you’re with them all the time… He enjoys company and he loves working with people. We got to the studio and people were just hanging about.”

Exposed to the relaxed atmosphere of Peter’s house-turnedstudio, they ditched the “clinical studio” environment and exposed themselves to a further-reaching sound. It goes the extra mile from the initial brute force of shouty punk they emerged sporting. “[Peter’s] idea was ‘How do we make two people sound really full?’,” says Stina. “That was the main thing for us. It’s still two people but it’s still a really fully sound. He was up for the challenge of doing that. It’s something we accomplished.”

Stina also cites a “piano

“It means nothing unless you connect with the people.”

Stina Tweeddale

Studio Crybaby Geeks Working in Peter Katis’ studio was a big deal for Honeyblood, especially for Shona who’s “a massive National fan - like, huge.”

ballad” that might or might not end up on the record. It’s “half a song” in her books; a spontaneous recording she put together in Connecticut after being egged on by Eric Sanderson from Augustines, of all people, who happened to be stirring about in Peter’s studio at the time. “We’ll see if that song makes it to the album. It was about trying new things, and those things working out.”

Piano numbers weren’t in the peripheral back when Honeyblood started out.

Initially it was a case of Stina penning a few songs - recent single ‘Bud’ included - and asking Shona to add her own take on the drums.

Today they’re more of a collective being. “Because we’re used to how each other works and because we’re more confident, we do a lot of jamming along,” says Stina. “The way that we write songs now has changed dramatically. And now there’s a certain instinct, definitely.” Sometimes that instinct manifests itself into the two wanting to avoid the sight of each other, but for the most part Honeyblood are a united force to be reckoned with. DIY

information and when we went over and he was setting up drums, she was like ‘So are you gonna do that thing on that album? I hear you’re into that’. And he just replied ‘Yeah I used to do that but I’m kinda like, nah - I’m over that’. And that was the end of that!”

The Glasgow duo still had to pinch themselves, however, when Peter hosted a listening party after Honeyblood wrapped up “We met a producer who told the album. “He was putting us a cool drum technique on first rough demos of The of Peter’s that he does on National, asking if we knew ‘so-and-so’s’ album,” recalls who they were. We were like Stina. “Shona banked that - err, YEAH.”

25

NEws in brief NEu

KWAB CAKES

London soul newcomer Kwabs started out by performing in front of Prince Harry at Buckingham Palace.

Now he’s announced his debut EP, ‘Wrong or Right’, which contains collaborations with Austrian producer SOHN.

SELFISH SO-AND-SO Another debut landing in early 2014 comes from Francis Lung, the former Wu Lyf guitarist and member of Los Porcos, aka Tom McClung. His ‘A Selfish Man’ 7” is out now on the Atelier Ciseaux label.

LAYING DOWN THE LAW Irish thrill-seekers Girl Band have given their new single a pretty ironic title. ‘Lawman’ is a new 7” single, released by a group of guys who follow exactly zero rules. This new song is a six-minute long giant, putting the fear in every do-gooder.

LONELY WORD-SMITH BRITs Critics’ Choice and BBC Sound of 2014 winner, Sam Smith has announced his debut album, ‘In The Lonely Hour’. It comes out on 16th February, a couple of days before the Disclosure collaborator picks up his award on 19th February.

BECAUSE THEY’RE GORGEOUS

Manchester’s Gorgeous Bully have signed up to Art Is Hard Records for the release of a new EP. The fuzz fiends premiered their latest track - ‘Couldn’t Keep It To Myself’ - on thisisfakediy.co.uk. The EP’s out on 17th February.

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Hello 2014 Kagoule

dATES

Neu’s taken over an East London haunt for four free entry new band nights.

7th

eu’s taken temporary lodging in London venue The Old Blue Last this month. The venue did have some say in the matter. There’s a reason for all of this - it’s the time of year where we put on the inaugural ‘Hello’ series; four new band nights spread out across January to help see the year in.

14th

N

Class of 2014 alumni Wolf Alice, MT and Superfood played some of their very first shows at last year’s ‘Hello 2013’ residency. This year, headliners come in the form of Honeyblood, Kagoule and Empty Pools. There’s also music from Birmingham’s Ekkah and new London boys Sun Machine, playing some of their first ever shows for ‘Hello 2014’. The shows are all free entry, taking place every Tuesday (7th, 14th, 21st, 28th) in the first year of the month.

Head to thisisfakediy.co.uk for all the action - photos, interviews, exclusive new music - from before and after every ‘Hello 2014’ show. And be sure to keep an eye on these names as the year progresses - debut albums and breakthrough tracks are just around the corner. DIY

•Kagoule •Polterghost •Ancient Times

•Honeyblood •Sundara Karma •Sun Machine •LSA

21st •Empty Pools •Febueder Ekkah •Two Jackals

28th •Spring King •Youth Man •Holy Milk

NEu

Live Report

JUNGLE C h a t s Pa l a c e , L o n d o n

T

here comes a point when hyped-up new entities have to ditch the attention and become an actual band.

JUNGLE have been swept up in all kinds of chatter, ever since debut single ‘The Heat’ set a distinct tone.

Not that they were expecting anything less. The exactitude, preparation that goes into the collective’s recordings takes some beating. It’s precision defined; hundreds of tiny ideas being delivered bit-by-bit, never clashing heads.

Tonight is JUNGLE’s first London show. It comes with the customary mist and smoke to match the occasion. The clearest you can make out the members of the band is when they become sharp-lined silhouettes. Their faces never show, though. Give it a month or two and identities will, in good time, be revealed. But tonight’s Chats Palace gig declares in bold, illuminated colours that it really doesn’t matter who’s behind the microphone, so long as it’s not a runaway prison inmate or a group of aliens preparing to invade.

The collective’s aim is thus: To create a sticky, frenzied atmosphere that’d be right at home in Amazonian quarters.

There’s nothing visually to encourage this. On stage, vague outlines of old-school microphones and dapper suits give the impression of a swing band, or a jazz group that somehow

wound up in a David Lynch flick. It’s in the music that things come to life.

Song by song, up goes the energy, until an extended, outstanding version of ‘Platoon’ shows JUNGLE up as more than a bunch of chancers working out their options in the live setting. Like everything else to their name, the whole thing’s been thought out in precise detail. Not exactly faultless, but sharp enough to cut the hype in half, these thirty or so minutes witness an ‘enigma’ morphing into a fully-charged force.

Step outside and the stage mist seems to have squirmed its way outside, London’s freezing streets covered in a blanket of fog. It’s all the confirmation required to assert that anyone turning up to Chats Palace with even a smidgen of cynicism leaves the venue completely converted. DIY

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Painted Palms T

I t t o o k ‘ F o r e v e r ’ f o r t h e s e t w o c o u s i n s t o e v e n t u a l ly c o l l a b o r at e , b u t t i m e ( a n d a c o u p l e o f e m a i l ac c o u n t s ) h e l pe d mak e i t happe n . Photo: Andrew de Santis.

he beginning of Painted Palms plays out like an episode of The Simpsons. ‘Bart of Darkness’ from season six - involves a summer spent indoors after a broken leg. Bart grows insane. This didn’t strictly happen to Reese Donohue, although the story involves a boat wreck (“It put me in bed for the summer”), a broken hip, damaged internal organs, and a guitar. A friend of his mum’s brought one over to help him cope with the boredom. Several years later and said guitar is one of many bubbling, excitable ingredients pouring into Painted Palms’ debut album ‘Forever’.

Reese still opts for isolation, as it happens. Living in San Francisco - he moved out of Louisiana for school, while cousin and other half of the band Chris Prudhomme stayed put - his method is strict: sending ideas and files over email. “We tried making music together in the same room but our approaches are different,” Reese says. “To have that distance separating ourselves over the internet, is kind of the only way the band would work.”

After an initial string of EPs from 2011 onwards, ‘Forever’ is the pair’s first full-length. They came into the record with a new perspective. With a respect for minimal, direct pop music, they used modern influences to shape their first work. “There are these songs that have almost nothing on there, it can be just vocals and a beat,” Reese enthuses. “The song is still so impactful. To me, that’s way more of an accomplishment than bringing in a full orchestra to achieve an emotion.”

‘Forever’ opens by honing in at its euphoric side. Reese cites another aspect of his upbringing as the reason behind that. “Louisiana has a separate culture from the rest of the country… A lot of that culture is based on having this philosophy; an enthusiasm and appreciation for life.” Wherever Painted Palms choose to locate themselves, a record like ‘Forever’’s always on the cards. From humble, frustrated beginnings to tech-reliant progression, they’ve seized every opportunity to produce one of the most all-thrills debuts of the year. DIY

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‘FOREVER’’S FINEST MOMENTS

Painted Palms’ debut is crammed with concise pop juggernauts - here’s some of the best of them, in Reese’s words: • ‘Hypnotic’ “We were listening to a lot of that baggy Manchester stuff, [and] Primal Scream.

What I love about that stuff is they are so good at seamlessly bringing elements from the psychedelic era.”

• ‘Spinning Signs’ “We tried to pare that one down as much as possible. We were trying to get as much across with minimal elements.”

• ‘Soft Hammer’ “That goes off in the opposite direction to ‘Spinning Signs’.

One instrument will come in, play a part, and then disappear, and then another instrument will take its spot. And the song will evolve like that.”

NEu Recommended Big Ups

NYC thrill-seekers are intent on setting the record straight with their Tough Love debut.

Barely a second into 2014 and Big Ups are wasting no time in introducing the world to their sweat-drenched, frustration-laced debut record ‘Eighteen Hours of Static’. The NYC group have signed up to Tough Love after starting out in 2010. As the clock strikes on the present day, their unrelentingly moody take on post-punk sounds more vital than ever. The basement venue rooted blues of their debut links up with fellow Brooklynites Parquet Courts, but there’s a further grit to this first work, a bark and a bite that commands attention.

The album itself is defined by frustration, with raw barking cries being the common ingredient. “It’s a record about coping with things that are very real and often disturbing,” says frontman Joe Galarraga.

“I don’t really have any problem speaking my mind, even if I’m writing from a vulnerable place,” Joe says about his rudely upfront approach. “Now, it’s on a record; it’s archived forever. That makes me a bit nervous. Maybe I’ll look back on my lyrics and cringe from embarrassment, but hopefully it will remind me of the things I was dealing with at the time.” (Jamie Milton) LISTEN: Debut album ‘Eighteen Hours of Static’ is out now.

FOR FANS OF: Shouting, skating, swearing.

Broods

NZ duo deliver sweet doses with deadly intent.

Georgia and Caleb Nott have been making music for the best part of two years, but it wasn’t until the release of ‘Bridges’ that they started to cause a stir. Chances are this is another double act in the vein of Wardell (the Spielberg siblings) or a trio of the Haim kind; family members who’ve been striking up a tune for goodness knows how long. Fans of chart-worthy stuff with odd idiosyncrasies will be immediately drawn to it. (Jamie Milton) LISTEN ‘Never Gonna Change’ FOR FANS OF Drinking too much Calpol.

Benjamin Clementine

Axxa/Abraxas

His Ballads might seem obvious, but nobody’s performing them quite like him.

Ben Asbury filters catchy pop tunes through a lo-fi folk lens.

There’s a backstory to 26-year-old Benjamin Clementine’s beginnings.

There needs to be, when music is this emotionally ‘out there’. A selfprofessed troublemaker, he based himself out in Camden before starting the whole music thing in Paris, aged 19. ‘Cornerstone’ is evidence that fragile early years can contribute to emotionally on-point songwriting.

(Jamie Milton)

While expectations are high for anyone joining the ranks of Captured Tracks, Ben Asbury is sure to fit right in with Axxa/Abraxas. Recruiting Woods’ Jarvis Taveniere to record and produce his self-titled debut, Asbury sounds more or less like a combination of a ferris wheel and Wild Nothing, all catchy pop tunes filtered through a lo-fi folk lens, a distillation of the past few years of Brooklyn indie. (Johan Alm)

LISTEN ‘Cornerstone’ FOR FANS OF Antony and the Johnsons, singing in the bath.

LISTEN ‘I Almost Fell’ FOR FANS OF Endless road trips minus the homesickness.

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NEu

Bridging The Gap: Menace Beach

Menace Beach

L e t t i n g c h a o s e n t e r t h e f r a m e s o m e t i m e s r e s u lt s i n b r o k e n f u r n i t u r e , b u t R ya n N e e d h a m a n d c o . w o u l d n ’ t c h a n g e a t h i n g .

B

ands always come with a hazard warning. But not like this. Ryan Needham, one half of the core behind Leeds group Menace Beach, is currently waiting for a builder to come and fix a broken window.

The fault lies with Pulled Apart By Horses’ Rob Lee, one of the many contributing musicians who help (if ‘help’ involves wrecking houses… ) add force to the project belonging to both Ryan and Liza Violet. “One person might not want to go to practice or a gig - I wanted to get rid of that whole part of it,” he says. “It loosens it up, this way. It’s better for the creative environment, I think.”

Ryan and Liza spearhead the project, but based on the new democratic ‘Lowtalker’ EP, the more outside influences involved, the better. Rob Lee’s just one of several faces contributing to the new release.

There’s also Hookworms member and

PLAYING MENACE Ryan Needham gives the gossip on all the band’s guest-players…

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go-to producer ‘MJ’, Sky Larkin’s Nestor Matthews, former You Animals bandmate Matt Spalding and on the odd occasion, Mansun’s Paul Draper. Often big, evergrowing projects like this tend to wretch at the tag ‘supergroup’, but Ryan isn’t so irked by the term. “Me and Liza write all the songs, but it’s nice that it takes the attention away from us in some sense.”

Recording in Komakino and a couple other projects out in Derby, before eventually landing up in Leeds, Ryan and Liza used the band as an excuse to make new friends (“we didn’t really know anyone, so I thought we’d go out and about”). Eventually, he had a hundred or so songs under his belt. It was his first stint as a songwriter (“I’d been the singer but I’d never written anything”), and when it came to whittling tracks down, he turned to Menace Beach’s current crop.

There’s a clear ideal behind the band,

even if it’s subject to the odd revolving door effect. “I’ve been in bands before where the obligation aspect ruins it,” he says. “We’re trying to do as little of the rubbish stuff as possible. We spent so many years doing pointless gigs in a weird outskirt of London…” Now that Menace Beach is starting to look like an actual, big prospect, he’s having to dodge the logistic side of things. “It’d be great to keep everyone on board now but Pulled Apart By Horses are doing another album, Hookworms are doing a new album. It’s the same with festivals: we’re trying to figure out how to do it…”

As things stand, Menace Beach has been built on a casual approach and very little else. It’s already got them this far - even if the offers continue to pour in, Ryan’s landed himself with dozens of songs under his belt and, undoubtedly, a queue of familiar faces who’d do everything in their power to get involved. DIY

Matt Spalding [Bass, You Animals]: “He’s super positive. He always brightens your day. I don’t think he’s ever been sad before.”

Rob Lee [Guitars, Pulled Apart By Horses]: “He’s always pissed. We were at a photoshoot the other day and he suddenly vanished, went off and met his girlfriend.”

MJ [Guitars / production, Hookworms]: “He’s always got interesting stuff to show us on the internet when we’re having a break; funny cat videos especially.”

Nestor Matthews [Drums, Sky Larkin]: “I’d met Nestor before at Leeds festival this one time. Sky Larkin hadn’t been doing much at this point, they had a little break because Katie [Harkin] was off with Wild Beasts. We all got in a practice room and messed about.”

Paul Draper [Guitar/ backing vocals, Mansun]: “We recorded just a couple of songs with him. He asked to play guitar on a Marc Riley session we got asked to do, out of the blue.”

NEu

little label

Neu tak es a lo ok at the record l abels r es pon s ib l e for b reakthrough releases, b ig or s mal l . Interview: Tom Walters

DON GIOVANnI

Founded: 2003. Key releases: Waxahatchee, ‘Cerulean Salt’ (2013); California X ‘S/T’ (2013) Joseph Steinhardt is co-founder of Don Giovanni Records, a New York label founded out in Boston alongside Zach Gajewski that’s since released records from Jeffrey Lewis, California X, Waxahatchee and Upset. Its focus is on New York talent, but that wasn’t part of the plan when the label started out. In actual fact, there was no plan.

Over a decade to the good, it’s finally acknowledged as one of the most influential underground labels going: a reputation gained both through its roster and its almighty, now celebrated yearly showcases.

What were your expectations when you started Don Giovanni?

There were no expectations when starting the label. I never really sat down and thought about what the label would look like early on. These bands I was around were some of the best bands I’d ever heard, with values that really inspired me, and no one knew about them and they couldn’t get records out, so when Zach and I started doing Don Giovanni for more than just our band, it was just with the goal of trying to help get the word about these bands out there, and that’s very much what we’re still doing.

Where did the idea first come from for the Don Giovanni records showcase?

Oddly enough, I was inspired by a show that never happened in a context I really disdain... When I was in high school I bought tickets for a Polyvinyl showcase in New York with Rainer Maria, Pele, and Ivory Coast and I thought it was so cool that all this label’s bands were coming together for a show.

The show ended up being a day or two after 9/11 and was cancelled - they sold screened posters at a fundraiser. I bought one and it hung on my wall for a number of years. Once I got a bit older I understood more about what CMJ was and how the show was really an industry showcase, which I thought was incredibly lame. A few years into the label, I had this idea to do a showcase like that one, but away from the industry, away from CMJ, away from SXSW, etc. So we did it in February and it was really successful and we’ve done it every year since trying to grow it bigger and bigger but still making it about bringing our bands and people together; not about industry and sponsorship. DIY

mixtape Not content with giving you a free magazine, we’ve put together a free mixtape full of our favourite new bands; download from thisisfakediy.co.uk/mixtape

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Famy

A Ho A Hand

London group boasting members of Los Porcos, returning with this odd-folk tune.

Bleeding Heart Pigeons Visiting Myself In Hospital

Dublin band Bleeding Heart Pigeons write Interpol-channelling post-punk.

Sun Machine

Have You Seen It, It’s Alive

Stars of Hello 2014, this debut from Sun Machine is a revitalised, refreshed look at the world.

Happyness Orange Luz

This is a slicked back, ‘90s-referring introduction from a much-talked about London group.

Tei Shi M&Ms

Bedroom pop artist Tei Shi lives up to ‘M&Ms’ title with a sweet-as-candy debut track.

Kyross Wait

Mentioned cautiously as a potential successor to Flume in producing amped-up electronica, Vancouver’s Kyle Cramer is a name to watch.

dd elle a note

Completely anonymous group dd elle have two tracks to their name - slinky, playful debut ‘a note’ is the best of them.

Shy Nature Lie Back

Anthem-crafters by day and night, London band Shy Nature’s new single is as colossal as they come.

Poppy Red It’s A Lie

Molly Long’s Poppy Red project forces abstract ideas through a heady, shoegaze filter.

Nouv Shy Past

A new Swedish folk artist relying on far more than a casual acoustic guitar, Nouv Shy’s tender, bittersweet routine is having a big impact.

31

c o v e r wa r pa i n t

is rw e fo th l i o a d e , C le t t, th e e i n t u p r H T u lf El e a r u se s: t o sh i r o r d o e W J . i nt l th m . r o u e u sa f b s at l arpa e a a e M W ac e e d cr n p ik M to co s: e s

e rn

ia

P hoto

warp 32

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paint World of

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W c o v e r wa r pa i n t

arpaint have just narrowly escaped a hailstorm and are in slightly chaotic moods as a result. “Where are we?” asks the band’s drummer Stella Mozgawa, peering around the room looking slightly dazed.

“North of Shoreditch, right? So Northditch.” Emily Kokal is looking for the chai tea, and meanwhile Jenny Lee Lindberg is busy trying to beat Theresa Wayman to the seat nearest the heater.

Warpaint’s second self-titled album has the small task of following ‘The Fool’ - a blinding debut. The only push to make an equally stunning follow-up, Stella says, comes from within the band, who are selfconfessed perfectionists. “It came from us, the pressure. I don’t feel a tangible threat or external pressure,” she says. “We had time to focus on what we were doing naturally - in that way we’re really lucky that we have a team that believes in us.”

It quickly becomes apparent that Team Warpaint are a tight-knit bunch with a huge deal of trust between them. Chris Cunningham, Jenny’s husband, has been filming the band throughout the whole process, and the result is a stand-alone multimedia film complete with song re-workings and iPhone footage – Jenny summarises the project as “an insight into the band... with really weird quirky shit.”

It was a relaxed, comfortable experience making the film. “Basically he just started shooting us…” adds Jenny, and the others erupt into laughter. “Oh god! That sounds bad. No, he wasn’t really following us round or anything. Whenever he was round at the house he’d take photos, film us writing some songs, he’s sort of been gathering content that way. Having him around is a joy. I mean it’s obviously a joy for me,” she laughs, “but I’m sure for the girls too.” Theresa nods, “he’s family.”

Producer Flood, too, was an ideal match for the band, and waiting to work with him was a main factor in the band taking so much time over ‘Warpaint’. “We had blind faith from the beginning that it was going to work out,” says Stella. “We decided he was the person for the job.” In

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Emily Kokal

“It was exciting to play a show that big after not playing for so long,” says Emily, “it felt good.” The band were nervous, quite understandably, but their two staples, chai tea and a pre-stage sing-along of Billie Holiday helped. Nerves, agrees Emily, help Warpaint give everything when they get on stage. “It prepares you - you get in the zone. It was just so exciting to play that show. We were majorly ready for it, and the outcome was a lot better than other shows where you kind of just roll up all tired. You don’t feel that same sort of edge.”

The response might come as a surprise to Warpaint, but everyone else probably saw it coming. Virtually the moment ‘Love Is To Die’ surfaced, Twitter timelines and Facebook newsfeeds everywhere turned into walls of scrolling misty artwork the hue of oxidized copper, accompanied by endless excitable comments. The atmosphere in Brixton on the night the band made their return was akin to Murray’s Mount at an alternative rock Wimbledon. Warpaint are a band that seem to unite people, and almost everyone is universally losing it over the prospect of their second album.

“It was otherworldly.”

Still, the band quickly go quiet when they hear that people were singing new material at the top of their lungs at the Warpaint’s Brixton Academy show late last year – despite one song in particular having been out just a few days. “Really?!” Emily exclaims. Stella throws out a silencing arm across the sofa. “Did you hear that? They knew ‘Love Is To Die’, right to the back!”

35

c o v e r wa r pa i n t

Jenny Lee Lindberg

“There’s no shortage of ideas.”

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thisisfakediy.co.uk

the meantime Warpaint escaped out into the South Californian desert, and holed up in Joshua Tree to write and demo solidly for a month. In such a concentrated place – the band compare it to a bubble or a dome – they could let loose with creative push-and-shove, and flesh out every idea.

“Flash out,” says Emily, giggling, “flush down.”

When asked if it ever gets difficult deciding which ideas to take forward, with four different forces pulling in different directions, Jenny has one word – yes. “You can intellectually decide what you think you’re going to work on,” she expands, “but then certain things just hit, there’s all this randomness, in a sense. It ends up working based on what day we’re at, or where we’re at.

There’s no shortage of ideas, and it ends up being what hits in those moments.”

One idea that has been explored widely on ‘Warpaint’ is a subtle interweaving of electronics and affected guitar sound. Having supported The xx, and Theresa’s boyfriend James Blake on tour before, electronic music has always been something the band have been interested in, and they’ve sung the praises of Aphex Twin in the past too. Typically, it wasn’t a conscious decision to go in that direction, though.

“It just kind of happened,” agrees Stella. “It was more like a substitution, you know, do we do drums or electronic drums in this part, do we want a cleaner texture? Rather than thinking ‘let’s do an electroclash album’ it was a playful thing, experimenting with all these different sounds. It’s really natural.”

“It’s cool that you, and other people, picked up on that fact we sound a little electronic, even when we’re obviously not electronic,” adds Theresa. “I think that there’s a lot of influence in our music from electronic bands, and it shows itself in our mood.”

In a strange turn, Warpaint created their most electronic music yet in the least synthetic place imaginable. “It was otherworldly,” Emily says of Joshua Tree. “There’s this thing called The Wildlife Corner by our dome,” she laughs, “our little dome. That’s where the animals go past from one place to another or whatever. At night we would go out onto our porch, our little deck, and we would see so many stars. It was kind of like living in nature, which is always so grounding. Natural elements complement music, and vice versa.”

Emily keeps using the word “little” to describe the band in comparison to their sprawling surroundings – the mountains and the endless bizarre Joshua Trees poking up towards the endless blue sky made them feel tiny in comparison. Even Warpaint couldn’t compete with a place like that, surely?

After spending a month in Joshua Tree though, Warpaint seemed to smash through into a new exciting place, and their music became a force of nature in itself.

Towards the end of their time, they found themselves creating something that burst out of their selfcontained dome, sending industrial post-punk flying out of a crack in the double doors, along with fleeing bobcats in its wake. ‘Disco // Very’ it turns out, upset a

37

c o v e r wa r pa i n t

warpaintings

GALLERY CURATOR, Anastasia Tasou (inyourheart verysad.com), CRITIQUES THE BAND’S POST-INTERVIEW war-PAINTING SESSION.

Theresa An interesting portrait. The blank stare is one of bewilderment, reflected back in the viewer’s futile attempts at engagement. Nonetheless the use of vibrant green and pink tones provides a sensorial provocation.

Stella This aesthetic reeks of Russian avant-garde. The rainbow crayon lines offset the prominence of geometrical decisions, and the black abyss is presented as a threatening background of engulfing nothingness.

Jenny An outstanding example of Abstract Expressionism, featuring naïve mark-making and a central use of textural scratching and Sgraffito. The piece emanates a seductive violence that makes it highly compelling.

Emily There’s a stark juxtaposition between the abstract Twombly-esque scribbles of magenta and the strong, decisive mountain forms reminiscent of Muromachi period Japanese painting. A surrealist dreamscape.

38 thisisfakediy.co.uk

few of the neighbours. “The police came over, straight up, to the door,” laughs Stella, “they said this lady was feeling nauseous!”

“I think that’s a very good example of how we were playing differently in the desert,” agrees Emily. “That was in our last week there, and that was the most intense playing we were doing, when we got that complaint. That person definitely would have heard us before, but [before] it was fitting with the atmosphere.

This one was very abrasive.”

“Disco… very,” says Theresa slowly with a giggle, letting the words mush together into an apt descriptor for Warpaint’s most pronounced change of direction yet. The band have always been a dab hand at cloaking melody in rich velvety layers of vocals and stunning textural interplay – but while writing this second album, Warpaint seem to have discovered a talent for creating discord and tension, too.

“We’re chomping to get [the album] out,” says Theresa, “such a long process, isn’t it?” The other girls nod. “Half of it’s a waiting game.”

Still, the band finally have their release date, and next on the agenda, after that, is a summer of festival slots. Jenny gives another of her excellent one word answers – “yes” the band

will be playing festivals.

“Probably the ones you’re going to ask,” she adds with a grin. “Yeah, all the ones you’re thinking about…” says Stella. “We’re playing Laneway Festival, in Australia, I can say that.”

We move off topic, and have a quick drool about the famous milkshakes served in huge metal buckets, straight from the mixer on The Rocks, over Stella’s hometown of Sydney. Emily doesn’t look as content with her chai tea any more. “I want one! We might just stay there and start working in a coffee shop.”

Hypothetical talk of Aussie coffee shop pipe-dreams aside, Warpaint are ultimately focused towards the band’s future, and they’ve already got new material they want to start working on. “As much as we love [this album],” says Theresa, “it’s exciting to think about all the other things we still want to do.

We just got a practice space to work in, so we have recording and demoing capabilities, and it’ll be a lot easier to keep things going.”

It’s clear that Warpaint can’t imagine doing anything else.

“If I wasn’t in Warpaint,” ponders Emily, “I’d be counting sheep.”

Warpaint’s self-titled new album is out now via Rough Trade. DIY

“I can’t decide if mine is finished. Hey, that’s a bit like how we write in Warpaint!” Emily Kokal

“The police came over…”

Stella Mozgawa

Warpaint unleash their inner Gareth Bale.

39

interview broken bells

Broken Bells make scant progress in finding Danger Mouse’s house keys.

40 thisisfakediy.co.uk

Da n g e r M o u s e a n d Ja m e s M e r c e r’ s Broken Bells just got a whole lot bigger, a s t h e y c o l l a b o r at e fo r a s ec o n d t i m e .

Words: Jamie Milton.

B

roken Bells isn’t a project that strictly needed to happen. Neither Brian Burton aka Danger Mouse nor The Shins’ James Mercer were hitting creative dead-ends. They had other routes, plenty of people wanting to work with them. They’d sold countless records, defined themselves as some of the most important musicians of the ‘00s.

That didn’t stop them from seeking out one last thing: a ‘band’ project.

That might sound curious given how James has fronted a fully-fledged band for over a decade, but this was different. When they collaborated for the first time in LA, it wasn’t necessarily the first of many steps, but it was a process that required both of Broken Bells to take a risk and seek out something they hadn’t yet achieved.

Broken

“I didn’t know we’d get on so well,” says Brian, sitting on a plush hotel sofa in East London. Both of them are dragged out and jetlagged, as James downs an energy shot, piping up in the process.

Touring, interviews, the inevitable add-ons of being in a band; these weren’t considered when Broken Bells first started out in 2010.

If It Ain’t

After initial sessions, “each thing came with its own next step,” says Brian. “We didn’t know what was going to happen, it was just a case of ‘Well, why wouldn’t we?’ I just wanted to have somebody to write songs with that I thought would be a really unique voice. I had a feeling James could be more versatile, and very quickly it was obvious that was the case.”

For the Shins frontman, the first Broken Bells record wasn’t just an exercise in writing songs with a different person. It got something out of Mercer, a new confidence that shows itself up in second collaborative LP ‘After The Disco’. “[It] revealed to me that I could stand on my own a bit,” James affirms. “I was a bit co-dependent on my bandmates when we started out.”

He describes the experience he’d grown accustomed to as “not really healthy”, claiming that “we got into such a situation where [the band] sort of knew that, about me. It was just a strange thing. Working with Brian was such a terrific break from that. And then I came back with this new perspective and whole new confidence about myself. It changed everything.”

That was the ‘... Disco’. Following a debut album and the subsequent touring, Broken Bells suddenly became a fully-fledged band, something in the back of James and Brian’s heads, even when they went back to working on other projects. Although they insist that they never email ideas or jot notes down, that it’s all a process that takes place as soon as they’re in the same room, second album ‘After The Disco’ is driven by a desire to improve, to step things up.

For starters, what began as an initial pairing

41

interview broken bells

“It’s personal, it’s very personal.”

Danger Mouse

together eventually developed its own studio relationship. Feedback and complaints were aired out with no fear of the consequences. “It was easier for James to critique me this time round,” admits Brian. “And it was easy for me to take it because I had that much respect for him.”

“I think Brian and I are closer as friends now,” echoes James. “And that somehow probably shows up [in the new album].” If anything’s shifted, Brian says, it’s the way they approach what’s within a song. The nitty gritty details, the underlying themes. “Our lyrical standpoint became more personal,” he affirms. “It was ok if one of us took more of a lead on one song. It was understood. It was like ‘alright, I see where this is going. Go ahead.’”

As it progresses, ‘After The Disco’ shows the pair speaking from the same page, albeit one laced with fear, loneliness.

There’s more to Broken Bells than the mere novelty of collaboration. Here, they’re showing their sensitive side. It’s a lonely world out there, they claim. “It’s personal, it’s very personal for either one of us depending on what lyric or 42 thisisfakediy.co.uk

what song,” says Brian.

Summing up the album’s dark but optimistic endpoint, James refers to “the endless longing that life is filled with, especially if you’re lonely. Even if you’re not, it seems like those periods are intermittent periods of satisfaction.

And then it returns. I always think of our pink orb as that - here it comes again.”

Loneliness can manifest itself constantly, for anyone trying to hit a creative goal. “When you make stuff, you want to prove you’re worthy,” Brian declares, speaking as a guy who made ‘The Grey Album’, guested on Gorillaz records, wrote Number 1 singles with Gnarls Barkley. As if he’s anything left to prove. “You want to prove that you’re somebody, that you did something, that there’s proof that you were here.

So, you want people to appreciate it or acknowledge it in some way. Usually you start out without any of that. And then they do, and then they don’t again.”

If Broken Bells stems from a desire to prove something - and indeed the debut showcased the pair’s ability

to transform and redefine their own boundaries in a dazzling instant - it’s countered with a level-headedness, something that comes with experience.

“You’ve got to be careful what fuel you run off of,” Brian says as James ironically takes another sip of his imported energy shot. “You can’t have a chip on your shoulder. If you’re running off of toxics, it can eat you up. I think there’s still a fair amount of that here and there.”

‘After The Disco’ backs up and defies the debut. Just like everything Danger Mouse and James Mercer have previously put their name to, it circles around expectations instead of meeting them head-on. This is their band and it’s their means of being most vocal.

Brian calls it “his main project”. The continuation of Broken Bells shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody. Both involved are treating it just like any other band, a strike while the iron’s hot project that won’t stop until they’ve reached their creative peak.

Broken Bells’ new album ‘After The Disco’ will be released on 3rd February via Sony. DIY

ROUNDHOUSE RISING DISCOVER NEW MUSIC 20 — 23 FEBRUARY 2014 4 DAYS OF LIVE MUSIC + MUSIC INDUSTRY PANELS, Q&A'S, NETWORKING SESSIONS + CREATIVE PROJECTS, MUSIC TECHNOLOGY MASTERCLASSES + MORE

FEATURING: BLESSA CYNIKAL DEMS FÉ FEAR OF MEN GAPS HONNINGBARNA JOEL BAKER KIRK SPENCER LETHERETTE LITTLE SIMZ

MARIAM THE BELIEVER MIDNIGHT DAVIS MOON GANGS PRIDES PRIMITIVE PARTS SHIFT-STATIC SHOPPING SKINNY GIRL DIET THE BROTHER MOVES ON TIM EXILE WILDEBEATS

www.roundhouse.org.uk/rising 0844 482 8008 @roundhouseldn #rising2014

43

interview Bombay Bicycle Club

wherever THey’ve been electric, acoustic, sample-happy and n o w, B o m b ay B i c y c l e C l u b a r e g o i n g g l o b a l . Words: Aurora M i t c h e l l , P h o t o s : E m m a S wa n n .

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B

ombay Bicycle Club put out three albums in as many years, but their fourth record has taken longer as frontman Jack Steadman travelled through Europe, Japan and India to

Whenever source the sounds that feature on ‘So Long, See You Tomorrow’. Back in his hometown London, it’s a drizzly Monday morning and he’s sat sleepily on a leather armchair in Hackney’s The Hunter. S. The pub has a real 1930s

feel, with decoratively patterned chairs and taxidermy animal heads adorning the walls, its current empty state giving it both a beauty and an eeriness. It’s named after writer Hunter S. Thompson, whose work Steadman

enjoys. “I went through a phase like everyone else. I love his style of writing.

I always read it really fast and it’s like he’s talking to you. I’m the type of person that when you’re at a pub, when people are just talking at you that’s

45

interview Bombay Bicycle Club

great. I would much rather listen than have to express myself.”

For someone so confident with his music, Steadman admits he’s never been as forthright talking about it.

While he says he’s “learning, getting better,” he still doesn’t feel completely comfortable with it. Today, he’s a lot more animated when having a conversation about his love for crate digging and how annoying alarm clocks are. “I feel like I started making music because it was a way of communication and I was always hopeless at doing it the normal way. Then you join a band and realise you have to talk about your music a lot, you’re like ‘You don’t understand! The whole reason I did this was so I don’t have to that!’” It’s fair to say that in the beginning, it didn’t come so easily to Steadman. “People are asking you very provocative questions and your manager’s behind you poking you in the back, saying ‘Say something controversial!’ It’s a disaster you know.

Maybe it’s almost good that we were very quiet when we started. People need these headlines that can be written in capital letters – I never talk in capital letters, I’m the smallest font you can find.”

‘So Long, See You Tomorrow’ has become a statement for Bombay Bicycle Club. “We’ve matured enough to be confident to do a record ourselves. We finally decided that we know best and we know what we’re doing. Here’s the record, this is it.” There’s a real emphasis placed on repetition and loops – both in the music and in the imagery that accompanies it. They created an interactive video for lead single ‘Carry Me’ with Powster – the jittering sample work accompanied by visuals you can move yourself in time to that. “I had been looking at the work of Eadweard Muybridge who pioneered stop motion.

I feel like you can listen to the album as a whole and you can also zoom in on little parts and appreciate subtleties.

We were talking about these things and decided we wanted to explore animation on this record.” Interactive videos are currently a very new and exciting way to visually represent music and Steadman enthuses about the opportunity to make one. “This is innovative, and we feel like we’ve made an innovative record. We wanted to match it with a video.”

There’s a very clear vision with this album, with Steadman deciding to handle the production as well as the writing. “The hardest step was just

46 thisisfakediy.co.uk

taking the step to agree to do it,” he states. “Once that was done, it wasn’t anything new for me because I started writing and producing albums ten years ago. Yesterday actually, I was looking through the internet at stuff I put on a website called Soundclick because it was 2003 and there wasn’t YouTube.

That was just me after school every day. I had this little set up in my room but it made me think, a lot of people are going to be asking ‘Oh this big step that you took producing yourself, how was that?’ And I just want to say, no, I’ve been doing this since I was 13!

“The only trouble is, when you do it yourself, there’s sometimes no one there to put perspective on things but for me that’s what the other three did.

I’d spend twelve hours working on a song and didn’t even know what it

“I never talk in capital letters, I’m the smallest font you can find.”

Jack Steadman

was anymore. That’s when I send it to the guys. You need to find someone in the world that you trust and then always send them your stuff.” Mark Rankin, who’s produced for Florence and the Machine and QOTSA amongst others, was also on board as both mixer and engineer. “We’d spent months talking to him about it and I wanted the guy mixing it to be as passionate as I was. We wanted clarity so it was a great combination of more bedroom producer type stuff and elements of Mark’s big production – I would just take everything and make it all work.”

Something that was important for

Steadman was getting away from the daily routine of his London life. “Even just the other day, I was on one of those new Routemasters and every time the person announced a stop they’d say ‘Watch out for traffic!’ I was like, ‘Shut up! I’m in control of my life, I’m a fully grown man and you can’t just tell me what to do!’ On the tube they’re like, ‘It’s very slippery, please walk slowly.’ I know what I’m doing! Health and safety has gone crazy.” Going away to other countries was a way to get away from the rules and regiments of the city to be able to think outside the box. “You’re not really gaining a fresh perspective when you’re just in your room, when I was in Mumbai I’d have this fantastic listening experience every day. The train doors over there are completely open – the opposite of health and safety, I was just cruising down this railway listening to the song I’d just made. It’s that experience that happens afterwards that’s almost just as important as the initial inspiration.”

One of the experiences that helped to shape the record was temporarily living with a family in Turkey. “There were a lot of surreal moments. Basically after a few days they just adopted me.

Everything that they did, I would have to do with them. But it was great, it was very charming and to have that fresh perspective as well because you’d write a song in London, show it to people and they’d be like ‘I’m really hearing future garage and I’m really feeling the influence of Flying Lotus,’ and I’d play it to the family and they would just dance.

I liked that, it was refreshing.”

Deciding to work on the production himself was partly due to the experience of working with producer Ben Allen on ‘A Different Kind Of Fix’, an experience that he feels didn’t completely live up to what it could have been. “There was so much potential, he’s so talented and we have a lot in common. None of the potential was being realised because I wasn’t communicating well. He’s a producer that really likes to sit down first and talk about music. The way that I make music is I just start. Maybe that’s why there’s a lot of different sounding things on the new record and all of the albums sound different. I don’t want to think about what it’s going to sound like.”

Not being able to communicate well with people he wants to work with is something that frustrates him. “There must be a solution to this. I want to work with other people but my way of

doing it would be instead of having to talk about it, it would be another musician and you’d just start playing together.” Steadman is excited at the prospect of doing some production work for other people. “I can see it from both sides now. If I want to produce a young, up and coming artist who’s quite shy, I’ll completely understand it because that was me ten years ago.”

His approach to production comes from “the most severe laziness you can imagine.”

“I want to do everything quickly – that’s where my dislike for studios came from.

I would get an idea, be so excited and I’d be like, ‘I just had this amazing idea, let’s do it! Wait a second, I’m going to have to set up this microphone, put it a few centimetres back, no a few forward – just tweak it,’ and I’d have fallen asleep probably at that point.” Whilst he finds working with other people to be a challenge, the experience of playing in front of crowds of people and meeting his fans is something he really enjoys. “The thing about meeting people on tour is you share the same interests with them immediately! It’s the frustration of trying to get someone who doesn’t know you to figure you

out, that’s what really depresses me because I’m terrible at that. If I go to a dinner party and I’m sitting across from someone I don’t know, they’re going to leave thinking I’m really weird or rude.

I just haven’t worked out how to say ‘This is me’.”

For Steadman, music makes him “very sentimental”. He listens to music that reminds him of a particular person or place that has some attached meaning.

“I think I’ve stopped trying to discover new music now, all my music that I listen to, it’s stuff that reminds me of being a teenager.” This is something that he hopes reflects on the people that enjoy his music, making that personal connection. “At our gigs, you sometimes see couples and we play a song that’s obviously their song and you can see them look at each other – I love that stuff. I’d rather have that on a smaller size than playing a huge arena with people that have heard ‘Shuffle’.”

The connection is also something that he can see in his own music. “You know Interpol’s first album? ‘Obstacle 1’ goes ‘But she can’t wait, she can’t wait, she can’t wait, she’s bad,’ and I realised I must have been thinking about that when I wrote ‘Carry Me’. ‘You carry, you

carry, you carry, you carry me.’ It’s even the sound of the c. I shouldn’t reveal that, but I heard that Interpol song after writing ‘Carry Me’, and I was like, that’s fantastic. It’s like a puzzle being solved!”

For a band that has the ability to release records at such rapid speed, it feels as if it must be a lot of work to be in Bombay Bicycle Club, but Steadman doesn’t see it that way. “I feel like I’m just always writing songs. I’ve already got three new songs that I’m super excited about. When you’re writing an album, you always think this’ll be the last one, I’m going to do something else, I’m going to start a jazz café. But you realise as soon as you finish you’re hungry again to write music.” The title of their new album may read ‘So Long, See You Tomorrow’, but this is in no way a departure for a band that’s making their most confident and assured music yet.

Bombay Bicycle Club’s new album ‘So Long, See You Tomorrow’ will be released on 3rd February via Island Records. DIY

“We’ve made an innovative record.”

Jack Steadman

Jack’s request for a “pint and BOMBAY MIX” doesn’t go down as well as he’d hoped.

47

interview you me at six

When We Were Young

48 thisisfakediy.co.uk

Their last a l b u m n e a r ly broke them, b u t, d e f y i n g a l l o d d s , Yo u M e At S i x a r e back f rom t h e brink.

Wor d s : Sar ah Jam i es on , Photos: Phil Smithies.

W

ith the band’s last album, 2011’s ‘Sinners Never Sleep’, You Me At Six faced some of their greatest challenges. From headlining stages at Download Festival, to shifting tickets for Wembley Arena, few were easily accomplished, but somehow, they managed to pull them off. It was then that they realised - despite all of their victories - in order to move forward, they had some damage to repair. The band cut themselves free of the business ties that had put so much pressure on them. With their slate wiped clean, a weight was lifted from their shoulders and they found themselves in a much more positive mindset.

“I guess, in our band,” explains frontman Josh Franceschi, “we got to the point where... Well, I can only speak for myself: I didn’t enjoy being in the band, it wasn’t fun. I didn’t enjoy being on tour with these guys and I think because I was being a miserable bastard, they probably didn’t enjoy being on tour with me. All that negativity was built from our label not doing their job and our management at the time not meeting the guidelines. I think when you get pushed so far against a wall, you need that rebirth.

That’s what pre-production and recording [the band’s new album] was for us: solidifying the friendships that we already had.”

“After Reading 2012,” continues guitarist Max Helyer, “it felt like there was a lot of stuff going on internally in the band; we left our old management, we left our record label. We were basically free agents and it became similar to how we started the band. It was

“We got to the point where I didn’t enjoy being in the band, it wasn’t fun.”

Josh Franceschi

really nice to have that freedom. It was just us, we were writing a new album and we thought, let’s just enjoy ourselves. It made us all gel together as a band a lot more. I think that shines out in the songwriting. ‘Cavalier Youth’ is definitely a much more uplifting and positive record, but I think that’s because us five in the band were having a lot more fun. We went into a place for five weeks in total. It was kind of like uni; go live together, go play music whenever you want to, there’s no curfew. We just gelled so much better.”

For their fourth album ‘Cavalier Youth’, the band were able to reestablish and rekindle their friendships with one another.

Joining forces with producer Neil Avron, whose Los Angeles recording studio is based in his home, they pushed aside any negative feelings that surrounded the recording process of their previous album. “I don’t think anyone was focussed on that last record,” offers Franceschi. “Everyone just sort of turned up because they had to. Honestly, the only person who was religiously in the studio every day and the person who really cared the most was Max. I’d literally only rock up if I had to sing.”

“That was the difference with Neil,” confirms Helyer. “Instantly when we met him, we all wanted to record with him; it was

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interview you me at six

“This is the strongest our band has ever been.�

Max Helyer

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With the right support system – or as bassist Matt Barnes puts it, “stick us in a room with a guitar and some nice people and we work so much better” - the band felt able to experiment a little more. “It sounds strange,” Josh explains, “but it’s the first record that we’re putting out where I don’t feel like, as a lyricist, I’m getting stuff off my chest. It’s easier to talk about it without thinking, ‘Oh shit, people are gonna know what I really think about that’. This record has been more liberating. We’ve definitely tried lots of things that we’ve never tried before. I hope when people listen to it, they think, ‘Oh yeah, this is still YMAS, but they’ve definitely tried something different’.”

It’s not lost on them that they’re about to release their fourth album either. While many of the peers they held when they were younger have now dropped away or transformed, they’re happy with their evolution. “This is basically what You Me At Six has always wanted to sound like,” confirms Barnes, “it’s just taken some time. It takes bands this long. I believe that if ‘Take Off Your Colours’, ‘Hold Me Down’ and ‘Sinners Never Sleep’ hadn’t happened, we couldn’t have written this album. They’re there for a reason.” “You Me At Six are a band that have stuck through everything,” adds Helyer, “we’ve not broken up over it. We’ve developed and finally started to work our way up. We worked through the hard times.”

“Lots of other bands have had

photo: Sarah Louise Bennett

a no brainer. Even the first day in pre-production, we all understood each other’s vibe.

I think he shaped us all to be better songwriters. He’s a great songwriter and I think he also made us, in the band, realise how to approach situations and talk to one another about writing music. We didn’t want to let him down. He doesn’t work with artists that are just gonna pay him loads of money. He wants to work with artists that he can say, ‘I wanted to work with them and I’ve done a really good job of it’.”

opportunities where they’ve played in local bands,” Josh continues, “might’ve done the teething process of finding what stuff they want to write, whereas we got really unbelievably lucky and with ‘Take Off Your Colours’ and went from doing nothing to doing 2,000 people in London. We knew that whatever happened next, there was gonna be a chunk of people listening.

Again, we were still trying to figure out how to be songwriters at that time, so it’s almost like ‘Cavalier Youth’ is our first proper, proper album. All of the songs in our back catalogue, we love playing, and are important to us, but I’m not sure if the rest of those records represent what our band is now.”

“Eight years on,” concludes Helyer, “we’re still playing music and we feel like it’s the best we’ve ever been as a band. Not just internally, but musically as well, this is the strongest our band has ever been.”

You Me At Six’s new album ‘Cavalier Youth’ will be released on 27th January via BMG. diy

GOT FRESH START FEVER?

Yo u M e At S i x s c o r e d b i g with their last album, s o t h e s ta k e s a r e h i g h .

The question is, are they feeling the pressure?

Josh Franceschi: Right now, I’d say this band is feeling as fresh and positive as it has for a long time. For example, we’ve never ever been as big as we are right now in America. It’s not as though we’ve had everything come to us on the first three records and now we’re fighting to salvage it.

We’re growing in every way internationally and hopefully that will continue. This is the first time that our label is getting us on the radio across Europe and we’ve never had that before. All these things are like a domino effect. We did 8,000 tickets at Ally Pally within the first weekend [of sale], which is pretty stupid! No one had even heard any new music!

Matt Barnes: The first date is already sold out in Manchester, the first date is sold out in Glasgow and the other two dates are almost sold out as well, it’s all amazing.

Max Helyer: It’s all a very positive sign! I feel like everybody in this camp is now working towards one thing and one thing only, and that’s to make this band the biggest it can be, and gain the recognition it deserves after eight years of hard work.

You Me At S ix head out on tour this spring: MARCH 28 & 29: Glasgow O2 Academy 30 & 31: Manchester O2 Apollo april 02: Plymouth Pavilions 03: Nottingham Capital FM Arena 05: London Alexandra Palace

51

interview Mo gwai

“We’ve always tried not M o g wa i a r e f o r g i n g n e w g r o u n d w i t h t h e i r

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thisisfakediy.co.uk

to repeat ourselves.” l a t e s t a l b u m , ‘ R av e T a p e s ’ .

Wo r d s : Davi d Zam m i t t.

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interview Mo gwai

Mogwai have released one of this year’s first musical blockbusters. ‘Rave Tapes’, the band’s eighth studio album and their first in almost three years, represents a significant evolutionary leap, bringing electronics to the top of the mix and taking their growing penchant for tighter, more succinct statements to its next logical step. It marks the close of a busy twelve months for the Glasgow quintet who dropped another soundtrack (for French horrordrama Les Revenants) and performed their score for Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno’s documentary Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait for the first time, almost seven years after the film first saw the light of day.

You’d never know it from the string of modest understatements that are tossed from the mouths of John Cummings and Stuart Braithwaite but ‘Rave Tapes’ is the group’s strongest effort since a millennial peak that delivered ‘Young Team’, ‘Come On Die

Young’ and ‘Rock Action’. They seem to pour cold water on even the slightest sniff of praise, still functioning much like that Kappa-clad down to earth, tightknit group of friends that emerged in 1996.

They are still clearly grateful to find themselves in the position to do this for a living, and seem to take everything with a generous pinch of salt.

The two of them speak with a candour that doesn’t fit easily alongside their contemporaries and they seem to have grown immune to the background buzz of ‘the industry’, to the point where Cummings is quite happy to discuss the shortcomings of their 2001 high-budget LP, ‘Rock Action’. While Braithwaite is a little more diplomatic (“It was a strange record as we left a lot of good songs off it, but I think a lot of the music in it has stood up quite well.”), his former laments, “I don’t know if it was just the budget that made that an excessive exercise. Everyone was very enthusiastic about the possibilities of spending more

money on recording and more money on marketing. All the standard record label stuff. It was exciting thinking, ‘More people are going to listen to our records because there’s going to be more posters up.”

When asked if anything has changed in terms of the band’s approach over the last two decades, Braithwaite is also quick to distance himself from the notion of grand, pre-determined designs. “I don’t think we’ve ever planned anything we’ve ever done to be honest. It’s been quite organic, truth be told. It happened by accident and then we listened back and that’s how it was.”

Cummings, an even humbler prospect if that’s possible, is yet more circumspect again. “We all just sit at home on our own playing guitars or keyboards or whatever and come up with wee bits and then bring them together and work on them.”

Exploring new sounds on this record,

“My demos are always really shit.”

Stuart Braithwaite

Eat my goal! Mogwai hit the Sunday league after an all-night rave.

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Braithwaite attributes their forays into electronic textures to the acquisition of new hardware. “Barry bought a modular synth and I think that played a big part in these songs. A lot of them were based around him getting his head around the instrument.” It’s clear, however, that that’s not all that’s at play on ‘Rave Tapes’’ notable evolution. “We’ve always tried not to repeat ourselves,” Stuart admits. “I don’t know if we’ve succeeded in that - it’s not a claim I would make - but it’s always been at the back of our mind to not do things always the same. Especially after the first couple of records, when it became almost fashionable to make that quite sprawling guitar delay type of music. We wanted to move away from that.” Or as John puts it, “There has been a definite attempt to choose songs that we haven’t done to death.”

Pressed on whether the process of writing and recording has developed since those early demos, both agree that it’s actually stayed relatively consistent. Stuart laughs. “My demos are always really shit. They’re really sketchy and everyone needs to do a lot to make them presentable. Barry’s ones are a bit more organised. The basic theory’s the same. We get a bit of music and then we play it until it sounds alright, which I enjoy. For this album we definitely had to think on our feet a bit more. It’s good to be under a little bit of pressure. I think it brings out the best in you.”

“We all just sit at home on our own playing guitars.”

John Cummings

When it comes to that inaugural performance of the Zidane soundtrack, Cummings is again keen to downplay its significance. “We thought we’d give it a go. It was a bit weird because it was hard to know if it was meant to be a concert with a film in the background or a film … it’s not the kind of thing that you go and see.” Braithwaite, the band’s default spokesperson over the years, employs a slightly more enthusiastic tone, however. “I think that last year was the first time our schedule would allow it. I’m really glad we did it though as it was a great experience.”

With around 60 dates planned between now and the end of May and their fortieth birthdays growing closer, Mogwai would be forgiven for growing tired of the live circuit and all of its baggage, but it’s clear that they approach it with the same level-headedness that underpins their work in the studio.

“There might be not quite as much fun being had,” Cummings says. “When you’re young it’s very exciting that you’re being allowed to go on a tour. It’s more of a party situation. The more you do it the more you think, ‘Oh no, I’m getting old here.’

But it’s really nice to just be in different places, go to different supermarkets and different restaurants. I definitely appreciate being at home more than I did when I was younger but it is brilliant.” Braithwaite is similarly reasonable. “I think I’m a less patient traveller but I still enjoy playing. We’ve also been most places so many times that we have friends.”

Finally, the conversation is dragged down and into the realm of politics. Track seven of 2011’s ‘Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will’ was the ominously named ‘George Square Thatcher Death Party’. Did any of the band show up to see if their tongue-in-cheek prophecy would be fulfilled on 8th April? Braithwaite sidesteps the issue (“Not personally as I was away but John ably represented us with his presence”), but Cummings admits that his curiosity drew him in. “I went down just to see what was going on. I’d just passed my driving test so I drove down, so I didn’t partake in any partying. There wasn’t much going on.” He pauses. “But it was kind of funny that there was anything going on at all.”

Mogwai’s new album ‘Rave Tapes’ is out now via Rock Action. DIY

55

interview Cheatahs

56 thisisfakediy.co.uk

C h e a t a h s a r e d o i n g t h i n g s t h e i r o w n way. W o r d s : E m m a S wa n n .

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interview Cheatahs

I

n two consecutive interviews recently, Nathan Hewitt recalls, French journalists have asked him whether his band are named for Tarzan’s chimpanzee friend, Cheeta. It’s not the only puzzle he and Cheatahs co-conspirator James Wignall are trying to work out. There’s comparisons to Teenage Fanclub - “we get that quite a lot,” explains James, “and I love that band, but I’d never call us anything like it”; their early bracketing as ‘lo-fi’ - “we didn’t really understand that, we recorded it to the best of our abilities and that’s what came out!”; and yes, the S-word. “The term shoegaze always makes me laugh,” the guitarist says, “because I don’t know what shoegaze is, and I’m pretty sure that most others using it can’t define it either.” It’s not, as he and Nathan agree, what Cheatahs are, at least. “We’re trying to convince people we’re not shoegaze, but ambient punk. There’s a punk ethos at the core of what we do. Listen to something like ‘Kenworth’, it’s pretty menacing. We’re a punk band really, just in our own way.”

Cheatahs have had a pretty busy 18 months or so. Releasing an EP that Nathan describes as “just for friends” lead to signing with Wichita, which in turn saw the London-based quartet (Nathan is Canadian, bassist Dean Reid American, and drummer Marc Raue German, leaving James the sole Brit) on tour with The Cribs in the UK, METZ across Europe and on that Wavves-FIDLAR double-header Stateside.

“It was pretty nuts,” laughs James. “I spent a couple of days in bed recovering when I got back!” Between all the touring, they also found time to write and record this self-titled debut.

“It has felt pretty non-stop,” Nathan admits.

Demos were laid out “in a little cottage in Devon,” the band decamping to the countryside to focus. “It was nice to go away and rest for a bit,” James explains. “We demoed for five days,” continues Nathan, “and wrote a bunch of stuff, then went and got mixes done. Then in January and February we went in to Dropout Studios in Camberwell to track loads of the drums and guitar stuff, so it felt like we had all the songs down to a point.

Then we went on tour and played them for six weeks.” He laughs. “Then we came back and changed most of them!”

A self-imposed deadline of the end of summer meant they then spent most of the hottest part of the year inside. “Literally every day,” Nathan says. “Going crazy. It was tough.” After they “explored every avenue on each song a million times,” in Nathan’s words, they handed it in to label Wichita. A scary moment? “Not really, we’d given them a few versions of it anyway, there wasn’t a ‘Hallelujah!’ moment,” says James. “They’d already told us it was good, but we maybe weren’t happy with it at that moment.” “Yeah,” Nathan agrees. “I mean we handed it in unmixed first, and they were

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like ‘Great, let’s go for February’, and we were like, ‘Does that mean we have more time on it, because we could do more to it’, and they were like ‘Yeah, I guess so’.”

James continues. “At every point along the line they were like ‘Yep, that’s fantastic’, and we’d go ‘Ahhh, I dunno, we’re going to write a few more songs’. So there’s a bit of a running joke with them at the end, going ‘Is this definitely the album?’” “We are proud,” he adds. “We just wanted something that we were all completely happy with. I mean, there are always things where we could’ve done it differently, but that’s just the creative process.

Like, live, we’ll play songs slightly differently...”

The record was produced, like the EPs, by bassist Dean, partly due to financial constraints, but also to make sure it was the album they wanted to release. “We haven’t changed anything,” Nathan points out, when comparing the sound of those early releases, “Dean just got better! And the luxury of time was great, chilling back and listening.”

“We spent ages getting it mastered, too,” James explains. “I love the way it sounds. It’s definitely still pretty DIY compared to many other albums I hear. We wanted it to sound raw. I mean, look at Pixies – it’s definitely still more Albini than Gil Norton. We’re still at that stage. The next album, who knows?”

They’re “thinking about” recruiting outside help for album two. “It’s great,” James says of Dean’s recording skills, “but there’s a lot of pressure on him.” Nathan continues. “I think if he was here, he’d say maybe one thing we should do is try and get someone else to mix. We wanted to do that this time but we didn’t find the right person, and we didn’t have enough money. We just did this little live session with our friend Jimmy last weekend, and he did all the studio work and it was so much fun. Dean was in the room with us, he wasn’t going back constantly to check stuff. It was a lot of fun, and I think it’d be a lot more fun for everybody to do it that way. It’s also nice to have somebody else whose opinion we trust, who isn’t in the band.”

“And yes,” James says, “we were very aware of, very conscious of doing things right first time.

You get bands who get to a certain point, go ‘Yeah, now we can get a producer’, and then there’s just a massive conflict there.” “And then it gets put out,” Nathan goes on, “and they’re like ‘That’s not the record we want to make!’ and they’re bummed out. No, you want it to be exactly, or as close as possible to, how you want it to sound.” “Whoever we work with in the future,” James muses, “it’ll still be a collaborative relationship.”

Cheatahs’ self-titled debut album will be released on 10th February via Wichita Recordings. DIY

“We’re trying to convince people we’re not shoegaze.”

James Wignall

59

interview wild beasts

Uncaging the

Beast For their fourth album, Wild B e a s t s h av e e m b r ac e d t h e i r w i l d side for the first time since an opinion-split ting debut that a l m o s t m a d e t h e m pac k i t a l l i n .

W o r d s : J a m i e M i lt o n , p h o t o s : e m m a s wa n n

W

ild Beasts are a band who could, if they were the types to settle, claim to have everything they ever wanted. Acclaim from all sides, a record deal that gives them as much time as they need, fans who wait on their every word. Then again, praise doesn’t tend to translate. It rarely spurs bands on to a next step, a higher calling. It took an outside view and a big look back on a divisive debut record to get Wild Beasts going again.

Third album ‘Smother’ is a wash of warm synths. The opposite, then, of first work ‘Limbo, Panto’, which still stands out as a wicked a wicked arrival, a divisive record that offended as many as it impressed. “I don’t think there are more bizarre and audacious debut records than ours,” claims champion of falsetto Hayden Thorpe, speaking almost six years on from its release. Back then Hayden purred and growled behind a microphone.

He was a possessed terror, a night lurker emphasising the wild side of his band’s name.

For all of ‘Smother’’s soothing, smart exactitude, something felt amiss. Wild Beasts had, ironically, shunned their wild,

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beast-like brilliance. It hadn’t bypassed them or fallen under the collective radar. They’d intentionally removed all aspects of ‘Limbo, Panto’ because it was something, in their words, that they were “running from.”

Now it’s back. Rearing its head, showing its teeth, the “gang mentality” of their debut returns. On ‘Present Tense’, the spitting growl doesn’t return, but the thinking behind this venom most definitely does. Wild Beasts have decided to embrace their divisive side.

“We had to be able to shock and surprise and wrongfoot still, because if it didn’t do that, ultimately what’s the point?”

With risk comes the inevitable doubt. “More than ever,” Hayden says, “I personally went through a stage thinking people were going to fucking hate this.” At first differences between the new album and those previous are pretty subtle. Thorpe’s joined by Tom Fleming in vocal duties, falsetto clashing with boldly bellowed statements. It’s still loved up, a record obsessed with sex. The same people are behind it - their perspective has changed, is all. There might even be - whisper it - signs that the band have something to say politically.

“We had to be able to shock and surprise.”

Tom Fleming

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interview wild beasts

“We sit down to make an artistic statement and it ends up being a pop record.�

Tom Fleming

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Tom dismisses the idea that the record’s about a “revolution”, saying “there’s a lot of gum flapping talk about it in the press.” But the newly sharpened bite has to have come from somewhere. “We’re talking about the chaos that will come if things continue,” continues Tom. He doesn’t strictly specify what these “things” are, but as the record progresses the themes begin to peer out.

‘Daughter’ talks about younger generations “sharpening their blades”, while closer ‘Palace’ basks in a new accumulation of wealth. “This is a palace and that was a squat,” sings Hayden, in a seemingly happy but completely twisted end to the record. It’s not 100% clear what the message is - “we sit down to make an artistic statement and it ends up being a pop record,” admits Tom - but there’s a sting to the tail, and it’s exciting.

Opener ‘Wanderlust’ doesn’t waste a second in planting its first punch.

The synths snarl, the scene is set. For the first time on a record, Wild Beasts swear, which is something. Hayden plants an intentional curveball by repeating the mantra, “Don’t confuse me with someone who gives a fuck.” A lot of their lyrics stand out in the first place, but this one feels like a statement.

“Someone actually said that line to Tom once,” says Hayden. “I remember it being the most obnoxious, horrible thing I’d ever heard anyone say.

And so I asked myself, ‘What’s the most crushing thing I could say at this point?’ It slotted in quite nicely.”

As it stands, Wild Beasts

continue to declare themselves a pop group.

Political or otherwise, a song like ‘A Simple Beautiful Truth’ is as clear, precise and melodic as they come. In the studio, producer Leo Abrahams was making “emotion graphs” for each song, pin-pointing when things should rise, calm down, stir into motion. It sounds ridiculous, but then “how else do you talk about it?” Tom claims. Working off instincts, the four of them claim to feel more of a unit than ever. But that didn’t stop the actual recording of ‘Present Tense’ from skewing their intentions. “It’s a factory element. You put in these raw materials and something completely different comes out the other side,” jokes Hayden.

One thing on the band’s mind was a desire to avoid a cultural zeitgeist.

Nothing could have been less cool than ‘Limbo, Panto’, when it first came out. Acclaim is a doubleedged sword, they admit. Hayden puts it in perspective by saying: “This was the danger and this was the thrill, because sometimes we’re only one hipster handclap away from it being very today.”

Citing Frank Ocean as an influence - “He changed things in a sense. It’s a fragmented record” - they claim that there’s a new “acceptance of mess”, stating that “things don’t have to be so concise.”

They even dive into ‘vaporwave’, bigging up Oneohtrix Point Never as an influence. Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland, too.

How any of this fits into ‘Present Tense’ is anyone’s guess, but Hayden asserts that “you don’t want to be chasing the gravy train” when writing a record. “I couldn’t think of anything worse than a Wild Beasts record that was trying to

slot into what’s current.”

The album still very much belongs to them.

Anyone who’s been raised on their records will have got accustomed to the sheer audacity of what they do, but to a newcomer it’ll come off like a strange, challenging pop record. “It could be very ridiculous if it’s not done right,” Hayden says, essentially summing up the risk of any Wild Beasts song. “I think we could have made a far more abstract and leftfield longplayer than we have but I think the adventure and the distilling what we do into an attempt at pop songs felt more adventurous and dangerous.”

The wild side comes storming back in. Any temptation to settle has been well and truly shunned. Tom admits that “you can’t pretend to be 21 anymore but at the same time you can’t be 40,” referring to the lure of becoming a more ‘mature’ band, but Wild Beasts aren’t growing up anytime soon. They’re mere cubs, even if they’ve just sped past their tenth year together as a pack.

“Hopefully when you look back on a - horrible word - career, you see the thought process,” says Tom. “Everything we do is both a learning process and also a reaction to what we’ve done before.”

If ‘Smother’ and second album ‘Two Dancers’ swept aside any notion of extreme, ‘Present Tense’ sees them returning to their daring roots with fire in their bellies, justifying why they still exist and remain one of the UK’s most vital bands.

Wild Beasts’ new album ‘Present Tense’ will be released on 24th February via Domino.

DIY

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Ag a inst Me ! / Angel O lsen / Art h ur B e a tri c e / Augustines / be c k / B ig U p s / bo m b a y bi c y c le du m girls / e a st indi a y out h / f a n f a rlo / g a rdens + V I ll a / grou p lo v e / h a lls / i bre a k p a r k / m ogw a i / p a inted p a l m s / p a l m a v iolets / p a tterns / p e a c e / p egg y sue / se p te m ber 64 thisisfakediy.co.uk

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‘Modern Guilt’ (“It hurt to sing”). In addition, he was between record deals.

Morning Phase

‘Morning Phase’ is, as Beck himself has previously suggested, very similar to 2002’s ‘Sea Change’ in style.

In short, it’s acoustic Beck.

And it’s every bit as stunning as that suggests. Luscious string arrangements weave their way between plucked guitar rhythms while countrytinged instrumentation scatters itself around, and his contemplative and so gorgeously crisp vocals sit on top.

BECK (Capitol)

The lack of a new Beck album had become somewhat of a running joke. Since the release of ‘Modern Guilt’ in 2008, the idiosyncratic singersongwriter (and all-round genius) had managed to produce albums for Thurston Moore, Stephen Malkmus and Charlotte Gainsbourg, co-write with Jamie Lidell, and Bat For Lashes, add to the Third Man Records ‘Blue’ series with the brilliant ‘I Just Started Hating Some People Today’, and help bring to life the world’s greatest ever fictional band, Sex-Bob-Omb. And this is just an abridged list.

Then came ‘Song Reader’, an album that’s equally not really an album and yet more like an album than any 12” or CD or collection of zeros and ones for a good few decades.

It was almost – almost – as if he were trolling.

Of course the reasons for the gap are more mundane than this, in an interview with Rolling Stone, it was revealed he’d been suffering from a back injury, one which hampered the recording of

That the record was made alongside his long-time touring band is telling, too – there’s a wonderful familiarity to the sounds while still sounding fresh and, with resigned asides such as “I’m so tired of being alone” (‘Blue Moon’), and ‘Morning’’s refrain “I want you to show the way it used to be”, every chance the melancholy running throughout is a result of Beck’s long recuperation.

That there’s nothing particularly ‘new’ about ‘Morning Phase’ is by no means a fault: this is acoustic Beck, and it’s acoustic Beck at his most sublime. (Emma Swann)

c lub / breton / bro k en bells / c a nterbur y / c h e a t a h s / c eo / c rosses / c y m b a ls / du m h orses / j a m es v in c ent m c m orrow / k a t y b / k eel h er / m a ri j u a n a de a t h squ a ds / m a x i m o girls / te m p les / tou c h É a m or É / v ul k a no / w a r p a int / y ou m e a t si x / y oung f a t h ers 65 65

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Katy B

Little Red (Columbia)

What Katy Did Next.

Positively glowing: Katy B

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Spreading Rumours (Atlantic)

Cursing The Sea (Fortuna POP!)

Grouplove At least they’re having fun.

Being in Grouplove must be a whole heap of fun. There’s not a moment during this second full-length, ‘Spreading Rumours’, that doesn’t ooze enthusiasm. Yet there’s not a lot to be so gleeful about. References that would make brilliant sense in youthful pop-punk sound stilted, and the guitar sounds borrowed so faithfully from Pixies jar when paired with synth noises that almost parody 2013’s radio-friendly output. And then there’s the excruciating ‘Bitin’ The Bullet’. In short, not a lot on ‘Spreading Rumours’ makes sense. It doesn’t match, even in its apparent desperate attempt to sound like the bargain bin of an Urban Outfitters. (Emma Swann) Listen: ‘Sit Still‘

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‘Little Red’ is both an extension of and also natural progression from Katy B’s 2011 debut, a record that felt authentic, not just because her prior guest vocalist credentials on the club scene meant its dabbling in UK garage, funky, dubstep and R&B came off as the real deal, but because it was written from her life as she lived it.

This time around, she delivers more of the same: tracks for the club with a sense of restraint and melancholy, as well as a poppy accessibility. The key difference is the action has mainly moved from the outer world of the dancefloor to the inner world of emotions. This is heard most clearly on ‘Crying For No Reason’, a heartwrenching electro-ballad, inspired by a friend’s breakdown, that goes for the jugular and finds it. If ‘On A Mission’ was a statement of youthful intent, then ‘Little Red’ is What Katy Did Next – growing in depth as an artist without ever sacrificing style. (Shefali Srivastava) LISTEN: ‘I Like You’

September Girls Doomy, stormy stuff.

September Girls share a lot with Veronica Falls. Both the opening title track of ‘Cursing The Sea’ and its follow-up ‘Another Love Song’ strongly echo those parts of the Londoners’ debut that caused them to be dubbed “goth”.

This is doomy, stormy stuff, topped off by some deliciously angular guitar parts. There are also clear nods to Joy Division (the guitars of ‘Heartbeats’ almost identical to ‘She’s Lost Control’) and The Ramones (the guitars on ‘Money’, drums of ‘Someone New’). But there’s a lot of fuzz. A whole lot. And at times the thick smothering of reverb-heavy feedback makes the record sound like it might’ve been recorded down a well.

Which is a shame – there are probably a few more damn fine tunes underneath. (Emma Swann) LISTEN: ‘Someone New’

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CROSSES

Crosses (Sumerian)

‘Crosses’ (or †††, if you will) doesn’t hit the mark quite as well as it could for more reasons than occasionally straying into familiar territory. Ten of the album’s fifteen tracks are from the previous EPs, meaning that ‘Crosses’ mostly comprises of recycled material. From the deceptively cheery ‘The Epilogue’ to the submerged beauty found on closer ‘Death Bell’, the muffled expulsions of sound are simply captivating. This is a debut full of intermittent moments of beauty that are comfortably, but possibly too recognisable. (Joe Price) LISTEN: ‘Death Bell’

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East India Youth Total Strife Forever (Stolen)

Innovative, cerebral and totally accessible.

‘Total Strife Forever’ flows brilliantly, darting between epic apocalyptic soundscapes, delicately melodic electronic pop songs and to driftingly ambient sketches while sounding entirely at one with itself. East India Youth seems like a man with more ideas than is fair, reasonable or indeed safe, but they all blend together with a coherence bordering on cosmic. It is a glorious thing.

Innovative, cerebral and yet totally accessible, ‘Total Strife Forever’ is an incredibly impressive record. (Tim Lee) LISTEN: ‘Hinterland’

q&A

william doyle tells laura eley the stories behind ‘total strife forever’.

It is a Foals reference, isn’t it?

By the time it came round to finishing the first mix, I didn’t really know what else to call it – it totally encapsulates the mood, the atmosphere, the feeling of the album.

The Foals album is their optimistic view of everything and I wanted to project the complete opposite idea really. It is quite a dark record, but I feel like things have changed quite a lot now and I feel a lot more positive - I’m going to make a great party record next.

What inspired the sounds on the record?

Everything going on in my life at the time really contributed.

It’s quite dour and noisy and a bit aggressive at points but it all fits in. At the time I felt like I was under immense pressure and stress and there was a lot of things happening in my life that weren’t particularly positive, so as the pressure built it sort of forced me into making music to express myself in a certain way. There’s some light at the end of the tunnel on some of the tracks though, where I was trying to get into a more positive headspace - it’s basically just my whole journey. DIY

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I Break Horses

Chiaroscuro (Bella Union)

Things have got a little more 80s in the world of I Break Horses: there’s less reverb and shoegaze; the songs you find on ‘Chiaroscuro’ are a little more shimmering and dancey. But there’s also the same effects-heavy, hazy textured soundscapes that made the first album so captivating, and Maria’s voice is still as beguiling. It flits between highs and lows, beauty and desperation, moments of glistening synth-pop and moments of somber introspection. And, most importantly, the songs remain heartbreakingly, hauntingly beautiful. (Danny Wright) LISTEN: ‘Faith’

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Warpaint

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Kaleidoscopic and zooming for the stratosphere.

Cheatahs (Wichita)

Warpaint (Rough Trade)

In the space of two records, Emily Kokal, Theresa Wayman, Jenny Lee Lindberg and Stella Mozgawa have established themselves as one of the most vital bands to emerge out of America this side of the Millennium. And while ‘The Fool’ was wonderfully muddied and submerged, ‘Warpaint’ zooms for the stratosphere. ‘Love Is To Die’ is absolutely saturated with texture, but also seems to have infinite breathing space. Their subtle handle of tone is magical too. One minute ‘Teese’ is quietly chiming and intoxicating, and then ‘Disco // Very’ suddenly drags copper pipes across rough concrete floors, and welds rhythm and unsettling sound together into a gargantuan, clanking industrial monster. Warpaint’s creation might feed on the blood of moody, swampy post-punk, but it ingests it and mangles it all into something self-sufficient, and unmistakable. Also remarkable are the endless nuances they capture – listening to ‘Warpaint’ is like looking down a kaleidoscope of swirling masses that clash and morph together effortlessly. Multitudes and wispy plumes in a thousand hues ooze out of every shape, simultaneously angsty, ethereal, shadowy, heavenly, dreamy, nightmarish, and unmistakably belonging to Warpaint. Get taken away by the current, and float inside every melody. (El Hunt) LISTEN: ‘Disco // Very’

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Cheatahs

Derivative, Cheatahs’ debut may well be. But, it’s also really well done. ‘Geographic’ has lovely fluidity to it, reminiscent of the better parts of DIIV’s ‘Oshin’. The way the deliciously wafty verses of ‘Mission Creep’ bleed into the harder edges of the chorus is great and it’s easy to see why they’d want to send ‘The Swan’ back around for another go. Just, after a while, there doesn’t seem to be a destination in mind. (Tim Lee) LISTEN: ‘The Swan’

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MOGWAI Rave Tapes

(Rock Action)

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Cymbals

The Age Of Fracture (Tough Love)

Debut ‘Unlearn’ showed promise but ‘Age of Fracture’ is that realised and then some. It’s bigger, more electronic and packed full of ideas, Cymbals’ sound evolving from slightly scrappy punk-funk into sleeker, disco-infused house and synth-pop. It shows growth without that boring sense of ‘maturity’. So it’s disco tinged at times, it’s also bright and sophisticated. It’s XTC, it’s Talking Heads, it’s The Cure, it’s early New Order. Defined by a sense of movement and grabbing opportunities, this is an album bursting with kinetic energy, full of life and big choruses. (Danny Wright) LISTEN: ‘Like An Animal’

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Maximo Park

Too Much Information (Daylighting)

It’s not a question of ‘Too Much Information’, as much as the manner by which it is delivered. There are a lot of words in this, Maximo Park’s fifth album, and yes, they have always been a literate band, but here it often seems forced. As if they’d spent much of time in the studio going: “Lads.

We’re Maximo Park. We’re clever, and that. Shall we prove it by regurgitating this dictionary”. It’s a shame when you realise that a lot of it is actually pretty likeable - ‘Give, Get, Take’ is as sprightly and spring heeled a track as they’ve made for years. (Tim Lee) LISTEN: ‘Leave This Island’

A celebration of what’s gone before.

That Mogwai are now elder statesmen of post-rock seems to be a position that suits them well: ‘Rave Tapes’ may not see them moving far from their widescreen template but it’s an assured record that sees them draw from across their rich palette of textures.

‘Simon Ferocious’’ creeping night time synths are magnificently noirish, and ‘Deesh’ seethes with menace as splashing, woozy synth line blooms into something bigger and takes over in a way that only Mogwai can do. ‘Rave Tapes’ is more than a side step. It won’t change your mind about Mogwai but it underlines how they are one of the most singular, interesting and disarming bands out there. (Danny Wright) LISTEN: ‘Blues Hour‘

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Against Me!

Transgender Dysphoria Blues (Xtra Mile)

Punk by chance rather than design.

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War Room Stores

Live Wild Die Free

Breton

Vulkano

(Believe)

(Vulkano Music)

Sure, it’s true that overall ‘War Room Stories’ is perhaps not as immediate as Breton’s debut, but there are still some absolute charmers here; ‘Legs and Arms’, for example, has a mega chorus that’s catchier than a ball made of superglue. Plus, with a few listens, fantastic subtleties leap out - the Metronomy synths on ‘Got Well Soon’, the glockenspiel of ‘Search Party’ – there’s far more ingredients in the mix, which is a great thing. (Kyle MacNeill) LISTEN: ‘S Four’

Throughout ‘Live Wild Die Free’ it’s clear that Vulkano are a band premised on a sense of reckless thrill and excitement. Building on experience the Swedish duo accrued in their former incarnation as members of Those Dancing Days, this debut is largely a collection of proficient post-punk songs with clear pop ambitions. Driving riffs?

Check. Furious drumming?

Check. Bonkers lyrics?

Check. And shouty chorus?

Check! (Tom Morris) LISTEN: ‘Too Young To Die’

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It will come as a surprise to very few that the primary lyrical concern here is singer Laura Jane Grace’s recent decision to live as a woman, and the stripped-back instrumentation on offer here lets the soul baring take centre stage. The lush production that characterised 2010’s ‘White Crosses’ is eschewed in favour of more bite, more space in the mix and an uncluttered atmosphere for the introspection to take shape in. Laura Jane Grace has cemented herself as one of the most vital, intriguing, engaging voices in modern punk rock. (Tom Doyle) LISTEN: ‘Black Me Out’

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Painted Palms Forever (Polyvinyl)

Painted Palms’ deep sea dive of a debut gradually evolves into a rich and colourful source of escape, like a coral reef excavation with the occasionally grizzly-toothed white shark thrown in for good measure.

‘Forever’ basks in the pure-pop sweetness of The Beach Boys while glittering each song with the sonic shift production style of Panda Bear. There’s a dreamy lull by way of The Shins in ‘Soft Hammer’, a Haçienda-diverting Bez-endorsed turn in ‘Hypnotic’ and the kind of lush instrumentation and melodic turns in ‘Angels’ that Grizzly Bear have fast become accustomed to. These stepping stones are linked together in a patchwork style for the duo’s first work. ‘Forever’ doesn’t quite discover its own identity, but it lays out its cards in resplendent fashion. (Jamie Milton) LISTEN: ‘Not Really There’

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Temples Sun Structures (Heavenly)

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Angel Olsen Burn Your Fire For No Witness (Jagjaguwar)

Something’s stirred in Angel Olsen since the release of 2012’s ‘Half Way Home’ LP. What was previously a content, albeit melancholylaced drift has since been ruthlessly stamped on. With a rotten tooth to spit out and a desire to stay below the three minute mark with each of her songs, ‘Burn Your Fire For No Witness’ is a record about wanting to be adored, if only for a split second. Previously Olsen could be declared to lack an agenda behind her folk-laced lull. Not this time. Always vivid and often affecting, ‘Burn Your Fire For No Witness’ deals with love and loss in a way that constantly resonates. (Jamie Milton) LISTEN: ‘Lights Out’

A sustained grandeur of their vision, lyrics and musicality.

‘Sun Structures’’ tapestry drifts effortlessly before the ears, presenting a sustained grandeur of Temples’ vision, lyrics and musicality. ‘Test of Time’ finds

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MAD SOUNDS

Fanfarlo

Let’s Go Extinct (New World)

‘Let’s Go Extinct’ should come with a warning: IT CONTAINS SAXOPHONE. It’s also hard to see what Fanfarlo are aiming for on their third long-player.

Yes, it’s meticulously put together, the instrumentation is undoubtedly lush, but the a cappella intro to ‘Painting With Life’ sounds less deep and more creep and the demented hotel lobby sounds of ‘Grey And Gold’ are less melancholic and more depressing. (Emma Swann) LISTEN: ‘Landlocked’

Bagshaw pushing his vocals to a higher boundary than any other track they have recorded to date, whilst ‘Fragment’s Light’ closes the album with the undertones of psych-folk heard in some of the other tracks and perhaps a precursor to their future sound. Whilst ‘Sun Structures’ blends together their debt to British folk and rock, Temples do it with a consistent and wonted stride. Like the heady themes on ‘Sun Structures’, Temples appear to be a group still ascending to a brighter sphere. It’s a good call. (Sean Stanley) Listen: ‘The Guesser’, ‘Colours To Life’

Ja m es Bag s h aw re v e a l s th e wei rd a n d wo n d erfu l r ec o r d s t h at i n s pi r e d ‘S u n S t r u c t u r e s’

the Zombies Odessey and oracle

“Just a really good record, it’s got some odd tracks and some very memorable melodies that only Colin Blunstone would come up with.”

The Moody Blues Days of future passed

“It’s beautifully recorded, beautifully played and beautifully arranged. Very inspiring to listen to. It’s a classic.”

David Bowie hunky dory

“There’s a very English songwriting mentality on this record, where it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Just a brilliant album that we all love completely.“

Psychedelia + big hair = A great Temples record.

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Bombay Bicycle Club So Long, See You Tomorrow (Universal)

Not so much a progression, as a realisation.

‘So Long, See You Tomorrow’ captures Bombay Bicycle Club’s most experimental moments, and expands them out into an absolutely massive, anthemic album of Bollywood samples (yes, really), focused lyricism, and a heady, propulsive drive with a sensibility nearing on hip-hop.

There’s tender pockets too in the beautiful ending to ‘Whenever, Whenever’, laced with echoing choruses before stripping right back to one plunking piano riff.

There’s that big old cliche of ‘finding yourself’, and indeed, Steadman travelled India, Turkey, rural Holland, and Japan during the process to hit on musical inspiration. Leave the gap yah jibes at home though, because as much as it should sound like a lead balloon crashing into a table of awkward small-talk, this is the band’s most cohesive record yet.

And for Steadman, it’s not so much a progression, but a realisation of the songs that he always wanted to write. Bold, experimental, and an absolute delight, Bombay Bicycle Club cycle the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. (El Hunt) LISTEN: ‘Luna’

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Canterbury Dark Days (Hassle)

There’s some solid song writing on ‘Dark Days’, but it does feel a little lacking in punch on occasion. The band seem content to tread around the edges of great tunes without really stamping their own character on proceedings. It’s also notable that while Canterbury have ostensibly been positioned with the likes of You Me At Six, Mallory Knox, Deaf Havana et al in the ‘New Wave Of British Rock’ bracket, ‘Dark Days’ lacks the ‘punk’ cut ‘n thrust of almost all of those bands. A head nodder rather than a head banger. (Tom Doyle) LISTEN: ‘All My Life’

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Halls

Love To Give (No Pain In Pop)

‘Love To Give’ mines from the same tender and striking well as Halls’ debut ‘Ark’, but there’s more life to it; colours burst through at unexpected times and there’s a sense of adventure and pushing things forward. The twinkling ‘Aria’ with its glacial splashes of piano is almost funky. ‘Forelsket’ is like a storm slowly building and coming to life. ‘Love to Give’ feels like the natural elements working together. No longer funereal marches, this is Sam Howard creating something that feels truly and vitally alive. (Danny Wright) LISTEN: ‘Body Eraser / Avalanche’

FILM

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Gardens + Villa Dunes (Jagjaguwar)

To say that Gardens + Villa sound very now on ‘Dunes’ would be to mean they’ve perfected that balance of using late 70s / early 80s synth sounds, a bunch of instruments hitherto relegated to gathering dust on primary school classroom shelves, and for the most part not sounding all that old. It’s espadrilles without socks, it’s chinos, it’s shoulder pads – on ‘Colony Glen’ it’s the theme to Knight Rider. But while these are all nice enough sounds pulled off to varying levels of success – there’s not a lot being said. (Emma Swann) LISTEN: ‘Echosassy’

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Augustines

Augustines (Caroline)

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Broken Bells

After The Disco (Columbia)

‘After The Disco’ opens with the vintage synth filled ‘Perfect World’ and the note-perfect falsetto stylings of the title track. These give a flavour of what to expect across the new album from Broken Bells - but there’s plenty more to discover. ‘Control’ is simple, but when the brass comes in midway it suddenly all makes sense. ‘Lazy Wonderland’ is more guitar led, embellished by hand claps and a dreamy backing. This shot of tranquility is swiftly followed by the funky groove of ‘Medicine’, and ‘No Matter What You’re Told’ is an impeccably-produced number with some clever almost distorted effects. As creativity and ideas are left to flourish, it’s another triumph for the pairing who can seemingly do no wrong. (Greg Inglis) LISTEN: ‘No Matter What You’re Told’

With their debut, We Are Augustines lay their beaten, bloodied hearts on the line.

Now, having shed their former guise, the newly-titled Augustines prove that they’ve also shed that old weight from their shoulders. Granted, thanks to Billy McCarthy’s roughened vocals and ever-present scars, their new songs still bristle with emotion and intensity. Yet, they somehow bear that sense of relief, that sense of elation, but most importantly, that sense of hope that could only ever be achieved when coming to the end of a very dark tunnel. (Sarah Jamieson) LISTEN: ‘Cruel City’

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Arthur Beatrice Working Out (Polydor)

Eloquent and positively fresh.

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Wonderland

Eighteen Hours Of Static

CEO

(Jagjaguwar)

Preferring to glisten rather than to outright shine, CEO’s ‘Wonderland’ takes elements from Balearic beat, new-age classical and even an occasional smidge of happy hardcore. It’s filled with intensely atmospheric whirrs and clicks. It’s got every right to be an utter train wreck.

Fortunately, Eric Berglund manages to keep all these disparate elements under control, but only just. The sense that it’s all about to cave in on itself at any moment is what makes ‘Wonderland’ so exciting. (Joe Price) LISTEN: ‘Harikiri’

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The true strength of ‘Working Out’ is how defined a debut album it is. All of Arthur Beatrice’s elements come together to build a better whole, despite how disparate some of them are. The slight juxtaposition between the vocals and the music works wonders, feeding a dynamic that’s the very picture of untouched beauty. The climbing yet ever-sosoftly whispering synths, the luscious guitars - it’s nothing we haven’t heard before, but it’s delightfully packaged. It’s clear statement of where they’re at, and an exciting hint at where they’re headed.(Joe Price) LISTEN: ‘Grand Union’

Big Ups (Tough Love)

“Do you feel anything?” asks Big Ups’ vocalist Joe Garralaga during the ferocious ‘Little Kid’. And the answer’s yes – ‘Eighteen Hours of Static’ is all brilliantly scrappy punk riffs, vocals which veer from a Black Francis shriek to Dylan Baldi’s frustrated fury, and guitars hopping between doom, grunge and back again. And yet it’s not noise for noise’s sake – it’s melodic.

It’s quiet at points, frantic at others. It’s dark, it’s messy, it’s glorious. (Emma Swann) LISTEN: ‘Little Kid’

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Patterns

Waking Lines (Melodic)

It’s been a long time since the internet hype machine went crazy for Manchester’s Patterns, but on balance that’s probably a good thing; keeping their heads down and working on their debut album in the interim has hopefully left them with a more durable record than might have otherwise been the case. However, though the quality of this album is unmistakeable, it has to be said that on closer inspection several out of the ten tracks have already been released. Of the new tracks, ‘Face Marks’ is the kind of woozy, Animal Collective-like pop that they made their name on, while the superior ‘Street Fires’ is an evocative, atmospheric number with an excellently understated off-kilter drum hook. What it lacks perhaps in originality, it certainly more than delivers in getting, keeping and rewarding the listener’s attention. (Alex Lynham) LISTEN: ‘Street Fires’

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Cavalier Youth (BMG)

Keel Her

You Me At Six With fourth album ‘Cavalier Youth’, You Me At Six have managed to restore enough of their scrappy pop-punkinfused sound of old, whilst giving it that sheen and sparkle that will see their choruses stuck in the heads of many a passing listener.

Granted, there are some inescapable moments of corniness - “I’m in a different district, hunger games” from ‘Win Some, Lose Some’ comes to mind - but overall, this album sings of positivity, of sunshine, of friendship. For a group of five young men who are tentatively standing on the edge of something huge, these songs - massive, glorious, shining songs - are a step in the right direction.

(Sarah Jamieson) LISTEN: ‘Fresh Start Fever’

Keel Her (Critical Heights)

With a SoundCloud account that pays testimony to a one-time habit of writing, recording and uploading a song every day, and a collaboration with R Stevie Moore before she’s even reached adulthood proper, that this is Rose Keeler-Schäffeler’s debut album comes as somewhat of a surprise.

So it’s probably best to view ‘Keel Her’ more as a compilation – the choice to include remixes on a record is odd; here there are two - in the middle. It’s a record infinitely more about the process than the result, which’ll be enjoyed largely solely by fans of the aesthetic to which she’s glued so steadfastly. (Emma Swann) LISTEN: ‘Wanna Fuck’

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Marijuana Deathsquads Oh My Sexy Lord (Memphis Industries)

Like 8-bit Mogwai after decades of plague and warfare.

Marijuana Deathsquads are the sound of music collapsing in on itself, a violent contraction of swirling synths, completely disfigured vocals and drumming at breakneck speed. For something so clearly digital, ‘Oh My Sexy Lord’ sounds terrifically primal. A distorting black hole of energy, it has the feel of electro post-rock, one song blending seamlessly into the next, each its own platform for an orgy of instruments at its crescendo.

At times it’s hard to separate the sounds from HEALTH, but that’s no bad thing. More power, more fury, more energy – it’s a promising tone to set. (Matthew Davies) LISTEN: ‘Stacks’

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Dum Dum Girls Too True (Sub Pop)

Cinematic, but maybe a step back.

There’s less of the blunt outpouring of emotion of 2011’s ‘Only In Dreams’ and a sense of increased lightness running through ‘Too True’, like EP ‘End of Daze’, this is Dum Dum Girls playing up their sultrier side. The opening trio of songs are high on the alluring scale.

There are heavy-lidded guitars echoing and lyrics which make pouty shapes at you. It’s ok.

But it doesn’t move you. But around ‘Are You Okay’ it begins to stir. That is a gorgeous thing: sighing, wafting guitars, coupled with Dee Dee’s plaintive vocal and leave something soft and inviting, and there’s a brilliantly splashing backbeat behind ‘Trouble Is My Name’ which perfectly supports Dee Dee’s languid voice.

‘Too True’ is a decent enough album and one which ends more strongly than it begins. But it isn’t as good as ‘Only In Dreams’ and because of that, it can’t help but feel a bit underwhelming.

(Tim Lee) LISTEN: ‘Little Minx’

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James Vincent McMorrow ee

Peggy Sue

Choir of Echoes (Wichita)

Peggy Sue have said that ‘Choir of Echoes’ is about voices, and at times, Rosa Slade and Katy Young do allow their voices to take control of the music. To great effect, as their vocals do have strength. However, they aren’t exceptional, vary little and are given scant space to breathe, forever smothered by other accompaniments. The music often simmers and builds, offering up a void to be filled, but nothing comes. It seems a mix of songwriting and production consigns ‘Choir of Echoes’ to the pile of not-quites. (Hugh Morris) LISTEN: ‘How Heavy The Quiet That Grew Between Your Mouth and Mine’

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Post Tropical (Believe)

Even the name ‘Post Tropical’ hints that the follow-up to the gentle folk laced beauty of James Vincent McMorrow’s debut ‘Early In The Morning’ will have an altogether different feel. This does nothing to prepare for what’s to come, though, as startling opener ‘Cavalier’ beguiles with its fusion of hand claps, gentle piano and sways of brass that take the listener into almost modern R&B territory. From stripped-back guitar and lilting piano to a swirling cacophony of sound, it shows how much of a step forward these songs represent. When you’ve had a degree of success with your debut it must be tempting to rush out a carbon copy but McMorrow has shaken off the folk singer with a guitar tag to give us an album pregnant with intrigue, creativity and diversity. (Greg Inglis) LISTEN: ‘Glacier’

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Dead Rising 3

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Young Fathers Dead

XBO

rovided you were alive at the last big console update and not some bubbling, regrettable foetus, it should be obvious that the point where next-gen console releases meet a sense of next-gen gaming is regularly askew. Dead Rising 3, the incredibly fun zombiebattering launch title for Xbox One, is sadly marred by ugly bugs and glitches that bely the shiny new console you’ll play it on. While its well-trodden gaming tropes won’t smell like new, the sheer amount of THINGS going on at the one time, the vast number of zombies and minimal loading times showcase what the Xbox One is capable of.

(Big Dada)

Beauty can manifest in the weirdest of places. Dilapidated buildings taken over by wildlife, the silence after destruction; beauty isn’t always restricted to things that are necessarily good. Young Fathers are fully aware of this, tapping into a brutal and naturalistic sound on ‘Dead’, making a brilliant example of the beauty to be found in destruction. It’s every bit an evolution of Young Fathers’ sound as it is a deconstruction of hip-hop. Beating the genre down to its very foundations, there’s no boundaries to be found throughout. Young Fathers’ music is as bewildering and terrifying as getting lost in the deepest, darkest cave. Get past the initially intimidating exterior and you’ll be treated to an incredibly confident and gorgeously composed debut. (Joe Price) LISTEN: ‘Hangman’

Recently Announced

Alien: Isolation

(SEGA) – PS3, PS4, XBOX 360, XBO, PC. Release Date: TBC

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ow do you follow up the absolute utter travesty of Aliens: Colonial Marines apart from shitting on it while it’s in the bin? Give a job to Total War developers Creative Assembly. First impressions of Alien: Isolation are that it’s going right where its predecessor went wrong, taking cues from the first movie in the series to deliver a tense, oppressive and terrifying first-person adventure which should hopefully be, in the words of the developers themselves, ‘the Alien game fans of the series have always wanted.’ YES. OH GOD, YES.

XCOM: Enemy Within

IT MAY NOT BE NEW, BUT...

(2K Games) – PC, Mac, PS3, Xbox 36

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pparently there was a Christmas recently. We missed it because of this.

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reviews live

live Photo: Carolina Faruolo

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peace

Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London

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illed more as special guests than support, Drenge take to the stage to an enormous reaction from the (mostly teenage) crowd. The Derbyshire brother duo - who have, like the headliners, had a phenomenal 2013 - must be ecstatic to see almost all the 2000-capacity venue’s standing area turn in to a giant mosh pit as they thrash their way through songs such as ‘Nothing’ and ‘Let’s Pretend’ from their self-titled debut album. As the last chords of ‘Face Like A Skull’ ring out and Eoin Loveless lays his guitar on the stage the only question to be asked is whether the headliners will be able to match up to Drenge’s hurricane-like force. Right from the opener Peace have no need to worry. Clearly appreciative of the audience, vocalist Harrison Koisser seems genuinely overwhelmed by the sell-out crowd. The simple staging, including huge spotlights, is bathed in yellow and orange for festival anthem ‘Higher Than the Sun’. Mid-set, they introduce a new song as ‘Money’, giving a promising glimpse in to what their second album may sound like. Proving that he’s more than an indie poster boy with a penchant for roll-necks, Koisser’s voice is on amazing form, especially during the more stripped-back tracks like ‘Float Forever’ and ‘California Daze’. And, after asking the crowd if it’s “too early for a Christmas song”, he leads his band through their take on Wham!’s ‘Last Christmas’ - the track mere days old in Internet age, but already sounding like one of their own.

Then as ‘Bloodshake’ ends, the crowd can barely contain their excitement. There’s no doubting, Peace deserve the hype. (Gillian Fish)

“Peace deserve the hype.”

“It’s quite easy to come across like a bit of a wanker isn’t it?”

It’s been quite a ‘big venues’ tour, this one.

Harrison: Yeah! It’s a bit weird at the moment, I haven’t really thought about it. We got offered a support slot here about a year ago and we were really gutted that we couldn’t do it, and then now we’re doing two nights and it’s quite surreal. I don’t know, I just can’t get my head around it really. We’ve done quite a bit of touring at this level doing support, so it isn’t scary, but it kind of is now thinking that it’s us. It feels like a support show, but we’re not, we’re headlining.

Dominic: But it’s fun isn’t it?

Do you remember your first London gig?

D: Was it at The Macbeth?

We were put on by our good friend Harry James from O Children.

Do you remember what was in your rider at that Macbeth gig?

D: Nothing.

H: There was no rider, I don’t think we even got paid!

D: I think we probably got a pint.

H: Probably we had a few drinks tokens. I remember someone saying that we were too loud afterwards.

And what’s on your rider tonight?

H: Just the usual really. We’ve left it to our tour manager, I don’t really pay much

q&A

attention to it. I drink the water...

D: Sam loves it though!

H: We’ve got fruit, crisps, a bit of hummus. Nothing exciting! We used to put too much energy into our riders, whereas now it’s just there.

We kind of peaked too soon with the riders.

D: We did yeah.

H: We had a festive rider last Christmas which will never be beaten.

D: The Sheffield festive rider was the best one we’ve ever had. We had stockings, a Christmas tree, we were handed Christmas cards, mulled wine, mince pies, turkey sandwiches, all the works. It was amazing!

H: And then after that we kind of lost the plot with riders.

Imagine that you’re walking down the street and you ran into one of your mates from school and after a small chat he asks you “What have you been up to?” What would you say?

D: It’s difficult that one, because it’s quite easy to come across like a bit of a wanker isn’t it?

H: I’ll probably say: “Yeah...

Same ol’, what about you?” (laughs) I’ll be more interested in what they were doing, I don’t like talking about myself that much so I’ll probably be like “I’m in a band, come see us”. And then I’ll put them on the list and then they can make their own mind afterwards. The people I went to school with would probably hate it anyways!

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Photo: Carolina Faruolo

reviews live

“I just couldn’t stop smiling for the first few songs, it was so overwhelming.”

Sam Halliday

Two Door Cinema Club

fall gently onto the cresting wave of the audience’s outstretched arms. ‘Pyramid’ is announced with the band being enveloped in a O2 Arena, London huge green holographic pyramid, As Alex Trimble and co arrive creating a striking visual that is two onstage for the trio’s biggest gig parts Daft Punk to one Spinal Tap. of their young lives – Trimble The eerie, modulated guitars are dressed in a suitably sparkly entrancing and a welcome caesura blazer - the ebullient ‘Sleep Alone’ to proceedings, but as is expected kicks proceedings into gear. The the haunting delicacy of the song set list is divided evenly amongst quickly ensconced as it erupts into songs from debut record, ‘Tourist a huge, chugging chorus that is History’, and 2012 follow up polished to a slick sheen. Similarly ‘Beacon’. However with their almost ‘Sun’ is one of the stand-out tracks, patented tropical, shimmering the funky rhythm given a new sound it can be hard to distinguish lease on life in the live setting, between tracks. Crowd interaction taking on the rich, full sound of isn’t high on the agenda either. stadium-rock – something it lacks ‘Undercover Martyn’ and ‘Do You on ‘Beacon’. There is an obligatory Want It All?’ are accompanied by a encore which is a suitably schizophrenic eruption of strobe spectacular finale, a cataclysm of lights and streamer explosions that pop perfection, garlanded in glitter bomb explosions and streamers.

(Tom Watts)

more like two-hundred doors at the o2 arena.

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Touché Amoré The Underworld, London

Photo: Carolina Faruolo

Having quickly become infamous for their full-throttle live shows, tonight is no exception for Touché Amoré, and as the lights dim in London’s Underworld, the crowd swell towards the stage with expectance.

Instantly, the bodies pushing their way forwards connect with frontman Jeremy Bolm as he bounds around the small stage. The adrenaline pumps fast and pure as the band plummet into ‘Pathfinder’ and seamlessly shift into new album cut ‘Just Exist’. Barely pausing to take a breath, they steam forwards into one song after another, tying each together, until all of a sudden, five songs have passed and the crowd are only just able to have their heads catch up with their hearts.

Their massive set of twenty-odd songs blisters with aggression and bristles with fury, while the passion shared by band and audience is almost tangible throughout. (Sarah Jamieson)

Photo: Carolina Faruolo

underworld, but no longer underground.

it’s rodeo time on the south coast.

Palma Violets

of the chaos-forthe-sake-of-chaos happening on and off stage and had Concorde 2, the role of keeping Brighton the audience Triumphal, visceral focused while Chilli and flawless, Palma moulds them to his Violets prove own entertainment. tonight that this The party is then headline tour isn’t brought to a close named Rattlesnake by a stage invasion Rodeo for nothing. led by members Kicking off between of support bands a cloud of blue Childhood and smoke, the speed Telegram, while is set to turbo from Chilli and infamous the very first time merch guy Harry that Chilli Jesson dive repeatedly steps on one of into a sea of hands the side speakers thoroughout the and reaches to the final song. How the crowd whipping south Londoners his head from one could top this in side to the other.

2014 is unclear, but Sam Fryer’s steady/ they probably will. romantic vocals are (Carolina Faruolo) almost unaware

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In d i e D r e a m b o a t Of the Month

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joff oddie WOLF ALICE

When Joff isn’t busy being Wolf Alice’s resident guitar buff, he’s doing his best to be in it - as attested to at our photoshoot.

Full name: Jonathan David Oddie. nickname: “The Joff”.

Star sign: Aquarius.

Pets: Joel [Amey, Wolf Alice drummer].

Favourite film: Love Actually.

Favourite food: Pasties.

Favourite fragrance: Eau De Joffete.

Chat-up line of choice: I’ll give you five seconds to give me your number or you can forget about going out with me forever.

If you weren’t a pop star, what would you be doing?: John Cleese’s body double.

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