DIY, October 2020 by DIY Magazine

DIY FREE • ISSUE 101 • OCTOBER 2020

FREE • ISSUE 101 • OCTOBER 2020 DIYMAG.COM DIYMAG.COM

WORKING MEN’S CLUB

MATT BERNINGER

+ PULL OUT POSTERS

How Beabadoobee became next in line to the indie throne

DIRT Y HI T

LONDON, LOS ANGELES, SYDNEY, TOKYO

THE 1975, 404 GUILD, AMA, BEABADOOBEE, BEAUX, BENJAMIN FRANCIS LEFTWICH, BLACKSTARKIDS, BOYBAND, BRYCE HASE, THE JAPANESE HOUSE, KASAI, LEO BHANJI, LOWERTOWN, NO ROME, OSCAR LANG, PALE WAVES, PRETTY SICK, RINA SAWAYAMA, SIPHO, VIJI, WOLF ALICE ℗ © 2020 2 DIYMAG.COM

WWW.DIRTYHIT.CO.UK

10 YE ARS OF DIRT Y HI T

weLcome to issue...

QUESTiON! It’s issue 101! So what, we ask, would Team DIY banish to the infamous numerical room…

Editor's Letter

SARAH JAMIESON • Managing Editor While this year would be very welcome to get in the bin, I’ll go with something less existential: stoneware pestle and mortars. Shudder.

EMMA SWANN • Founding Editor Acoustic guitars. Literally nothing ever has been improved by being strippedback, toned-down or folksified. Also, removes all prospects of ‘Wonderwall’ at festival campsites or parties. After a quieter tone? If you really must (and please, question your decision here), turn your amp down. Sorted. LISA WRIGHT • Features Editor People who put knives in the draining rack, blade end up; people who try to talk to you when you’ve got headphones in; people who leave empty packets out and trick you into thinking there are still biscuits in them. And anything that has ever come into contact with aniseed.

Fresh from last month’s festivities (and only just about recovered from our 100th issue gigs over at Signature Brew’s Walthamstow Taproom), we decided that - after having such a good time putting together our special A4 edition - we’d make it a permanent fixture! So, without further ado, welcome to the new look DIY, in all its super-sized, shiny glory. That’s not the only thing we’re excited about this October: this month, we’re chuffed to invite the incredible Beabadoobee to the cover, as she readies the release of fuzzy debut ‘Fake It Flowers’. Wandering around Camden, we caught up with the singer to reminisce on her youth, and delve into the making of her first full-length. And because we like spoiling you, we’ve even got a cheeky double page poster of Bea in the middle of the issue.

Coronavirus.

Plus, The National’s Matt Berninger tells all about his new solo album, Royal Blood give us an insight into their forthcoming third record, and we’ve got the inaugural column from Happyness’ Ash Kenazi, our brand new DIY Drag-ony Aunt. Best believe it.

ELLY WATSON • Digital Editor All the bellends not covering their nose with their face masks. Oh, and coriander.

Sarah Jamieson, Managing Editor

LOUISE MASON • Art Director

listening post What’s been worming its way around DIY’s collective ear-holes this month? THE MAMAS & THE PAPAS CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’ “All the leaves are brown/ And the sky is grey/ I’ve been for a walk/ On a winter’s day” goes this 1965 classic. Stick on a big jumper, have a trundle through the park and remember - they may take our late curfews, they may take our sociable fun, but they can never take away our shitty British weather. THE WHITE STRIPES - DEAD LEAVES AND THE DIRTY GROUND Can you sense a theme starting here? Don’t worry, we won’t subject you to an entire leaf-based playlist (Kanye’s ‘Blood on the Leaves’? slowthai’s ‘Dead Leaves’?) but any excuse to whack on this certified banger is fine by us. G’wan Jack’n’Meg. THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS - THIS IS HALLOWEEN The irony of Halloween - the year’s most dark-hearted holiday - coming as a slice of light-relief among the 360 degree horror show that is 2020 is not lost. But, no matter what ghoulish form it takes this year, stick your third eye on, cover yourself in blood and pour one out to having a small amount of fun, we say.

Shout out to: Signature Brew for hosting our genuinely incred 100th parties, Feed The Village for providing the delicious grub (follow them @feedthevillage.uk), Heavenly for getting us up to Todmorden, the owner of the lovely pink door in Portobello that we shamelessly hijacked for our shoot and our new Drag-ony Aunt, Ash from Happyness, for being a total legend. Special animal shout outs to Goat Girl’s neighbours’ dog (v cute) and the rooster who kept shouting all through our Nude Party chat (v annoying).

Founding Editor Emma Swann Managing Editor Sarah Jamieson Features Editor Lisa Wright Digital Editor Elly Watson Art Direction & Design Louise Mason

Contributors Abi Whistance, Alex Cabré, Andrew Benge, Bella Martin, Ben Tipple, Eva Pentel, Fiona Garden, Jack Johnstone Orr, Jenessa Williams, Joe Goggins, Louisa Dixon, Max Pilley, Nick Harris, Sean Kerwick, Will Richards.

100 Drummond Road, London SE16 4DG

40 46 NEWS.

6 R O YA L B L O O D 1 0 A R L O PA R K S 12 SHAME 1 4 G O AT G I R L NEU.

18 BABY QUEEN 21 HOME COUNTIES 22 PHOEBE GREEN 2 4 M O O N C H I L D S A N E L LY

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. 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 DIY 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.

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CONTENTS

Cover photo: Eva Pentel For DIY editorial: info@diymag.com For DIY sales: advertise@diymag.com For DIY stockist enquiries: stockists@diymag.com DIY HQ, Unit K309, m The Biscuit Factory,

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42 FEATURES

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BEABADOOBEE GUS DAPPERTON WORKING MEN’S CLUB F E N N E L I LY WILL BUTLER T H E N U D E PA R T Y M AT T B E R N I N G E R

REVIEWS

52 ALBUMS

+ + +

Gus Dapperton

ORCA Out Now

Swinging back into action with the funk-tinged strut of new single ‘Trouble’s Coming’, Royal Blood’s formula looks like it’s been given a shake up. What changed? “My entire life!” explains Mike Kerr. Words: Joe Goggins. 6 DIYMAG.COM

ack in March, Royal Blood were finally cooking with gas. They’d spent much of 2019 trying to follow up their second record, the Number One-charting ‘How Did We Get So Dark?’, yet had been struggling for inspiration; more than 60 songs were written and discarded, as the duo aimed to break away into new sonic territory. Last summer, however, a run of huge festival slots - including sub-headlining positions on the main stage at Reading and Leeds - finally set their creative juices flowing, and by the start of this year they had an album that they were not only happy with, but that frontman Mike Kerr felt confident was their finest work to date. And then… well, we all know what happened back in March. In the middle of recording LP3 in London, the studio closed as lockdown commenced, putting proceedings on hold yet again just as Mike and drummer Ben Thatcher were finally getting somewhere. “After a week or so of sitting around at home, I decided I might as well try to keep making music,” says the singer. “So I went into the studio near my house and just started writing for the sake of it, which is really the best place to be - that’s how you start out, just writing to entertain yourself more than anything. By the time it was safe to get back to work, I came out of this weird little twilight zone I’d been in with three new songs, and I honestly thought they were the best three I’d ever written. So, from a musical point of view, lockdown was brilliant. More personally, it was fucking scary and isolating, but that’s obviously not a unique experience.” Far from upending the progress already made, the new tracks slotted seamlessly into the running order, “almost like they were the answer to the questions we’d been asking ourselves” notes Mike. Two of them will be singles, with the still-untitled record - which is now in the final stages of mixing - tentative-ly slated for release in the spring of 2021, when the pair will aim to make it a hat-trick of chart-toppers.

“I had to change one thing, and that was everything.” - Mike Kerr

The first taste, however, arrived at the end of last month in the

form of the supremely danceable ‘Trouble’s Coming’ - a track that sees them veering off the course set by their last two releases into considerably funkier territory, swapping hard rock for a disco stomp. It might prove challenging to a fanbase accustomed to the bare-bones riffery of the last two LPs, but Mike is unfazed. “We’ve truly made it just for ourselves - we love it, and if you don’t, that’s OK. It’s genuinely all I’ve been listening to at the minute!” he chuckles, proudly. “You can hear that we’re liberated on this record; all the new influences on there, it’s stuff we’ve always loved but never allowed ourselves to pursue. I think you can actually hear the embryos of these songs in tracks like ‘Figure It Out’, but we just didn’t explore it enough. That’s why we self-produced this one; as soon as we knew which direction we wanted to go in, it seemed pointless to put anybody else in the way of it.” For Mike, the new musical trajectory was made possible by a profound breakthrough in his personal life. “I had to change one thing, and that was everything,” he laughs. “A big part of that was the way I was living. I needed to be in a different headspace.” The singer has been sober since February 2019, and points to the decision as the basis for the euphoric sound that came to define the new record. “It’s had a huge effect. My entire headspace has shifted; it’s changed my outlook, my relationships, the way I think about music, everything,” he continues. “I really feel like it’s helped me to access all of my brain, all of my potential. There were a lot of reasons for wanting to sort my shit out, but my songwriting has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of it. It’s why that festival run we did last year was huge; I had to prove to myself that I could do it sober. And I did it, and I was singing and playing better than ever, so I came away from that with genuine confidence. I didn’t feel like I needed to answer to anybody. So, that’s what had to change. My entire life!” With ‘How Did We Get So Dark?’ providing the platform for the step up to massive festival slots and arena headline tours, it’s not unreasonable to imagine the new album could see them take it a step further - if the future state of live music allows them. On that, though, Mike is philosophical. “Touring is the reason that we make records,” he says, “and potentially not having that be a part of this new one is fucking strange. I’m trying not to think about it too much, because it’s daunting, the idea that it won’t be coming back for a while. But ultimately, it’s something I can’t control, so I won’t dwell on it. The only thing I have power over is the music that we’re making right now.” DIY

Dear Kenazi, The DIY Drag-ony Aunt

Dear readers, welcome to the inaugural advice column for the lost and confused, the downtrodden and destitute, courtesy of Happyness stick-wielder and drag queen extraordinare, Ash Kenazi. This month we have a country star who’s gotten too close to the cuntry, an emo in need of escape and a female drummer fed up of boys in bands.

Dear Kenazi, How can I get the boys in my band to be less intimidated by me? - Al Greenwood, Sports Team Dear Al, Boys in bands are trash. Be the fierce bitch you are and watch them cower. Tell them to get a grip. You are not their mother. Show them who’s boss and make them eat it!

We might need to rethink our working from home looks…

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Dear Kenazi, I’ve fallen in love with a cow from Devon. I don’t know to tell my human partner the truth. What should I do? - Katy J Pearson Dear Katy, Your love for this cow should be celebrated and appreciated. I’m sure my dad went through a similar experience when he started calling my mum a “fat cow”. Sadly, in those times extrahuman relations were frowned upon and they were divorced. To avoid this, my advice would be a bovine date night with your human lover: introduce him to animal husbandry; the joys of drinking straight from the udder; the sensual act of bovine palpation; a trip to the cattle market where bulls and heifers are paraded then sold for cash. Reignite the passion in your relationship with chaps and piebald print. This will surely get your partner used to the changes before you introduce the cow. Remember: cows are sexy, just ask Doja Cat.

Dear Kenazi, I have assumed the role of confused bedroom emo for so long now, as I shed time’s layers away there’s a far more colourful and sparkling core to my being that I want to share with my world to assume the role of my most authentic self. As an inspirational character on your own journey of self-discovery, how does one identify, celebrate and express. their newly evolving so-called ‘weirdness’ when I’m afraid it might be too steep of an acceptance curve for the ones I love? - Oliver Wilder, Pet Shimmers Dear Oliver, Thank you for your kind words. My advice is that the path to self-acceptance demands failure. The bedroom is your safe space; release your inner child and make mistakes in the real world. The emo lifestyle has and always will provide solace to the downtrodden and the lonely, but once it becomes your norm it’s time to get out and fly your freak flag. Make the switch from the voice inside your head to shining bright like a diamond; think less Tom Delonge and more Rihanna. In terms of the ones you love, if they truly love you they will love you even more for your authenticity and quirks. Do not let the past dictate your future. Live in the present. BE THE STRANGE YOU WISH TO SEE IN THE WORLD!

NE WS

Live & # 100 Kicking

DIY

Last month, we teamed up with Signature Brew for a series of intimate, socially-distanced outdoor shows to celebrate DIY’s big 100th issue. Ah, to be in the warm embrace of live music once more…

t’s been six long, lonely months since we took in the sweet, slightly sweaty smell of live music - and not even the firmest believers in the incoming powers of Libra season really know what the fuck’s going to happen next - but for one glorious week in September, there was a much-needed light at the end of the tunnel.

IDLES’ Mark Bowen

Setting up shop at Walthamstow’s Signature Brew taproom, we marked our big 100th issue (presents welcomed - our postal address is on the website…) with a week of sensible, socially-distanced gigs and DJ sets. And you know what? Sitting down watching some of our faves rock out didn’t even feel weird. Kicking off the week with a special DJ set, cover stars IDLES’ mustachioed guitarist Mark Bowen proved that dropping Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas’ before autumn’s even really settled in is actually a glorious idea. While closing things off on the Friday, Sports Team’s resident double act Al’n’Oli redeemed themselves from their minimal techno DJ set for our virtual lockdown DIYsolation festival with a bangers-filled party slot. Thank the lord.

Black Honey

Sports Team

In between those most delightful of bookends, meanwhile, came gigs - real ones! - courtesy of three artists who’ve graced their fair share of pages across the last 100 mags. If there’s a better way to ease back into things than by having South London’s premier doe-eyed crooner Matt Maltese serenade you in the fairy-lit darkness then we’ll be surprised. Don’t believe us? Just ask Jamie T, who grabbed himself a front row seat to soak in the charms of the young romantic - from a

Sports Team

tear-jerking cover of Jon Brion’s ‘Little Person’ (released as part of recent EP ‘madhouse’) to a final soaring rendition of old-favourite-turnedunexpected-TikTok-hit ‘As The World Caves In’. Yeah it’s a bit nippy, but that’s not why we’ve got goosebumps.

Matt Maltese

Cut to Wednesday and if you’ve never seen a pub bench of people try and individually mosh in their chairs, then you’ve never been to a sit-down Black Honey show. Flaunting a host of new material from their upcoming second LP, the band were back in their element, and as sequinclad singer Izzy B. Phillips led the band through the closing roar of ‘Run For Cover’, you could feel good vibes emanating from all corners of the courtyard. Good vibes, thankfully, are what DIY veterans Spector are all about - and while you could happily just enjoy Fred Macpherson’s patter as a separate stand-up routine, they’re on hand with the indie hits too. From ‘Chevy Thunder’ to roping in a reluctant Jack Kaye of The Magic Gang to guest on ‘Never Fade Away’ to a lighters-aloft ‘All The Sad Young Men’, we might have had a sad, festivalfree summer, but tonight feels about as close to a communal, congregational musical experience as we’re likely to enjoy in a while. You might not be able to throw your arms around a stranger, but there’s something in the air tonight nonetheless. DIY

Black Honey

Spector

Ash Kenazi

In the Studio with... Arlo Parks

I feel like my aim is to make the hypersubjective feel universal.â&#x20AC;? 10 DIYMAG.COM

With her eagerly-anticipated debut in the can and nearly ready to launch, we catch up with the wise young singer, who’s taking famous fans and critical acclaim in her stride. Words: Lisa Wright.

hile most music lovers were drinking tinnies in the living room and trying to make a half-arsed party out of the iPlayer re-watch schedule, Arlo Parks was doing what literally less than a handful could stake claim to this year: she played Glastonbury (and if not on, then just in front of the Pyramid Stage,

brains and bedroom-bound anxiety. “Everyone during lockdown was feeling quite fragile, so I think people wanted music that made them feel held in this time where nobody really knew what was going to happen,” she posits. “I got so many messages from people saying [‘Black Dog’] had brought comfort to their terminally ill parents, saying it had saved their

I got so many messages from people saying [‘Black Dog’] had brought comfort to their terminally ill parents, saying it had saved their marriages...” no less). “I remember Glastonbury weekend last year, I’d just finished my exams, we were playing Princess Nokia in the van going down and everyone was a bit tipsy and excited. And then this year it was just me and my guitarist, and the cows and this empty field,” she laughs. “There is an energy there that remains, being on that site though; it was a very special moment.” Yet if a pilgrimage to Pilton sounds like a pretty wonderful thing among the barren wasteland of this summer’s musical options, then it’s far from the only standout of the singer’s 2020. She’s been shouted out by Billie Eilish, gained a new musical mate in Phoebe Bridgers and found a hugely acclaimed crossover hit in recent devastating ballad ‘Black Dog’ (which even IRL Sporty Spice Mel C recently told DIY she was a huge fan of); in short, within the most universally difficult calendar year in recent history, Arlo Parks has been thriving. It shouldn’t really be a surprise, however, as the young Londoner’s strain of intimate, tender lyricism sits as the perfect aural balm to frazzled

marriages - it made me feel like I was doing something tangible that was having a real, comforting effect in people’s lives, and that art still had a purpose in this world. It really made me feel grounded and motivated to do this for the rest of my life.” So motivated was Arlo, in fact, that she’s emerged out the other side with her debut record complete and ready to go. Bedding down in an East London Airbnb with her regular producer just as everything hit, she spent the first fortnight cocooned in a writing bubble, taking full advantage of the strange freedom the situation afforded her. “I just wrote for two weeks straight and didn’t go outside. I felt like I was in another dimension because I literally had no other responsibilities on this earth, which I was so grateful for. All I had to do was write music,” she enthusiastically recalls.

that ‘In Rainbows’ song but more crunchy’, and then I’d stumble out in my dressing gown the next morning. There was no glamour…” Glamorous it may not have been, but excited and inspired it certainly was. Where many artists talk about shutting the world out and turning their speakers off for six months around the making of a record, Arlo explains that she went fully the other way, immersing herself in everything that could possibly provoke a new idea, from hours spent listening to old classics (“‘Rubber Soul’, ‘Baduizm’, Joni Mitchell, Elliot Smith”) to moments where she’d flit happily between Aphex Twin and Miles Davis. “We were just completely in music mode, immersing ourselves completely into so many different worlds, and [the album is] a fusion of all those things,” she explains. “I feel like the only way I can feel inspired is by listening to music constantly. When I’m trying to write, I listen to music even more; I’m just always listening to things.” It’s an attitude that’s always shone through in Arlo’s music, where this wide myriad of influences is allowed to nestle up and inform the person at its centre. Lyrically, meanwhile, she hopes that her debut will do the same but in reverse: “I feel like my aim is to make the hyper-subjective feel universal; for people to feel immersed in my world, but also be able to see themselves in every song,” she nods, “so I can talk about something that feels very personal to me but it will remind them of a time in their lives or a person and they still feel connected to it - that’s always been my mission statement, as it were.” Having flourished across the past nine months and made life in 2020 look easy, Arlo Parks’ debut should provide a much-needed slice of musical nourishment to see us through life’s next phase. She’s already sort-of headlined Glastonbury, so you’re in safe hands. DIY

WHAT DO MUSIC’S GREAT AND GOOD RUSTLE UP FOR THEIR SUPPER? LET US PEEK INSIDE THE RECIPE BOOK… BON APPETIT! NAME Blaine Harrison, Mystery Jets DISH Blaine’s Humble Nut Crumble INGREDIENTS 1 medium cauliflower, cut into florets 1 bunch of broccoli, cut into florets 2 cloves of garlic, smushed 3 tablespoons olive oil Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper 50g walnuts, roughly chopped 55g unsalted butter, cubed 50g rolled oats 40g Panko breadcrumbs 150ml of crème fraîche 125g crumbled goat’s cheese METHOD: Place the florets in a large bowl of boiling water and soak for 2 mins. Drain and transfer to a roasting tin, adding the garlic, olive oil, sea salt and a couple cheeky grinds of black pepper. Mix lustfully with your hands and roast in the oven for 15 mins (pre-heat to 220C). Meanwhile, mix together the crumble topping: walnuts, butter, breadcrumbs, sea salt and a couple more cheeky grinds of black pepper. Smush together until the butter is evenly incorporated. After 15 minutes in the oven, remove the baking tin and mix in the crème fraîche and top with the crumbled goats cheese. Scatter over the crumble topping and return tin to the oven for another 30 minutes until golden brown and crispy on top. Crack open a bottle of your chosen mead, sling on some Sufjan Stevens and get involved. Tidy.

“I would just go to bed super late and spend the early hours finding songs and send [my producer] in the next room a very sleep deprived text being like, ‘So the kick drum from

...with Shame’s Charlie Steen In which we talk to some of our faves about anything but music (see what we did there?)... Interview: Lisa Wright.

Careful Charlie, you might end up with egg on your face…

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o as well as working on a rather exciting new album you’ve spent lockdown doing a lot of art, we see! Where did your painterly tendencies come from? I went to Camberwell for a year of painting foundation and I came out of it with about three paintings… I felt like a bit of an imposter - and I’m an imposter in the music world too but that’s kind of easier because people like bad singing, which is fortunate - but it’s something I’ve always enjoyed doing, and [over lockdown] I had the time and the space. Did you get on with the art school kids? I don’t think they got on with me! I think the problem was people would take it very seriously, but we were 18 and it was just fun. But I liked that there was no hierarchy of the teenage years there - it’s all the outsiders and loners. And all the people that took it too seriously were always the guys. Who can look more like Jean-Michel Basquiat..? So, the full cliche! Yeah. In a hilarious way. The first day at Camberwell, we had to do a thing where we went into the garden and had half an hour to make a piece of art, so me and my mate basically just found these sticks and hit them against a metal cabinet. And that’s how Shame began… That’s how we found our drummer… No, but there was this silence and then the tutor did that slow clap and then suddenly everyone started clapping, and that was the lightbulb moment where I realised the whole thing was hilarious. But it’s something I’ve continued and I love doing. I’ll find myself having conversations with the canvases that are quite similar to conversations I’ll have with my bandmates, which is quite alarming. Frustration, working something out, it’s a constant dialogue where sometimes it’s a good friend and sometimes it’s an arsehole. Your paintings are all quite pretty and gentle - a curveball, perhaps? Yeah, but it’s weird because the technique is the complete opposite. I use a lot of wood because it’s way easier and cheaper than getting a canvas, and I’d put on ‘Sabotage’ by Beastie Boys and try to cover the entire thing before the song finishes. I used to have a thing when I was younger about realistic art, I just think that’s why they created the camera? But now I have such an appreciation for it. I like pretty stuff! I like colour and flowers! That’s not very punk, Charlie. It’s because I was staying in

Somerset during lockdown. There were a lot of fields, and I was working and helping the family I was staying with, doing a lot of gardening. I built a natural pond and that was the sort of environment I was in. Are you a fully-fledged country boy, now? I learnt a lot of stuff. I learnt how to make loads of different cements and shovel loads of bricks. It’s a lot harder than being in a band… I liked the gardening and planting stuff, anything to do with using the soil; it felt like it was a part of you. I haven’t got back to it since I got back to London though, I’d like to grow some herbs. We’re told you have a secret egg recipe - are the herbs anything to do with that? So my grandad, his dad was a butcher in Spitalfields and liked a drink, and he’d wake up in the morning after a heavy night and not much sleep, and for breakfast he’d pour himself a pint of lager and crack a raw egg into it. It’s called a Bombay Oyster. He’d down it and tense his muscles and then get on with it and go to work. Your body’s so used to the alcohol that the protein doesn’t directly hit it but it’s enough to carry you through. That sounds revolting. I haven’t tried it yet and my dad says, ‘do not do it’. It’s not for our generation. Luckily, they created aspirin. I never used to eat eggs that much but I love the look of a fried egg - it’s the most perfect visual food when done right. So over lockdown I discovered this love and passion for eggs and I’d spend hours - well, not hours, they take ten minutes making the perfect fried egg. You want the lowest heat possible, loads of butter, no sizzle when you crack the egg in - that’s where people get it wrong. Albert Roux opened

You pour a pint of lager and crack a raw egg into it, and that’s called a Bombay Oyster.”

I like pretty stuff! I like colour and flowers!” the first Michelin-starred restaurant in London and when chefs would come with these incredible CVs, he’d just ask them to make him an egg because his theory was you can tell everything about a chef by the way they cook an egg. Are you saying that you could scam your way into a Michelinstarred kitchen? I worked in one as a runner and a kitchen porter actually. It was such an intense job. The devil’s in the detail unfortunately… but God is in the vague. I’m gonna write that down. Don’t put that in or the band are gonna moan at me for being a wanker... DIY

STEEN’S GALLERY CORNER:

S HOW ME THE

DOGGY We love dogs. You love dogs. Here are some pop stars’ dogs.

THIS MONTH: Bully’s Alicia Bognanno and her pups Mezzi and Papa. Names: Mezzi and Papa Age: 11 (Mezzi) and 6 (Papa) Breed: Both mixed breeds, Mezzi has some German Shepherd and Husky in her and a few other things. Papa has some terrier and Chihuahua and I’m not sure what else! Favourite things: Being as dramatic as possible, texting with friends (particularly Kayla the dog that lives down the street), throwing a bit of shade here and there, peanut butter, getting their leashes tangled together. Tell us a nice anecdote about your dogs: I’m not proud to admit that they do pee on each other from time to time on walks due to their significant height difference and dire need to mark their territory on the same mailboxes at the same time.

PAPA

MEZZI

In the Studio with...Goat Girl The South London quartetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s self-titled opener made for one of 2018â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most adventurous, exploratory debuts. Heading into their imminent second, Goat Girl are older, wiser and sticking even further to their guns. Words: Lisa Wright. Photos: Emma Swann.

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alking down a nondescript road in South East London, it doesn’t take a genius to work out which property likely houses members of Goat Girl. Adorned with homemade signs calling for trans rights, more widely-distributed PPE and justice for Congoleseborn Belly Mujinga - who died of COVID-19 after being assaulted by a man carrying the virus at Victoria Station - from the outside in, singer Lottie ‘Clottie Cream’ and drummer Rosy Bones’ current dwelling is a visual testament to the fact that the band practise what they preach. It’s something the group - completed by guitarist Ellie ‘LED’ and new bassist Holly Hole - have been settling into during the creation of their imminent second LP, the follow-up to their critically-acclaimed 2018 self-titled debut. Inking a deal with Rough Trade somewhat fatefully on the day the Brexit vote rolled tragically in, and armed with a canon of early songs that wore their political leanings on their sleeves, from the off the band were put in a certain bracket. “Because that’s how the industry works, you have to be boxed in and have an attainable quality that people can latch onto: young, political, South London, Windmill Brixton scene. All these bitesize points that people can digest,” Lottie begins. “At the beginning [of writing this album], I was like, how am I gonna continue this thread of people seeing me as this political person? But then I realised that everything you do in your daily lives is political and we’re very active people and we don’t have to prove that through our lyrics.

an instrument that isn’t natural to you, you can just mess around without knowing all the details of how it works or what the outcome’s gonna be,” Lottie begins. “None of us are particularly technical, we play more by ear, but we can all hold a beat, all of us can play guitar and keys to an acceptable level, so we’d write and then teach it back to ourselves to record it,” elaborates Holly. Moving between producer Dan Carey’s second Streatham studio (“We were there last summer and it was so hot and the air conditioning didn’t work. We were sleeping there and we went a bit crazy… Those are definitely some of the weirdest songs we have on the album…” notes Rosy) and East Grinstead dairy farm / wedding venue / recording studio The Yoghurt Rooms, the band began allowing the more experimental sound that had developed during their live shows to seep in. Recently-released first single ‘Sad Cowboy’ - a multi-faceted affair that begins with a heady synth motif before breaking into a groove-laden gallop acts by way of introduction.

The way you go about living your daily life is political.” - Clottie Cream

“Music doesn’t need to be political to be important but at the same time it always is in some way,” she nods. “But lyric-wise it was a struggle at the beginning because it was like, how am I gonna continue this idea of what people think of me?”

igned at 18, and with most of their debut’s material written a couple of years before, Goat Girl’s second may only arrive a couple of years after their first on paper, but in reality it represents a huge period of growth for the quartet - both as a band and as people. Practically, that comes in the form of a line-up switch (original bassist Naima Jelly left the group amicably during their 2018 tour) and a change in writing style, with ‘Goat Girl’’s predominantly Lottie-helmed compositions swapped for a lengthy year-long period that saw the whole band come together to pen tracks in various locations in and around London. “At the beginning we were trying to understand what we wanted from the second record, so we’d switch up instruments. It gives you a lot of freedom with what you’re doing; when you’re on

“It’s probably one of the more dancey ones, but there’s a lot of different textures on the record,” begins Ellie. “Anyone that’s heard it has said it’s quite different but you can tell it’s still Goat Girl,” nods Rosy. “There’s no fillers - and I’m bigging ourselves up, but on the first album we weren’t that confident and on this one we’re really pleased and proud and all of the songs are really good!”

Lyrically a track about “being sat in my room, looking outside and seeing this whole world around me”, ‘Sad Cowboy’ might not be an overt fist-shaking rant about The State of Things but, having spent their lockdown vocally and actively engaged with mutual aid groups and “a newfound collectivism that [they] hadn’t felt before,” Goat Girl are happy with the idea that they don’t have to box-tick to the masses to get their message across. “The things you do and write about are inevitably gonna have a political agenda in some ways because you view the world differently to someone else and that in itself is political. The way you go about living your daily life is political. It doesn’t have to be through the music itself, but the music is a tool to create this safety net and safe space for people,” Lottie explains, as Rosy picks up: “[Making music] in itself is an act of rebellion because we’re taught to hate ourselves, so if you take the initiative to love yourself and be kind to others then that’s a pretty radical act.” ‘On All Fours’ is out 29th January via Rough Trade. DIY

on the

‘Gram These days, even yer gran is posting selfies on Instagram. Instagran, more like. Everyone has it now, including all our fave bands. Here’s a brief catch-up on music’s finest photo-taking action as of late.

The blushing bride boshes down the big beefy burger. Say it again, kids! (ps congrats Lily!) (@lilyallen)

slowthai has been awaiting the birth of Album Two for around 9 months now… (@slowthai)

Coming out of his cage and he’s been doing just fine. (@sportsteam)

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Live music will return. Venues will reopen. Bands will tour again. The sun will come out and weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll stand in fields with our friends, beer in hand, arms around each other, watching the best bands play our favourite songs. Keep safe. Keep the faith. And defend live music with everything youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got.

NEU

If the music thing doesn’t work out, Bella’s a shoo-in for the next Pat Butcher.

18 DIYMAG.COM

BABY QUEEN Hilarious, hyper self-aware and destined for greatness, Baby Queen is sticking two fingers up to the perfect, preened pop stars of yore and remodelling the genre in her own image. Words: Lisa Wright. Photos: Fiona Garden.

“When I was 18, I was a massive emo and got these random shit tattoos. You’d think as a songwriter I could come up with some better words than ‘Milk’ and ‘Metal’…” eyerolls Bella Latham, pointing to the admittedly-not-brilliant stick’n’poke letters adorning her forearms. “My mum was FURIOUS. She called me the next morning and was like, ‘That’s IT Bella. You’re getting on the next flight back to South Africa. Your time is UP!’. Fuck. Can you imagine if that was my legacy?” Entering the West London cafe where we meet today, Bella - aka Baby Queen - is an immediately magnetic whirlwind of a human. Clad in hair rollers, puffing on a cigarette and frequently bursting into song (sometimes her own), there is absolutely no chance that the woman before us would have allowed herself to be shipped back to Durban because of some bad ink - not before the rest of the world knows her name, at least. “I always say to people that you have to, to a certain degree, be out of your mind [to do this job]. To have this blind belief and tunnel vision for something that is completely unrealistic - to think you’re gonna come here and sign a big record deal, you have to be a fucking lunatic,” she theorises, gesticulating wildly. “You have to be fucking mad otherwise you would give up! The amount of times I’ve been kicked down to the dirt, and how the fuck I’ve come back, I don’t know…”

therapy for it because I’m a total people pleaser to the point where I feel like my life when I’m around people is such a pantomime because I want everyone to like me and then when I’m alone…” She stops for a second. “It’s good now, I’m on antidepressants so it’s different, but I’ve been so unhappy. This has been an incredible year because everything I wanted, I’ve finally got it. But before that, my life was a shit show.” It’s this duality - of a big, open-hearted, effervescent spirit shot through with world-weariness and an acute awareness of life’s dick moves - that characterises Baby Queen’s output so far. The aforementioned ‘Buzzkill’ details the mental minefield of parties that make you want to curl up in a cupboard with wry, speak-sing vocals, while ‘Medicine’ is a deceptively chirpy ode to the numbing effects of mood-altering prescriptions (“My life is great, because it is devoid of meaning”). Recent single ‘Pretty Girl Lies’, meanwhile, takes aim at the fakeness of social media and the problems presented by picture-perfect pop stars; having grown up idolising Taylor Swift in her original poster girl form, the line “my role models were never real” feels particularly pertinent.

To think you’re gonna come here and sign a big record deal, you have to be a fucking lunatic.”

“I never had an artist that was saying, ‘I kind of wanna die. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m so depressed while everyone is happy’. I thought I was fucked. I thought it was only me,” she stresses. “So the best thing I can do is be completely transparent so that the kids out there think ‘I’m not alone’, and then they come to the show and think, ‘I’m really not alone’.

See, while on the surface Bella is a hoot - the kind of made-for-stardom personality who’ll gleefully recall a video of her three-year-old self naked, singing Madonna’s ‘Like A Virgin’ before pausing for comic effect: “Not a virgin anymore!” - there’s a darker side to her dead-eyed, sarcasm-laced pop that shows Baby Queen is far from all sunshine and lollipops.

“The face of pop has changed as a new generation grows up that’s rebelling against the Kardashian-esque, airbrushed thing. That’s not what people want anymore. The reason why Billie Eilish is the biggest pop star in the world, and people like Melanie Martinez and Clairo are breaking through, is because the demand for bubblegum pop girls is over. Their time is over. They’re done. Goodbye huns,” she Stifled and out of place among the uninpronounces with a wave. “The spired, 2.4 children attitude of new generation is sick and her home town, Bella knew that fucking tired of it, and people to pursue her dreams she would want something they can acneed to buckle up and move to TWITTER FOLLOWING tually relate to because we’re a much bigger city. London, she If Baby Queen doesn’t work out, all depressed and struggling. explains, completely changed Bella’s got her second choice of We don’t want to see Kylie her life and her music - in both career all lined up, it turns out… Jenner. Put it away.” positive ways and tougher ones. “I feel like I’m more of a London “I do really miss South The face of pop is changing musician than 99% of actual Africa - I used to spend most for good, yes, and Baby London musicians because holidays and weekends in Queen feels like the next in it has so heavily influenced the wild going on roadtrips line to make a genuine impact everything. You can HEAR to the game reserve. I was in it. If, according to the London in my music. It’s a very obsessed. I know the whole gospel of RuPaul, the tools cynical voice in my songs that’s Birds of Southern Africa book needed for superstardom talking,” she says. “Living in this off by heart. I know every are a heady mix of charisma, city that’s so incredibly fucking single sound a bird makes. uniqueness, nerve and talent difficult to survive in - I was ‘Ooh, that’s a Lilac Breasted then Bella’s got them all in stealing sandwiches from Tesco Roller’. ‘Ooh - that’s a Southern spades. Sorry Mrs Latham, because I couldn’t afford to eat. I Ground Hornbill’. If I didn’t you probably won’t be cashcouldn’t afford to pay rent. It’s so become a musician I wanted ing in that plane ticket home difficult to come to a city and not to become one of the people any time soon. DIY know anyone and I had no idea who tours you through the what the industry was. wilderness.” “Songs like ‘Buzzkill’ and ‘MediSo there you go. cine’ were so real for me. I go to

The demand for bubblegum pop girls is over. They’re done. Goodbye huns.” 19

From sad bops to full-on dancefloor-worthy bangers.

BIG JOANIE

Walthamstow-born Rose Gray has been kicking around for a while, releasing her debut single at the start of 2019, but it’s in recent track ‘Same Cloud’ that the singer’s hit on something special. Where those early tracks nodded to a Winehouseesque blend of soul with a hip hop tinge, her newest nods more to the baggy pill-popping party tracks of the ‘90s, but helmed by Rose’s slightly throaty (yet impressively powerful) vocal for that extra je ne sais quoi. Listen: ‘Same Cloud’ is like All Saints’ ‘Pure Shores’ remixed by Primal Scream. Similar to: Playing two songs from two different decades on your iTunes at once, and it sounding surprisingly excellent.

OK, so very technically Big Joanie break the rules of Neu a little as they do already have a debut - 2018’s ‘Sistahs’ - out already. However it feels like, over more recent months, their rise has started to reach a new level. Most recently performing as part of Third Man Records’ Public Access series, theirs is a gnarly, infectious brand of punk that sizzles with intensity. Plus, their cover of Solange’s ‘Cranes in the Sky’ is a slow-burning triumph. Listen: Their aforementioned Third Man Public Access set, with its three unreleased tracks. Similar to: If Solange and Bikini Kill teamed up for a killer collab.

The Third Man-approved London punk trio on everyone’s lips.

neu

RECOMMENDED

ROSE GRAY

TV PRIEST

Roughened up post-punk with a side of articulate social commentary. Having burst into our consciousness back in April with ‘House of York’, an acerbic take on the monarchy and its impact on the country, TV Priest have spent the past six months proving themselves to be one of post-punk’s most exhilarating new prospects. Deliciously chaotic new single ‘Slideshow’ packs in the squalling guitars and attitude too, while their debut album ‘Uppers’ is sure to be an intricate but scuzzy highlight in the final months of 2020. Listen: ‘Slideshow’ is a gnarly take on how social media is entangled with our everyday lives. Similar to: The band cite the likes of The Fall, Ought and Stereolab as influences.

JEAN DAWSON Experimental pop’s latest provocateur.

Hailing from Tijuana and San Diego, Jean Dawson grew up on the Mexico and US border, falling in love with the rap and rock that his parents played alongside the Latin sounds around him. Translating his shapeshifting influences into electrifying popleaning slappers - while pulling on elements from punk and hip hop in a Lil Peep / KennyHoopla-reminiscent way - forthcoming debut album ‘PIXEL BATH’ will undoubtedly see him push pop to its limits even more. Listen: Latest track ‘Starface*’ is perfect for living out your cool teenage fantasy. Similar to: The newest addition to the ever-growing Breakfast Club-esque group making pop cooler than ever before.

20 DIYMAG.COM

BB SWAY

From Hong Kong to London, making lush, far-reaching bedroom pop sound easy. Bedroom pop by its original definition suggests an artist hunched over a laptop at their desk. These days, however, people are upping their game - as evidenced by London-via-Hong Kong talent bb sway. While previous cheeky single ‘cook4u’ (an ode to the simple pleasures of making pasta for your beau) might ring with lo-fi charm, her latest - ‘I Found Out When The Day Had Come’ - sparkles with the kind of sunrise warmth that Grizzly Bear would be proud of. Listen: Set ‘I Found Out…’ as your morning alarm clock and wake up blissed-out e’rry damn day. Similar to: The sound of golden hour.

The Bristol band talk literal and musical ‘Redevelopment’. Words: Elly Watson. Band reinventions can always be a bit tricky, but Home Counties seem to have smashed it. Formerly known as punk whippersnappers Haze, the Bristol-based group re-emerged earlier this year with Squid-meets-Britpop banger ‘Redevelopment’, dropping their debut EP of the same name last month. “Haze was all about energy and vibing off each other, but this has been a lot more thought out,” explains guitarist Conor Kearney of their exciting new chapter. “We came up with the name Haze on a walk once, but this time we sat down and actually had a brainstorm of names.” “One of the high contenders was Nu Labour, like Nu Metal,” singer Will Harrison chuckles. “To be fair, there weren’t a lot of names on the mind map…” Eventually landing on Home Counties,

the band’s revamp sees them exercising more consideration musically and, in Conor’s words, “not just spamming all the chords and hoping for the best”. Taking inspiration from the likes of Parquet Courts and Television, they pinpoint their new style as a lot less “abrasive” than their previous offerings, with bouncy, tongue-in-cheek EP gem ‘Dad Bod’ as a shining example. Lyrically, the band’s political commentary is more subtle and playful this time around too, exploring British living over the last 50 years by breathing life into its “boring grey spaces”. “There’s a playfulness and it’s not too serious, which reflects us,” Conor emphasises. “I feel like we’ve become Home Counties so much more and we’ve really decided about the music we want to make,” Will agrees. “The EP really marks the transitional phase.”

Though finally feeling like they’ve found their footing, the group aren’t quite done experimenting just yet, however. “Everything we’ve written since lockdown has been a complete departure!” Will laughs. “We’ve actually got really into shitty ‘80s synth music, and ‘70s cop drama music. I think we’ve amplified not taking it seriously to quite extreme heights. Lyrically, it all seems to be honing more into the hypocrisies of middle England and middle class life. That’s why I was saying it feels like we’ve become our band; every bit of it feels a bit more tailored towards us as a project.” Overall, the quintet are feeling stronger and surer than ever before. “I think Home Counties is the band we always wanted to be, even when we were Haze,” Connor smiles. “This is where we wanted to get to.” And we have no doubt they’re here to stay. DIY

We’ve got really into shitty ‘80s synth music and ‘70s cop drama music.” Will Harrison

HOME COUNTIES

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neu

Co-signed by all your indie faves, Mancunian Phoebe is ready to speak her mind - and no one’s getting in her way. Words: Sarah Jamieson.

On her most recent single, Phoebe Green is on tantalising form. Half spoken, half sung, ‘Reinvent’ is a track that deals in a witty brand of honesty that feels entirely her own the Manchester singer deliberating the pros and cons of people-pleasing in the most satisfyingly straighttalking of fashions. “It’s definitely my way of putting across things that I want to say without having to actually say them!” she laughs down the phone of its honest and direct approach, a few weeks on from the track’s release. “I do like to do that!”

But for the 22 year old, her newest track marks something of a breakthrough. “I would definitely see it as [that],” she agrees. “Singing is always something I’ve done, but I’ve never actually done spoken word… And like, I’ve never been self-conscious about how Northern I sound, but I’ve always thought, well, you know, it’s not the most romantic sounding thing ever… So yeah, I felt quite vulnerable [on the track] - especially when I was being so blunt - but it felt good. It felt really empowering, and I think it shows a lot more of my personality than just a standard track would.”

PHOEBE GREEN

That much is evident from all of her singles so far. Having broken through early last year with the similarly forthright ‘Dreaming Of’ (“You don’t get to choose what makes me blue / I don’t want to compromise myself for you”), she’s already earned herself some major #indie cred, first signing to Chess Club Records and heading out on tour with labelmates Sundara Karma, and now writing alongside The Big Moon’s Jules Jackson.

It’s with her next step, however, that the singer’s set to really lift the lid on herself. Continuing in that same honest vein, her forthcoming debut EP aims to build upon the gorgeous alt-pop leanings of her early tracks, while still offering a platform to speak her mind. Ultimately, though, it’s about giving people a real sense of who Phoebe Green is.

“I have struggled with knowing my own mind with things, and trying not to constantly appease people,” she offers up. “Now that I’ve finally got to a headspace where I do feel like I know what I want, I’m clinging to it for dear life! I wanna stay like this forever, and I don’t wanna get back into a cycle of people-pleasing ever again! I think it’s nice to be able to document this state of personal growth through my songs. I’ve always wanted to do that with my music; to keep who I am as a person in this present moment.” DIY

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It’s nice to be able to document this state of personal growth through my songs.”

RESEARCH SUBJECT

I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME

VISUAL

REFERENCE

THE DEBUT ALBUM ‘RAZZMATAZZ’ DELIVERANCE

23 OCTOBER, 2020

FEARLESSRECORDS.COM • iDKHOW.COM

A PRESENTATION OF MUSIC AND THE SPOKEN WORD

MOONCHILD SANELLY The South African ‘Queen of Gqom’, bringing some much-needed joy to the rest of the world. Words: Max Pilley.

Moonchild Sanelly has picked the perfect moment to grace the world with her good vibes. With external misery continuing to close in, her debut international offering, the ‘Nüdes’ EP (released last month via Transgressive), offers the perfect escape - its jubilant tales brimming with body positivity, sex positivity and a determination to let nothing stand in the way of a good time.

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The Johannesburg-based singer and rapper established herself on home turf some time ago, where she’s been hailed as the ‘Queen of Gqom’ - the style of minimal house that arose in South Africa during the 2010s. After immersing herself in the Durban poetry scene of the late 2000s (“Give me a word and I can tell you a story,” she says), Sanelly branched off into making her own music because she “wanted something more exciting, something that wasn’t already being done”. Having grown up obsessed with kwaito, hip hop and jazz, she now has her own way of describing her sound. “I call my genre ‘future ghetto funk’,” she says. “It’s a blend of

different things. What I bring to a song is not necessarily limited to a genre, but it is very distinct and you can definitely hear where I’m from. If you don’t understand the gqom, there’s something else that speaks to you; it’s really exciting to see people from different places celebrate that.” It’s not all they’re celebrating, either. Her track ‘Thunda Thighs’ recently inspired a TikTok dance challenge, acting as an entreaty for women to celebrate their bodies. “It’s a song that reminds women that they are awesome as they are,” she explains, although the South African radio authorities didn’t agree, banning it from the airwaves earlier this year. It didn’t stop the track from becoming an international viral smash, however, and many of the clips are set to feature in a forthcoming video for the song. August’s ‘Where De Dee Kat’, meanwhile, is a paean to sex positivity, a full-throated anthem to female desire with its chorus of “penis, penis, penis”. “It’s like, man, we come from sex, let’s talk about it!” she says. “I get surprised how people fear talking about sex, and it’s like, why? Why are they scared of something they’ve enjoyed?” It’s grimly predictable that the singer has had to deal with a measure of abuse as a result. “They associate it with being a slut, saying that you enjoy sex and talking about it,” she explains. “I get called all these names all the time on social media, but they’ll have to deal with it, because I’m not changing anything and I’m not going to not talk.” Does she secretly quite enjoy winding those people up? “Abso-motherfucking-lutely! It really does give me a kick,” she beams. Suck it up trolls, ‘Nüdes’ is clearly just the beginning for Moonchild Sanelly. DIY

I get surprised how people fear talking about sex. Why are they scared of something they’ve enjoyed?” 24 DIYMAG.COM

FEED All the buzziest new music happenings, in one place.

PLAY LIST

Every week on Spotify, we update DIY’s Neu Discoveries playlist with the buzziest, freshest faces. Here’s our pick of the best new tracks: BREE RUNWAY

Little Nokia

TAKE OFF TO THE CITY Liverpool’s Sound City has unveiled some of the first names from its 2021 lineup, with The Murder Capital, Working Men’s Club and TTRRUUCCES all set to appear. Next year’s edition is set to take place in Liverpool from 30th April to 2nd May and tickets are on sale now.

The latest from Bree Runway is a masterclass in genre and generation blending. ‘Little Nokia’ is full of glossy pop-hooks and crunchy rock guitars, referencing sounds from both chart-topping 90s pop and nu-metal as she dismisses a boy who’s stressing her out with all his phone calls and lying. Adept at mixing and matching influences, Bree’s music is always unpredictable but wholly on brand - and as heard on her latest single, whatever it is she decides to turn her hand to, the end result is always exciting. PIXEY

neu

BUZZ

Just Move

THE GRAND UNVEILING

A REIMAGINING

Announcing her first body of work in two years after 2018’s ‘Wild Yout’ EP, Flohio has confirmed that her brand new mixtape - ‘Unveiled’ will be arriving on 27th November. Linking up with production duo Take A Daytrip for the mixtape, Flohio has also revealed the title track alongside an electric video choreographed by ALL CHOREOGRAPHERS ARE BASTARDS. An exciting glimpse at what she’s got in store, check it out on diymag.com now.

Following the release of their track ‘SUNRISE’ back in July, NYC group MICHELLE have teamed up with the wonderful Arlo Parks for a reworking of the single. “Our good friend Arlo Parks hopped on our newest version of ‘SUNRISE’,” the band have said. “What a pleasure it is to hear new voices reimagine a tune we’ve held so close. Her soothing voice and stunning lyricism is everything we could’ve asked for.” “There‘s such a warmth and an energy to this track and MICHELLE are such a talented, genuine bunch,” Arlo adds. “I feel so honoured to be a part of it.” Hear it now over on diymag.com.

Written and recorded in her bedroom at the beginning of lockdown, the newest track to come from Liverpool’s Pixey is a real gem. A little bit Primal Scream, a little bit Madonna in her ‘Beautiful Stranger’ era, ‘Just Move’ is a groove-laden hit that’s sure to see the new Chess Club-signing making quite the mark. TIÑA

People Taken from forthcoming debut album ‘Positive Mental Health Music’, the latest track from Tiña is quite the lilting ditty. Speaking of the track, Joshua Loftin says, “The sun’s going down, John Lennon and Elton John are in a small row boat together, they’ve just been intimate with each other and are lying down side by side, and everything is okay.” Sure… PVA

Talks Meeting at the junction between the club and the mosh pit, PVA’s latest takes a little from Talking Heads, a little from ‘90s club culture and some deadpan vocals courtesy of Ella Harris and combines them in a heady mix made for sweaty, smoke machine-filled rooms at 2am (remember them?).

Skyrocketing to fame over a rollercoaster last few years, Beabadoobee

is now gearing

up to release her highly

anticipated debut album ‘Fake It Flowers’, and she’s not holding

anything back.

26 DIYMAG.COM

Words: Elly Watson. Photos: Eva Pentel.

Queen B ea

ea Kristi is running late, but it’s easy to forgive her as she’s had quite the shock. Emerging from Euston station about half an hour earlier, Bea - better known as Beabadoobee - encountered a sight that would make anyone stop in their tracks: a humongous billboard of her own face. “There was a family looking at it and then looking back at me and I was like, ‘Fuck!’. Oh my god, it was so trippy!” she laughs, now safely back in her teenage stomping ground of Camden. Having been through a whirlwind last three years, it’d be easy to think that Bea would be used to ticking off huge milestones by now. Critically acclaimed EPs? Already got several. A sold-out tour with one of the biggest bands in the

world? Smashed it. A viral song on TikTok? Currently at a cool six million views, and counting. What’s a huge billboard zoomed in on your face to add to the mix, eh? It’s easy to forget that, only a few years ago, the now-20-year-old songwriter was chilling on Camden Lock, where we sit now, her biggest goal trying to convince a woman “who looked just like [her] mum” in one of the market shops to let her have a job when she was 14. “There was definitely a similarity between us and she got really sad when she found out I was too young [to work there],” Bea recalls. The location of many of her teenage ups and downs, NW1 has seen what Bea describes as “different phases” of her life. There were the lows when she’d sit by herself by the canal feeling lonely and depressed, but, walking around, most of Bea’s memories centre around the rite-ofpassage of getting “super fucked up” with friends. “There was one time when I really needed a piss and we were by the canal and it wasn’t dark enough to piss by the bush,” she begins through giggles. “We ended

I either get sentimental messages about people getting over their breakup, or it’s people having sex to my music.” 28 DIYMAG.COM

up getting on this guy’s canal boat; he was a complete stranger and I pissed in his canal boat. It was the grimmest thing I’ve ever done. To be honest, he did give off quite strong Pete Doherty vibes... “When I was 15, that was when the crazy shit happened,” she continues. “I was just a very rebellious teen. It sounds really cringe but me and my friends just did a lot of bad shit around London. We did these allnighters. It was terrible. We’d have a house to sleep at and then not go. So I’ve slept on South Bank beach, Primrose Hill, a Hammersmith roof…” Nowadays, however, her nights out look a little bit different (though the getting super-fucked-up bit still remains strong). Walking past a bar that’s only five minutes away from where she used to take singing lessons back in the day, she remembers the last time she did karaoke. “It was in Dublin where I got this tattoo,” she beams, pointing to the alien-esque figure on her forearm that makes up one of her many pieces of ink. “Yeah, Mac DeMarco stick and poked my arm in a dingy karaoke bar in Dublin.” Any,

um, sanitation, Bea? “Vodka!” she laughs. “My bassist was so drunk, she had to be carried away and her tattoo was only half finished. I was like ‘What is going on?! Mac DeMarco, who I’ve looked up to since I was 14, just stick-and-poked my arm in a karaoke bar?!’ It was really weird.” Evidently, Bea’s entire world has changed massively. Originally planning to go to Queen Mary University to study English and do a teaching course, perfectly happy with a weekend in Camden’s Ice Wharf pub - “Not to sound like a basic bitch, but I’m alright with a Wetherspoons, you know?” - Bea still holds a dream of teaching nursery school at some point. “Music was my hobby and now it’s my job and everything is about music, so it would be nice if I had something separate from that,” she says. “I did teaching assisting for a bit in sixth form and it was the best time ever. I got so into it, and I cried when I left. The kids made me this massive card and they drew me a rainbow and

The Bea Hive Though yet to rival the famed Bey Hive, Bea’s got some pretty wild fans already… I would be friends with all of them. I stalk them out and I see how they dress and what they look like and I’m like “I’d so be your friend, we’d hang out”. The kids that come to my shows, like, we’re the same person! They come so fucked up and I’m like safe. After my show just before I went on tour I met everyone outside and smoked a zoot with them in a circle and people were doing my tarot cards!

stuck all their faces on the rainbow. It was so cute I wanted to die. And the amount of DILFs was crazy!” For now, however, her sights are set on something rather different. With highly-anticipated debut ‘Fake It Flowers’ released this month (which she plans on marking with a flowery “tramp stamp” new tat, FYI), Bea’s latest goal is to become the voice and role model that she was seeking as that lonely teenager sat by the river. “I never had someone to look up to or who even looked like me,” she details. “I was in a bad place and needed someone to help me out and it’s nice knowing that I can be that person.”

riginally from the Philippines, but having moved to England during her early childhood, Bea found it hard to fit in in a place where not many people resembled her. “I was in an all-girl Catholic school that was predominantly white and I felt so alienated at times,” she begins. “Some of the girls were quite rude to me, but I managed to find an amazing group of friends who accepted me as who I was. It was that weird thing where I was too white to be in the Asian group but too Asian to be in the white group. It was a confusing time. At a point, I felt kind of embarrassed about who I was because I didn’t know anyone who was like me.” It wasn’t until she came across ‘90s band Lush and frontwoman Miki Berenyi that Bea saw someone who looked like her on stage. The revelation inspired her to pick up the guitar and give it a go herself. “I was constantly trying to find my ‘thing’ growing up and once I picked up a guitar, it felt right,” she smiles. Flitting between the indie and pop spheres, Bea’s already seen huge success, though she still doesn’t fully see herself fitting in. However, a recent team up with Dirty Hit labelmate No Rome and Jay Som - both also Filipino artists - on May track ‘Hurry Home’ brought with it some welcome reminders of her heritage. “I remember being with Rome in the studio and [being Filipino] comes into conversation without realising, like ‘Do you remember this food? Do you remember halo-halo? Did you watch this?’. We just bounce off each other,” she gleams. “Being on tour with Rome was the nicest experience because his band is all Filipino so I would just hear Tagalog spoken all the time, and despite being so far away and doing dumb shit on tour, every time I heard them speak in the background it was so nice. “I remember when we did signings after some shows, and the amount of Filipino girls who came up to me like, ‘You’ve inspired me to do this’ [was

amazing]. One time I actually cried,” she recalls. “It means so much to me. It makes everything so much more worth it and makes me feel like I can’t stop doing this. And I don’t want to stop doing this! “I’m glad if I can help even in some way for one person. I think that’s honestly amazing and I do think I have a sense of just not letting anyone down and the fear of, if I chose to stop for a while, that people would miss out from that and not be able to hear music that helps them. I always say, ‘No I don’t ever feel any pressure’, but I am starting to feel a bit now and I think that’s natural because of everything that’s happening. There’s a lot of shit to get used to!” Yet, though she may only just be feeling the pressure, Bea’s been dealing with stress for a while, and it’s this experience and the act of venting her feelings from it that would lead to her debut. Noting her last tour cycle as a particular time of acting “a bit dumb,” the singer explains that she felt as though she was beginning to lose her sense of self and took to writing to help her through it. “When I was 15, I was pretty wild and then I got super sensible and calm and made [2018 EP] ‘Patched Up’ and it’s going well, going well, then [last year’s] ‘Space Cadet’, and boom!” she emphasises. “I went on tour and I was like, ‘This is definitely not me. I have no idea who I am’. It got messy.” “Everything just became so overwhelming. I kind of lost myself a bit because I just went wild. I have a habit of, if I’m away from home and I don’t feel like myself, doing things to distract myself from that. It got to the point where I was being too reckless,” she recalls. “I needed that time, obviously, but after experiencing that I realised that I didn’t know anything about myself. Some of the songs are written from the time when everything was happening and I was kind of getting over it - thinking about the things that happened when I was a kid and how that’s affected me as a person today. It was a stressful time but I’m glad I have ‘Fake It Flowers’ to vomit my heart out.”

Mac DeMarco stick and poked my arm in a dingy karaoke bar in Dublin.”

s a result, Beabadoobee’s debut arrives as an unflinchingly honest album, the singer unveiling the inner workings of her soul across 12 wildly emotive tracks. Written during her transition from teenager to 20-year-old, Bea returned, as she always does, to her bedroom at her parents’ place to write it. “I wrote every single one of those songs at home,” she smiles. “In the future I want to buy the house and I’m going to keep my room exactly the same, keep the Tom Hanks posters, keep the weird

smells. That room has seen me go through so much, it’s seen me be so happy and so sad. No one really knows you as good as your room. My parents don’t want to change it either; they don’t want to touch it! They don’t even wanna go in there, they’re scared of what they’ll find!”

I never had someone to look up to or who even looked like me.”

Packaging her chaotic thoughts into a string of grungy, ‘90s-leaning bangers, ‘Fake It Flowers’ soars with an overwhelming sense of honesty on every track that Bea credits to being forced to grow up quickly and experience a lot of things she never thought she’d go through. There’s anger on ‘Emo Song’, where Bea details why she doesn’t trust men, and love in the ode to her boyfriend ‘Horen Sarrison’ with heartstringpulling, diary-like entries of “You are the smell of pavement after the rain / You are the last empty seat on the train”. Elsewhere there’s the empowerment of ‘Dye It Red’ (“Kiss my ass, you don’t know jack”), regret and loss in ‘Sorry’, and everything else in between. In other tracks, her stories get more personal, detailing her struggles with self-harm in ‘Charlie Brown’ (“Back on old habits / That no one knows about”), with one song (‘Yoshimi, Forest, Magdalene’) even named after her future children. “I’m pouring my heart out and I have to do it or else I’ll go insane,” Bea explains. “[The album] talks about a lot of experiences and there’s a lot of emotions. Everyone is going to think I’m crazy! I’m going to get loads of messages like, ‘Yo, is this song about me?’. We’ve had a lot of awkward conversations already and it’s only the third single! When I write and record I’m like, ‘This is sick’, and then 10 minutes before I’m like, ‘Oh my god, everyone’s gonna know everything about me’. But sometimes it’s good to be honest. It definitely feels like closing a chapter in my life with ‘Fake It Flowers’. Now I can enjoy it and see how people receive it and see if anyone gets inspired or dances in their bedrooms at least…” Popping on her specially-created Spotify playlist entitled ‘Fake It Flowers Energy’ - made up of tracks including Avril Lavigne’s ‘Complicated’, ‘My Favourite Game’ by The Cardigans, and ‘Sweet Sixteen’ by Hilary Duff - Bea spends the shoot today showing us the tracks that conjure up the same energy she hopes her own

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will have. Her go-to mirror dance tracks, she notes, are anything from Veruca Salt’s 1997 ‘Eight Arms To Hold You’ LP or... Hannah Montana. “Have you heard ‘Rockstar’ or ‘You’ll Always Find Your Way Back Home’?” she giggles. “I look like a dumb ass but I have dance routines. It’s embarrassing what my mirror has witnessed. But you know what? I want songs from ‘Fake It Flowers’ to make people dance like I do.” Certain reactions to her music, she tells us however, have been more connected to the, ahem, horizontal tango. “I either get sentimental messages about people getting over their breakup, or it’s people having sex to my music,” Bea laughs. “I’m like, ‘This type of music?! That’s gonna be a weird rhythm!’ And they put it on shuffle so it’ll go from ‘Deathbed’ to ‘Care’ and I’m like, ‘This is so confusing!’. I speak to this one girl who doesn’t even know what it sounds like yet but is like ‘Yeah, I’m definitely going to have sex to ‘Charlie Brown’.’ I’m like, that’s a screamo song, so that’s going to be interesting! I think it’s quite flattering, to be honest.” However, no matter what the physical reaction may be, Bea is hoping ‘Fake It Flowers’ can soundtrack the life of girls like her and help people through the difficult teenage years that she’s known all too well. From getting pissed on Camden Lock to encountering a billboard of her face down the road just a few short years later, it’s been a whirlwind of a ride for Beabadoobee and her debut acts as the perfect glimpse into the rollercoaster journey so far.

“At times it can be very overwhelming,” she nods, “but the thing that’s keeping me going is music, and playing with my band, and the people who appreciate my music. I’m in this weird limbo where I appreciate and love everything that’s happening to me right now, but I have no idea what the fuck is going on!. I kind of just really like smoking weed in my bedroom and doing nothing! If you’ve been on lockdown-

Chicken Run

app-of-the-moment TikTok, you’ve likely heard the remix of Bea’s debut single ‘Coffee’ soundtracking loads of your fave viral moments. I don’t use TikTok a lot but I think it’s cool how people use the ‘Coffee’ remix a lot. It’s weird as fuck but I’ve come to appreciate it because so many people have discovered my music despite it being so different to what I make. I had TikTok for a bit in Oxford when I was staying with The 1975 guys and my band and I was just making weird-ass TikToks, like my band chasing chickens…

“My plan was never music,” she grins, “it just kind of fell into my hands. But I love making people happy and I don’t want to do anything to stop that.” ‘Fake It Flowers’ is out 16th October via Dirty Hit. DIY

DIY

BEABADOOBEE October 2020

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BEABADOOBEE October 2020

DIY

GUS DAPPERTON October 2020

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Experiencing the highs and lows of touring life as he’s worked his way up the indie ranks, ‘Orca’ finds Gus Dapperton embracing his vulnerability and coming out fighting. Words: Elly Watson.

“A

lot of people come up to me and tell me I look like Gus Dapperton and then they don’t think it’s me,” Gus - the real one - laughs over the phone. “There was one time this girl came up to me like, ‘You look a lot like Gus Dapperton’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s actually me!’ and they were like, ‘Ha, you’re so funny...’. It was weird. I think I change my hair so much nowadays it’s hard to recognise me…” Yet, though people might not clock him without the signature bowl cut-and-glasses look he sported when he first emerged, he’s spent the last few years slowly rising through the alt-pop ranks. Currently rocking a slick buzzcut, Gus and his many hairstyles have become something of a staple name within those spheres. Carving out a name for himself when 2017 hit ‘I’m Just Snacking’ blew up online, Gus’ signature howling vocals, nonsensical lyrics and jangly melodies quickly saw him capture people’s attention. Follow-up EPs ‘Yellow and Such’ and ‘You Think You’re A Comic!’ further showcased his experimental pop chops, rife with witty wordplay and clever synth-y licks, before last year’s debut LP ‘Where Polly People Go To Read’ fully pushed him into the spotlight. “I never really had a dream to be anywhere in music,” he shrugs of the ascent. “I was always really content. I had a couple of music videos and they had like, no views on them, and then I made ‘I’m Just Snacking’. I wasn’t hoping it would get millions of views; I was just really excited to be where I was at and to be working with really talented people. “I’m not a naturally gifted musician by any means, I just really like to do it, so I do it all the time,” he continues. “I’ve grown up with people who are naturally-gifted singers and guitarists, and people who have it embedded in them; I was never encouraged to pursue music because I was never naturally gifted in those things. My dream growing up was always to move to New York. I grew up just outside of the city, and my whole dream was just moving to New York and living there. As soon as I got there, that was my dream, so anything else that comes is just an added bonus.” Now happily bedded down in NYC (congrats), the “added bonuses” have been rolling in thick and fast. If you’ve been anywhere online in the last few months, you’ve likely heard New Zealand newcomer BENEE’s viral hit ‘SUPALONELY’, which Gus features on. “I still haven’t met one person who’s heard that song on the street because we’ve all been in quarantine!” he laughs. “I haven’t

heard that song out and about and experienced any of that journey yet. I never would’ve dreamt of anything like this, or sharing my music with so many people. It’s been a huge surprise to me!”

peaking to the singer on the eve of second album ‘Orca’, his newest output finds the now-23-year-old artist gearing up for even more exciting times ahead, though the record originated from the opposite. Written back in 2018, ‘Orca’ sees Gus battling with the emotional turmoil brought on from the highs and lows of tour life, discussing the mental health issues he experienced during those chaotic times. “You’d play some of the best shows you’ve ever played and have these huge emotional highs,” Gus explains, “and then the next show, I’d break a string and it would be the most devastating night of my life. All of that combined, it definitely took a toll on me.” Across the album, Gus details his struggles with anxiety (‘Bluebird’) and depression (‘Grim’), noting the direct metaphors on both ‘Medicine’ and ‘Antidote’ as some of his favourite songwriting. “In the past, I’ve been a little bit more cryptic with my lyrics and stuff, but this album and these songs are a bit more forward,” he smiles. “I was nervous about releasing them! They’re all very personal and based on real experiences, so I was quite nervous about that. I really want people to understand the depth of the music I’m making, and I think when I started releasing the singles, people understood where I was coming from pretty quickly.” With people already praising the tracks for their relatability in these “weird and unprecedented” times, Gus is clearly confident with what he’s created - he’s even got his pal Lee to give him a face tattoo to mark the occasion. “It’s a symbol I was trying to make to symbolise the album and the themes of the album,” he says of his new ink. “I’m not really religious but I’ve always been interested in faith and how people can have these icons that they hold close to them to make them feel good. I got stitches right by my eye and my tattoo is right underneath, and I was trying to symbolise humans healing each other and helping each other heal. I have faith in humans to learn from their mistakes, and that’s sort of what my faith is.”

“I really want people to understand the depth of the music I’m making.”

Guess the 2017 bowl cut won’t be needed for any future IRL Gus identification, eh? ‘Orca’ is out now via AWAL. DIY

WORKING MEN’S CLUB singer Syd Minsky-Sargeant may have ditched an entire line-up of band mates and made an album born for pills, thrills and bellyaches, but up in Todmorden, we find a surprisingly sweet 19-year-old who just wants to do what he loves.

I didn’t like it. You find most people who form bands went to art school, but I wasn’t welcome there,” he shrugs. Because of his supposed misbehaviour, loudmouth antics and rebellious streak? ”I just wasn’t very good at art!” he laughs.

it makes me really angry, so I’ll get even more into it. It’s shit like that - it’s an outlet for stress, but honestly lockdown has mellowed me.”

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Words: Abi Whistance. Photos: Andrew Benge.

Syd MinskySargeant is a shock to the system, just not in the way you might think. Polite, warm and with a sense of reserve, after five minutes of being in the same room as the Working Men’s Club’s lynchpin and sole original member, it’s clear that the singer is not the crass figure he’s painted out to be.

Ahead of today’s interview he’s locked in friendly conversation at his local pub with a landlord who knows him on a first-name basis. According to other articles written about him he is, for want of a better word, a gobshite. Yet it’s hard to connect the dots between the brash, chaotic figure seen on stage, or the sound of this month’s selftitled debut album - a heady release in debt to the ravier end of Factory Records - and the quiet teenager sat across the table.

It seems that school aversion did the trick for Syd. After their debut single ‘Bad Blood’ gained critical acclaim in 2019, Working Men’s Club - now rounded out by bassist Liam Ogden, keyboard player Mairead O’Connor and guitarist Rob Graham after the departure of two original members quickly began pricking up ears, leaving little time for the singer to fall in love with education, but plenty for him to fall in love with the microphone.

Stranger still is the place that raised Syd, where we meet him today. Rife with greenery and antique shops, the West Yorkshire market town of Todmorden seems an unlikely location for the genesis of a magnetic frontman. “I was born in London, and then got kicked out of social housing. I think as a child it excited me moving [to Todmorden] because I’d never been somewhere so green, but I always had the intention to move back to a city,” he ponders. “I find cities more intense now; I used to like the excitement but now I like the peace…”

“I’ve always enjoyed playing gigs, it’s nice to be able to be yourself,” he explains. “I have a lot of aggression in my head that blows up when I’m performing, like, I’ll see someone on their phone at a gig and

Syd’s brief fling with city life didn’t end with his early childhood. Studying music then brought him to Manchester, yet, separated from urbanity at a young age, the bright lights and climbing office blocks clearly did nothing for him - nor did the mundane nature of schooling. “I found music college weird,

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“I had a tough time throughout school, so as soon as I could leave, I did. I ended up dossing around and didn’t do much work; I wanted to make music. I didn’t like the idea of some boring career. I didn’t care if it worked or not; music made me happy.”

oday, Syd does mostly seem mellow. Far from the strident man we’ve seen spouting his mouth off with a middle finger up to the world, there’s evidently a far more sensitive one behind the facade. “I’ll act on stage how I feel in my head, but when I meet people I’ll try and be as nice and polite as I can because I don’t want to be known for being a dick.” He pauses. “I don’t think I am one. [The press] make me sound like a pretentious arsehole and it upsets me because I try and not be. This is why I keep my circle small and I go off and get fucked with my band after and don’t integrate with everything else. I’m just doing my job. That’s what everyone else gets to do.” Separating Syd from Working Men’s Club reveals a 19-year-old battling the same struggles as any other young musician, forced into the music industry’s spotlit shark-pit. Who wasn’t seen as a bit of an arsehole before they hit their twenties? If you point the finger at someone and call them a prick for long enough, you can bet they’ll start to act like one.

“I think it’s because I tell people what I think instead of trying to fit in,” he speculates. “Especially with guitar music, there’s a real lack of honesty. It’s like post-punk: now everyone wants to make that. Just fuck off and do what you want - if it’s good then it’s good. Sign a folk artist if it’s good. Not everyone is listening to folk, but if it’s better than that shitty little band from London then why aren’t you signing them?” It’s this reluctance to toe the musical party line that leads us to ‘Working Men’s Club’, the band’s debut, recorded with lauded producer Ross Orton who’s previously twiddled the knobs for the likes of Arctic Monkeys, MIA and The Fall. “This album is very much

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I HAVE A LOT OF AGGRESSION IN MY HEAD THAT BLOWS UP WHEN I’M PERFORMING.” Some great camouflaging there, mate.

THE DAY THE BUSINESSMEN TOOK OVER MUSIC, IT ALL WENT TO SHIT.” Syd Minsky- Sargeant

JOIN THE CLUB

With a tally of members a hair short of what you’d find in an actual working men’s club, it’s easy to understand why Syd Minsky-Sargeant has gained a bit of a reputation... ‘‘It wasn’t some Mark E. Smith thing; it was just stuff that didn’t work out,’’ he says on the departure of original members Jake Bogacki and Giulia Bonometti. ‘’I’m really content with the band now, if anything I’ll just add to it. But I don’t need anyone else [in the studio] with me, I like the fact I can do it alone because it eliminates all the things that get in the way. There are seas of ideas otherwise; all I want to do is bang it out then fuck off, write the next one.’’ Would he like to be in a band with himself? ‘‘I’d hate it!’’ he laughs. ‘’It’s like that Anton Newcombe thing in Dig!: ‘What Anton wants is seven other Antons in a band’. I don’t want that though, I still like working with other people, and it’ll always be a semicollaborative thing.’’

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my work melodically,” he says, “but I did work with a producer. I feel like they’re helping me get the best out of myself. There’s no ego there, there’s just two people after the best thing. But I’ve moved on from [the album] already to be honest. Obviously I care what people feel because once it’s out there it’s not mine anymore, I just don’t care if people like it or dislike it. I only care if they have their own relationship with it.’’

Syd’s declaration of indifference feels authentic; you can tell he really doesn’t strive for approval. ‘‘I just feel content. Now it’s been recorded it’s past the final stage of excitement so I’m trying to separate myself from that and move on. I’m not really excited about it anymore; I guess it’s nice when you see it on vinyl for the first time, but now I just want it to be out there.’’ Yet though the singer might not be tooting his own horn, there’s plenty in ‘Working Men’s Club’ to get the blood pumping. Signed in their infancy, the band have already morphed into something that builds

on their first moves and sends them veering to the left, swapping out that first track’s Late-of-the-Pier-goespost-punk strut for Human Leagueesque keys (‘Valleys’), spacey synths (‘John Cooper Clarke’) and industrial Fall-isms (‘Be My Guest’). “‘Bad Blood’ wasn’t necessarily my type of music, I just wrote the synth and the drums for it,” Syd says. “When we were in the studio this time it was just me making [the record] and whoever I needed at the time, so I feel like it sounds more like what I want.’’ The singer is clearly a character who cares little for the standard new band narrative, and it’s this particular gripe that brings him nearer to the opinionated upstart he’s portrayed as. Rather than an antagonistic young Liam G in the making, however, he simply seems frustrated, principled and ready to carve out his own path, as he’s already begun to do. “You walk around a gallery and see 50 different paintings and like one of them; it doesn’t matter why you like it, you just do. The day the businessmen took over music, it all went to shit. It

used to be something that brought people together, now it’s gone down this capitalist route,” he says. “You’ve got bands on their fourth record [still] trying to make it sound like their first because they think that’s what sells. But I wouldn’t pigeonhole myself. That’s what the media does and it’s fair enough they want to feel like they understand, but how can anyone else understand my music when I don’t even understand it myself?”

And despite - or perhaps because of - this, there’s a fierce passion to keep creating within Syd. ‘‘It excites me when I write a song. I don’t know what the music I write is really, it’s not anything,” he shrugs. “It’s a mood or feeling, and then I’ll just go with that and move on. I’m not trying to recreate anything because I think that’s when it loses its meaning and becomes repetitive. “Making music still excites me though, it always will.’’

‘Working Men’s Club’ is out now via Heavenly. DIY

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o contemplate the difference between loneliness and being alone is not exactly a new concept. Yet, for so many of us, it’s a lingering thought that’s become all the more prescient in this present day. And while it is, of course, a question heavily packed with meaning and existentialism, it’s also only something we can really begin to process with time and experience.

“Aloneness and loneliness are two very different things, of course,” wrote Nick Cave back in September 2019, in a sage entry on his Red Hand Files. Responding to the question ‘How long will I be alone?’, and adding to the conversation at large, his entry feels apt to mention to Fenne Lily, as she readies the release of an album grappling with that same theme. “I haven’t seen that! But a) fuck him for taking my only talking point,” she laughs, “and b) I will definitely read it.” Having first emerged back in 2016 as a fresh-faced singer-songwriter who’d go on to release heart-onsleeve debut ‘On Hold’ two years later, Fenne today seems almost like a different person entirely. “I keep being asked how I’ve changed as a person between records, and I don’t think I’ve really changed that much in my emotional make up,” she counters. “I have, though, tried to make a choice to focus on different aspects of myself.” It was through that choice that Fenne found herself ready to take the leap into unknown territory.

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Having finished the rigorous touring run around that album, the then-21-year-old took the decision to relocate, alone, to Berlin. “I think on the first record, I was quite confused and angry - but I didn’t want to show that I was angry. Mainly at myself,” she caveats, “for letting what went badly go badly. Then on this album, I learned physically how to be by myself.” Moving away for a month, she needed to fully throw herself into a new version of life. “I had never been alone for more than a couple of days before, and I think that process - of taking myself, feeling uncomfortable, into a situation that made that discomfort more profound - made me look at the more positive aspects of my character. If I’d dwelled on the shit bits, I wouldn’t have made it through that time with my own mind.

“It’s weird when you realise you have to spend your whole life with yourself; sometimes, you hate yourself more than you’ve ever hated anyone else,” she continues. “You realise if you don’t become your friend, how can you expect anyone else to, and that you’re going to have a really long, crap time.”

t’s this sense of growth that helps to define her rich new record ‘BREACH’. A second album that sees her move towards a more personal sure-footing - from ‘Berlin’’s lyrical admission of “It’s not hard to be alone anymore” through to the search for closure within ‘Laundry and Jet Lag’ - there’s a sense of quiet assuredness running through its twelve tracks that feels truly cathartic. “I genuinely feel more in control than when I made the first album,” Fenne confirms. “Even the title of

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the first album suggests that I was stuck, or waiting for something to happen. On this album, I was just like, ‘I know what I want and I’m gonna do it’. I’m not saying that it was an easy process and it all went super smoothly - it really didn’t but I was more prepared for things going wrong than I would’ve been had I not made that decision to unlearn some stuff and learn some coping mechanisms.” That concept even stretches to ‘BREACH’’s title. Touching upon both the way in which she was born, and the desire to break through her own self-imposed barriers, it’s a powerful metaphor for where Fenne finds herself right now. “I think that the way that I came into the world has partially dictated how I exist in the world,” she explains. “I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, but it’s definitely happened. Then, the [alternate] definition of breach is a gap in a defence or barrier and that’s definitely something that I was thinking about when I was writing. I was trying to be more self-sufficient in terms of how I made the songs for a start. Taking control, reclaiming autonomy, that all ties into it.” And it’s through this new sense of clarity that ‘BREACH’ really hits home. An album that sees her build on the more traditional folksy foundations she had previously laid, it’s here that she provides a fuller, more kaleidoscopic insight into the pressures of growing up, of figuring yourself out, and of searching for your place in the world. “Aloneness versus loneliness, for me - I don’t know about Nick Cave,” she winks, “but I see aloneness as a choice, and loneliness as a symptom of something being thrust upon you. I wanted to make sure I understood that being alone didn’t have to be because someone had thrown me away, or because I was sick of a situation. It could be voluntary.” It can be liberating.

A Chance Meeting Let’s just say that the way Fenne discovered photographer Nicole Loucaides, who’s behind ‘BREACH’s artwork, wasn’t exactly what we’d expected. But, karma’s a bitch and all that... “I met her through a mutual friend, and they went on a date through Tinder. She lives in London, and she came down to Bristol to go on this date. We got talking, and then I found out that the guy I was sleeping with at the time was her ex-boyfriend, who completely broke her. She spoke it in less of a ‘don’t go there, I know what you’re going to go through’ way, but she was like, ‘You seem like you’re better than that, and strong enough to leave now that you know this, but make your own decision’. Meeting her precipitated the end of my relationship with this guy and it turned out he’d been sleeping with other people; it was exactly how she’d portrayed it from her perspective too. So when it came to choosing a photographer, I love her work and I knew it would be a middle finger to that guy, but also other people who treat people’s feelings like they don’t matter. That was a good choice I think.”

‘BREACH’ is out now via Dead Oceans. DIY

alking to Will Butler is a bit like trying to have a conversation with a human magpie. Hugely enthusiastic and with a constant giggle on the go (“I have a nervous laugh, so I laugh at more things than I should…”), the 37-year-old has a tendency to veer off down strange tangents, taking your original point but then getting distracted or excited by some other new, shiny train of thought in a different direction. You can tell he’s smart - not just booksmart, but the kind of smart where you can practically see the cogs turning at 100mph. “I love knowledge for its own sake,” he professes at one point. “I believe in it to a fault. I think it’s worth knowing all this shit, for no other reason than just knowing that it’s true.” And it’s this attitude that’s filled the three years since ‘Everything Now’ - he and his Arcade Fire bandmates’ society-skewering fifth LP. In that time, amid world tours and festival headlines, Will has had two more children - twins - and went to Harvard to study a masters in public policy. He also found time to record ‘Generations’ - a second solo effort that takes the brilliantly all-over-the-place nature of 2015’s ‘Policy’ and hones it into something that’s more pointed, though still clearly fuelled by the same curious mind. Or as he puts it: “The first [album] it’s like, ‘I’m at the market! There’s some eggplants! Oh there’s a nice sausage guy! And OK cool I’ll get some of those and these!’ But then ‘Generations’ was much more like,

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Not content with being one sixth of one of this century’s most innovative bands, Will Butler can now also add ‘Harvard graduate’ and a second solo album full of curious, questioning brilliance to his CV. Words: Lisa Wright.

‘I’ve been storing these bones in my freezer for two years and now we’re gonna boil this down to make the pure essence of the beast’.” Like most debuts from artists splintering off from their main projects, ‘Policy’ had been born from accumulating a collection of material that didn’t fit

I jokingly say that I was radicalised at Harvard, which is basically true.” with his band. Unlike most, Will had just been nominated for an Oscar (for his soundtrack to Joaquin Phoenix film Her) before its release, “so that was a confidence boost,” he notes amiably. Conversely, the essence of ‘Generations’’ particular beast seems a far more targeted one - one intrinsically linked with the intense political conversations the musician had found himself wrangling with during his recent studies.

“I always want whatever I’m making to emerge out of what I’m living and for it to help me understand how I’m living better, so going to policy school was certainly part of that artistic project as well as the ‘what do we fucking do?’ project,” he explains. “I jokingly say that I was radicalised at Harvard, which is basically true. I was in a mid-career programme, so there were 25-year-old geniuses but also people in their middle age who’d worked in the UN in Pakistan or the government in Mexico. They had this whole perspective of how fucked everything is across the whole globe so it was… educational.” As such, his second brims with a sense of palpable unease for a society that’s not only crumbling before our eyes right now, but has been doing so intermittently for decades and centuries. The twinkling, finger-clicking patter of ‘Close My Eyes’ belies the all-too-timely despair beneath it (“The photograph is new / But I seen that same headline, and I got to dance to keep from crying”), Randy Newman-esque closer ‘Fine’ digs right back to “George Washington and all his slaves,” while ‘Not Gonna Die’, he explains, was written in direct response to the November 2015 Bataclan shootings. “All these things hit different people in different ways, but that was so close to home,” he says. “It was Christmas after that and I was shopping in Manhattan; I walked into Sephora and it was super crowded and I thought, there’s a lot of people in here, where would I go [if something like that hap-

Butler’s Bits

‘Generations’ is undoubtedly an album rooted in politics and society - this much we know. But it’s also a record that digs into the musician’s relationship with other parts of the human experience...

HUMOUR “It’s a coping mechanism and it’s also a worldview. There’s not exactly a cabaret scene in New York but the comedy here is quite musical and there’s a lot of comedians that interact with people in interesting ways. They’re a bit younger than me - I’m the oldest millennial - but there’s something in that spirit that feels relevant.”

RELIGION “I grew up Mormon and I’m still ethnically Mormon. It’s like The Smiths song, ‘Meet Me At The Cemetery Gates’ - ‘Keats and Yeats are on your side, and Wilde is on mine’, you lose, haha. I’m sure Yeats is such a fucking asshole but that’s my heritage. The classic lineage of the Western canon is how I grew up.”

ADULTHOOD “I have three kids now, and it doesn’t make me worry about the future so much as it’s made me learn so much about humanity watching them - watching how it all goes into the ‘this is what humans are’ mill. On ‘Policy’, the protagonists are a motley crew of rag-tag whatevers, whereas this is much more a coming of age novel - not like a teenager becoming an adult, but an adult becoming a worse adult...”

pened]? And I got so mad. It fucking worked. You made me scared. I’m not gonna die in Sephora on 5th Avenue but you made me think about it, you fucking pieces of shit. “Mike Pence was writing about it before he was running for Vice President, like, ‘We need to make sure we don’t have any immigrants come in because the immigrants can do this to us here’. And it’s like, I’m not gonna be killed by a woman fleeing violence in Guatemala!! The terrorists and the people saying ‘Be afraid!’: what you’re doing is working, and I AM afraid, and fuck you.”

erhaps most interestingly, however, ‘Generations’ doesn’t just point the finger outwards, it also poses questions of the singer’s own inherent part in it all. “A big chunk of this record is asking: What’s my place in American history? What’s my place in America’s present?” he explained in a previous statement about the album. “Both in general, but also extremely particularly: me as Will Butler, rich person, white person, Mormon, Yankee, parent, musician. What do I do? What can I do?” “It’s basically like, ‘My God, how did we get here?’ - that Talking Heads line,” he continues now. “The record is at times literally a conversation with people arguing back and forth, and there’s a lot of questions raised and the answers aren’t answers - you just end the conversation in a different spot. There’s something to that process of discussing and coming to some sort of revelation only to find out what’s lacking there, and then you move onto the next conversation and find out what’s lacking there. I was pleased that the material felt cyclical and of a piece, and you feel like you’re in a different spot than you were at the beginning.” Because yes, his latest might not provide all the answers - “This is a musical work and I don’t know what the end notes are,” he admits - but ‘Generations’ does emphasise the importance of asking the questions and having the conversations, both with the world and with yourself. And if you can have them over an album of musically explorative, rich and often perversely funny new offerings? All the better. Next, he’ll return to the fold to begin work on Arcade Fire’s sixth opus. Writing for that had originally started in New Orleans before the pandemic hit, but the band “don’t have the file management down to really do it at a distance,” he chuckles. “Win and Régine are always demoing and working, and I’ve done a little. We always work on a record for about a year and a half and we’re not off that pace yet, we’re still weirdly on track…” You can bet by the time that record lands, he’ll have chalked up a handful of other accomplishments to his name, too; lord only knows the political battleground of the coming weeks will give him enough food for thought. And in the inquisitive mind of Will Butler, thought and curiosity are clearly the most nourishing tools of all. “You can write a love song that’s super true, but can you write a history song that also is? And if it comes out right and there’s some value in it, then what does that mean?” he muses. “It’s about just trying different angles to express something true.” ‘Generations’ is out now via Merge. DIY

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[The record] is basically like, ‘My God, how did we get here?’ that Talking Heads line…”

IF YOU DON’T HAVE DEEP JOY IN THE CREATION AND THE PERFORMANCE OF MUSIC THEN YOU’LL GET WEEDED OUT.” - Patton Magee

When The Nude Party said they were bringing a new bird to dinner, we didn’t quite have this in mind.

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Naked Catskills sextet The Nude Party might deal in good, old-fashioned rock’n’roll, but amid the late nights and giddy highs we find a band prepared to knuckle down and put in the hours to keep the dream alive. Words: Lisa Wright.

“I

don’t think a rock’n’roll band is ever gonna put out a song that’s as big as ‘WAP’. It’s just not gonna happen. So that’s just never the driving force; if you’re doing it and you think that’s what’s gonna happen, then you’re deluded,” begins Patton Magee, as a rooster makes his presence loudly known at the Catskills ranch The Nude Party are currently holed up rehearsing in. “All the industry’s fucked; there’s no touring, and physical and digital sales are miniscule - I can’t live off that. But it’s never been about the money; it just brings joy into my life. Without it I think I would just be miserable.” It’s a reasonable assessment that, among all the unstable career choices out there, being in a rock’n’roll group that thrives hardest on the live stage is probably one of 2020’s most ill-advised propositions. And yet, as Patton and his band approach the release of second LP ‘Midnight Manor’, there’s clearly still no place he’d rather be. “We’re so down to rough it and pretty much lose money or break even to go do it, because I mean… it’s just really fun! And that’s been the main thing the whole time,” he grins. “I’d rather come home poor having had a really good time than stay home with loads of money.” Having caught the attention of the wider music sphere (and, notably, one Alex Turner) with debut album track ‘Chevrolet Van’ - a tongue-in-cheek, country-flecked romp that, appropriately, rolled its eyes at the naysayers harshing their vibe (“You’re gonna wake up someday/ And you’ll wish you’d got a job…”), The Nude Party spent the best part of 2019 living the dream. They toured with Arctic Monkeys and Jack White, travelled across the world playing festivals in Europe and Australia and, after six years of slowly inching their way up the ladder, finally began to reap the rewards. It would be easy to press the narrative of ‘good-time

gang goes wild’ onto the story; today, the singer cheekily regales us with tales of getting busted for robbing the bar at a London show and their standard four-hour sleep ritual (“You’re up until 4am every night and then getting up at 8am the next morning to drive to the next place and load in. When you don’t have any international cell phone service, you have to stay with the touring group, so then you’re forced out as late as the last person because you can’t leave anybody…”). But what really comes out in conversation with the Jim Morrison look-alike frontman is that yes - The Nude Party know how to enjoy themselves. Wouldn’t you, if you were halfway across the world and basically being paid in beers? But more than that, they genuinely give a shit, and their second lands as a testament to a band who’ve put in the hours not just for a big night, but to harness their big moment as well.

ecorded live to tape in a week, ‘Midnight Manor’ - from the Black Lips hoe-down of ‘Pardon Me, Satan’ to the Velvet Underground-circa-’Waiting For The Man’ romp of ‘What’s The Deal?’ - may sound like the liquor-soaked soundtrack to a gleeful seven days of hedonism, but in order to get to that stage of looseness and locking in, the band spent a considerable amount of time doing their homework. “If we were some savants and could take acid and turn out some incredible thing like Jimi Hendrix then that would be the style we’d do it, but we’re not - we’re inspired and we really care and we really feel it, but we’re amateur-ish so our minds have to be there too to make it happen,” Patton explains. “When you start realising that the recordings you put out are permanent, then you start to really put the time and mental space in to get it the way you want it and really pay attention and give it mindfulness. A song can have so many different lives; you think of any Bob Dylan song and there’s like, 10

versions. A song has an infinite life to it, but when you put it on record for the first time that’s always the version people will think of as THE version.” THE versions of the tracks that form the band’s second span the kind of spirited stomps that have made a name for the sextet, but this time around there are prettier moments too: recent single ‘Shine Your Light’ brings to mind the warmth of Todd Rundgren’s 1972 classic ‘I Saw The Light’, while the singer earmarks ‘Things Fall Apart’ as his album favourite - “it’s very simple, really soft”. “We’ve dug a bit deeper in ourselves to be more vulnerable,” he continues. “I think it’s taken time to grow into being willing to do that, whereas before there was more of an impetus on rock’n’roll, fun, playing at a show. Now we’ve pushed ourselves to play softly, and play a vulnerable, emotional song.” Yet, whether they’re letting it all hang out or looking a little further in, The Nude Party are undoubtedly in it for the long haul. You could chalk the assertion up to the realisations of a strange old year, but really it’s something they’ve embodied from the start. “You need to really want it, and if you don’t want it you’ll get weeded out. If you don’t have deep joy in the creation of it and the performance of music then you’ll eventually cop out because the misery will overshadow everything else,” Patton affirms. “We stopped playing together during the pandemic for five months which is the longest we’ve ever gone since the band started, and I don’t think I realised how depressed we were all becoming until we started again and a light turned back on. It makes me realise how much playing music together positively affects all of us and how we feel about being alive.” ‘Midnight Manor’ is out now via New West. DIY

Ambition 47

NATIONAL TREASURE The National frontman Matt Berninger’s debut solo album, created alongside Booker T Jones, started out as a covers record. With a little help from his friends, however, the singer ended up making a prescient statement for troubled times. Words: Will Richards.

It’s 7am in Venice, California

when Matt Berninger calls. Even down by the ocean, you can feel the effects of the wildfires that are currently raging along the entire West Coast of America, he tells us, adding literal flames to the metaphorical forest fire that 2020 has already proven. “I smoke a lot of weed and I go outside and I can feel the air, and it’s more toxic than the weed,” the singer halfchuckles, half-winces. “It’s really scary, and really depressing, all the fires and everything,” he continues, the early hour seemingly no barrier to heavy chat. “There’s never been anything like it. There’s been fires, all these fires... but nothing like this year. It’s just terrifying and devastating. And it’s all our fault, too. There’s a great sadness and a great reckoning, and it’s at our doorstep, this climate crisis.” He pauses. “But anyway, the record! Let’s move on…” Ah yes, the record. Despite the more-than-distracting real world crises that still loom large, we’re interrupting Matt’s breakfast to talk about the National frontman’s debut solo album: the mournful, exquisite, frequently beautiful ‘Serpentine Prison’. “This record was completely finished before the pandemic, and so I’ve been talking about [it] a lot, and having people ask me about its relationship to the pandemic and politics and the environment, and the truth is I was really just thinking

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about myself when making this record,” he explains. As we have become accustomed to in this strangest of years, though, any discussion about music or art suddenly, and understandably, folds out into a wider rumination on the past, present and future of a nation and a planet. It seems 2020 really is demanding an all-encompassing stock check from all of us, and it’s one Matt enters into hungrily from the off. “We’ve been in such crisis,” he says. “Everybody has been in the same existential, dreadful crisis for 15-20 years I think. 9/11 was such a shock, and George W Bush being elected, frankly, I couldn’t believe that. Everything since has been a series of traumas. Global traumas, but also very, very deep American traumas. “It’s just been guns, massacres in the streets, and Nazis everywhere. It’s overwhelming. But it is the truth of our country here, and Donald Trump is our President, and he was chosen by Americans. It’s not exactly his fault, it’s our fault. He’s a tool of our own demons. Trump is a manifestation of America.” Not your average wake-up call over a croissant and a latte, huh? Yet, despite this (entirely legitimate) sense of despair with the world at large, it’s in music and art, Matt says, that hope and escape can be found among the chaos.

‘S

erpentine Prison’ wasn’t supposed to be Matt Berninger’s debut solo album. Originally, the idea was to record a covers record, inspired by his love for

THERE’S A GREAT SADNESS AND A GREAT RECKONING, AND IT’S AT OUR DOORSTEP.”

COVER TO COVER

Willie Nelson’s 1978 LP ‘Stardust’ - a favourite of Matt’s dad’s. The concept was then pushed further into his mind after he and his father went through a particularly difficult period of their relationship. “This record isn’t about my dad, but it’s for him,” he says. To execute the vision, he reached out to previous collaborator and production legend Booker T Jones, who sculpted ‘Stardust’ alongside Nelson. However, upon hearing a number of the original tracks Matt had floating around, Booker urged him to expand and write more of his own songs. “I didn’t have any need to make a solo record,” Matt says. “I’ve had three bands in my life and all three I love. I am also constantly working with other artists, individually and on other projects, so there wasn’t really much of a need for this.” Instead, any need for a solo album was replaced by a sudden, unexpected want for one - he and Booker found themselves with more original music than covers, and a full-length solo album began to take shape before their eyes. After some polite nudging from National bandmate Scott Devendorf, who vetoed working titles of ‘Matt Berninger and Friends’ or ‘Matt Berninger’s Serpentine Prison’, Matt thought, “‘OK, this feels right, it feels like it’s time, and I’m ready - let’s do it’. Then I embraced the idea of the solo album. In the cocoon of the studio, it turned from a covers album into a solo record.” The album borne from these sessions is at once quintessentially Matt Berninger and also somewhat of a significant departure. While ‘Distant Axis’ and ‘Take Me Out Of Town’ lean on the kind of confessional balladry he’s been mastering for decades with The National, the mid-album highlight of ‘Loved So Little’ possesses a creepier twang, one that could easily soundtrack a Western. Elsewhere, the album’s closing title track hinges on a quietly anthemic chorus, while ‘All Or Nothing’ is based around a cutting heartbreaker of a piano riff that leads into a stunning, rapturous, horn-filled outro. Despite the anxiety that courses through today’s conversation, and of much of the album, ‘Serpentine Prison’ is also a record cut through with dry humour, a trait the singer has been cultivating online and on stage for the last half-decade. “Sorry, I’m fishin’ without permission,” he sings on the title track, while ‘All For Nothing’ sees him “standing in the quicksand with a smiling face.” “Even when I was a designer or a painter, humour has been an essential tool,” Matt says. “So is frankness, and I love the artists that can put something hilarious next to something crushing. Or it’s both at the same time.”

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The cover versions originally set to make up ‘Serpentine Prison’ itself now sit on its bonus disc. Here are some of the highlights... The Velvet Underground European Son (1967) A highlight of ‘The Velvet Underground & Nico’, this near-eightminute behemoth sees Lou Reed at his most sardonic and cutting.

Perhaps unusually for the brooding frontman of an often downbeat indierock band, Matt has steadily crafted an online persona for himself that’s as much goofball dad as it is sentimental crooner, and it’s shown best on his frequently hilarious Instagram account. Whether he’s applying National lyrics to videos of chirping birds or posing in-store at Sephora, a stark humour courses through it all, with a steadfast refusal to take himself too seriously. Though he’s never touched Facebook or the “heroin”-like Twitter, and calls himself “a bad emailer”, Matt professes his love for Instagram, though he “wishes it didn’t exist”. “It’s an addiction, and so are phones. Googling things is an addiction, and it’s designed that way. Mark Zuckerburg and the developers knew how to get people addicted.” While he somewhat surprisingly sings the praises of streaming services (“Some artists have suffered” because of Spotify, he says, “but art itself has flourished. I’ve got my parents listening to ‘WAP’! I’ve got my parents listening to Run The Jewels!”) there’s a world-wariness to ‘Serpentine Prison’, and it’s an album that demands better of the status quo, through both its light-hearted moments and its weighty ones. “Music and art are the only things that really cut through all that shit,” Matt believes. “Films, books, novels. Things that exist for someone to talk

Don Cherry - Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye (1962) A storied American song, passed down through the ages and from genre to genre, was the inspiration to start the covers project. “It was the first one where I really thought, ‘I wanna cover this song’,” Matt remembers. Eddie Floyd - Big Bird (1967) This classic soul track from the late ‘60s, a simply joyous romp, was reportedly written while Floyd waited at an airport to attend Otis Redding’s funeral. Morphine - In Spite Of Me (1993) The ‘90s alternative rockers’ take a soothing, mandolin-assisted break on this highlight from their lauded 1993 album ‘Cure For Pain’.

MUSIC HAS PULLED ME OUT OF SO MUCH SADNESS AND DEPRESSION SO MANY TIMES. IT’S THE ONLY THING.”

about themselves in the context of their surroundings, for other people to relate to and then feel empathy. That’s what art does, whether it’s a Jackson Pollock painting, or the movie ‘Jaws’, or ‘Nebraska’ by Bruce Springsteen. Those things make us understand each other.” This abstract comfort that art can offer to those suffering is also shown strikingly on album highlight ‘Oh Dearie’ - one of the starkest, most open songs Matt has ever committed to tape: “I am near the bottom / Name the blues, I got ‘em,” he sings mournfully. “I know a lot of people who suffer from real depression,” he says of the album’s crushing centrepiece. “I suffer from mild waves of up-and-down, but I do not have what I know a lot of people get, which is genuine deep paralysis, and they can’t even bring themselves to open the window or make food for themselves or sustain themselves.” The singer then recalls an article written in the New Yorker in the first weeks of the pandemic, entitled ‘Music Will Be Important’. In it, author Donald Antrim discusses how music helped him “find [his] communion with others who were alone” during a period of severe depression, and how it could also help unite and comfort those living through this current period of turmoil. “Sometimes art and music can give you enough of a battery charge so you can work through that impenetrable paralysis,” Matt says. “Music has pulled me out of so much sadness and depression so many times. It’s the only thing. I wanted to write about that feeling of being under a thousand miles of concrete. Under the bottom of the sea. In the bottom of the abyss. Nothing makes sense, and sometimes nothing anyone can tell you even resonates.” It’s this notion, then, that gives this often-terrifying early morning phone call a silver lining, and that keeps Matt Berninger going when the fires continue to burn outside. It’s an offering spread throughout ‘Serpentine Prison’, too - an album that solidifies his status as one of this generation’s most affecting songwriters, and serves as a vital outstretched hand of community to those in need.

DONALD TRUMP IS OUR PRESIDENT, AND HE WAS CHOSEN BY AMERICANS. HE’S A TOOL OF OUR OWN DEMONS.”

One of the artists who offered Matt “a way out” in dark times, he explains, was Nick Cave. “Nick Cave songs, every one of ‘em is a tiny candle,” he offers, “and it’s like [Cave] once said, you have to keep that tiny flickering candlelight inside you at all costs.” ‘Serpentine Prison’ is out 16th October via Book’s Records. DIY

Q&A

re vi A record born of lockdown, ‘Shamir’ sees the nowPhiladelphia-based singer embracing ‘90s lo-fi pop, as he explains...

The album is full of pop licks - do you feel in a way you’ve maybe come full-circle? I don’t think it’s a full circle moment, I just feel like I’ve finally been able to bring in my old pop energy into what I do now. I self-titled it because I’m proud to be able to combine all sides of myself in that way. It sounds like you enjoyed rifling through the ‘90s section of your record collection... Yeah, late ‘70s and early ‘80s postpunk is actually my favourite era of music, but I feel like it metabolised into pop music in the ‘90s in a really cool way which inspired me. What else did you take from it? I also love the aesthetics for sure, I love how lowkey the fashion was! Philadelphia has a reputation for nurturing a lo-fi DIY scene, have you found like-minded people, or a community there? Of course, I think the main reason I moved here is because of that. I immediately felt kinship with the scene because of this.

Illustration: Chloe Zola

From the outside at least, you appear to have adjusted well to preparing to release a record during a time when you can’t see too many other people. Well I’m such a DIY person, so I love the challenge of seeing how far I can go by myself! But the record was actually finished in quarantine so I just knew before its creation that I probably wouldn’t be able to tour it and find creative ways to market it. It’s not ideal but the challenge kept me on my toes creatively.

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e w s 

SHAMIR Shamir (self-released)

In the summer of 2015, Shamir Bailey was one of music’s bestkept secrets. Signed to XL, single ‘On The Regular’ was a sleeper club hit adjacent to Azealia Banks’ ‘212’, soundtracking slick tech ads that looked and sounded like the millennial future. The talent was obvious, but the confidence less so - even in those early stages, there were signs that Shamir was at a personal crossroads, his name never quite drawing the same recognition as his song. Having been diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2017, the years since that first record have been spent trying to find his creative purpose, leaning into the nuances of what makes Shamir, Shamir. A prolific writer, several independently-released records have allowed him to roam spectrums of gender and autonomy, moving towards a more indie-rock approach. While each record offered its highlights, nothing hit quite the same as ‘On The Regular’ - until now. Self-titled by way of long-awaited personal acceptance, you can tell a lot about ‘Shamir’ from its opening track. Not only does ‘On My Own’ mark his best work in years, it sets an important mantra - romantic love is cool, but self-love is infinitely cooler. Cherrypicking the best parts of his former musical lives, it’s an

unmistakable return to pop, but put through a lo-fi lens, heavily indebted to the female-fronted grunge he grew up admiring. As he sings “I don’t care to feel like I belong”, you can almost hear the clouds of overthinking part, lifting the emotional toll-gate to find real joy in self-acceptance. No longer racing straight for the chorus, Shamir appears to be finally enjoying the ride. The Wild West swing of ‘Other Side’ sees him embrace the theatrical spirit of his Las Vegas birthplace to unlock new highs of his vaudevillian countertenor, while ‘Diet’ is the sound of SoCal circa 1995, with a big let’s-blow-this-town chorus that could easily serve a duet with Alanis Morrisette. It’s nostalgic without going full cheese, a tribute that never falls into parody. No matter how far his sonic influences roam, the songs are all tied together with that solid narrative - life is far too short to conceal who you truly are. Were the record to be summarised in a single song, it would be ‘Running’ - a poignant, butterfly-winged retelling of Shamir’s first experiences with gender dysphoria. Finding its way out of the chrysalis with ‘90s pop-rock optimism, it’s an anthem that will brighten even the darkest of days. Exploring all that we give up about ourselves to make others feel comfortable, Shamir’s new take on pop songwriting is one that finally suits. Leaving enough scuffs around the edges to mark it out as his own, this is more than just album seven - it’s the start of a whole new era. (Jenessa Williams) LISTEN: ‘On My Own’, ‘Running’, ‘Diet’

The start of a whole new era.

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MXMTOON dusk (AWAL)

Being a great pop star doesn’t always mean shouting the loudest. Having made a name for herself with her introspective meditations on love and youth, mxmtoon is a woman in demand - after all, Carly Rae Jepsen won’t collaborate with just anyone. The swooning ‘bon iver’ makes effective use of her trademark ukelele, shrouding it in heavenly ‘ooh’s’ and ‘aah’s’ that recall ‘Pretty. Odd.’-era Panic! At the Disco at their most Beatles-aping. Her choice of instrument might be humble, but this is big-budget Gen-Z songwriting at its finest - intimate, charming but with a solid thread of melancholia. No longer using humour as a safety blanket, said collaboration with Queen Jeppo (‘ok on your own’) is an R&B-adjacent duet that makes good on the wisdom that no relationship can thrive unless both partners can find assurance in themselves. Should IRL gigs ever return, ‘show and tell’ pushes towards a place that could easily be beefed out into stadium rock, while ‘Wallflower’ sells itself as an introvert anthem but actually reveals serious bravery in its stripped-back piano production. By knowing her audience and growing with them, toon’s time is unmistakeably now. (Jenessa Williams) LISTEN: ‘ok on your own’

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MATT BERNINGER

Serpentine Prison (Book’s Records) Named after a sewer pipe that drains into the ocean near LAX airport, Matt Berninger’s solo debut remains enamoured with approaching the dreg ends of things. A number of songs here could definitely pass for National material, but something more intimate emerges within the country-fried restraint that the legendary Booker T. Jones unfurls at the production helm. ‘Silver Springs’ is a gorgeous duet with Gail Ann Dorsey that flickers around flourishes of harmonica and the plea to meet each other “somewhere right now” because “they’ll never understand you anyway in Silver Springs”. ‘One More Second’, described by Berninger as a kind of response to Dolly Parton’s ‘I Will Always Love You’, is a lament that finds him cheekily pointing out “always in love with someone, if it ain’t me, come on”. As with The National, Matt’s brilliantly obtuse way with words swirls into frame frequently - “My eyes are T-shirts, they’re so easy to read”, he croons on the dreamy opening track. With less layers of instrumentation to hide behind, this collection allows Matt’s lyrics and song-craft to shine through unfiltered. (Sean Kerwick) LISTEN: ‘Silver Springs’

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LAURA JANE GRACE Stay Alive (Big Scary Monsters)

Immediately before the release of Against Me!’s ‘Transgender Dysphoria Blues’ in 2014, Laura Jane Grace led the charge on the stripped-back ‘True Trans’ EP. ‘Stay Alive’ sees her return to that singular nature; it’s folk-punk at its most sincere, carrying the same political and personal charge. Be it waving goodbye to lost years on ‘Calendar Song’ or the overt rage of ‘Hanging Tree’, Laura reflects on her own experiences to examine the shared encounters of the underrepresented and undermined in today’s society. Although previous work has never shied away from her individual experience, here Laura elevates her lyricism to new heights. By the final title-track of sorts, ‘Stay Alive’ carries a dual meaning - that life continues not just after but also during adversity. That anger and frustration can co-exist with hope. “Please stay alive,” she pleads, “please survive.” (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘Calendar Song’

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BEABADOOBEE

Fake It Flowers (Dirty Hit) While obviously entirely coincidental that her debut falls towards the end of a year in which both nothing much and everything ever has happened Beabadoobee’s ascendancy was secure once she’d pondered existence as a ‘90s slacker rock icon on her ‘Space Cadet’ EP. After all - if there’s one thing the universe has conspired to allow us to do over the past six months, it’s brood. And the diary-entry nature of Bea’s songwriting - over twelve tracks she dips into hair dye as empowerment (‘Dye It Red’), selfharm via blistering highlight ‘Charlie Brown’, and a not-particularly-wellhidden reference to her boyfriend in ‘Horen Sarrison’ - makes the fuzzy, bubblegum grunge of ‘Fake It Flowers’ a perfect brooding soundtrack. Jumping into life with the anthemic ‘Care’, Bea’s playfulness with a loudquiet dynamic is on point, whether in the aptly-named ‘Emo Song’, or even ‘Sorry’ - which faltered slightly as a single - here acting as a perfect tension- breaker. Grab your baggiest, most-frayed jumper, pop this on and get ready to get moody. (Emma Swann) LISTEN: ‘Charlie Brown’

FLOWER POWER Bea’s just the latest in a long line of musos taking cues from all things flora and fauna.

HAYLEY WILLIAMS PETALS FOR ARMOR Not only doffing a cap to our floral friends for the title (a line from lead single ‘Simmer’), the record also includes the boygenius-featuring ‘Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris’, a call for women to compete less, ‘cause we’re all uniquely beautiful flowers. Hero.

TYLER, THE CREATOR - FLOWER BOY AKA ‘Scum Fuck Flower Boy’, the record is peppered with allegory, from a ‘flower boy’ being a feminine-looking idol in Korean pop culture to his ‘Garden Shed’ stepping in as a closet.

VAMPIRE WEEKEND SUNFLOWER Van Gogh also liked sunflowers and made use of newly-invented pigments to paint his (aka we don’t

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really know what Ezra Koenig was on about with this one).

OUTKAST - ROSES

‘A rose by any other name’ may have been Juliet associating all kinds of niceties with the thornbearing plant, but André 3000 and Big Boi came to a different conclusion completely back in ‘03.

SQUID HOUSEPLANTS A crushing indictment on the precariousness of rented housing, the Brighton boys’ breakthrouygh is also a bit of a bop. Avocados, anyone?

THE WHITE STRIPES BLUE ORCHID Blue orchids are almost impossible to find naturally, so people often dye them. Which is probably related to what ol’ Jack was banging on about here.

Q&A Laura Jane Grace tells us how - and why - ‘Stay Alive’ came to be. How would you describe ‘Stay Alive’? The thing I like most about the album title is that it is completely blunt and to the point. What am I trying to say with this album? I’m saying STAY ALIVE! We’re in a global pandemic. What do I want people to do? I want them to stay alive. This is the only way I want this album to be interpreted, it’s about staying alive. Beyond that, it’s a document. It’s two days in the studio captured on tape. No computers involved. I would describe it as the antithesis of a Zoom call. What did Steve Albini bring to the table? I had never worked with Steve before but I’ve been a fan of his work for a long time and beyond that I’m a fan of his opinions. I didn’t want anyone’s opinion on what they thought I should do with the songs and I knew he didn’t want to give me any. I just wanted someone to press record and make it sound good. I wanted someone who knew how to make an all-analogue recording and that’s exactly what Steve does. I also knew that if I was hesitant or started second guessing myself that he was going to lose respect for me and lose interest. I wanted the challenge and that’s what I got. Did the climate have any impact on the record? I can’t see how it didn’t. It felt almost cinematic in the studio, the two of us in face masks alone. Very much like the world was ending outside but we’re still in there plugging away. I thought that making a minimalist record felt very appropriate for this time and place. The aesthetic choices of wanting to record all analogue, of wanting to record as quick as possible, those were in direct response to the times we’re all living. It’s not that I didn’t want to record a record with my band, it’s that I couldn’t, it wasn’t possible.

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BOY PABLO

Wachito Rico (777 Music) It’s a tale as old as time: cherubic bedroom-pop sensation is enshrined in hype, rides the wave, aand disappears only to re-emerge with a slick debut album. But while Chilean-Norwegian wunderkind Nicolas Muñoz ticks all those boxes, debut ‘Wachito Rico’ is proof that it needn’t be a compromise. Taking its title from a Chilean expression that translates to fondness for a “handsome boy” the album centers on the titular character’s love story, mirrored by Nicolas’ own experiences as a young man. Familiar territory and no mistake, but his pining craft, all jazzy guitar shapes and heart-stung pleas, feels remarkably well-realised. Opener ‘i hope she loves me back’, with its slick synth arps, is given the low-key Mort Garson treatment. The title track, sung in both English and Spanish, is a full-blown Latin disco throwdown - and works. ‘Hey Girl’, meanwhile, cuts to the chase. “Hey girl, do you like me? I guess that’s a stupid-ass question,” he sings. As long as you don’t go into ‘Wachito Rico’ expecting Dostovevskyian nuance, it’s a trip worth taking. Boy Pablo wears naïveté well. (Brian Coney) LISTEN ‘Hey Girl’

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SUFJAN STEVENS

The Ascension (Asthmatic Kitty) Surpassing the hour mark with some space yet to go, ‘The Ascension’ provides an expansive canvas for Sufjan Stevens to critique the flaws of humanity, at the same time finding room for the inward focus that made ‘Carrie & Lowell’ so compelling. Far from running away with vague existential questioning, he doubles down on his characteristic delivery, not least in the way he pairs the grandiose with the personal. ‘Tell Me You Love Me’ could just as easily be interpreted as the breakdown of love as a search for stability in society, whilst the overt political connotations of ‘America’ hint at something profoundly private. Moments likes ‘Lamentations’ and ‘Die Happy’ hark back to Radiohead’s late‘00s output, and much like Thom Yorke, Sufjan’s mastery of tone is sublime. Effortlessly gliding from the delicate to the forceful, not least on the industrial ‘Death Star’, not a single moment on the record feels accidental. Instead he delivers an all-encompassing sound that captures both the apocalyptic nature of modern society and the possibility of its rebirth. By the final plea of epic closer ‘America’, Sufjan Stevens has been torn between action and resignation, looming large over the destructive tendencies of mankind and discovering his own role within it. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘Tell Me You Love Me’

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ASHNIKKO Demidevil (Parlophone)

Ashnikko was always going to bring out a new mixtape with a bang, and ‘Demidevil’ arrives like a colourfully-chaotic cannonball. Banger-packed, the ten-track project finds Ash on her finest form, spitting cutting, unfiltered bars over glitchy R&B-infused booming pop backings. Teaming up with fellow a series of game-changing female artists, she recruits Kelis on sleek-pop sizzler ‘Deal With It’, Grimes on fiesty ‘Cry’, and Princess Nokia on ‘Slumber Party’ - a dancefloor-grind, girl-loving, sex-positive banger with the opening lines “I’m not shy I’ll say it, I’ve been picturing you naked”. She even reinvents Avril Lavigne’s 2002 classic ‘Sk8er Boi’ on ‘L8r Boi’, revamping the iconic lines to “He was a punk / She did ballet / What the fuck does it matter anyway?” Ash preaches empowerment and sex-positivity throughout, with final track ‘Clitoris! The Musical’ riffing on classic piano-led musical theatre balladry as Ash pushes female pleasure to the forefront and tells a clueless boy that he’s doing it all wrong (“You’ve been rubbing the same spot on my leg for 10 minutes / You haven’t hit it”). Ten tracks of orgasm-loving, empowering anthems, that pack a punch musically as well as lyrically, what’s not to love? (Elly Watson) LISTEN: ‘Slumber Party’

Orgasmloving, empowering anthems.

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HAYDEN THORPE Aerial Songs (Domino)

That ‘Aerial Songs’ consists of material composed for the not-quite-happeningas-planned highbrow Aerial Festival in Hayden Thorpe’s native Lake District should give some indication that a snappy, pop EP this is not; think the singer’s more reflective moments as opposed to the full-on swagger of Wild Beasts’ latter output. The songs, he has explained, are the first in which he’s tried to reflect the area’s landscape, and indeed it’s hard not to imagine floating by silently on a boat between green hills and under grey, ominous skies as the synths scatter around the end of ‘Blue Crow’, the strings soar on ‘Set It Loose’ or ‘Head on a Platter’ builds and builds. (Louisa Dixon) LISTEN: ‘Head on a Platter’

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WORKING MEN’S CLUB Working Men’s Club (Heavenly)

If music often acts as a means of escape, then Syd Minsky-Sargeant must have really wanted to get the fuck out of Todmorden. “Trapped inside a town inside my mind / Stuck with no ideas, I’m running out of time,” begins heady opener ‘Valleys’, and the rest of ‘Working Men’s Club’ feels like a defiant fight to ensure that defeat doesn’t happen. From the aggy, squalling guitars of ‘Cook A Coffee’ to the almost Orange Juice-esque riffs of ‘White Rooms and Other People’, ‘WMC’ is a debut like no other in 2020, one that lands completely out of step with any current sonic trends. Instead, it offers an intriguing window into the brain of the 18-year-old, where beats plucked out of the Factory Records school of dance music, and futuristic keys that New Order wouldn’t sniff at reign supreme. Having clearly wigged out on the ecstatic powers of a repetitive, ravey synth motif (‘Teeth’) or a skittering, industrial drum beat (standout ‘A.A.A.A’), Working Men’s Club’s first combines them with aplomb - but it’s the underlying sense of unease and something to prove that really adds the edge here. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘A.A.A.A’

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Anime, Trauma and Divorce (Auto Reverse)

I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME

OPEN MIKE EAGLE With one limb in the comedy world and another in all things nerdy, if there was one musician likely to blame a dystopian sci-fi tv show for the breakdown of his marriage, it would be this one. “Thought that it would be another Lost in Space / Now I gotta go and get my own damn place,” spits Open Mike Eagle on ‘The Black Mirror Episode’, the track a perfect balance of frustration at his situation, and complete self-awareness (while likely not on his Christmas card list, Charlie Brooker is probably not about to be summoned). Written after his therapist reminded him of his musical outlet - see the “dude got screwed up / shit got burned up / so he fucked her up… and I got chewed up / and shit fucked me up / so Ima fuck you up” of opener ‘Death Parade’ for evidence of that particular strand of navel-gazing - ‘Anime, Trauma and Divorce’ is as wry as documents of desperate times get. Life may have given Open Mike Eagle some fresh citrus fruit, but this resullting record is some sweet, sweet lemonade. (Emma Swann) LISTEN: ‘The Black Mirror Episode’

Q&A

Dallon Weekes is stepping out of the conceptual shadows for IDKHOW’s debut full-length.

It sounds like you’ve been doing some more musical crate-digging for this record... It was more related to aesthetics than anything musical. While I certainly love a lot of music from the ‘70s and ‘80s, I wouldn’t say I have any interest in being a revivalist. It was more to do with the way I experienced and consumed music and art as a kid. Admittedly, I think a good handful of influences from the ‘70s and early ‘80s took a tiny step forward when making the record, artists like Sparks, David Bowie and Oingo Boingo. Musically, it’s just not something that I had ever explored before. Growing up I was so enamored by The Beatles, and Elvis Costello, and British bands like Blur, Pulp and Radiohead. My favourite bands as a young man were Weezer and Ben Folds Five and Phantom Planet. In the early 2000s it was bands like Ima Robot, The Killers, and Louis XIV. I never identified with any emo / Warped Tour / pop punk stuff. So, for better or for worse I feel like I wear my influences on my sleeve. Where did you record the album, and who with? I recorded a good portion of stuff at home in Salt Lake City, at my kitchen table at first. In the past year or two I started to learn how to record on my own, but we ended up taking all these demos to a producer named Tim Pagnotta. A lot of the sounds I had built ended up being used, but Tim is a pro, and we definitely needed someone who knew that world. We started tracking in February when COVID started to show up in the US, and we finished tracking just as quarantine and lockdowns started to be implemented. So when it came time to mix, we had to do it all via email, which is not ideal in any way. That delayed the process even more than the pandemic was doing on its own. With the EP, you were still quite conceptual and hidden - which bits of the subterfuge remains in IDKHOW c. 2020? Secrecy and the whole modus operandi of ‘deny everything’ was fun to do for the first year or so. I think it gave us an opportunity to find out what this band

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is, and to find our roles within it, and at the same time circumvent the whole ‘formerly of’ title as best as we could. As far as concepts go, it’s simply another layer of entertainment for the fans who care to dive into it. I’ve always been a sucker for concept albums. Diving into those fictional worlds of Ziggy Stardust, and Sgt. Pepper was this brilliant little moment of escapism and I always wanted to do something like that myself. I don’t know that we will always do things that way, but it certainly is fun. And therapeutic for me. Using visual metaphors, you can present very real things and subjects within a fictional story. You can say everything you want to say without explicitly saying it. But it’s all there if you care to look closely. The video for ‘Leave Me Alone’ - was it deliberately COVIDcompliant?! Very much so! We got caught in this weird moment of finally being able to release music at the worst possible time. How do you do make a video, but keep everyone safe in the process? Safety was the biggest priority for us, so we had a COVID compliance officer on site, and everyone had to be tested beforehand and have their temperature taken at the door. But conceptually, I decided to incorporate social distancing, sterile isolation, and quarantining into the video. Wanting to isolate and separate yourself from toxic people and harmful situations. Wanting to be left alone.

Razzmatazz (Fearless)

Some titles will always be mysterious, a metaphor conjured up with little obvious connection to the record inside. But with ‘Razzmatazz’, I Dont Know How But They Found Me knew exactly what they were doing. “Noisy, showy, and exciting activity designed to attract and impress,” goes the dictionary definition, and funnily enough, it delivers on that promise. Melding together ‘80s synths, baroque piano and pithy, self deprecating choruses, their debut delves deep into a vibrant, multi-faceted world. Channelling a similar energy to debuts from the likes of The Killers and Dallon Weekes’ former band, Panic! At The Disco - emo-pop hooks married with excessiveness and glitz it’s a record that dabbles in tongue-in-cheek bombast, the odd knowing wink thrown in for good measure. From the speakeasy piano of ‘Nobody Likes The Opening Band’ to the glammy stomp of ‘Sugar Pills’ via the funky strut of opener ‘Leave Me Alone’, ‘Razzmatazz’ is fun, flamboyant, and entirely of its time. A record that truly lives up to its name. (Sarah Jamieson) LISTEN: ‘Razzmatazz’

Cohesive and decorous.

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EMMY THE GREAT April / 月音 (Bella Union)

Recorded in a two-week burst in 2018 and stowed away while she took a year’s maternity leave, ‘April / 月音’ is something of a time capsule marking Emmy The Great’s travels to her birthplace of Hong Kong. These chronicles surface in an ethereal, dream-like fashion across the LP’s 10 tracks illustrated with singing bowls, prayer bells and Buddhist percussion picked up on her way. The lyrics reverberate with the doe-eyed language often employed in folk tales - “you once told me about the moon, and the first men who walked on her… they were searching for a Chinese queen” - but often withhold some grip on reality making them all the more the more whimsical; “couple of salesmen trying to shift themselves from this dream”. The jaunt of ‘Dandelions / Liminal’ is a welcome break amongst the lighter pace set by the tracks that surround it. Elsewhere, the strings that fade in and out of ‘Okinawa: Ubud’ are beautifully melancholic and the idiosyncratic instrumentation of closer ‘Heart Sutra’ signal an illuminated imagination at play. An intriguing new chapter from Emmy The Great that carves out a world you can dive into. (Sean Kerwick) LISTEN: ‘Dandelions / Liminal’

OUT OF THE WOODS Adrianne hotfooted it up to a cabin in the mountains to write and record ‘songs’ and ‘instrumentals’. Just like these other artists who’ve found creative solace in remote places.

Q&A

THE JAPANESE HOUSE

The world might have exaggerated the secluded nature of Bon Iver’s April Base, but it’s where Amber headed to for debut album ‘Good at Falling’, the Wisconsin wilderness providing the necessary quiet.

GEORGE EZRA

Sure, he might’ve named the record after his crashpad in bustling Barcelona, but it was a cottage in rural Norfolk where most of ‘Staying at Tamara’s’ was written. “You could see a pig farm in the distance, but you couldn’t see another soul,” he told us.

WHITNEY

Before they too headed to Bon Iver’s infamous shed, the Whitney boys opted for a less-notable space near Mount Hood in Oregon for ‘Forever Turned Around’.

THE KILLS Guitarist Jamie Hince hopped on the Trans-Siberian Express to begin work on the band’s ‘Ash & Ice’. “I had this vision of the record being this icy, paranoid record,” he said at the time.

SHOCK MACHINE

Ex-Klaxon James Righton found the forests of the South of France the perfect place for him and producer James Ford to get to work.

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ADRIANNE LENKER

songs / instrumentals (4AD) The title ‘songs’ betrays overwhelming modesty on Adrianne Lenker’s part. Instead of isolated works, the Big Thief singer delivers one of the most cohesive, decorous albums of solo acoustic music in recent memory. From a remote Massachusetts cabin, she weaves songs that broadly fit into two categories - the simplistic, melodic folk of ‘Heavy Focus’, even nearnursery rhyme of ‘Half Return’; and the swirling, restless spiral of tracks like ‘Forwards Beckon Rebound’ or ‘Ingydar’. The former calls to Phoebe Bridgers, or Joni Mitchell; the latter shows off Adrianne’s guitar virtuosity and vague imagist lyrics, reminiscent of Nick Drake or Van Morrison. It’s a record that draws from folk, but never lands directly on it. And with lo-fi production that leaves in snippets of birds and rain, ‘songs’ feels like unearthing an old puzzle a piece at a time. ‘instrumentals’, while texturally the same, focuses on pure ambience – the unspecific title is far more deserving. If anything, this feels more like a companion piece, a window into that cabin rather than its own separate record. If you wish you had been there, this is the best way to feel like you were. (Nick Harris) LISTEN: ‘Half Return’

Returning to her birthplace for ‘April / 月音 ‘ ended up even more poignant than Emmy The Great could imagine. It’s been a while since your last record, and yet you’ve had your fingers in many pies - what have been your standout moments from that time? Getting more into radio and seeing the different ways that sound can tell stories has been really expansive for me. Working on music for Mia Lidofsky’s series Strangers in 2017 was a real treat, and getting to know Sara Pascoe’s genius mind through various projects, like her adaptation of Pride & Prejudice and her new TV show for BBC2. I also got to soundtrack data for Mona Chalabi’s artwork at the Tai Kwun museum in Hong Kong in 2019. There’s obviously a great irony in speedily finishing a record only for it to be delayed - in what ways have you already started looking at the record differently? Ahead of writing the album, I got really into this force in Chinese folk tradition called yuanfen. It’s a karmic version of fate that brings people together, or pulls them apart. When I found out I was going to take maternity leave and the album would be delayed, I felt OK about it because it was probably meant to be. I had no idea that things in Hong Kong would change as they did. Right now, talking about Hong Kong for album promo feels more cathartic and important than at any other previous time. Thematically it appears to be a snapshot of time, and not just because the world - and perhaps Hong Kong more than most - is a very different place… It was one of the most beautiful times of my life. I was exploring my birth city, and the whole of Hong Kong just felt so alive with art and possibility, and the many ways that people were trying to find their post-colonial identities. I am so lucky that I captured how I felt in that moment, because, as you say, some of my memories of Hong Kong from a couple years later are really difficult. Whenever I listen to the album, I got back to that peaceful time. You’re playing at, and curating a series of events at the Barbican in London this month... I’ve always loved Mid-Autumn Festival, with its legend of Chang’e and association with the moon. When I started writing the album, it was around the mid-autumn full moon, which is supposed to be bring about renewal and self-knowledge (the moon represents the feminine yin, which is linked to the subconscious). I did actually gain those things, so I was hoping to share some of what I’ve learned about the festival, and hope to bring a little bit of yin magic to the audience as the seasons change.

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THE NUDE PARTY Midnight Manor (New

West)

RECO MMEN DED Missed the boat on some the best albums from the last couple of months? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

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GLASS ANIMALS Dreamland

Rose-tinted nostalgia for the perfect summer (y’know, in place of having one of those).

Long-haired, cowboy-shirted and with a chosen moniker that suggested they probably weren’t gunning to be the new Jonas Brothers, The Nude Party’s self-titled 2018 debut arrived in a fug of Velvets-meets-Stones wild charm, cribbed from an era soaked in free-spirited hedonism. So it’s to the Catskills sextet’s credit that, on follow-up ‘Midnight Manor’, the jangling riffs and bar-room keys are still present but there are some altogether prettier moments jostling for prime position too. Best is the warm Todd Rundgren charm of recent single ‘Shine Your Light’, while ‘Things Fall Apart’ is a lilting, lovelorn ‘50s swooner. Yet, if there’s a gaping hole in the garage rock crossover spectrum since Burger Records so disappointingly showed its true colours, then fear not because the more spirited tracks of ‘Midnight Manor’ are better than pretty much anything they’ve released in years anyway. From the raucous opening romp of ‘Lonely Heather’ through the swaggering jam of ‘Cure Is You’ to cheeky, industry-baiting closer ‘Nashville Record Co.’, ‘Midnight Manor’ is dripping with exuberant charm; The Nude Party might throw back to the past, but there’s clearly some very present ambition here too. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘Shine Your Light’

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METZ

Atlas Vending (Sub Pop)

METZ have long been capable of invoking a real sense of ferocity. It’s on their fourth full-length ‘Atlas Vending’, however, that the Toronto trio seem to have channelled down into a new kind of blistering rage. From the stabbing guitars of opener ‘Pulse’ to the propulsive drums of ‘Blind Youth Industrial Park’, the record still pushes hard against the boundaries of noisiness, but this time it feels even more fraught, more dystopian; much like the outside world. But even in the middle of such frenetic chaos, the trio have still managed to build on and broaden their sonic horizons: ‘No Ceiling’ bears the fingerprints of a pop hook, while ‘Draw Us In’’s opening guitars swagger almost arrogantly. Here is a band who are both confident enough to continue playing to their strengths, all the while pursuing a sense of sonic diversity. A record that feels both raw and refined, this will shake you to the core. (Sarah Jamieson) LISTEN: ‘Blind Youth Industrial Park’

MAD SOUNDS Vocalist Alex Edkins on the records METZ were spinning while writing and recording.

CRIME - SAN FRANCISCO’S STILL DOOMED

“Perfect, ramshackle unhinged rock’n’roll. For fans of the Stooges, and reissued by Swami John Reis.”

VENOM P STINGER - MEET MY FRIEND VENOM

“Rough, rough, rough around the edges. It reminds me of the Scientists mixed with the Urinals.”

TONY ALLEN & AFRICA 70 - PROGRESS, JEALOUSY

“We listened to this a lot in the studio while recording. We went to a bar called the Peddlers Inn, and they didn’t play any music so we just played this record from my phone. It will always remind me of Pawtucket and making ‘Atlas Vending’. Incredible Afrobeat genius, RIP.”

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EELS

Earth to Dora (E Works / PIAS)

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BIFFY CLYRO

A Celebration of Endings As Biffy-ish as ever with its crankedup guitars and stadium-sized hooks.

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ALUNA

Renaissance A joyous trip through all things dance, that it’s her singular vision is never in doubt.

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If there’s one thing Eels’ E does better than most, it’s bring into song the kind of internal dialogue that has one awake at 3am on a Monday morning, bleary and possibly also teary-eyed (ahem). And as anyone who’s read the singer’s autobiography could attest, he’d know better than most. His designating the band’s thirteenth studio album an antidote to lockdown misery is a noble move, but mere seconds into opener ‘Anything for Boo’, in which he does, yes, in fact refer repeatedly to his “boo”, it’s clear ‘Earth to Dora’ isn’t likely to fix much. ‘Dark and Dramatic’ is neither, instead a pontification on someone else’s status; ‘Are You Fucking Your Ex’ has none of the melodrama its title suggests, the question holding about as much weight as ‘did I leave the bathroom light on?’, and ‘I Got Hurt’ sledgehammers the line “I got hurt… and it didn’t feel good”. For a songwriter who’s so loved for finding poetry in the quotidian, for saying so much with so little, it’s just a bit basic. Maybe if he’d allowed him - and us to wallow a bit, he’d have had more of a point. (Emma Swann) LISTEN: ‘Who You Say You Are’.

A new kind of blistering rage.

BACK TO THE

DRAWING BOARD WITH THE WYTCHES Q1: Where did you record the album? (And how, if you were in different places!) 

THE WYTCHES

Three Mile Ditch (Cable Code)

Q2: How would you dig a ‘Three Mile Ditch’?

Between The Wytches’ 2014 debut ‘Annabel Dream Reader’ and its 2016 follow up ‘All Your Happy Life’, the Brightoners seemed to fall into something of a swamp. Where their first showed the now-trio’s penchant for all things heavy, it did it with a Pixies-like sense of nuance, the thrashy bits cleverly intertwined with moments of melody and hooks; by their second, the dirge was in full swing and everything was dark, dark, dark. Another four years later, one member down and returning with an album cheerily-titled ‘Three Mile Ditch’, the signs for the band’s third aren’t too rosy, and yet their latest does go some way to showing the defter touch they first struck out with. Recent single ‘A Love You’ll Never Know’ is a cathartic nocturnal lament, ‘Midnight Ride’ has a touch of the Elliott Smiths, and though ‘White Cliffs’ sounds like it was recorded in a tin can, its fuzzy chord sequence cuts straight to the heart. It’s unlikely to put their name in lights, but ‘Three Mile Ditch’ shows The Wytches always had a sweet side, deep down. (Lisa Wright) LISTEN: ‘A Love You’ll Never Know’

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ANNIE

CLIPPING

Dark Hearts (Anniemelody)

Q3: What was the ‘Fly Inside’?

Q4: What would grow on ‘Silver Trees’?

Back in the early ‘00s, Annie was hot shit. Besties with fellow Norwegians Röyksopp, regularly teaming up with UK pop maestro Richard X, the singer’s star was on the ascendancy. Then… pretty much nothing. There’s long been enough of a latent interest in her for her first album in eleven years to be a great comeback. And yet. Breathy lead single ‘American Cars’, a Drive-era take on ‘70s odd bop ‘Warm Leatherette’ aside, ‘Dark Hearts’ is a whole lot of nothing. ‘The Streets Where I Belong’ appears to aim for ‘80s FM radio nostalgia, while the title track hints at cod reggae, ‘Forever ‘92’ borrows a smidgen of shoegazey guitars and ‘The Bomb’ a touch of trip hop. But with a lack of immediacy, paper-thin production and no discernible hooks throughout, for anyone still humming ‘Chewing Gum’ or ‘Heartbeat’, it’s a disappointment. (Bella Martin) LISTEN: ‘American Cars’

Visions of Bodies Being Burned (Sub Pop) On ‘Visions of Bodies Being Burned’, Clipping have taken all of their most powerful trademarks and pushed them to breaking point. The result is nothing short of spectacular. Daveed Digg’s usual vocal style is a little toned down, instead, favouring a more measured speed, backed by William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes with their usual menagerie of rusted machinery and spectral banging on doors. And as per usual, they provide music that fills the eye as well as the ear, often with the most minimal textures providing the space required to paint such a picture. This space also leaves room for excellent features: Cam & China provide some of the most visceral performances Clipping have ever had in collaboration on ‘96 Neve Campbell’. This is a oncein-a-generation band reaching their peak. (Nick Harris) LISTEN: ‘96 Neve Campbell’

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FUTURE ISLANDS

As Long As You Are (4AD) Future Islands’ clean-cut synth-pop - all shiny keys, neat drums and plinky bass - eventually broke the group through to the mainstream in 2014 with frontman Samuel T Herring’s raw, primal TV performance of ‘Seasons (Waiting On You)’. Even though this collision of characteristics is certainly the band’s gift, which continues to give here on sixth LP ‘As Long As You Are’, you can’t help but feel it’s also their curse. With the bombast of ‘Singles’ exchanged for a subtler, more restrained sound here, the LP suffers from lack of variety. Though this doesn’t stop some gems shining through in the tracklisting: the fantastic ‘Born In A War’ is underlined by a slinky bass-drum sequence as Samuel howls about an “impossible dream you’ve been damned by,” ‘Waking’ is a wonderful slice of melancholy and ‘The Painter’ builds upon an icy groove indebted to house music. For the most part though, ‘As Long As You Are’ is a steady-as-she-goes sort of affair - a solid effort from the four-piece that would fare better with a little more exploration. (Sean Kerwick) LISTEN: ‘Waking’

Q&A

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TOUCHÉ AMORÉ Lament (Epitaph)

By the untimely death of vocalist Jeremy Bolm’s mother and the subsequent release of ‘Stage Four’, Touché Amoré had already kickstarted a revolution of hardcore. Following it was never going to be easy, yet anybody who has gone through grief will note a change in priorities. ‘Lament’, although still a companion piece to their previous record, is the musical outcome of this. From the unexpected yet brilliant power-balladry of ‘A Broadcast’, the piano intro to ‘A Forecast’, and the Julien Baker featuring ‘Reminders’, Touché Amoré continue to reinvent the very foundations of hardcore. Teaming up with producer Ross Robinson, the band have been provided with the creative space to indulge. With that, ‘Lament’ packs a truly heavy punch. There’s a crispness that highlights every drum beat and crashing riff, providing the backdrop to Bolm’s introspective lyrics. (Ben Tipple) LISTEN: ‘Come Heroine’

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LANY mama’s boy

(Interscope)

Since 2014, LANY have been pioneers of “sad boi pop” with previous releases ‘LANY’ and ‘Malibu Nights’ rife with all the feels. Now on third output ‘Mama’s Boy’, frontman Paul Klein is right back onto pulling on heartstrings. Sticking to their tried and tested formula of sad lyrics over bubbly synths, Paul is backed by the trio’s classic alt-pop sound as he croons about relationship woes (‘When You’re Drunk’), getting over heartbreak (‘Sad’), navigating new relationships (‘Good Guys’), and more. Though ‘Mama’s Boy’ won’t exactly be changing the alt-pop game, it certainly might convince you to text your ex after one too many glasses of wine. (Elly Watson) LISTEN: ‘When You’re Drunk’

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JÓNSI Shiver

(Krunk)

While ‘Shiver’ isn’t exactly the epitome of batshit some might’ve hoped for once news of the Sigúr Rós frontman working with PC Music main man AG Cook surfaced, it does have its moments. ‘Wildeye’ makes like Swedish glitch-pop outfit The Knife immediately, its stopstart, cut’n’paste nature a joy to behold - and then comes the beautifully baffling breakdown. ‘Salt Licorice’, featuring Swedish floorfiller Robyn then takes it to eleven, making reference to her spectacularly on-brand “Scandinavian pain”. Similarly, ‘Hold’ marries Jónsi’s eternally-curious, childlike vocals with futuristic production to great effect. ‘Sumarið Sem Aldrei Kom’ is curious, albeit in a different way, standing out for being more organic, almost hymnlike in nature. Elsewhere, however, while not exactly the wildlife-soundtracking level of Nan-friendly safe his day job has reached, it’s largely default Jónsi, just with a few more effects. (Louisa Dixon) LISTEN: ‘Wildeye’

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PUP This Place Sucks Ass

‘Snapshot’ was written in the midst of Juanita’s father’s terminal illness. She tells us how it came together, including having her brother on the record.

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JUANITA STEIN Snapshot (Nude)

Knowing that ‘Snapshot’ was written around, and recorded following, the death of Juanita Stein’s father could immediately give the record a gravitas and sense of foreboding that, perhaps, without that knowledge it might not have possessed. But the singer’s third solo effort is a darker proposition; where her gorgeous, silky vocal usually comes paired with sun-soaked sonics, ‘Snapshot’ lets her voice wander. It falls to a nearwhisper in ‘The Mavericks’, attacked by stabs of synth and sinister strings. ‘Reckoning’ has it fulled with frustration, meanwhile, with the refrain of “you’ve gone away.” Moreover, the heavier guitars courtesy of Juanita’s brother and fellow Howling Bell, Joel Stein, give the record extra menace. (Bella Martin) LISTEN: ‘Reckoning’

This album came out of a very tumultuous time for you emotionally. Can you give us an insight into the songwriting process? In an artistic sense, there’s something pretty magical that is derived from pain. Only a couple of times in my life have I been able to experience that rawness. It’s brutal and at the same time, you’ll never have such direct access to ’the source’ so to speak. So while my father was ill, I found absolute solace in writing these particular songs, whilst the outside world was crumbling, I was able to harness that into music. Your last two albums were recorded with a relatively quick turnaround of just a few weeks. This album was spread over 8 months. Was that a creative choice? Yes, in the sense that I had the luxury of being able to record in a studio close to where I lived, so I didn’t have to cram the creative process into a two-week period, it also gave us time to really consider the songs and their parts. It gave me time to consider the lyrics, and also, I was able to experiment sonically. Your brother Joel played guitar on a number of these tracks. What was the thinking behind this? Joel and I have played music together since we were kids, there’s a secret language you develop with musicians you’ve played with for a long time. Without words, we can communicate what’s working and what isn’t. Because of the intensely personal nature of the record and the fact that he was experiencing the same grief I was, I only wanted him to be involved and to put his stamp on it. Also, just straight up, he’s a shit hot guitarist. How does it feel to share these songs with others? Writing the songs was the only thing I could do at the time to get through, making the record was the only thing I could do at the time to get through. Luckily I had [producer] Ben Hillier at the helms to navigate the process, so until the very point of releasing the music, I’ve felt inspired and protected so to speak. What people do with the songs and the lyrics and the vibe is out of my control. So, I truly have to let this go and embrace whatever comes. However! Having said that, to share these songs and this profound experience with other people that are open and inspired when hearing them is truly phenomenal to me.

Watch out for Theresa May, Juanita!

(Little Dipper / Rise)

Perhaps one of PUP’s greatest strengths is their ability to take on the darker moments of life, and transform them into punked-up rallying calls for the disenchanted. And looking back on a year like 2020, it feels like there’s never been a better time for a fresh injection of the Toronto punks’ spirit. Granted, three of the tracks from the rather aptly-named ‘This Place Sucks Ass’ may be taken from their 2019 ‘Morbid Stuff’ sessions, but their fiery spirit of fighting back is still very much relevant. “After the smoke cleared, I opened my eyes and I was still here,” sings Stefan Babcock on ‘Floodgates’, providing a real moment of clarity and catharsis, and a reminder that, no matter how bad this year gets - or quite how much this place sucks ass - PUP still have our backs. (Sarah Jamieson) LISTEN: ‘Rot’

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A darker proposition.

LIVE 

THE OBGMS

The Ends (Black Box)

The OBGMs are based out of the same Toronto punk scene as flag-bearers PUP. And, while the cans-in-the-air chorus of ‘All My Friends’ and Pixies-Weezer axisindebted closer ‘Move On’ echo a lot of the same touchstones as their Canadian counterparts, ‘The Ends’ is largely a broader take on the genre. Opener ‘Outsah’ clamours immediately, its asymmetrical, multi-layered percussion a perfect foil for frontman Densil McFarlane to spit lyrics one second, let out a guttural roar the next. ‘WTFRU’ both pummels and swirls; ‘Fight Song’ features an almost Blur-like guitar line, and ‘Cash’ marries garage punk with a biting vocal rhythm. The one to leave a grin on your face, however, is ‘Karen O’s’ in which Densil repeats “yeah yeah yeah” over the kind of whirring guitars Nick Zinner would be proud to put his name to. Tongue firmly in cheek, The OBGMs couldn’t be more serious. (Emma Swann) LISTEN: ‘Karen O’s’

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WICKETKEEPER

Coming Up THE CRIBS - NIGHT NETWORK The Jarman brothers' eighth album that oh-so-nearly never was, 'Night Network' is released on 13th November.

GORILLAZ - SONG MACHINE: SEASON ONE STRANGE TIMEZ With a guestlist even Elton John (who himself even appears on the record!) would be proud of, Gorillaz's seventh is out on 23rd October.

Shonk (Meritorio)

MARIKA HACKMAN COVERS Probably one of the better lockdown cover projects, Marika's turn is out 13th November.

Coming Up

‘Shonk’ is a record so in thrall to ‘90s slacker rock that it’d hardly be a surprise to discover that instead of being a new, 2K20 release from a group based between London and Margate, it was rescued from dead stock status in a warehouse somewhere across the ocean in the Pacific Northwest. There’s hopeful highlight ‘Modest Breakfast’, the driving, post-punk inflected ‘Feeling’, the slow-build interlude of ‘Tired’. Fuzzy around the edges, yet clean-cut in its style, mixing atonal meandering with ‘50s harmonies, there’s a swathe of listeners for whom this is very much IT (and, conversely, if scruffy, lilting indierock isn’t your bag, very much won’t be). (Louisa Dixon) LISTEN: ‘Modest Breakfast’

WILD PATHS Norfolk Showground

A festival? In 2020? Sounds unlikely, but against all odds Wild Fields (an open-air alternative to Wild Paths, a multi-venue bash which began last year in Norwich) brings a host of brilliant names to the Norfolk Showground for a much-needed reminder of why live music is, let’s be honest, literally the best thing in the world, full stop. After settling in to one of the many roped-off ‘pods’ which hold groups of up to six, the whole affair has the cool, comfortable energy of one enormous beer garden. Screens and extra speakers ensure everybody gets a proper sight and sound experience, and the sunshine beaming down is a plump glacé cherry on the escapism cake that today is serving up. Local boys Pin Ups are a brilliant first band back, dishing out woozy psychedelia with a Britpoppy edge and looking pleased as punch to be back performing, an energy shared by Lauran Hibberd and her band. “This reminds me of my Dad’s fiftieth birthday party,” the Isle of Wight native quips, “only with a distinct lack of my Mum”. Her breezy bubblegum-pop is a breath of fresh air - any other year ‘Call Shotgun’ would rouse a moshpit for sure. On to the big guns - the sun’s going down and it’s time to rock. Any rustiness Indoor Pets might be feeling is promptly obliterated as they plunge into their scuzz-rock anthem ‘Pro Procrastinator’, bounding round the stage with the joyful demeanour (and matching shaggy ‘dos) of puppies let out to play. Jamie Glass swiftly finds his mojo and provides entertainment a-plenty as he stomps and screams his way through such earworms as ‘Teriyaki’ and ‘Barbiturates’ from last spring’s ’Be Content’. An unreleased song titled ‘London’ closes their frenetic set with the promise that there’s new stuff to look forward to from these boys, just as soon as ‘all this’ has blown over. Night descends and Another Sky usher in an intense and captivating aura as they showcase ‘I Slept On the Floor’, their stunning debut released only weeks ago. It’s a spine-tingling moment when ‘Fell in Love With the City’ ricochets around the huge outdoor arena, its almost staccato opening riffs channelling out pure enthusiasm. ‘Riverbed’ and ‘The Cracks’ swiftly win over the audience, and the more trip-hoppy ‘Forget Yourself’ mirrors the foursome’s shifting stage presence in its slow building majesty. Never understated are Catrin Vincent’s vocals - she moves with ease through delicate whispers to belting out massive choruses in an awe inspiring display. “These days have no up or down,” she sings on ‘Avalanche’, a line which feels more than a little poignant. Heading up the main stage, Gengahr fall victim to technical difficulties (festivals, eh?) but even when dealt a shorter set than planned they give the people what they want. ‘Sanctuary’, the quartet’s third record, dropped at the start of the year and its sleeker, groovier production is reflected in the tightness of their performance. The noise from John Victor’s guitar punches is immense, and they meld gorgeously with Felix Bushe’s dulcet tones as the hits are rattled through - ‘She’s A Witch’, ‘Bathed in Light’, and even a wistful cover of Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Love.’ Ultimately, time runs dry but the sultry, hypnotic bassline of ‘Heavenly Maybe’ is enough of a sweetener to end a beautiful day on a high. (Alex Cabré)

IT’S YOUR ROUND

A big inter-band pub quiz of sorts, we’ll be grilling your faves one by one.

NO BROUW GHT TO YO U VIA ZOOM !

THIS MONTH: MXMTOON

Where: California. Drink: Water. Price: Free, duh.

Specialist Subject: Houseplants Which continent does Aloe Vera originate from? South America? It’s actually Asia - it’s from the Arabian Peninsula specifically. I would not have guessed that. I’ll probably just be learning in this quiz… Why is a Peace Lily called a Peace Lily? I know how to take care of one? I think there’s flowers on it? Is it some kind of symbol? It is… Man, I know nothing about plants - that’s what I’m learning so far. The big white lily petal is meant to symbolise a white flag - the sign of truces and peace. What are Hedgehog, Golden Barrel and San Pedro all types of? Are they cacti? Correct!

Yes! One question right let’s go! What is ‘Dracaena Marginata’ more commonly known as? It sounds like Dracula, I’m not sure why I’m going off on this weird thought train… Get on the thought train, but not that particular one. OK. Dracaena… dragon? Dragon Tree! Yes! Correct! What very good British band recently released a song called ‘Houseplants’? Oh my goodness, I don’t think I know it because I would definitely have freaked out if someone had released a song named ‘Houseplants’. It’s Squid. Oh I know Squid! I didn’t know they released a song called that!

General Knowledge Who wrote and starred in all-conquering musical Hamilton? Lin-Manuel Miranda Correct! Have you seen it? I went and saw it live - I’m a big Hamilton fan. If you have cryophobia, what are you afraid of? I assume it’s not crying cos nothing would be that easy. I wanna say it’s that you’re scared of the cold? Correct! Did I get it?! Yes! Nowadays, you might get told to “say cheese” before taking a pic. However, if you were getting papped in the 1800s, which dried fruit would you be asked to say? Which fruit makes you smile when you do it? I actually read about this… I’m gonna guess raisins? That would make more

sense, but it’s actually a very pouty prune. You’d just do a duck face? Clearly that was the Victorian way. Who is set to play Batman in the next Batman film? Robert Pattinson. Correct! I only watched Twilight for the first time two weeks ago, but I think Robert Pattinson is very entertaining. Twilight is undeniably a bad series though. What soft drink is commonly associated with Scotland? I’ve only been to Scotland once… It’s orange - you can have that as a clue. Um, Fanta? Unfortunately not, it’s Irn Bru. I’ve never had that - I’ll try it.

3/5

2/5 FINAL SCORE:

5/10

Verdict: “It’s halfway there, I’ll take it.” And that’s the glass half full attitude we need in 2020, mxmtoon!

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