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81 Articles

I hope very much that you are healthy, but if you are not, that you soon will be. At the time of writing, we are all doing fine at Q. Music can seem trivial in these moments of unusual international anxiety. Immediately after September 11, 2001, the music stopped. For a period, newspaper columnists agonised about how entertainment culture would ever recover. Then, slowly, as we all rediscovered how melody provides strength and succour and inspiration in times of extreme stress, the music returned. By that Christmas, we were raving again with extra relish. The record shows, too, that 2002 was a vintage year. Life may not return as quickly this time, but it will. So, now, if you can, buy some music please. Help those musicians, and labels, and record stores…

Splendid Isolation!

Victoria Segal Q Writer Music: For dark times not done darkly, there’s Cornershop’s excellent latest album, England Is A Garden. Similarly, Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s intimate I Made A Place manages to keep the apocalypse on a very human scale. Screen: Trigonometry (BBC2)/Feel Good (C4) – two gently idealised shows about modern romance that makes audiences fall as hard in love with the characters as the characters do with each other. Books: We Have Always Lived In The Castle, Shirley Jackson’s icy American gothic, is all about people who don’t like to go out much. West by Carys Davies is a tiny novel about isolation and wildness: read it in a day and feel a sense of achievement. For pure escapist joy, there’s always Elton John’s outrageous autobiography, Me. Podcast: The Last Bohemians – vivid interviews…

Splendid Isolation!

“It’s an illusion that if you want to write dark music, you need to do it in the dark.” Hello, Ghostpoet, where are you right now? I’m in the glamorous offices of my PR company in East London. The view’s amazing, the plant life is delicious. There’s a wood finish here that’s inspiring. I might put it into my own property. Your fifth album is coming out soon. What was the most annoying thing about making it? Probably the logistical side of it, which involved me having a large spreadsheet that I had to constantly keep checking to make sure I was recording everything. I saw it done by somebody else and I thought, “Yeah, that’s what I need to do to keep everything on track.” But it just became an obsession. So even dark…

“As Mongolians we believe in the eternal blue sky and that good things come from above.” Gala Even in the theatre of the outlandish that is Camden Market, the four top-knot-and-tunic-clad men parading through its passageways like stray members of Genghis Khan’s rampaging horde draw stares. They are The Hu, and North London is the latest stop-off on their mission to bring the culture and history of their native Mongolia to the wider world via the unlikely medium of modern metal. “As nomadic people, we respect and love this earth and nature, and as Mongolians, we believe in the eternal blue sky and that good things come from above,” says singer Galbadrakh “Gala” Tsendbaatar via a translator, as we sit in the dressing room of the nearby Electric Ballroom, where The Hu…

Out to lunch with... JEHNNY BETH

Jehnny Beth takes a seat at a table inside Tempio, a bustling Italian restaurant situated below Temple Chambers in central London, and looks around her. It’s a sunny, Friday lunchtime in early March and tables are filling up with giddy diners from the surrounding solicitors’ offices. “I wouldn’t have chosen here,” she says, her accent a mix of native French with a hint of cockney thrown in, overspill from a decade spent living in London. “I would have taken you to Banner’s in Crouch End, my old local. But I’m working near here,” she explains. As singer with Savages, Beth is a thrillingly fierce and antagonistic performer but today she chirpily scans the menu and is immediately warm company. “OK, I’m not going to take hours,” she says aloud to herself,…

Out to lunch with... JEHNNY BETH

CAN I TAKE YOUR ORDER PLEASE, MS BETH?

Favourite restaurant? “Banner’s in Crouch End, London. It’s a Jamaican jerk chicken place. There’s a plate on the wall from Bob Dylan cos he used to sit there. It was my local when I first moved to London, I used to go there a lot and sit in the Bob Dylan chair.” Culinary speciality? “I’m really good at baking. Well, I shouldn’t say that I’m really good but I love baking. I was speaking to my TV PR and asking, ‘Is there any way I could go on Bake Off?’ I’d love to do it! I’d be competitive and I think I’d be upset if I didn’t present something good enough.” Most detested foodstuff? “I don’t think I hate anything, but I was a teacher in a British school in Enfield and the food was…

CAN I TAKE YOUR ORDER PLEASE, MS BETH?

Gazing out of the window of her London hotel suite, Jessie Reyez has the faraway stare of someone who’s seen a lot. “I’ve done shit,” she says, her thick Canadian accent underscored by the lilt of her Colombian roots. Only she’s not referring to relationship implosions, the kind detailed on 2017’s breakthrough single Figures (100m Spotify streams and counting), or the myriad emotional mazes traversed on her debut album, Before Love Came To Kill Us, but her previous London-based tourist exploits. “We’ve done London Bridge, and the first time we came we saw the Crown Jewels…” Born in Toronto, the 28-year-old’s childhood was tough financially, but her parents instilled in her an ambitious streak early on, one that led to her taking piano lessons at a local music school aged three.…

Due: Summer Title: TBC Song Titles: We Will Always Love You, Running Red Lights, The Divine Chord, Reflecting Light. Producers: The Avalanches Recorded At: Sing Sing Recording Studios, Melbourne Fascinating Fact: The pair’s collaborations with Tricky happened after Chater DM-ed the Bristolian rapper on Instagram. “Eventually our manager emailed us and said: ‘Have you been working with Tricky?! I just got a message from his manager!’ They freaked out because neither of them knew about it,” he says.…

THE AVALANCHES EMBARK ON A COSMIC TRIP

“It started with us talking about things like death, the afterlife, the stars, celestial beings...” Nothing focuses the mind like a deadline. Just ask The Avalanches. After 2000’s acclaimed debut album, Since I Left You, the Australian duo took a whopping 16 years to release a follow-up. “Difficult second album syndrome” puts it mildly. “I remember hitting the 10-year mark and thinking, ‘Woah, where does the time go?’” laughs Tony Di Blasi. “Year after year after that it just compounded to the point where it was almost comical.” “Well, we can laugh about it now at least,” adds bandmate Robbie Chater. “We wanted a deadline for this record. We learned the hard way what happens if you don’t.” Thankfully, the pair are currently holed up in their Melbourne studio sticking to a self-imposed schedule…

THE AVALANCHES EMBARK ON A COSMIC TRIP

Cash For Questions THIS MONTH: THE KOOKS

I fall the bands who emerged in the mid-’00s, The Kooks were the ones who looked most likely to be derailed by mainstream success. Even by the time their debut album peaked at Number 2 in the UK charts, they were already without original bassist Max Rafferty due allegedly to an excess of extra-extra-curricular behaviour. But onwards the band marched and, over a further four albums, they have established themselves as one of the country’s most resilient and successful indie-rock bands. “People say we’ve had a resurgence but I just think the songs have lasted,” says frontman Luke Pritchard, stepping out of a wet Monday morning in central London and into the cosy confines of Bradley’s Spanish Bar. “We’ve had to persevere through some tough times. A lot of people had…

Cash For Questions THIS MONTH: THE KOOKS

THE PRICE OF FAME

Backstage in the dressing room of Glasgow’s SWG3, just before she plays her first ever show in Scotland, Toni Watson is trying to stifle a yawn, but the yawns just keep coming. “I’m so sorry for yawning,” she says, in case I take it personally. “I’m just… I’m awake now. It just comes out of me.” The singer, known as Tones And I to the billions of people who have streamed her track Dance Monkey, or watched the video for it, or seen her perform on Ellen or on Jimmy Fallon or on breakfast TV, is fresh from a nap. “And I don’t nap. It’s weird. Usually I’ve been up all day, will go to the gym, will go for a walk and get some lunch, and then we’ll start…

THE PRICE OF FAME

“The reason I stayed sober was because I wanted to improve myself.” 1 Lay Off The Sauce I’ve been sober for eight years now and that’s my first priority in order to keep everything else working. I know that’s not the case for everyone, but for me the bigger lesson is, “know yourself and know your limits.” I get up every day and think, “Whatever happens today I’m not going to drink...” Everything else falls into place after that. If I woke up now feeling like I used to every morning, I would immediately need to go to the emergency room. 2 Don’t Lie To Yourself, Or Other People (Within Reason) Being honest with yourself is sometimes the most difficult thing to do but it’s also the most rewarding because then you can really…

THOU SHALT COVET THESE FIVE ALBUMS

Carol King Tapestry “It’s an album that makes me appreciate what it’s like to be someone that I’m not.” John Prine John Prine “How could he write a song like Sam Stone when he was that young? He was just a kid. It’s incredible.” OutKast Aquemini “Growing up in the South in the ’90s you had to have this album.” Bob Dylan Blonde On Blonde “This was Dylan needing to stay in touch with what he called the ‘thin wild mercury sound’. It was a successful attempt to stay in touch with that wild part of himself.” Prince Sign O’ The Times “There are people who are great songwriters and great entertainers and great musicians but I don’t think all three of those things have ever existed in the same amount in anybody else as much as Prince.”…

THOU SHALT COVET THESE FIVE ALBUMS

ONE OF MARCH’S FEW REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL was an episode of Reply All, a podcast about internet culture, called The Case Of The Missing Hit. A man called Tyler Gillett approached co-host PJ Vogt to solve a mystery. He vividly remembered a song from the late ’90s, down to the tiniest detail, but couldn’t find anyone else who did, nor the slightest trace of it online. Had he imagined it? How could a radio hit just disappear? Vogt’s search for answers, involving memory, obsession and the madness of the pre-Napster music business, was hailed as “the best podcast episode ever” and “instantly legendary”. Vogt suggested that it became “something for anyone who felt stuck and needed something to focus on”: a joyful distraction in scary times. It could only have…

Location: Berwick Street, Sunday, 23 July, 1995 Michael Spencer Jones: “It was very much a trust thing with the artwork for Oasis. Sometimes Noel would have an idea about something and then that idea would change and get tweaked. Morning Glory was quite tricky. The initial idea was that Noel had said the album sounded like ‘riot music’, so I was thinking, ‘Right, how can you have a visual representation of riot music?’ Then you’d hear tracks like Cast No Shadow and Wonderwall and it was like, ‘Hmm, I think we’re going down the wrong road here guys!’ “We got to a point where we wanted a morning scenario and it developed into two people coming home from a nightclub. Originally Noel and Liam were going to be on the cover but…

It’s the fifth biggest-selling UK album of all time, containing national anthems that will long outlive its authors. But as it arrived just 14 months after its predecessor had kicked the door open for Oasis, (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? appeared to little fanfare. That soon changed. Hamish MacBain tells its inside story, track-by-track… It is, of course, the Oasis album with statistics to make your eyes water. Still the fifth biggest-selling UK album of all time – outstripped only by a pair of Greatest Hits albums (Queen, ABBA), Sgt Pepper’s and, most recently, Adele’s 21 – it has sold more than 22 million copies worldwide: almost three times as many as either Definitely Maybe or Be Here Now. But more importantly, it is the album which contains the songs…

Two Sides Of The Same Coin

The ’90s were not short on bands going above and beyond when it came to their B-sides. Suede, The Verve, Pulp… all excelled in this area. The young Noel Gallagher’s heroes, too – The Beatles, The Jam, The Smiths, The Stone Roses – did some of their best work on the flipsides of their singles (see, respectively: Rain, The Butterfly Collector, Girl Afraid, Mersey Paradise). But even against such stiff contemporary and historical competition, when it comes to B-sides, no band comes close to the over-achiever status of Oasis in 1995. The theory has often been posited that had Noel Gallagher banked some of these songs rather than frittering them away, he could have extended Oasis’s imperial period significantly. But where, really, would the fun have been in that? Talk Tonight Few…

Two Sides Of The Same Coin

The Year After (What’s The Story Morning Glory?)

“Being part of Oasis was like being part of a circus: you just turn up and everyone goes nuts.” Liam Gallagher Two aces, no bassist With (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? released, Oasis gear up for their biggest gigs to date: two nights in front of 20,000 people at Earl’s Court, with the Bootleg Beatles in support, which both sold-out in seconds. But there is a problem. Or rather, two problems. The first is that bass player Paul “Guigsy” McGuigan had just a month or so previously quit the band due to “nervous exhaustion”. The second is that his replacement, Scott McLeod of The Ya Yas, has also left the band after just a few shows. And then the phone rings. Bonehead (rhythm guitar): “Guigsy phoned up and was like, ‘I’ll be there’.…

The Year After (What’s The Story Morning Glory?)

On a chilly “It’s only in the last year that I’ve realised, ‘Oh, Radiohead!’ I’ve never thought we’re a great band. I’ve thought it’s just what we do.” afternoon in January, Plas Dinam Country House looks like the setting of a murder mystery, or a ghost story. It’s in the same patch of mid-Wales as Led Zeppelin’s fabled Bron-Yr-Aur – Misty Mountain Hop country – and the surrounding hills and valleys are blanked out by a wintry fog. Ed O’Brien – 51-year-old father of two, one-fifth of Radiohead, currently trading as EOB – bought a house nearby during the seven-year gestation of his debut solo album, Earth, because he craved wide open spaces. He dreamt up lyrics while wandering in the hills. So when it was time to start recording in 2017, this…

Are You Receiving?

Philip Selway Weatherhouse (BELLA UNION, 2014) The drummer’s solo excursions began with the stark folk of 2010’s Familial but this follow-up explored a more expansive sound. Assisted by electronic artist Adem Ilhan and experimental multi-instrumentalist Quinta, Selway crafts an atmospheric, creeping rock record, chiming with some of Radiohead’s more soothing moments. Thom Yorke Anima (XL, 2019) Feelings of dread and anxiety have been a constant in the frontman’s work but they strike a contemporaneous chord on Anima, his third solo album. Tetchy electro mixes with lurching strings and claustrophobic vocals, best of all on the swooping Not The News. Yorke’s best record outside of the band that made him. Jonny Greenwood Inherent Vice (NONESUCH, 2014) One of the best guitarists of his generation has reinvented himself as a sought-after composer in his work away from Radiohead. Greenwood has…

Are You Receiving?

“My music isn’t for everyone”

“All my life I’ve been known to be a quiet girl. I can’t even lie, it felt like my voice didn’t matter.” The number 16 follows Flohio around. She was born on the 16th of September, lives in the London postcode SE16 and her debut release came out in 2016. But it gets weirder. She’ll board a flight and her seat will be on aisle 16, she says. And – really – we happen to sit down at table 16 for our interview. In numerology, if you believe in that sort of thing, 16 usually indicates a spiritual awakening and Flohio sensed it meant good luck. So she got the digits inked smack bang in the middle of her collarbone, as a permanent totem of positivity. “When I’m doing something good,”…

“My music isn’t for everyone”

Five more new-gen UK MCs to check out

CHE LINGO The rapper signed to Idris Elba’s record label with the single, My Block, calling out British police brutality. Hear This: My Block (single) LAVA LA RUE Ladbroke Grove’s Lava deploys tasteful spoken word about self-love and LGBT solidarity over jazzy soul-pop. Hear This: Stitches (LP) AITCH Manchester-born 20-year-old scamp who reached Number 2 in the Top 40 last year with Taste (Make It Shake). Hear This: Rain (single) NSG Six-strong Hackney collective who blend the rump-shaking sounds of West Africa, Jamaica and UK. Hear This: Ourself (single) JAY1 Drill-inspired flow from this fast-rising Coventry rapper and UK chart-botherer. Hear This: Flex (feat. JB Scofield) (single)…

Five more new-gen UK MCs to check out

“In the ’90s, major labels spent sick amounts of money making videos that might never be seen by anyone, putting their bands on the road, and especially recording albums. Almost all of it was paid from recoupable advances that bands would ultimately be on the hook for, so unless you were lucky enough to have a hit and sell a shitload of records, you were simply racking up a huge debt with the company, money that would eventually come out of any royalties you might make but also money that was in most cases never recouped. Record companies spent vast amounts of dough signing a bunch of bands, only to throw them like wet dog shit against a wall and wait to see which ones stuck and which would slide…

THE BLACK CROWES

“The Madcap Laughs was like a cult magic.”Chris Robinson CROSBY, STILLS, NASH & YOUNG DÉJÀ VU (1970) Rich Robinson: “I first heard it when I was, like, three. My dad used to play it all the time. The guy I latched on to the most throughout the years is Stephen Stills. I love the way he played guitar and the way he sang and as a child listening to those harmonies that were coming out of our console stereo, which was like a piece of furniture that had the speakers built into it, what it pulled out of me is something I’ve always carried with me. To this day I can put this record on and have it be something totally different but something just as potent and powerful.” BIG STAR THIRD (1978) Chris Robinson: “I…

THE BLACK CROWES

The Q Review is the definitive music guide. Its hand-picked writers are the undisputed experts in their fields, and they rigorously adhere to Q’s world-famous star-rating system. ★★★★★ Classic This is a work of genius. Essential for any collection. ★★★★ Good Solid as a rock. You will not be let down. ★★★ Fair A decent attempt, but not ripe. Investigate at your own peril. ★★ Poor Ill-conceived, under-cooked. Please return to the drawing board. ★ Rubbish This will boil your blood with fury and disgust.…

Gaz Coombes Matador (2015) The Supergrass singer’s second solo album showcased an all-grown-up Coombes flexing his experimental pop muscles, the shadow of Krautrock, folk-rock and late-period Radiohead suggesting all was no longer quite alright. ★★★★ Luke Haines & Peter Buck Beat Poetry For Survivalists (2020) Auteur Luke Haines has spent his post-Britpop years developing cultish solo albums: teaming up with former R.E.M. guitarist Buck allowed him to open the curtains slightly without letting too much light into his outsider gloom. ★★★★ The Good, The Bad & The Queen The Good, The Bad & The Queen (2007) Damon Albarn is never short of side-projects, but this collaboration with Paul CSimonon, : Simon Tong and Tonyhe Allen ’d got wasinto one of his more quixotic a row outings with, aahaunted journey through particularly a lost world. ★★★★…

JARV IS… BEYOND THE PALE ROUGH TRADE, OUT 1 MAY The campaign to propel his 2006 song Running The World to the top of the charts last Christmas underlined Jarvis Cocker’s enduring status as pop’s lurking truth-teller, a man skulking on the margins, making notes and taking names. It’s been a while since he was happy just to peep through the crack in the wardrobe door, but he still likes to watch. Beyond The Pale, his first album since 2009’s Further Complications, is the work of a man kitted out with a full array of emotional surveillance equipment, its expansive space-rock and cosmic lyrics zooming in and out on humanity in all its rich chaos. Each of its seven tracks feel like they’re straining to catch something important in their roving lens: a flicker…

A WESTERN CIRCULAR DOMINO, OUT NOW Producer du jour turns in impressive future soul debut. Taking inspiration from such diverse sources as the orchestral works of Frank Zappa and the soundscapes of Arthur Russell, Newcastle’s Wilma Archer has distilled them into potent, classically influenced soul/jazz. The result is a record in which the listener is led through various sonic twists and turns, never quite sure what lies around the corner. MF DOOM’s rhymes float over chamber strings in the pulsing Last Sniff, while Cheater features Sudan Archives cooing over staccato brass and percussion. Best of all are the two tracks with Future Islands’ Samuel T. Herring, eclipsing his work in his day band in the reverie-inducing soul of The Boon and sharing vocals with Laura Groves in dreamy, Solange-like album standout Decades. Beautiful…

IF YOU’RE DREAMING HEAVENLY RECORDINGS, OUT NOW Intimate and enjoyably ambiguous second from US singer-songwriter. Where Detroit singer-songwriter Anna Burch’s 2018 debut Quit The Curse was nervy and brisk folk-pop, its follow-up is a surprisingly woozy, often baleful affair. However, that’s a red herring for the laser sharpness of Burch’s lyrics. Much like Eleanor Friedberger, she’s novelistic in her cataloguing of the interior life. “When I used to hate myself” begins Tell Me What’s True, “I saw things so clearly.” When observing jealousy on velvety, louche standout Jacket, couplets such as “she won’t meet my eye, don’t tell me she’s just shy” can stop you in your tracks. In the album’s pacing, there’s a sense of malaise, even meandering, but it only serves to further reflect the emotional terrain covered by Burch. An…

SHORTLY AFTER TAKEOFF BELLA UNION, OUT 24 APRIL Songwriter closes his Manchester trilogy with gallows humour. When he moved to Manchester from Philadelphia nearly a decade ago, even Brian Christinzio – aka BC Camplight – would have been surprised to find that decision proving the catalyst for an unlikely comeback and a redemptive Manchester trilogy, of which this is the final instalment. As with labelmate Father John Misty, this is piano-led adult pop that catalogues self-destruction and interior male ennui with a double-shot of gallows humour. Paranoid, doomy synths temper the classicism of Christinzio’s luxuriant Harry Nilsson songwriting – never better than on organ-driven bourbon ballad I Want To Be In The Mafia. ★★★★ Listen To: I Only Drink When I’m Drunk | I Want To Be In The Mafia | Born To Cruise…

WILD BILLY CHILDISH AND THE CHATHAM SINGERS

KINGS OF THE MEDWAY DELTA DAMAGED GOODS, OUT NOW Prolific Kent outsider artist gets the blues. The Rolling Stones were among the first British R&B groups inspired by Louisiana bluesman Slim Harpo, and here’s another man of Kent drawing from the same source. Utilising Rochester’s Ranscombe Studios’ echo chamber, plus producer Jim Riley’s blues harp skills, The Chatham Singers furnish these 12 tracks of street crackle and pop with skeletal verve. As with his previous 125-plus albums, Childish explodes notions of cultural appropriation by embedding his own aesthetic deep into originals such as The Double Axe, as well as Harpo’s 1957 classic Got Love If You Want It. Mississippi or Medway, mud is mud wherever you go. ★★★★ Listen To: Got Love If You Want It…

WILD BILLY CHILDISH AND THE CHATHAM SINGERS

WOMEN IN MUSIC PT III POLYDOR, OUT 24 APRIL LA siblings widen their soft-rock focus. In many respects, the drolly-titled third album from Alana, Este and Danielle Haim is business as usual for the Californian family band: Women In Music Pt III is chock-full of sisterly harmonising, Fleetwood Mac-style soft rock and subtle nods to 1990s R&B. Yet there are also frequent disturbances to the group’s cheerily nostalgic sound. I Know Alone references 2-step garage, 3AM incorporates gloopy G-funk, while elsewhere you can find reggae rhythms, flamenco guitars and Lou Reed samples. This zeitgeist-friendly genre-hopping proves the trio are moving with the times, but it’s satisfying to note that when they return to their starkly simple, powerfully melodic trademark sound on closer Hallelujah, Haim remain in a league of their own. ★★★★ Listen To:…

SHABAZZ PALACES

THE DON OF DIAMOND DREAMS SUB POP, OUT 17 APRIL Another way-out transmission from US rap oddball. Ishmael Butler’s last outing as Shabazz Palaces, the duo he fronts in collaboration with Zimbabwean-born percussionist Tendai Maraire, was a double concept album that imagined present day America as an alien dystopia. His fourth album is considerably shorter, if no less otherworldly in its approach, with the dynasty theme (his son Lil Tracy is a SoundCloud rapper with a taste for diamonds) far less obvious than the Afro-futurist influence of Sun Ra and George Clinton – witness, for example, Wet’s space-age production and echo-effected vocals. An atmosphere of heightened weirdness prevails, not least on sparse electro slow jam Money Yoga and the woozy, outsider funk of Reg Walks By The Looking Glass, a suitably cryptic sign-off…

SHABAZZ PALACES

The new album arrives with something more than the shrug of its philosophical title at stake. IT IS WHAT IT IS BRAINFEEDER, OUT NOW Bass visionary and Flying Lotus collaborator’s further adventures. The surprise success of Thundercat’s third album, Drunk, propelled by the single Show You The Way, helped put ageing soft-rockers Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins on a new generation’s lips and the veteran session bassist, and latter-day vocalist, into year-end charts. It also means It Is What It Is arrives with something more than the title’s philosophical shrug at stake. Not that you’d know it from the contents, which sees the Los Angeleno beat his own path, as ever – where the gorgeous Black Qualls, a guest-packed hit in waiting, sits alongside the frenetic, indulgent bass workout How Sway. Soft soul, gibbering…

I’M YOUR EMPRESS OF TERRIBLE, OUT NOW LA’s alt-pop queen embraces club culture and heady house music. Lorely Rodriguez might have gone mainstream on 2018’s Us, but the singer/producer’s third album sees her once again embracing the off-kilter energy that made her arrival midway through the last decade so refreshing. There’s still a deeply catchy element to her electronicadriven sound – the pulsing Love Is A Drug comes over like a DIY Dua Lipa/ Janet Jackson hybrid – but Rodriguez digs deeper into rave and party culture here. She embeds herself fully into the club groove for the sweaty house of Give Me Another Chance; particularly impressive when you consider it’s only two and a half minutes long. In fact, not much here is over three minutes, showing a sense of urgency that…

ROGER AND BRIAN ENO

MIXING COLOURS DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON, OUT NOW Ambient brothers combine forces beautifully. Brothers Roger and Brian Eno’s first album as a duo has been a long time coming. Fifteen years ago, Roger, an ambient composer, began writing pieces on a MIDI keyboard. His older sibling, known for the pioneering work of being Brian Eno, would then rearrange his compositions. The result is not so much conversational as a work of intriguing collision – an 18-song adventure in sparse and particular beauty, whose tracklisting reads something like a Winsor & Newton paint catalogue: Dark Sienna, Verdigris, Cerulean Blue. Across the wit and warmth of Quicksilver’s keys, the glower of Burnt Umber and the fine, sweet elegance of Iris, it’s less a record than a slow sensory immersion. ★★★★ Listen To: Quicksilver | Iris | Spring Frost…

ROGER AND BRIAN ENO

REVEL IN THE DRAMA BELLA UNION, OUT NOW Salford singer’s triumphant return after eight years. Having suffered a freak accident in 2011 that resulted in a broken back, Ren Harvieu understandably found touring her debut album, 2012’s Through The Night, something of a trial. The darkness she went through in the intervening years (shattered dreams, depression) is documented here in beautiful piano ballad Spirit Me Away. In spite of its title, Revel In The Drama is light-hearted too – Strange Thing and Teenage Mascara are cartoonish explorations of adolescent feelings – and collaborator Romeo Stodart of The Magic Numbers has helped to free the singer’s creativity and frame her soaring vocals in imaginative arrangements. Playing the femme fatale in showstopper You Don’t Know Me, Harvieu’s voice is set to stun. Against all odds,…

NOTHING IS TRUE & EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE SO RECORDINGS, OUT 17 APRIL St Albans genre-splicers deliver best work in years. Enter Shikari’s ecstatic marriage of post-hardcore, EDM and unbridled eccentricity has long distinguished them from their peers. And so it remains on Nothing Is True…, as convulsing opener The Great Unknown reaffirms their aptitude for breathtaking electro-rock. The all-too-sleek misfire of The Pressure’s On aside, it’s their poppier excursions that really impress, with Crossing The Rubicon transforming a Samuel Beckett quote into a riotous hook. The unexpected highlight comes from Elegy For Extinction, a rousing classical piece pairing the group with the City Of Prague Symphony Orchestra. It’s the sound of grand ambition being realised. ★★★★ Listen To: Elegy For Extinction | The Great Unknown…

EVERYTHING IS RECORDED

FRIDAY FOREVER XL, OUT NOW Another seismic electro-dub soundclash from XL head. Intended to evoke the rise and fall of a classic Friday night out, XL Recordings boss Richard Russell’s second outing as Everything Is Recorded comes off like an extended tour through UK club culture, taking in bass-heavy boom and jazz-infused soul. Elevated by Trinidad-born vocalist Berwyn, the electronic dub of 10:51 PM/The Night is an early highlight, while slow-motion banger 12.12AM/Patients taps the zeitgeist with verses from Manchester rapper Aitch. Yet for all the arresting cameos, it’s Russell’s show, the sudden deceleration into the spoken-word chill-out of 5.10AM/Dream I Never Had showing his mastery of modern music in all its forms. ★★★★ Listen To: 10:51 PM/The Night | 12.12AM/Patients…

EVERYTHING IS RECORDED

Sawayama incorporates so many influences and styles – was making such a varied album always the plan? “I think it happened along the way. I get bored quite quickly so it was almost like a challenge for me to write in all these different formats. I wanted to task myself with the core writing being pop, but the sound being super diverse.” Some of your genre choices, like the bombastic rock tracks, bring a comic element to the album. Why was that important to you? “I think when you take music too seriously, it loses a bit of charm, and I wanted my songs to be charming. With Who’s Gonna Save U Now?, no one was asking for a stadium rock song, like ever. I was laughing a lot when I was doing…

It’s a broad church but Sawayama never feels cluttered or jarring. RINA SAWAYAMA SAWAYAMA DIRTY HIT, OUT 17 APRIL Rina Sawayama first began making waves in 2017 with her excellent Rina EP, a post-ironic rush of self-consciously saccharine ’90s R&B punctured by shards of industrial guitar. On her first album proper, the Japanese-born, London-bred 29-year-old substantially expands her remit, adding sax-spiked new wave, PC Music digi-pop, flamboyant ’00s Eurodance and metal (hair- and nu-) to her arsenal. It’s a broad church, but Sawayama never feels cluttered or jarring. Instead, the songs on this impeccably stylish record are united by knowing nostalgia, tight, memorable choruses and contemplative lyrics that tackle big topics. That combination of arch, amusing sonics and serious, sensitive subject matter is a surprisingly affecting one. Identity politics and family ties feature heavily here:…

SEX EDUCATION OST BELLA UNION, OUT 10 APRIL Funny, flamboyant soundtrack for funny, flamboyant series. Could there be a more perfect person to soundtrack the funny, sad, silly, serious woketopia that is Netflix’s Sex Education? Furman has provided the music for both series thus far: this collection mixing old songs (Can I Sleep In Your Brain) with just-for-the show originals (the delicate Every Feeling) and a wonderful cover or two (a version of LCD Soundsystem’s I Can Change is truly sublime), all of which exhibit the unique charms of the Chicago singer/songwriter. The show itself – in which Furman and his band also made a cameo during the school dance scene – has reportedly been watched by more than 40 million people. If even just a 10th of them let a little Ezra…

DREAM IN COLOUR JUICEBOX RECORDINGS, OUT NOW Sparkling, and very smooth, disco pop from North London ravers. London duo Franc Moody came together playing DIY warehouse raves, their early gigs a sweaty mass of inebriated instrument-swapping. Not that there’s anything particularly chaotic about debut album, Dream In Colour. A slick set of sparkling disco pop in which basslines snap, keyboards glisten and grooves glide effortlessly into one another, at its best it can come across like a well-buffed LCD Soundsystem (Charge Me Up’s dirty funk, the Studio 54 throb of Night Flights) or Balearic Islands Phoenix (joyous closer A Little Something For The Weekend). It never strays far from the dancefloor, although a little anarchy and the odd rough edge wouldn’t have gone amiss. ★★★ Listen To: Night Flights | A Little Something For…

MTV UNPLUGGED WARNERS, OUT 24 APRIL Strings attached: Liam shines in acoustic setting. Famously, Liam Gallagher was a last minute no-show at Oasis’s MTV Unplugged show in August 1996 (Noel took over while he smoked and drank in one of the Royal Festival Hall’s boxes). This fuelled the theory that Liam was only comfortable singing with an up-to-11 wall of noise behind him, but his solo career has featured plenty of evidence this was, and is, nonsense. Following January’s Acoustic Sessions EP, this official release covers his much bootlegged set in Hull last August. The likes of Once and Now That I Found You suit the stripped-back aesthetic perfectly but it’s the strings-assisted version of Sad Song that is the real showstopper here: one of the great Liam Gallagher vocals, acoustic or otherwise.…

SUPERSTAR NEW WEST, OUT NOW Charismatic red-clad artist deepens her high-concept pop. Doubling down on the vibrant pop storytelling of her 2018 breakthrough Loner, New York songwriter Caroline Rose has carved her fourth album into a multi-faceted narrative about the quest for success. It’s a tale touched with ambition, lust, despondency and, on Someone New, “breaking bread with evil men”. And while there’s nothing as splashily direct as Loner’s trash-punk anthems Money or Bikini, Superstar coalesces into a powerful whole. The tarnished hopes of Pipe Dreams; Back At The Beginning’s cubist St. Vincent disco; the mutated Prince of Feel The Way I Want (“I’m so in love with myself/It’s so romantic”): it’s a record of quiet confidence, its brightness dialled down but its impact still fierce. ★★★★ Listen To: Someone New | Feel The…

KISS MY SUPER BOWL RING EPITAPH, OUT NOW Oddly cohesive total chaos from LA jesters. New listeners might not believe that The Garden’s chaotic fourth album is their most coherent to date, but Kiss My Super Bowl Ring makes good on the duo’s decade of scrappy, futuristic ideas. LA twins Wyatt and Fletcher Shears have a reputation for frenzied live shows and that adrenaline overload burns through tracks that clash vintage pop-punk melodies with bone-shattering jungle loops and snippets of snarling dogs. For every screamed verse there’s a genuinely soft melody, and it’s unsurprising to see mischief-makers Ariel Pink, Khalif Jones and producer Dylan Brady in the credits. The Garden’s uniquely garbage kind of glamour is far better than their clownish antics would suggest. ★★★★ Listen To: Hit Eject | Lowrider Slug…

POSSESSED THE VINYL FACTORY, OUT 10 APRIL Electronic visionary hits a new note on debut film score. Laurel Halo’s music for design collective Metahaven’s 2018 film Possessed is often seemingly at odds with the tech documentary’s unsettling examination of new forms of surveillance. She chooses to build tension very gently, letting the dread creep in almost unnoticed – until it suddenly overwhelms. On Lead, a shapeless sound of static swells to an unbearable peak; piercing strings create a tight-rope peril on Cave Walk; and siren-like drones echo through the industrial soundscape of Zeljava, named after the Croatian airbase. This skin-shivering unease is offset by the Rome Themes dotted throughout, which are luscious and stately. Halo’s score is detailed and meticulous – but far more sombre than her usually playful, exuberant records. ★★★ Listen To:…

THE PRETTIEST CURSE LUCKY NUMBER, OUT NOW The Strokes’ favourite Madrileños aim big on third album. In old-fashioned comics, fights were often depicted by a dust-cloud full of protruding feet and fists. A Hinds song has a similar energy, a tangle of chaotic movement that somehow resolves into recognisable – and catchy – form. While the Madrid band’s third album does have a new sheen of sophistication and ambition, it remains full of buoyant, ballooning pop songs and slumber-party attitude, Boy sounding like an unholy Andrew WK-Shampoo alliance, Good Bad Times raiding the Pet Shop Boys’ cupboards, The Play and Take Me Back anime avatars of The Velvet Underground and Pixies. It can occasionally cloy, but on The Prettiest Curse, Hinds are on fighting form. ★★★ Listen To: Take Me Back | Boy |…

As he boldly trades verses with Jay-Z, Jay Electronica spins visionary religious mantras around vintage loops. JAY ELECTRONICA A WRITTEN TESTIMONY ROC NATION, OUT NOW What connects Jay-Z, religious movement Nation Of Islam and British heiress Kate Rothschild? Answer: New Orleans-born rapper and producer Timothy Elpadaro Thedford, a long-time friend and associate of the Roc Nation founder who also became Rothschild’s lover while living in London in 2012. That he’s now recorded an expansive, allusive album that pays frequent homage to controversial NOI preacher Louis Farrakhan is just the latest twist in a career that’s up until now been long on promise and short on actual product. Arriving over a decade after Act I: Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge), a beat-free mixtape based on the soundtrack to Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, A Written Testimony…

1988 STONES THROW, OUT NOW Kendrick-endorsed sample wizard gets funked-up. A Los Angeles beatmaker whose profile received a sudden boost when Kendrick Lamar sampled one of his tracks on To Pimp A Butterfly, Glen Boothe actually has a sprawling back catalogue dating back to 2009 that includes a career-high collaboration with Anderson .Paak as Nxworries. In solo mode, though, it’s Boothe’s love of J Dilla that shines brightest, these 22 miniatures serving up sliced funk, jazz and soul with all the dexterity and precision of a sushi chef. Do You’s mesmeric bass groove has a touch of Thundercat and Solivelife’s bizarre chipmunk vocal echoes Flying Lotus, while Minding_my Business’s flashback to late-’80s R&B radiates a warmth often missing from other hi-tech laptop jams. ★★★★ Listen To: Do You | Solivelife | Minding_my Business…

THE LOVELY EGGS

I AM MORON THE LOVELY EGGS, OUT NOW Psych-punk-pop electronicists on melodic return. Not all bands have the ability to veer sharply and exuberantly between the shouty and the melodic, but for the last 14 years Lancaster two-piece The Lovely Eggs have made it their calling card. There’s something irresistible about the strange choral-pop intersection of Long Stem Carnations, just as it’s hard not to be stirred by This Decision’s loudhailered rabble-rousing. Across I Am Moron you come to see that The Lovely Eggs are an act of fine calibration of noise and sweetness, of intelligence and brutish mettle – for every punkish bout of fury, there’s something as gently charming as the New Dawn: all avant-pop vocal layers and Lancastrian vowels. It’s a winning combination. ★★★ Listen To: New Dawn | Long Stem…

THE LOVELY EGGS

HAMILTON LEITHAUSER

THE LOVES OF YOUR LIFE GLASSNOTE, OUT 10 APRIL Storytelling hour from barrel-voiced former Walkmen singer. Hamilton Leithauser’s latest solo LP is a reminder of just how changeable and variegated life can be. It’s a kaleidoscopic look at some of the people the singer has met over the years – strangers and friends, bad singers and bad dye jobs, living the easy life and driving Chevy Silverados. Leithauser’s voice is its usual delicious scuffed-up howl, the music covers a broad indie-rock sprawl, but the focus here is the stories: from Here They Come, which recounts the story of a friend who would hide from life by heading to the cinema to Isabella’s account of trust-fund existence and Cross-Sound Ferry’s tale from the stretch of water between New York and Connecticut. ★★★★ Listen To: Isabella…

HAMILTON LEITHAUSER

TOM MISCH & YUSSEF DAYES

WHAT KINDA MUSIC BLUE NOTE, OUT 24 APRIL Divergent UK jazz talents team up to raise their game. With his 2018 LP Geography, South London’s Tom Misch mapped out a safe space of pastel-shaded pop-soul. So the singer-guitarist’s collaboration with drummer Yussef Dayes, who also performs in jazz improv duo Yussef Kamaal, feels like a step outside that self-made comfort zone. Misch’s fluid songwriting is still to the fore, as on the title track’s loose-limbed shimmy, heightened by an uplifting string arrangement. But the way Dayes can shift gears, as when integrating a Freddie Gibbs cameo on the hip-hop-inflected Nightrider or helping power Lift Off towards the cosmic heights of ’70s prog-jazz outfit Mahavishnu Orchestra, injects both depth and drama into the mix. ★★★★ Listen To: Nightrider | Lift Off…

TOM MISCH & YUSSEF DAYES

PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS

VISCERALS ROCKET RECORDINGS, OUT NOW Heavy riffing excellence from implausibly named Geordies. Emerging from the same Newcastle DIY scene that produced the avant-folk songwriter Richard Dawson, Pigs x7 are a metal band who deviate from the genre’s modern trappings, instead dropping anchor firmly in Black Sabbath/Motörhead waters. On their third LP, they counter the bombastic riffing of tracks such as Rubbernecker with just enough silliness and surrealism to avoid pomposity. Crazy In Blood delves into the dense droning of My Bloody Valentine – swirling, fuggy and primal – while Halloween Bolson seethes with righteous political fury and a rallying cry of, simply, “bastards”. If you squint, it could be IDLES. As they put it on Blood And Butter, this band are “poison, made with the cheapest ingredients possible.” It’s potent stuff. Visceral is…

PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS

Self-Preservation Society

Gigaton is not without surprises, but Pearl Jam learned to play to their own strengths long ago. PEARL JAM GIGATON MONKEYWRENCH RECORDS, OUT NOW Pearl Jam’s third decade will not go down as one of their most productive. Pearl Jam Twenty, as they titled their 20th-anniversary celebrations, was marked with a film, album, book and festival but the next 10 years have yielded a sole LP, 2013’s Lightning Bolt. The lack of new material hasn’t knocked their stock, though. The Seattle rockers are in that upper-realm of bands who’ve done the hard miles, who will forever be arena-sized whatever the weather, their diehard fanbase untested by half-decade sabbaticals from record releases. Perhaps that’s because it’s an audience sure of what they’ll get when a new album does eventually come round: sturdy rock anthems and some…

Self-Preservation Society

SNAPSHOT OF A BEGINNER JAGJAGUWAR, OUT NOW Poetic, off-kilter indie rock from Canadian four-piece. Just as Franz Ferdinand have claimed not to be named after the slain Austrian archduke, so Mark Zuckerberg, the standout track on the fourth LP by Nova Scotia’s Nap Eyes, appears not to be about the titan of tech. Instead, it’s more a meditation on modern life, set to the sort of melodic but off-kilter indie at which Pavement once excelled. Nothing else matches that song’s immediacy, though there are plenty of other tracks here that meander charmingly, frontman Nigel Chapman’s poetic lyrics evoking the Silver Jews’ streams of consciousness en route. At times they meander a little too much, as on the ponderous Fool Thinking Ways, but this is far from the work of beginners. ★★★ Listen To: Mark…

ABOLITION OF THE ROYAL FAMILIA COOKING VINYL, OUT NOW Dub-club veterans recharge and fight the power on album #17. He may flick the Vs at the monarchy with the title of The Orb’s 17th album, but Alex Paterson’s enduring electronic gangshow shares certain traits with the House Of Windsor. Both long-standing institutions in an ever-shifting world, they’ve stuck to what they do best, survived via infusions of new blood, and worn some striking headgear.Co-produced by new partner Michael Rendall, and with help from Roger Eno, Steve Hillage and Youth, Abolition… shows there’s still vigour in The Orb’s ambient house vision. Luxuriant disco, Vangelis-like synthscapes and even a cosmic tribute to Stephen Hawking complement the familiar dub moves. Paterson will get an OBE for services to dance music at this rate. ★★★★ Listen To: Shape…

EARTH POLYDOR, OUT 17 APRIL Radiohead guitarist steps into the limelight. Three decades-plus as Radiohead’s guitarist have served as a fine apprenticeship for Ed O’Brien’s solo debut. These are, as you might expect, sophisticated, intricate songs that nod to the complexity of his band work, but remain distinct. Inspired by O’Brien’s time living in Brazil, and particularly what he has referred to as the “musical eureka” moment of attending Carnival, what’s striking is the record’s diversity. The percussive strands that launch Olympik gather into something euphoric, like a whole neighbourhood of house parties, windows wide on a hot night; fleeting closer Cloak Of The Night is a finger-picked folk lilt with Laura Marling on guest vocals; Shangri-La, a twitching, bleeping, intoxicating adventure. Well worth the wait. ★★★★ Listen To: Shangri-La | Olympik…

WOMB 4AD, OUT NOW Canadian pop experimentalists settle into a groove. Emerging around the same time as Grimes, Purity Ring’s Megan James and Corin Roddick shared their fellow countrywoman’s penchant for deconstructing pop. But after 2015’s Another Eternity album was followed by collaborations with the likes of Katy Perry, it felt like their early experiments were now becoming pop’s base coat. On their third LP, they seem less preoccupied with reinventing the wheel, instead carving out ethereal electro-pop such as I Like The Devil one minute, and chipping away at vast walls of sound the next, as on Rubyinsides. Locked inside Womb is an excellent EP, but stretched out to 10 tracks it can feel predictable, a claim you’d have been hard-pressed to make about them a decade ago. ★★★ Listen To: Rubyinsides |…

WE NO BE MACHINE STRUT, OUT NOW Futurist Afro-disco duo get on the good foot. As leader of London jazz-hip-hop-Afrobeat collective Nubiyan Twist, Tom Excell is no stranger to the pull of propulsive, cross-pollinated grooves. So it goes for this team-up with Ghanaian singer K.O.G on debut We No Be Machine, the pair cooking up a storm of different styles on a record which seeks to find human connection in a robo-centric world. Makoma, featuring an emotive vocal turn from Afro-popper Wiyaala, pulses with effervescent highlife; Smoke Screen taps the energy of Konono No.1’s junkyard funk; South African rapper Spoek Mathambo and the UK’s Syntax trade verses over Free Up’s bubbling percussive rumble; Sohaa sounds like OutKast after being reupholstered by Flying Lotus. Onipa’s buoyant, free-spirited approach is a winner. ★★★ Listen To: Fire…

CLOCKDUST DOMINO, OUT NOW Ex-Talk Talk bassist returns with gorgeous autumnal melancholia. Talk Talk’s landmark final albums made a virtue of quietness, silence even – and it was into silence that their various members retreated following their split in 1991. Clockdust comes from the same sessions as predecessor Drift Code, Paul Webb’s first new music in 17 years, released shortly prior to the passing of former bandmate Mark Hollis. As on Drift Code, Webb paints in muted colours, here evoking the jazz-folk of John Martyn and, in his plaintive vocals, the English melancholy of Shirley Collins and Robert Wyatt. The songwriting is more direct too, questions of mortality and nature are faced head on, and curiously the record ends on its noisiest, most sonically chaotic moment. Silence, no more. ★★★★ Listen To: Carousel Days…

CHILDISH GAMBINO

3.15.20 RCA, OUT NOW Actor/rapper returns with more first-rate rhymes. This Is America, Donald Glover’s unflinching and stupendously successful 2018 satire of US race-relations juxtaposed uplifting soul with icy trap and lyrics about police brutality, transforming him from kooky creative to zeitgeisty soothsayer in the process. On his first album since, Glover shelves stark societal commentary, but continues to offset sweetness with sour notes. On Time feel-good funk soundtracks a desperate quest for cosmic meaning, 35.31 discusses drug dealing over novelty country while smooth summer jam 42.26 bristles with dread. By warping his voice and glitching his grooves, Glover manages to impart ominous ambiguity, but it’s his sharp, searching lyrics – 12.38’s pastiche of hip-hop decadence; 39.28’s beautiful evocation of grief – that elevates 3.15.20 to giddying heights. ★★★★ Listen To: Time | 39.28…

CHILDISH GAMBINO

925 DOMINO, OUT NOW Where killer tunes meet unnerving ennui. There’s something unsettling lurking around every corner of London duo Sorry’s debut. A queasy sense of dread that warps songs detailing casual sex, listlessness, drugs and of a world rapidly crumbling around you. Asha Lorenz’s disinterested vocals deliver melody lines worthy of mid’90s Blur but they’re constantly kept on edge by the discordant lurch of the music. Even 925’s sweetest moment, the lovestruck Ode To Boy, is quickly bent out of shape by a creepy choir and background noise. Sorry rose to prominence in the same scene that birthed scuzzy rock’n’rollers Shame and Goat Girl, but the sonic scope here is far wider, incorporating both industrial and squawking jazz into something that chimes perfectly with uncertain times. ★★★★ Listen To: Starstruck | Ode To…

TAMOTAÏT GLITTERBEAT, OUT NOW Saharan desert blues from world psychedelic fusion pioneers. Owing to the decade-long conflict that has engulfed their native northern Mali, Tuareg five-piece Tamikrest have pioneered a kind of psychedelic fusion across five albums while being exiled in France. Their music conjures the Sahara via a hypnotic desert blues that’s informed by both Malian folk music and their love of Western bands such as Pink Floyd and Can. As such, they can be both rhythmically inventive and straightforwardly thrilling, as on the storming Amidinin Tad Adouniya. The high point here, though, is Timtarin, a stirring duet with Moroccan actress Hindi Zahra, while the group continue to innovate by incorporating traditional Japanese scales into the gorgeous, finger-picked guitar on Tabsit. ★★★ Listen To: Tabsit | Amzagh | Anha Anchal Wad Namda |…

I FEEL ALIVE MUSIQUE TOPS, OUT NOW Fourth album from Montreal’s knowing soft-rockers. There’s such a sweetness to Jane Penny’s voice that you could be forgiven for thinking the songs she makes with her band TOPS are just empty calories. Admittedly, eight years after their lovely debut Tender Opposites, their aesthetic – cold-pressed Fleetwood Mac, a degraded tape of Chris Rea’s Fool If You Think It’s Over, woozy 10th-generation-copy synths – feels so far behind the curve that it’s just rolling gently backwards on roller-skates at this point. Yet Direct Sunlight’s fluting pop or the title track’s lost college-rock jangle is more than enough to draw you into TOPS’ little world: more edge, it seems, would only burst their bubble. ★★★ Listen To: Direct Sunlight | Ballads & Sad Movies | OK Fine Whatever…

HEAVEN TO A TORTURED MIND WARP, OUT NOW Master shapeshifter does saucy glam-pop and Prince-like funk. By shunning interviews and presenting himself as a myriad of startling characters, you might expect Turin-based/Tennessee-born Yves Tumor’s music to be every bit as mysterious as the artist himself. Yet his sound is relatively straight-up. On the slinky Kerosene! and more industrial Dream Palette, for example, Tumor comes across like an even more priapic Prince. Elsewhere, he’s as in thrall to 1980s R&B as he is the jazzier side of Bowie and OutKast’s pop balladry – and when he croons “tell me I’m your lover” on the languid Super Stars, it’s hard to turn down. Things get even more sultry on Strawberry Privilege and murky instrumental Asteroid Blues. Sleazy listening at its best. ★★★★ Listen To: Kerosene! |…

DEEP DOWN HAPPY ISLAND, OUT NOW Indie-rock, just like 2005 used to make. The upturn in fortunes of The Kooks, The Wombats and other bands you’d find on Skins: The Soundtrack is proof that the music of the mid-’00s is undergoing a revival. London-based Sports Team are the fresh case. They have a singer in Alex Rice who specialises in the eat-the-microphone delivery favoured by frontmen of the era and the music pinballs between ramshackle indie-rock (that sounds a bit like The Cribs) and ramshackle post-punk grooves (that sounds a bit like The Rakes). The indelible choruses, most expertly dispatched on Camel Crew and The Races, are all their own, and while the sound they make is unmistakably then, their tales of life in your 20s in modern Britain are unmistakably now. So…

LUCINDA WILLIAMS

GOOD SOULS BETTER ANGELS HIGHWAY 20/THIRTY TIGERS, OUT 24 APRIL Queen of Americana turns her attention to politics. Lucinda Williams is an artist who seems to grow into the depths of her voice with every album. Good Souls Better Angels is her 15th studio release, and one that steps away from the intimate narratives that have defined much of her career, to stride out in a more political direction. It suits her. Opening with the snarling blues of You Can’t Rule Me is the equivalent of walking into the saloon and announcing there’s a new sheriff in town. The slow, tarry unfurling of Bad News Blues tells of the relentless bombardment of misery, while Wakin’ Up explores domestic abuse with a gathering fury. It’s the voice that carries it all: rawer and more…

LUCINDA WILLIAMS

AFTER HOURS ISLAND, OUT NOW Canadian miserablist thaws out his sound. In pop’s recent pivot towards melancholy, the influence of Abel Tesfaye cannot be overstated. His directional and mildly disconcerting debut mixtape of 2011 fused gothic new wave, moody R&B and lyricism that revolved almost entirely around numbed debauchery – a recipe that later yielded mega-hits such as Starboy and Can’t Feel My Face. On his fourth album as The Weeknd, that carefully honed aesthetic remains intact: spidery tendrils of sex-and-drugs-related dread curl around dramatic synth-pop and twinkling R&B. Yet there’s also a batch of tracks (Blinding Lights and In Your Eyes among them) that draw from bombastic, slightly tacky ’80s pop – a warm, funny and wholly welcome diversion from the stylish but sterile bleakness that remains Tesfaye’s calling card. ★★★★ Listen To:…

MIGRATION STORIES ANTI-, OUT NOW Portland indie-folker dazzles again on 10th solo album. As the title suggests, M Ward’s latest LP is inspired by human restlessness, both literal and metaphorical. It’s a concept that exists more in its author’s head than the listener’s, and if a common narrative spills from these songs it’s one of finding kindness and trust in a fractured world. Ward has an uncanny ability to sound profound and frivolous all at once, achieved here by marrying bouncing pop melodies to cosmic dreams on Migration Of Souls, drenching cowboy standard The Santa Fe Trail in swathes of reverb, or mixing jazzy guitar solos with a horse-hoof beat on Coyote Mary’s Traveling Show. A thought-provoking songwriter and under-valued guitarist, Ward continues to set a standard few other artists can match. ★★★★ Listen…

WHAT WE DREW GODMODE, OUT NOW Korean-American artist stages a quiet revolution. Drink I’m Sippin On, Kathy Yaeji Lee’s 2017 breakthrough single, was a slinky, hypnotic swirl of trap and expansive electronica, delivered partly in English, partly in Korean. With her first full-length release, Lee continues to hone her subtly weird take on hip-hop, drawing from dream-pop, house and tingly ASMR. Opener My Imagination mixes together spectral synth washes, chipmunk rapping and groggy beats; the title track gilds a skeleton of tinny snares with barely-there brass and translucent vocals; and In Place sports a bassy rumble you can feel rather than actually hear. Simultaneously disorientating and seductive, Lee’s gossamer-light handling of latter-day rap tropes gives the genre a gentle push forward. ★’ ★★★ Listen stubborn To: My se Imagination | In The Mirror | These…

THE RABBIT THAT HUNTS TIGERS BONGO JOE, OUT 24 APRIL. Pan-global grooves from Maastricht-based psychedelicists. Much like their Texan spirit animals Khruangbin, Maastricht-based Yin Yin fashion South-East Asian music into a potent strain of groove-driven psych rock. While they lean heavily on the region’s traditional instrumentation, debut album The Rabbit That Hunts Tigers throws its net far and wide, pulling in Krautrock, desert-parched African blues, fuzz-heavy ’60s psychedelia, snippets from kung-fu movies and, on self-explanatorily titled closer Dis Kô Dis Kô, the pulsating, robotic throb of Giorgio Moroder. Vocal-free throughout, it’s a relentlessly enjoyable trip and one that picks up the common funk thread from an entire history of music. ★★★★ Listen To: One Inch Punch | Alpaca | Dis Kô Dis Kô…

Tame Impala The Slow Rush FICTION Few artists embody the musical cross-pollination of recent years like Kevin Parker – and his fourth LP is one that thrillingly plunders from a cornucopia of sounds and styles from across electronic and dance music’s past and present. Tame Impala might be operating in a field of one, but even then, Parker is still streaks ahead. U.S. Girls Heavy Light 4AD Toronto-based Meg Remy has always clouded her pop surfaces with unease and political protest, but here she moves closer to home, picking at family ties, at self-determination, at the immune response to a sick world. This is a record that looks backwards in the hope of finding new answers, new outcomes, without melting in the dark. Waxahatchee Saint Cloud MERGE Katie Crutchfield is moving towards self-acceptance and stability on her fifth album, a set…

WHAT'S ON Absolute Radio THIS MONTH...

ALBUM OF THE WEEK: THE BEATLES’ LET IT BE Absolute Radio, 7 April, 9pm On the 10th April, 1970, the Daily Mirror ran the front page headline: “Paul Quits The Beatles”. Their final studio album, Let It Be, was released a month later, 50 years ago, after the group’s break-up, on 8 May. In the Album Of The Week slot, Danielle Perry looks back at the events leading up to the split of the band who changed everything, playing tracks from the record throughout the week. FRANK SKINNER Absolute Radio, 11 April, 8am Comedy legend Frank Skinner is joined by co-hosts Emily Dean and Alun Cochrane every Saturday morning for a round-up of the week’s gossip and the best real music. The show, which has been running since 2009, has won numerous awards and is…

WHAT'S ON Absolute Radio THIS MONTH...

This month SNMC host Danielle Perry suggests how creativity will help fight the virus crisis...

“I’m sat here writing this amid the virus crisis, where we’ve already seen an unprecedented shake-up of the music industry. Tours, festivals and releases have been cancelled or postponed. It’s such a heartbreaking time for the majority of artists and crew who suddenly find their summers cancelled. Fortunately, we know this is a creative industry and we always bounce back from difficult times in imaginative ways. This makes me excited to see how it will adapt and grow, especially in the areas of live streaming gigs, online blogs, instrument lessons and even pop-star cooking videos. One idea I’ve seen online is the suggestion that some of the streaming services could perhaps temporarily drop their fees during a lockdown. This would give an opportunity to those who’ve yet to invest in…

This month SNMC host Danielle Perry suggests how creativity will help fight the virus crisis...

These Sex Pistols photos catch one last blaze of furious, snaggletoothed glory. On Christmas Day 1977, photographer Kevin Cummins pushed back his chair at the end of Christmas dinner and announced he was off to Huddersfield to see the Sex Pistols. “My parents were apoplectic with rage,” he writes in the introduction to 1 Sex Pistols: The End Is Near 25.12.77 (ACC ART BOOKS, ★★★★), “my father didn’t speak to me for at least three weeks afterwards.” The reward, though, was these fabulous pictures of the embattled band’s last UK show – Johnny Rotten a lit firework, Sid Vicious in full sneer, everyone so young. Three weeks later, it was over, the band imploding in America: these photographs catch one last blaze of furious, snaggle-toothed glory. Sticky traces of punk spirit streak…

GRADO GW100 £169 This pair of wireless headphones are perfect for home use, handy in these home-bound times. They were tested in the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom, the hallway, and they sounded great everywhere. The only drawback is that the sound bleeds out ever so slightly, meaning you can be tracked easily by the kids. So they were tested in a locked bathroom, too. Still sounded good. ★★★★ TRUST GXT 310 £16.99 You know what they say: “Those who can, teach, and those who can work from home, game.” This headset will give you a solid sound while your new mate Lucas, a 12-year-old who lives in Kettering, talks you through the absolute beating he’s serving up for you on Fifa. They are comfortable so you can take repeated whippings without…

Letter Of The Month

R.I.P Lord Sabre It seems that everyone has their own tale about meeting Mr Weatherall. I spent a couple of evenings in his company. Both in the DJ booth in the New Ardri in Hulme, Manchester, at the infamous Herbal Tea Party nights. We bonded briefly due to a mutual appreciation of sheepskin car coats, obscure rockabilly records and Lee Perry’s production on The Clash’s Complete Control. Despite the weed, I remember it clearly because I thought it was strange he chatted with me rather than all the other pie-eyed techno freaks! As others have said, he appeared to be a genuinely unassuming man who was in it for the art and the culture, not the money or the fame. He certainly wasn’t paid well for these gigs, one of which…

Letter Of The Month

Q has teamed up with the good people at KitSound to offer TWO readers the chance to win a KitSound BoomBar 50 Bluetooth Speaker, worth £49.99. The BoomBar 50 offers a great range of features, including no-limit listening with its 22-hour play time, and IP67 waterproof protection for when listening to music in the garden or by pool. Not only does the BoomBar boast a stylish, metallic design that fits anywhere in the home, but it also has superb surround sound (due to two passive radiators for an extra bass boost) which easily connects via Bluetooth to another BoomBar so you can enjoy double the audio with stereo pairing for a truly immersive experience. For more information, visit www.Kitsound.co.uk This month’s teaser: What is the name of the street photographed on the…

It Was All A Blur Dear Q, They say that love is blind, which might explain why you didn’t consult the history books from the time when you declared last month that Blur’s Tender [Q’s Greatest Love Songs Of The Last 60 Years list] was “not considered a career best upon release” and was only later redeemed at the band’s 2009 reunion shows. That comment got me rummaging through my back issues of Q where I found Tom Doyle’s review of 13 from 1999, and he appears to contradict your analysis. In fact, it seems he had a lot of love for the Number 2 hit single: “Calling card single Tender has already burned itself into the national consciousness, all Appalachian guitar and Give Peace A Chance shuffle.” That sounds like…

“ Life’s about getting drunk with your grandparents…” Princess Nokia

When did someone last call you Destiny? Today, when my dad called me. He called me Destiny Nicole, which is my childhood name. He’s always called me that, or sometimes just D. What was the last video game you played? Mario Kart. Actually, that’s a lie. The last video game I played was Galaga. It’s an arcade game from the ’70s which I bought recently. It’s like Space Invaders, kind of. I’m pretty good at it. As someone who wrote a song about Game Of Thrones (2014’s Dragons), did you enjoy the last ever episode? Absolutely not! I felt that Cersei Lannister should’ve died [posh English accent] a bloody gruesome, treacherous, long death! But I did love that the Stark family eventually restored peace and order. When did you last spend too much money on something? The…

“ Life’s about getting drunk with your grandparents…” Princess Nokia

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