TRACK REVIEW: Damon Albarn - Royal Morning Blue

TRACK REVIEW:

 

 

Damon Albarn

PHOTO CREDIT: Aaron Richter/Contour by Getty Images

Royal Morning Blue

9.2/10

The track, Royal Morning Blue, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY0xBLdyWng

RELEASE DATE:

22nd September, 2021

ORIGIN:

London, U.K.

LABELS:

13 under exclusive license to Transgressive Records Ltd

PRODUCERS:

Damon Albarn/Samuel Egglenton

 The album, The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows, is available from 12th November, 2021. Pre-order here:

https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/damon-albarn/the-nearer-the-fountain-more-pure-the-stream-flows

__________

I get to focus on one of my favourite artists…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Linda Brownlee

for this weekend’s review. I have been a fan of Damon Albarn since listening to Blur in the 1990s. They are one of my favourite bands ever. I have also followed Albarn in his Gorillaz guise. He is one of the most versatile and talented musicians in the world. It seems like he never rests and he is always creating something! In November, he is releasing his solo album, The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows. It follows 2014’s Everyday Robots. I think that Albarn will continue to make music with Gorillaz and on his own. I am not sure whether he has any plans for anything else in the coming year. You never know just what he will produce next and who he will work with. I am going to get to his new track, Royal Morning Blue, in a bit. I want to work up to that by sourcing some interviews that give us a greater impression of where Damon Albarn came from and what we can expect from his upcoming album. Last month, The Herald spoke with him. We get to find out more about Albarn’s early life, in addition to those early days with Blur:

“That is the culture he grew up in. Albarn was born in London in 1968. His mum Hazel was a theatrical set designer, his dad had been the manager of Soft Machine and went on to be a headmaster in Colchester where the family settled.

“I was brought up an internationalist and my dad’s dad was a conscientious objector. Both my parents were very much part of the sixties in their mindsets.”

 As a result, he says, “I didn’t feel any sort of nationalism. I didn’t really understand what it was. I remember when I first went to comprehensive school, Scotland had been in the World Cup in ’78. I bought a Scotland top and went into school, and I got the s*** kicked out of me. I soon learnt about nationalism after that one.”

“That’s a true story. I didn’t know you weren’t allowed to support other teams. Literally, because it had never been part of my upbringing.”

Curious then that when Blur started what marked them out in the early 1990s was their studied Englishness, a reaction to their miserable experiences touring America at the start of the decade.

There was even a moment before Cool Britannia reduced it to caricature when that idea of Englishness, drawing on English pop of the 1960s, felt progressive. That feels a very long time ago.

“Yeah, well, Brexit opened Pandora’s box and a lot of things our generation thought we were growing out of …That ignorant racism and bigotry … We thought we were progressing from that. But now it’s been given the platform to continue its dull, ignorant belligerence”.

When we were in my parent’s garage in Colchester and we first played Sing and She’s So High and I suddenly felt like I had moved on from being in local Battle of the Bands in Colchester and there was a chance that we might be able to fulfil our dreams, our real crazy Top of the Pops Whistle Test, TV show dreams. We could be a bit like The Who. That’s the best moment. Because ever since then I’ve just been working really.”

He laughs. “I’ve been busy”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Gullick

I always associate Damon Albarn with his younger days in Blur. He has accomplished a lot since then, though my mind travels back to the classic Blur days and this incredible frontman delivering songs that were unlike anything else. It seemed like, then, anything was possible and there were no obstacles. Even though Blur could be quite reflective, I always associate them with being youthful and spirited. As a solo artist, there is more contemplation, calm and reflection in the music. Albarn is fifty-three now…so perhaps middle-age has accounted for that. Even so, Albarn is restless and always on the go! Coming back to the interview from The Herald, the subject of growing older came up:

“At 53 Albarn is well into the middle of his life. Is he onboard with the idea of ageing?

“I think you just have to start coming to terms with the finality of life. In a way that’s quite liberating because once you get over that … I mean, who knows how we face death until we face it? There’s nothing else getting in your way, really, other than death. So, if you see it like that, it’s very liberating. There’s one thing you can’t avoid, so head towards it joyously.”

Joyously? “Well, yeah, of course. Why not? Rather live a life of joy than to fear the end.”

I have wondered sometimes if your Stakhanovite appetite for work is in any way a raging against the dying of the light, Damon?

“Raging against death? By being super busy?” The idea amuses him. “I think there’s definitely an element of avoidance by being super busy, obviously.

“I love making music. It’s just a joy. I’d rather live a life in joy than not.”

Does he take time off? If so, what does he do with it? “I love reading, but falling asleep on the sofa is more what I do. I like cooking.”

Is he any good at it? “I’m a very good cook.”

I’m surprised Celebrity MasterChef hasn’t come calling, I say. “I can’t be f****** bothered to go on TV. Why would you do that? No way would I go on telly. I’ve been asked to do so many things over the years. All those talent shows. MasterChef, I’ve been asked on that. The dancing one. Celebrity Come Dancing”.

I will concentrate on Albarn’s solo output soon. I feel it is quite useful to know about his other projects. That way, we get a fuller impression of his talent. Back in October, Gorillaz released their seventh studio album, Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez. It is clear that Albarn is one of the most innovative and influential artists around. With Gorillaz, he has helped create something historic and hugely popular. In this DAZED interview from last year, Albarn discussed his time in Gorillaz and Blur:

“Reflecting on how that teenage dream became a full-blown reality via the runaway success of Blur in the 90s, Albarn lights up. “The mad thing for me is I’ve been in Gorillaz a lot longer than I was in Blur,” he says with a hearty, gold-toothed grin. “When you’re in an indie band it’s like a marriage, you know? You’re married to everything about it. I was just at the front being a fucking knobhead frontman for quite a long period of time.”

Frontman theatrics aside, it’s the sheer finesse of Albarn’s songwriting that made Blur one of the most vital British bands of a generation. Though it may not have been outwardly obvious, his transition from one guise to the other can be traced back to what he calls the first Gorillaz song – “On Your Own”, from Blur’s 1997 self-titled album. “It makes me smile when I think how far I thought I was reaching by doing that,” he says. “Because at the beginning I didn’t play guitar because Graham (Coxon) was just so good. It was still very much in the distance but I felt like there was another door opening for me.”

IN THIS PHOTO: Damon Albarn alongside his Gorillaz bandmate, Jamie Hewlett/PHOTO CREDIT: Thomas Chéné 

As that door came fully ajar via their eponymous debut album three years later, Gorillaz sat down with Dazed for their first-ever cover feature. In it, Jamie Hewlett AKA Murdoc Niccles from the then-anonymous cartoon band declared: “If the music works that’s all that counts, and we don’t like to think of people as stupid.” Does Albarn, alias 2-D, agree with that sentiment two decades on? “I do,” he says. “I was always accused of being a bit of a dilettante back in the day. I never really saw it like that. I was just interested in lots of different things, and I wanted to see how I could somehow articulate my own thing through other things. No one actually comes up with something that reinvents music.”

He may not have reinvented music in the intervening years but Albarn, backed by Hewlett’s singular aesthetic, has come close by honing the globetrotting hit machine that is Gorillaz. Thanks to multi award-winning albums including 2005’s Demon Days and 2010’s Plastic Beach – releases that delivered ubiquitous singles like “Dare” and “Feel Good Inc” – they have long been officially recognised as the most successful virtual act of all time. And that’s really just for starters. In much the same way Blur progressively expanded their sonic palette while some of their more noteworthy peers creatively stagnated, Gorillaz have defined, and redefined, the limits of what a band can be”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jess Shurte

As a creative who never seems to sit still, lockdown was busy for Albarn. Everything has led to his solo material and a new album. The Times chatted with Albarn in October about the new Gorillaz album. Even though it was an unusual situation and restrictive one, Albarn managed to adapt:

“We shouldn’t take this as a sign that Albarn is withdrawing from the limelight, though. Come off it. This is a man who, since the death of James Brown, has a decent claim to being the hardest-working person in showbiz. As well as being a key member of Blur, the virtual band Gorillaz, the Africa Express collective and two supergroups, the Good, the Bad & the Queen, and Rocket Juice & the Moon, he has created stage extravaganzas with English National Opera, the National Theatre and Manchester International Festival, plus a new show in Paris called Le Vol du Boli. He says he gets his creativity from his father, an artist, and his mother, a theatrical set designer. During his childhood in Essex and east London his parents “were always busy creating and doing things. And hopefully it’s rubbed off on to the next generation.” Missy, 21, wants to work in fashion, and his nine-year-old niece played “mad trumpet” on the new Gorillaz album, Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez.

Albarn recorded the bulk of it in Devon during lockdown, with guest singers completing their parts remotely and sending them in. I’m not meant to call it an album; it’s more like a conveyor belt of music that serves Albarn’s prolific way of working. Each song is released when it’s ready and accompanied by an animated video from Jamie Hewlett, his partner in Gorillaz for 20 years, featuring the cartoon members of the band: Noodle, 2D, Murdoc and Russel.

PHOTO CREDIT: Studio Wane 

The first batch is collected together as season one and features Robert Smith of the Cure on a swirling lockdown anthem called Strange Timez and other guests including Skepta, Beck, Peter Hook, the Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara and Elton John, who duets with Albarn on a psychedelic torch song called The Pink Phantom.“It came from a true story that I told Jamie about a year ago. And if you’d like,” Albarn says coquettishly, “I will tell you the story.” Please do. “Well, when I was seven, I was picked up from my primary school, George Tomlinson in Leytonstone, by Elton John’s pink Rolls-Royce Phantom V. I really was. It wasn’t driven by Elton. It was driven by his percussionist, Ray Cooper, who was a family friend of my mum and dad. So nothing strange about it. But the reason why he had this ridiculous car was because Elton had done a tour of the USSR and had only been paid in coal, I believe, and couldn’t convert it into money. He consequently had no money to pay his musicians, so he had to give them things and Ray, fortunately or unfortunately, got the pink Phantom. And obviously for a kid to be picked up from school in such a striking automobile was something I’ve never forgotten.”

Was this all news to John? “Yeah, and he claims it wasn’t pink. He might have said it was fuchsia. But for the sake of my sanity, it remains pink.” The numbers don’t quite add up either — John toured the USSR in 1979, when Albarn was 11. He has never let the facts get in the way of a good song, though.

His other lockdown project was co-creating Le Vol du Boli, a show featuring musicians from Mali, Congo and Burkina Faso, at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. Despite coronavirus restrictions they welcomed 1,000 socially distanced people for each of the three performances. Albarn says that he woke up every day and thought: “Right, today’s the day someone rings in sick, and the whole thing gets cancelled. But it didn’t happen”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Linda Brownlee

This brings me to the album, The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows. One can feel a lot of beauty, landscape and stunning geography on the album. It is no surprise, as Albarn has a house on outskirts of Reykjavik. He also has a house in Devon. Rather than getting an album that is quite intense, colourful and edgy – like we might expect from Gorillaz -, The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows looks set to be a more lush, gentle and immersive listen. NME interviewed Albarn back in June to discuss some of the elements of The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows:

“Quite right. So, this is one of the first interviews you’ve done about your new solo album ‘The Nearer The Fountain, The More Pure The Stream Flows’?

“Yes, very good. Do you think it’s a bit of a long title?”

A little, but people are just going to shorten it ‘The Nearer The Fountain…’, aren’t they?

“Yes, but don’t you want to know what happens nearer the fountain?”

I do! I understand this album started out as a set of orchestral pieces inspired by the landscapes of Iceland. What is it about these places that first drove you to pen music about them?

“Well, the best thing to do there is to show you the view from the window. It’s slightly unorthodox for a Zoom interview, but sometimes words aren’t enough…” [Damon shows NME the extremely beautiful view he snapped in Iceland].

Very well. I’m going to screen-grab this, Damon, if that’s alright?

“Go for it.”

That’s really wonderful. So what did looking at that every day stir up inside you?

“It’s a nice place to meditate on the elements and particles. I’d been dreaming of making music while looking out of that window, when my friend from the Lyon Festival offered me the very tempting proposition: ‘You can do whatever you want’. I immediately had something that I never thought would be feasible, so I organised some musicians, string players, three bass trombones, some percussion and keyboards into an interesting arrangement.”

 Was there anything special in the arrangements to capture Iceland’s uniquely supernatural feel?

“I found a stone marimba made by this guy who lives in the mountains outside of Reykjavik. He literally finds each note as a stone in mountain streams. Just to make a pentatonic scale can take years. It’s a beautiful thing. There’s no manufacturing; it’s just him knocking on all these stones found in streams to find the right note. Anyway, I digress too much for our snappy little interview. Where were we?”

You were telling us how the arrangements came together. How did heading back to your home in Devon and living in lockdown shape the record?

“Obviously March came last year and that was the end of everything. What I was left with was all of this great rehearsal recording from just a mic in the room. I just felt like the beginning of this year was so grim and I had to do something to lift me out of those, I wouldn’t call doldrums, but storms – those terrible north wind storms that you get down by the sea in Devon sometimes. They come down off the Atlantic from Greenland, they spin round, and they’re brutal. I got together with a couple of my old friends who I’ve been making music with for a long time – [former Verve guitarist] Simon Tong and Mike Smith – and just tried to nail everything into some kind of cohesive meditation about particles, now and the future.”

So when the time came to turn all this material into these 10 pop songs, what were you drawing from lyrically?

“While [I was] staring out of the window in Iceland, the wind was so strong that the windows would start to move. It was so freezing that sometimes you’d be staring at the rain and while you’re watching it, it suddenly turns to snow. I took some of these real-time, extreme elemental experiences and then tried to develop them into, as you say, more formal pop songs with that as my source. I wanted to see where that would take me. Sometimes it took me down to Uruguay and Montevideo. Other times I went to Iran, Iceland or Devon. With travel being curtailed, it was kind of nice to be able to make a record that strangely put me in those places for a moment or two”.

 There is a really interesting interview from National Geographic that hones in on themes of nature and the elements. I think that his new album will be quite elemental and nature-inspired. Albarn spoke about turning the atmospheres of Iceland and Devon into music – in the shadow of the pandemic:

“One less positive aspect of this inspiration was articulated in the Gorillaz album Plastic Beach, released in 2010 at the peak of the 'virtual' band's fame: an environmentally-veined statement piece which Albarn described to BBC Radio 4's Today programme as “the beginning of a meditation on the state of our oceans.”
Now, the 53-year old musician's experience of spending lockdown overlooking this same coast – as well as another he calls home, outside Reykjavik in Iceland – has culminated in a new album of naturally-charged, intimate music. All inspired, he says, by the outlook from these two seemingly disparate vantage points. But according to Albarn, speaking to National Geographic UK via Zoom from his London studio, the two are –­ like everything else – connected.

Tell us about your connection with Iceland.

National Geographic is the reason I went there in the first place. There was an article about black sand beaches [in Iceland]. I’d had recurring dreams as a child about flying over black sand beaches… so when I made that connection, I thought ‘well, I definitely have to go there.’ So I took my typewriter and guitar and booked into a hotel, and very quickly realised that it was a very special place. I was so lucky – I went pre-tourism. Now there’s a bar to drink at in the middle of the blue lagoon. When I first went there was just a wooden hut to change in. And that’s all in 20 years.

PHOTO CREDIT: Axel Hoedt for Zeit Magazin

What inspired you about that place in particular?

The space. I’d never been somewhere that had so much empty space. Where you could easily escape humanity. You could be in a bar in Reykyavik then half an hour later you could be in the most deserted kind of place you can imagine. The whole genesis of [this album] really came from wanting to make a record staring out of my window in Iceland. And that evolved into a series of workshops with some fantastic musicians, in collaboration with my friend Andre de Ridder, the conductor and orchestral arranger. We gathered in my house during various seasons. During the darker months, we’d get there around half nine, everyone would have a coffee, then get in place and we’d literally just play as the day emerged.

Right back to Blur's Parklife, your songs have always been products of their time in terms of the stories they tell. What story were you telling with this album?

Initially it was just, ‘how far can you take an ensemble into nature without literally abandoning your instruments and just being in it?’ It was about getting people to be really sensitive to the way the water changed, the clouds came in, the light, the rain… almost horizontal rain, then very gentle rain, almost mist. Or moments where a storm would come in, and the temperature would drop really dramatically and the rain would turn to snow, and amazing things like the northern lights appearing. (Related: Images of winter magic from Europe's frozen north.)

Then the wildlife. The habits of the wading birds, the seals, the occasional whale that would be out in the bay. And the physical landscape: the mountain Esjan, and far in the distance the glacier and volcano of Snæfellsjökull. Just a wonderful tableau to meditate on. It was amazing really. Once people accepted that there were no written notes, and everything was driven by the actual dynamic of the environment, the music started to emerge. And I suppose the songs are sort of an articulation of that experience.

How do you go about turning what you see into sound?

That’s just, you know, the joy of making music and playing with your environment while you’re making it. These strange synapses that create weird thoughts and images.

 How did the pandemic inform it?

In lockdown, it did enable me to sort of travel, to go back to places that were haunting me. Like the desert in Iran, or the tower of Montevideo [the Palacio Salvo, a building in the south American city designed by Italian architect Mario Palanti in the early 1930s]. So in that sense it was a unique record. Inevitably if you spend days and days looking out of the window, either behind it or outside, you just really tune in to that small space and that perspective looking out-out-out.

Are you hopeful for humans? As a species?

I’m hopeful that eventually we will realise how fragile everything is. [But] there’s so much noise. Social media is not helping, because… it stops... a whole new generation... just listening, and being quiet, and not having anything other than what’s around them. They just have what’s in front of them in their hand [mimics a phone], and everything that comes out of that – the energy that comes out of that – it’s a kind of massive great joke. The amount of energy that’s needed to fuel the mechanics of social media is exactly what we shouldn’t be doing.

Everyday Robots, from your last solo record, includes the lines: We are everyday robots on our phones... looking like standing stones.

Yeah. I sing about my fears. It’s cathartic for me to sing about what I fear and what I imagine could happen... if things become how I imagine them. It’s about tipping points. We are starting to accept that we are tipping over an edge. But our cultural expectations and dreams are still massively incoherent to the reality about what we need to do”.

I will come to the new single from Damon Albarn soon. I am coming back to the Herald interview to wrap up before getting to the review. The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows has these improvisational elements. It seems that Albarn was keen for orchestration that represented the weather and landscape of Iceland. Maybe, too, the darkness and uncertainty of the pandemic and lockdown affected the sound of The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows:

“Albarn’s new album is based on an idea he had to take orchestral musicians to the front room of his house in Iceland and “play the weather and the outline of the landscape.”

And so that’s what he did, mounting three workshops, one in the last of the summer light in September the others in the depth of winter in Iceland when it’s almost entirely nocturnal.

“It’s just an amazing process for making music and I recorded hours and hours of very interesting orchestral improvisation. And then I had to leave it at the beginning of last year. But it was just such a haunting experience, in such a stark contrast to how the world metamorphosised within a month or so.”

Ah yes, the pandemic. He spent most of lockdown in his home in Devon, where he started thinking about making an album out of those instrumental “atmospheres.” (They weren’t songs yet, he says).

In the press notes he talks of the album taking him on a dark journey, I say. How dark?

Albarn begins to talk about John Clare’s haunted, mournful poem Love and Memory. “Such an ode to the death of somebody. I’ve always loved his poetry. I love his story. I love what he represented to the beginning of the 19th century; the anti-aristocrat poet, someone who was self-aware and into that kind of English magic realism.

“So, I’ve always gravitated to his poems, and I had the line From Love and Memory, ‘The nearer the fountain, more pure the stream flows.’ I was using it for the title for what I was doing in Iceland.

“But then I felt there was much more in this poem that means something to me at the moment through personal loss and just that sense of loss of a generation … Do you know what I mean? All these kids not able to express themselves.”

Because of the moment we’re living through? “Yeah, exactly. So, when I sing, I don’t necessarily sing about the death of a young person. It’s more the death of that moment. People’s dreams”.

This takes me to Royal Morning Blue. The introduction to the song is really beautiful and interesting. There is the sound of a what appears to be synthesisers. Piano plinks and there is a gentle electric guitar strum. The combined effect is wonderful! I said earlier how Alban’s new album will be less energised and layered as a Gorillaz album. There is quite a bit going on at the start of Royal Morning Blue. The introduction builds these images and impressions. One transports themselves to a different place. Every listener will have their own thoughts and escape. Albarn is backed by a driving drum beat as he delivers the first verse: “Rain turning into snow/You put on your robes and disappear/Into new realities/Thought and memory/Stay by your side”. The lyrics are quite oblique - so it is unsure whom he is speaking about and what the inspiration is. His vocal is typically impactful and full of emotion. I have come back to the song a few times in order to work out the meaning and possible relevance of those lines. There is a definite energy and surge from the composition. The synth sound provides plenty of weather and atmosphere. I sort of consider the song to be about the environment and how things are changing. Some might look at it as being about the breaking of a new day, though I pick up on fears about the changing climate and what impact that is having on us. The chorus shed more light in that sense: “Royal, royal morning blue/You are saved/And nothing like this had ever happened before”. I guess one can have a different viewpoint. It is interesting how Albarn writes, so that everyone has their own impression and theory.

I think the composition is one of the most interesting aspects of the song. It seems like there is a string instrument in the mix with the synthesiser. Rousing, funky, glacial, sunny and hypnotic all at once, it is a brilliant sound. I wonder about my theory regarding the song and its meaning. I have not read about Albarn explaining Royal Morning Blue. I keep coming back to the idea of the environment and climate: “Running out of things/Sent to give us wings/To fly away”. Albarn’s voice is powerful and beautiful the whole way through the song. Maybe Royal Morning Blue is more about a general feeling or person. The final words are among the most well-delivered and memorable: “At the end of the world/Stay by my side/At the end of the world/Stay by my side/Royal morning blue”. I have spun Royal Morning Blue a few times. It is a song that grows and expands the more one listens. It is so full of imagery and possibilities. Maybe the lyrical truth and story is not as important as the general feeling and impact of the song. Its aura. A typically assured, accomplished and memorable track from Damon Albarn, I look forward to seeing what The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows contains and whether there will be other songs such as Royal Morning Blue. A fantastic offering from a much-anticipated album, there is no denying Damon Albarn is one of most hard-working and important artists. He has this passion and love of music that results in so many different and interesting projects! His solo work is among his best. I look forward to seeing what…

HIS new album offers up.

___________

Follow Damon Albarn

PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Gullick 

Official:

https://www.damonalbarnmusic.com/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/Damonalbarn

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/DamonAlbarn/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/damonalbarn/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/0O98jlCaPzvsoei6U5jfEL?si=4AU056iaQO2NbnCh4fEhYw&dl_branch=1

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFRNTiK9a2Lc_HPmTQK-C7A

ALL UNCREDITED PHOTOS:

Damon Albarn

TRACK REVIEW: GIRLI - Ruthless

TRACK REVIEW:

 

 

GIRLI

PHOTO CREDIT: Hugh Finnerty

Ruthless

9.6/10

The track, Ruthless, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltEnFK9S-Ig

GENRES:

Pop/Electro-Pop/Pop-Punk

ORIGIN:

London, U.K.

LABELS:

AllPoints/Believe

__________

EVEN though I have been following…

the music of GIRLI (Milly Toomey) for a while now, I have not reviewed it. Following the release of the 2019 debut album, Odd One Out, and her excellent E.P. from February, Ex Talk, there has been growing awareness and love of her music from all corners. She is definitely someone who music that is very much her own – so much stronger than that from many of her peers! There are some areas I need to cover off before getting to her latest track, Ruthless. There was a lot of press and attention around GIRLI in 2019. Many were trying to get to her essence and explain this wonderfully original and engaging artist. I want to take things back even further to start with. In 2016, DIY ran a feature about GIRLI. There are a few sections that I want to bring in:

“Self-professed “pink coated punky foul mouthed london gurl” GIRLI is already drawing extreme reactions, and that’s exactly what she wants. The 18-year-old can either provoke glee or disgust, depending on who you ask. Fearlessness defines her every step, a belief that if strangers wind up offended by what she does, that’s completely fine.

“I want people to feel uncomfortable!” she beams, a few months on from striking gold with the siren-backed call to arms ‘ASBOys’, an obnoxious track designed for dispute. “The worst thing ever would be for someone to walk away from a show and not have an extreme reaction… Someone walked to the front of the stage with a note at a show in Sheffield and it read, ‘You’re shit.’ Someone chucked something at me. And then I had a group of girls who had come to see me and had glitter on their faces. That’s exactly what I want.” 

From the get-go, GIRLI has been determined to showcase what she stands for. She’s set up her own radio station - the bonkers ‘GIRLI.FM’ - and on her debut track, she spat out the line: “You thought I was gonna do a ballad? Fuck off!”

Her ultimate mission is to “normalise things that some people see as taboo,” for example: “In the studio recently, I wanted to sing “suck my clit”, but the guy I was working with told me I should probably take that out. But if I said “suck my dick,” you wouldn’t say that. On stage, women think about what they wear really carefully. And guys don’t have that problem. Look at punk music, someone like Iggy Pop - dudes always take their shirt off and crowd surf. But if I took my shirt off, everyone would be like ‘Woah, she’s extreme, she’s such a slut’. It’s not fair. I suppose if I do that, I wanna shock people. But only in a way where it no longer shocks people.”

With nothing but an iPod backing track and a fake ID her mum bought from www.fakeid.com, the North Londoner started out by playing open mic nights. “It was very different music. Still crazy, but I was a lot more tame. I’d rock up and there’d be twenty blokes with guitars, going ‘What the fuck?’”

She grew up as the smart kid in a comprehensive school (“whenever they see someone with good grades, they want to make you a statistic”), truly discovering herself when she started going out. “I’m writing about what I see - my friends, London, funny shit that actually happened. It’s hard to write about anything else,” she says, and so far she’s showcasing an in-your-face chasm of local chicken shops and the dickheads she comes across. “I had a bit of a crisis, in the middle of GCSEs, where I thought ‘Is this literally it?’ Having a shit time at school, going to uni and having a couple of years of jokes, and then going into a 9-5 job, and then another job, and then you retire. I literally can’t do that. I had to realise that life is about having fun,” she remembers, and it’s hard to find any other newcomer who sounds like they’re having as much fun as GIRLI”.

Taking it forward to 2019, there was this buzz and collective interest in GIRLI. The Line of Best Fit interviewed her. We got to find out about the teen years and how that shaped this incredible person:

“Toomey has lived in London her whole life, and moved out from her parents’ house in North London at 18, just as her musical career was taking off. She didn’t go to university, and hated school, leaving as soon as possible to pursue music at college. Prior to taking up music she was part of the local youth parliament, and “cared so much about everything” – a symptom of her OCD. “I think when I was a teenager I was just trying to escape from school if I’m honest, just trying to do loads of shit outside of school because I just dreaded it," she tells me. "Y’know it wasn’t all bad, I liked my teachers and my classes, but the social element of it just freaked me out. I was the girl at lunch time who was like ‘fuck where am I gonna eat my lunch’, so I definitely didn’t breeze through school. It was difficult and I think that’s why I turned to music, because I just needed something to do to get this frustration feeling out.

"I just remember being so restless, like I cannot fucking wait for this to be over, all this school bullshit, as soon as I was 16 I was like, right I’m gonna go to music college and I’m gonna do music and I don’t care!

“When I was a teenager I was very self-conscious and anxious. When I went into secondary school, I have OCD and it started to show, like the transition from primary to secondary school just like fucked me up, and I think I just freaked out. Primary school was like a little home, like a warm hug, and then secondary school, I went into the school of like 2500 students and it was pretty rough.” 

PHOTO CREDIT: Danny Kasirye

As Toomey talks about her teen-hood, it’s not hard to see why she’s titled her debut record Odd One Out. She’s spent most of her life as an outsider – not in a cool, wallflower, ‘people don’t get me’ way, but in the way that took its toll on her mental health, social relationships, and trust in others. “I got bullied in year seven and eight. It was just really nasty people, and the jump between friendship groups. All of that made me quite an anxious person, although I didn’t really see it as anxiety at the time, I just really cared about certain things, and I think it’s part of how the OCD expressed itself in my personality and still does. I get very obsessed with things.

"I really cared about school work, I really cared about doing as much as possible. I wanted to go do that club and then that instrument, and get A grades. I put so much pressure on myself.

“I have a little sister who’s 16, and she’s having this crazy fun: she goes to parties every week, and she’s been doing that since she was 14. When I was 14 and in the youth parliament, I was going home every night and watching TV with my mum and doing homework. I really didn’t have a great social life, and I think I was quite lonely to be honest.

"I had a best friend who I spent a lot of time with and she really introduced me to things like music...but I kind of jumped from friendship groups a lot, so I think I lost a certain level of trust in people at school. I didn't know whether people were real, because I didn’t have that one friend from when I was like seven years old to now, where I think a lot of people I meet have those childhood friends...”

I will bring things to the present day soon enough. Before then, there are a few more subjects I want to explore. Not to mess with interview timeline too much, but I want to jump back to 2016. It is interesting to see how GIRLI is defined and represented. Prior to the release of her debut E.P., Feel OK, she was interviewed by The Independent. They highlighted this energetic and colourful Pop artist who was a breath of fresh air on the scene:

“When getting to know GIRLI’s hyperactive, anything-goes pop, the best starting point is through one of her mixtapes. Shadowing as a twisted homage to pirate radio, her two “GIRLI.FM” shows are messed up, junk-filled introductions. On her latest, she impersonates Anne Robinson on The Weakest Link, envisages an episode of Take Me Out where Donald Trump gets buzzed off, and recounts late-night party conversations with her friends. All while this is happening, she throws in a dozen demos, half-finished ideas and off-the-cuff takes. In truth, these works are less like actual mixtapes, more like hearing her weird imagination spilled out in song form, warts and all.

As she neatly puts it, this is the sound of “me vomiting out my brain”. An exciting prospect for some, a gross one for others. In her short existence, the outspoken north London newcomer – real name Milly Toomey – has pissed off as many people as she’s brought on board. Songs go for the jugular – new single “F*** Right Off Back to LA” being as brash as it gets – and it’s enough to make hesitant bystanders flock for the hills. Speaking ahead of another sold-out London show, however, it’s clear the all-pink-sporting star wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I’ve been trolled quite a few times,” she says, readily admitting that many don’t see eye-to-eye with her music or opinions. “I got trolled by The 1975 fans on Twitter. I’ll probably get trolled again if this is in the article,” she begins, clarifying: “I like their songs. I respect them for where they are. But the album title [I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it]... I thought it was the most stupid thing ever. So I tweeted, I Like It When You Name Your Album A Twatty Title, For You’re So Pretentious Yet So Unaware Of It. I was on the train, thinking, ‘I’m so funny’ and that five people might pick up on it. I logged in two hours later and it was exploding with hate.” Her account was invaded with abuse (“You’re s***! I hate your hair!”), mostly personal slights. “I made fun of a band’s album title, they said something about my family!”.

ith the hype wheel spinning, at this time of year talk begins to turn to 2017. GIRLI is right at the heart of the conversation, alongside a bunch of young, opinionated acts eager to make a point, even if it might ward off potential fans. Just last week, go-to tip Declan McKenna was arguing with Piers Morgan on Twitter. Fellow 2017 hopeful Jorja Smith penned her first song, “Blue Lights”, about police brutality. GIRLI is similarly screwed-on. Politics is part and parcel of her early material. Brash single “Girls Get Angry Too”, released earlier this year, is a vital celebration of female identity.

It’s impossible to be a musician in 2016 without being partly politicised, but GIRLI has a history of this. At 15, she was the deputy Youth MP, campaigning after she felt “the need to change the world.” After being “very academic” in school, her brush with politics arrived exactly when she entered a “massive rebellious grungy phase.” There’s footage of her speaking in Parliament with an untucked shirt, sleeves rolled up. “I remember being like, ‘F*** you all!’ And I remember all these kids from the countryside coming up to me like, ‘Oh, you live in Camden do you? With all the punks!’ But yeah, that happened”.

This sort of compels me to come to the album, Odd One Out. I really like the album. For Milly Toomey – the woman behind GIRLI -, Odd One Out was a way of not only addressing some of her demons. She was also reintroducing herself as an artist. Coming back to the interview from The Line of Best Fit, GIRLI spoke about the album and how it came together:

“Her debut album has been a long time coming and wasn’t really meant to be an album at first. The tracks came about as a result of various writing sessions in LA with Mark Ronson-collaborators MNDR and Peter Wade, and former-Dirty Pretty Things member (and co-writer of Gaga/Cooper-hit "Shallow") Anthony Rossomando. Sticking with the same writers on every song was what she needed to feel more comfortable doing “proper pop writing sessions”.

“We were just making songs together, us three, and then [with] these guys called Fast Friends who are this awesome trio. I’d gone to LA before and I’d done the whole ‘lets do pop writing sessions’, had some good ones and had some terrible ones where it was like I feel like a product right now, this isn’t creative, this isn’t fun, so I went back and I just worked with these two people and it was so fun.

"I worked with a few other people as well but the main songs on the album come from these two groups of people. So I went back in may for another month and wrote most of the songs on the album.

“There’s a few songs on there that I’d written before, like ‘Hot Mess’, and it all kind of came together last year and by summer we had an album. I’m not a band so it’s not like I write the songs and go into the studio for a week and record them all, I’ll write the songs and come up with the concept, go into the studio with people, work on the song together, then we’ll just record it on the day. All the songs on Odd One Out were just recorded the day they were written, then worked on afterwards. I went back to LA for two weeks to finish them all properly.” 

Toomey used writing the album to fight some of her personal demons and pull herself out of some dark place, a process which delivered a sense of catharsis: “There’s a song on the album called ‘Up and Down’ which is just about having mood swings, but this is me and if you want me around you can take it or leave it. Basically like euphoric, that song – I get up and I get down but I love myself for it, and actually at the time, I fucking hated myself for it. I felt like I was ruining everyone’s life around me for being so erratic and ruining my partner’s life and ruining my friends’ life and my family’s life, so that song actually comes from so much pain”.

Odd One Out is about reintroducing Girli as an artist. Early material such as ‘So You Think You Can Fuck With Me Do Ya’, ‘Fuck Right Back Off To LA’ and ‘Girl I Met On The Internet’ underplayed how smart and eloquent Toomey actually is: “I think a lot of people made a decision about who I was, especially in the media and radio and industry, but also just music listeners, and I think people just put me in a box as being this kind of irrelevant, kind of childish artist, who made these silly 'fuck you' songs. Even though I feel like that phase of me was centuries ago, I think a lot of people still think ‘Girli, oh!’.

“It’s funny like, my song was being played on the radio and I was intro’d as the girl who wears all pink. I haven’t worn all pink in over a year - but you forget that when you realise things about yourself, it takes everyone else ages to realise those things [too]. So I think the album for me is saying: look, this is who I am, I’m a lot more than you thought I was, and I don’t just make childish, bratty songs. I’m a serious songwriter and I wanna be taken seriously."

“A lot of pain went into the album but it’s meant to be happy, it’s meant to make people feel euphoric...and I think the title, Odd One Out, comes from a place of feeling like an outsider or a freak, or why do I feel like this, what is this emotion, and hopefully people can listen to it and feel proud to feel like that, instead of ashamed”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Phil Smithies for DIY

When Odd One Out arrived, I recall there was this great interest and investment from a lot of critics. GIRLI’s fans were especially responsive and moved. NME were keen to speak with GIRLI following the album’s release. They asked her about Odd One Out and what it was like recording it:

“How’s the reception been to the album?

“It was great. My fans all loved it, and I think I made a lot of new fans, which was cool. And it was crazy – we played a show the day the album came out, and people in the crowd already knew the lyrics. The whole crowd knew lyrics to songs that had come out that day!”

What was the recording process like?

“It was fun, but it was also a really hard time. I was feeling terrible, I was really struggling with a lot of mental health stuff, so I think that as a result, the album is very honest. I can listen to it and even though most of the songs are really upbeat like “wahoo it’s going to be okay”, I can really feel my own pain in it, which is a sad thing to say.”

Is music cathartic for you?

“Yes and no. It’s my diary entry: I play guitar and love writing lyrics, but I kind of started when I was 13 and I love writing short stories. That was the thing that came before writing songs. So writing and getting my ideas out has always been cathartic for me, sometimes the music making process can be quite stressful for me, because I’m such a perfectionist and I want it to be great, and sometimes it’s really hard if you’re having an off day and can’t get the idea out that you want to convey and I beat myself up a lot about things like that.”

Do you find fans really relate to your music as it’s so honest?

“Yeah! It’s a bit crazy. I’ll get DMs and YouTube comments where people really open up and get personal and it’s kind of amazing. It actually reminds me constantly of the responsibility that I have with the kind of people who listen to my music who are very young and are probably going through a lot, so they’re listening to this music and sometimes I’ll get messages saying my song has changed someone’s life, and that’s really overwhelming, but in an amazing way”.

One of the most important aspects of GIRLI is the fact that she is a Queer artist. One of the most inspiring L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artists out there, it is very important to GIRLI to identify as a queer artist. She has a lot of fans who are part of the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community. In an interview with Worst Taste in Music, she explained a little more:

“How important is your identity as a feminist and queer artist?

Feminism is the core of everything I do. Feeling empowered as a woman and my journey as a woman and calling out sexist bullshit is a big part of my music. Being queer and proud is also a big inspiration for me in my songs, my videos, my artistic expression. I love being a part of the LGBTQIA+ community and a lot of my fan base is part of that community too, so it plays a huge role in my life.

You have always been very supportive about people feeling comfortable in their own skin. Do you feel responsible towards your fans? Is it also a way of express your thoughts about society and what’s happening in the world right now?

I feel responsible to learn and grow and correct myself when I make mistakes, but I don’t feel pressure to be a good or bad influence on my fans. The majority of them are young teens growing up in a digital world and they are super aware and woke, and often teach me things rather than the other way around. My music is a diary entry from my life and what goes on in my head. I’m so happy that people can relate to that.

I want to stay on this subject for a little bit more. GIGWISE spoke with GIRLI in August. This is one of the most recent interviews I could find. Again, as she has mentioned in older interviews, she was passionate about the importance of her identity and how she related to fans:

“As well as her musical candidness, it is GIRLI's proud queerness that has lead her to a fanbase of like-minded and sweet individuals. “Being queer is such a big part of my life," she enthuses. "I definitely think that queer artists shouldn’t feel any pressure - they can talk about it if they want to [and] they don't have to if they don't want to. I think that straight artists should be uplifting queer people, and be talking about it, like how white people should be uplifting people of colour.

"I think that straight artists need to definitely use their privilege in that sense. I feel so passionate about it, and proud, and it's always been a big part of my artist project. I also think it's kind of a cool way of attracting the right people. I don't really want any homophobes listening to my music.”

Speaking further about the Damsel in Distress project she says “It's kind of like going into a war in a way, like a mental war. With all of these topics and emotions that the songs are about, I was like this princess but like having vengeance on the kingdom. Coming back and being like: I'm not a damsel. I was thinking about that phrase damsel in distress and it really applied to me. Even though these songs are all about doubting myself, they're not necessarily light hearted, happy clappy songs, [but] to me it's really badass and really empowering. Releasing the songs now, I feel so empowered, and so powerful”.

There are a few more things that I need to get to – so that we can get a more rounded and complete picture of GIRLI as an artist. In this interview, a question about gender identity really caught my eye. GIRLI has talked about sexism and gender imbalance in music quite a bit. When it comes to the subject of gender identity and how things are not binary anymore, she was very keen to talk about how perceptions and conversations have changed:

“Do you think you, or by extension your generation, are seeing and talking about gender differently than previous generations?

"I think there has definitely been a massive shift with my generation. Because of the internet, being on Twitter and Instagram, there is a lot of conversation. I have friends who identify as nonbinary, I have trans friends. When I talk to my parents, who are open and love everyone for who they are, they are confused when I tell them, 'That friend doesn't want to be referred to as she, but they.' Or explaining that my friend who used to be a boy is now a girl to my mom, who wants to know what that even means. My parents weren't raised with those terms around. You have to allow the older generation time to learn. It's like my grandma not knowing what a smartphone is, you know? That said, it's great to have social media so the next generation are able to talk about these things. For example, so many people on Twitter put in their bio their gender identification. That is something that would have been unheard of 20 years ago! I think it's so great to have that representation now." 

You've said you like to write music that gets a reaction out of people. With "Girl I Met on the Internet," do you think playing with gender norms and sexuality in music like that you still get a reaction or upset people?

"That is an interesting one. Sometimes I'll put songs out, like 'Hot Mess' or 'Girl Gang,' where I make a video that challenges people, to make them feel upset by it but then question what is upsetting. Because I'm actually talking about feminism or gender or whatever. With 'Girl I Met on the Internet,' it was a love song basically. It was me saying that I want to meet a girl to go out with, so it was fascinating to see a song that was not meant to provoke people [or] weird them out. I didn't get any abuse about it online, other than a few comments I ignored. It was less people being homophobic, but more like — I had an interview with a certain magazine, and they called it a song about a platonic relationship with a friend I hung out with for a night. I was like, what do you mean? It's clearly about wanting to have a girlfriend! I was talking to someone who was so used to straight relationships that they immediately thought if I was singing about a girl, it must be just about making friends. I want to challenge people. I want to say about that song, this is about me not being straight and liking girls too. And I want to have them react by understanding that homosexual relationships can be exactly the same as hetero relationships. To understand that I can feel the exact same way about someone!”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Rory James for The Line of Best Fit

One of the best songs from GIRLI is Hot Mess. The opening track from her 2017 E.P. of the same name, she talked to the Evening Standard about sexism in the industry. This is a conversation we are still having to this day. I wonder whether there will be any improvement or real leaps forward regarding equality and representation:

“Speaking about the song, she reveals the track was inspired by the sexism she experienced in her nascent career, which lends the track added significance.

“Being a woman making music and dressing the way I do, I find myself having things said to me and comments made that I feel I wouldn’t get if I was a guy. Hot Mess is actually written about the time I went to a meeting with a certain company I won’t mention.

“Afterwards, there were comments made that claimed I ‘wasn’t presented properly’. I’d skated there, I was a bit sweaty and I wasn’t wearing much makeup. If I was a guy and I’d just rolled up - no disrespect to men in the music industry - but a lot of my mates in bands will roll up to meetings and look like shit," Milly says.

“They’re called rock stars, and then girls are called hot messes, or told they’re not good enough."

She concludes by saying: "It’s just double standards. Why can’t everyone be who they want to be without being judged?”.

One cannot help but notice one thing about GIRLI when we see photos. The colour pink defines her. That very distinct hair is as bright and vivacious as her music. I was intrigued to learn why pink was such an important part of her aesthetic. GRAZIA posed the question in an interview from 2017:

“What was the progression of developing your personal style?

I don’t like to use the word ‘tomboy’, but when I was first in a band, I loved wearing men’s clothing. I wore loads of baggy t-shirts and jeans, I had short hair, and I wore baseball caps. And then it just switched when I discovered new types of music. I was really into indie, then I started listening to more female-made music, and my style developed based on what I was listening to. And one day it just assembled.

Where does your obsession with pink come from?

Initially, it came from a love of Japanese culture, like Kawaii and Harajuku, and of 90s millennial style. But I also like subverting it the concept that people see it as a weak colour as that’s bullshit.

I was really into millennium fashion and the Spice Girls, Britney, Shampoo and ‘90s Pop, which had adopted a child-like style. It started when I would tie my hair up in little girls’ bobbles and stuff and then I started being into punk, and pink started to represent something different for me – instead of something childlike it started to represent something strong. I like subverting it and that when people see I wear all pink they underestimate me because they think it’s childish. It’s the same thing as what people think when they hear the word ‘Girli’. They think it means weak and sissy and I’m a pussy, but it doesn’t. To me, it means strong. 

Do you think you’ll ever move away from pink?

I don’t know. Who’s to say. People ask me that a lot as in I should be embarrassed about it if I ever stop wearing pink. And I’m just like, ‘fuck off, I’ll wear what I’ll wear, when I want to wear it.’ I’m really into it right now, but in three years maybe I’ll be into blue.

How do you decide what to wear on stage?

I work with a really cool stylist called Jamie Jarvis, she’s a legend. Basically, I have ideas about what I want to wear or the outfits to look like. Say there’s a 12-date tour, we’ll have like six different outfits and I’ll wear some of them twice. We go shopping to places like Punkyfish and vintage stores or we’ll collaborate with a designer. For instance, I had boiler suits tie-dyed for this tour. I also had a matching double-denim millennial pink look with diamanté that said Girli on the back. And, I worked with Jamie Hutwood who sews together polo shirts and petticoats to make dresses. The idea is to look punky and girly”.

Prior to coming onto the review of Ruthless and wrapping things up, I was curious to see how the pandemic has affected GIRLI. It has been pretty bad for all artists. Coming back to that GIGWISE interview from August, GIRLI spoke about being dropped from her label, in addition to what she hoped to achieve with her podcast, GIRLI IRL:

“Obviously not all musicians perform that much. I think for a lot of people it's more about being in the studio or writing, which is obviously huge for me, but I've always been the type of artist who thrives on stage, and thrives touring" she says. "I love interacting with my fans that way and getting the crowd hyped up. When I'm on stage, this devil takes over; a whole new badass. I've really missed it.”

“When the pandemic started, I was still in this really weird limbo place because I'd been dropped by my last label and I hadn't started releasing music" GIRLI (real name Milly Toomey) continues. "It was kind of an in-between period where I hadn't met my current label [Believe]. I was very low, and thinking I can either give up in this pandemic, or I can go full steam ahead and hope people appreciate what I'm doing. So, I started doing loads of online shows and live streams, and I started a Patreon."

With a cult-like following paired with an unwavering work ethic despite the setbacks thrown at her—both the result of having started in the industry in her mid-teens (she’s now the ripe old age of 23)—GIRLI was adamant to give back to her fans in whatever way she could, so she hosted a virtual art exhibition, and started her own podcast.

With the GIRLI IRL podcast, Milly says she "really wanted to do something on the side that people could watch or listen to, to gauge who I am as a person and what kind of stuff I care about and am passionate about; my beliefs on certain things. I wanted to make a podcast which was me talking to women or non-binary folks about sexuality, politics, heartbreak and all kinds of stuff, conversations I'd have with my friends anyway.

"People can listen to my music and they probably get a good idea of who I am from that because I'm very honest in my lyrics and the music anyway, but I like the idea that it's another way for me to show who I am”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Hugh Finnerty

This take me to the new track from GIRLI. I really like the video for Ruthless. We see the heroine in a car in a crushing plant/scrapyard. As a contrast to the ruins and slightly scuzzy environment around her, GIRLI looks quite elegant and grand. Almost resembling a pink-haired Marie Antoinette, it is a wonderful visual! Whether the destroyed car with her in is a metaphor for a destructive situation and a feeling of being trapped, I am not tool sure. We see GIRLI writing in a diary/journal as she sings. The start of Ruthless is quite calm in terms of the composition. The words trip and skip out of GIRLI: “Take me home/Take me back/Take me back to playing teddy bears and butterflies in my hair/Home?, what's that?/I got a doll's house with a few cracks/Grew too tall/Now I’m poking out the attic/My feet are in the basement /Coz I never wanna hack it/Life, what's that?/Life, what's that?”. I got that sense of someone who wanted to return to a simpler time. Maybe this sense of growing up and living in the modern world is quite strange and tough. That said, the imagery GIRLI projects about the cracked doll’s house makes me thing that, perhaps, the past is something that she cannot go back to. They are interesting words that made me wonder. In the video, we see GIRLI hold a mirror and make faces. Almost taunting her own reflection, the smashed doll’s house can be seen outside of the car on the ground. The vocal performance through Ruthless is wonderful. In the next passage, it swoops from a lower register to something quite acrobatic and theatrical: “Take me use me screw me over/Play me like I like losing /Trip me trick me drug me say you love me but you like cheating/You're the only one to blame/You made me this way/Guess that's why I’m so damn…”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Hugh Finnerty

When the chorus comes in, this heavy beat and electronic sound replaces the more acoustic feeling of before. It is an awakening and angrier transition that sees GIRLI, in the video, dancing atop a car as she is joined by her crew (the women are dressed similarly to her). I am not sure whether GIRLI is speaking to a lover who made her ruthless - or a person from the past who has had this impact: “Ruthless/You made me/You made me/You made me/Ruthless/You made me/You made me/You made me /Ruthless/Only way to do it/When you break me/And I lose it/You made me so damn fucking/Ruthless”. The shift from the calmer verses to the outpouring and rush of the chorus is wonderful. One is caught by the beat and the command from GIRLI’s voice. This idea of going back to childhood and trying to figure out adulthood comes back in: “Take my soul/Take me down/Take me back to the beginning of this when I was still innocent/Me, sorry who?/I'm a kid in a grown-up suit/Looking in the mirror/Tryna figure out who's/Banging on the glass coz they're tryna break through /Is it me? Is it you?/Think it's me/Wish I knew”. Trying to reclaim a more innocent past and figure out who she is, the lyrics are very powerful. Although some mystery and questions remain, one does get this sense of someone in a bad space who would give anything to have her time over and start afresh.

PHOTO CREDIT: Hugh Finnerty

Before the chorus comes back in again, there are some of the most stark lyrics: “Take me use me screw me over/Play me like I like losing /Trip me trick me drug me say you love me but you like cheating/You're the only one to blame/You made me this way/Guess that's why I’m so damn”. With some processed vocals and scuttling beats, one gets this head-spinning and sense-altering sound. The video sees GIRLI and her gang dancing and moving as it is dark. There are strobe lights and this almost tripped-out, trance quality. The final words are delivered softly as the composition returns to something more sedated: “Yeah, it's tragic/All the bad bits/Made me so damn ruthless/No it's not me/I don't wanna be/Ruthless”. A typically captivating, colourful, memorable and original Pop song from GIRLI, I think Ruthless ranks alongside her very best. With lyrics one can pour over and an incredible sense of emotional outpouring, it is such a stunning song. It shows that there is nobody else like GIRLI in the industry. A phenomenal talent with many years ahead of her, Ruthless shows that we are very lucky to have an artist like this…

IN our midst.

___________

Follow GIRLI 

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/GIRLImusic

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/girlimusic

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/girlimusic/

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@girlimusic?

Spotify:

https://girli.backl.ink/spotify

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGzWrQolm1k_nHt1-H2EfGw

ALL UNCREDITED PHOTOS:

GIRLI

TRACK REVIEW: Griff - One Night

TRACK REVIEW:

 

 

Griff

PHOTO CREDIT: Cal McIntyre for NOTION 

One Night

9.5/10

The track, One Night, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcQjLopjcnM

GENRE:

Pop

ORIGIN:

Hertfordshire, U.K.

LABEL:

Warner

__________

ALTHOUGH her family and friends…

know her as Sarah Griffiths, we refer to her simply as Griff. The twenty-year-old Hertfordshire-born artist is one of the biggest talents we have. With a highly-acclaimed mixtape, One Foot in Front of the Other, released in June, she is on fine form! I am going to look at her latest single, One Night. That mixtape did receive so much praise. A rising star who has been lauded and tipped for greatness, Griff has definitely shown that she is going to be around for many years! A terrific talent who cannot be easily define (though I think of her music as largely being Pop), she sits alongside other superb young artists like Sigrid and beabadoobee - who are producing such brilliant and original music. Although Pop has changed radically through the years, one can still find artists who are making music that is uplifting and effortlessly listenable, yet it is layered and fresh. I am going to cover a few topics before getting down to reviewing the song, One Night. Whilst Griff is not a huge star at the moment, she is definitely a name that many people. It was not too long ago since she was relatively unknown. As we find out in this 2021 interview from The Forty-Five, Griff has thrown herself into her music. She is someone who wants to shape her own sound and direction:

“Hertfordshire-born Griff, is all that and more. In the 19 months since releasing her debut single – ‘Mirror Talk’’s balance of minimal production and pop hooks that get under your skin – she’s carved out her place as one of British pop’s next big things, growing more and more into the role with every track she puts out. It might be a part that’s coming to her naturally but, when she first started making music at the age of 11, becoming a musical icon wasn’t at the forefront of her mind.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jordan Rossi for HUNGER

“It’s weird, I don’t think I ever really desired to be a pop star,” the now-20-year-old tells us. She’s sat in her music room at her parents’ home in the quiet village of Kings Langley, near Watford, guitars hung on the wall beside her and a piano behind her. “I just loved writing songs and I was really excited by the idea of being a songwriter – for other people.” As she got a little older and more experienced in her craft, what she was writing became so uniquely her that it felt like no one else could sing them.

Nevertheless, she’s now fully throwing herself into things, be that producing her own tunes, creating the set design for her shows, or making her own clothes for photoshoots, videos and anything else that requires her to look like a pop queen. For Griff, each of these creative strands feeds into building her own world – one that she hopes will always set her apart from the crowd.

“There’s so much of the same conveyor belt pop at the moment and it’s really overwhelming,” she explains. “If you go on [Spotify’s weekly new music playlist] New Music Friday every week, everything’s good but it’s the same. It’s another girl writing about heartbreak and looking the same.” Instead, she wants to follow in the footsteps of the likes of Lorde, Haim and Banks, and become an artist with her own distinctive sound. “Sonically, I think I’ll always write big pop melodies, but I always want to try and create something a bit more interesting in the production that throws it off a little bit”.

I wonder whether Griff has always wanted to be a musician. Most of us change our minds regarding our desired career. Raised in a Hertfordshire village, it must have seemed quite far-fetched being an acclaimed artist. The Guardian interviewed Griff back in January. She talked about how her parents (unconsciously) directed her towards music, and how she prefers to go down the D.I.Y. route:

“Superstardom seemed a long way off growing up in the sleepy village of Kings Langley in Hertfordshire. “Being half-Jamaican and half-Chinese, as a family we stood out like a sore thumb,” she says. “I’ve always felt a little bit different. But music has helped me embrace that. Now I can’t think of anything worse than being like everyone else.” That musical journey was aided by a mix of Taylor Swift (Griffiths learned to play Swift’s 2008 album Fearless when she was nine), Sundays spent at church, and her parents’ thoughts regarding timewasting. “They were like: ‘No TV in the week, do something practical, learn something,’ so I gravitated towards music.”

After teaching herself production using her brother’s copy of the music software Logic, a handful of early homemade demos caught the attention of a manager before she landed a record deal with Warners three years ago. “I didn’t know what a record deal was so I kept them waiting for a year – I wanted to finish school.” In fact, she started using her textiles A-level immediately, eschewing designer labels in favour of her own self-made outfits in early photoshoots. “I just love creating things,” she says of her DIY ethos. “I enjoy the challenge of envisioning something in your head and then making it come to life”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Ollie Adegboye for CLASH

I didn’t know this before I started researching for this review. The church plays a very big and personal role in Griff’s life. If it does not feed heavily into her sound and lyrics, faith is very important to Griff. I do not know of many young artists in this country who have mentioned religion and its role. In an interview with The Line of Best Fit, Griff discussed the role of the church in her music:

“A dumbfounding moment like that, would for many feel like a gift from God, and Griff especially uses her faith to navigate the surreal situations she’s finding herself in: “Growing up in church and putting my faith first has been a huge thing,” she tells me. “And really believing that whatever I’m pursuing in music is not just about me, but about putting my trust in who God is, and his plan for my future.” Music was heavily integrated into services at Hillsong – the church Griff attended – and it was here she received her first taste of performing live.

After refining her songwriting independently at home, Griff played her work to fellow musicians in the congregation, who subsequently introduced her to industry contacts. From there, aged just 13, she scored a management deal but held off releasing her debut single “Mirror Talk”, until she left school five years later.

Playing it characteristically cool, she refrained from telling her teachers or classmates when she later signed a record deal. “I think it’s the competitiveness in me”, she says. “I think I always thought it was cooler if people found out, not because I told them, but because they heard it on the radio or saw it on the TV, or something.” In the years prior, she did branch outside her music room into studio sessions, whilst doing her A Levels. In this induction into the industry, she discovered a distinguishing mark that she hadn’t even noticed she had”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jenny Brough for FLAUNT

There is another interview that I want to drop in where the church/its importance was mentioned. As Griff states in an interview with Women in Pop, the fact that attending church meant that she was always surrounded by music and song guided and inspired her:

“That's so uplifting. Obviously you're an incredible song writer and producer with one hell of an origin story. Can you just give us a little back story about how the music got from your bedroom to the worldwide stage and platform of our ears?

Totally. I was born and raised in church, so I think in that sense I was constantly surrounded by music every Sunday. I started learning piano from a very young age. Then my dad bought my brother [music software] Logic and I realised I could jump on there and write my own songs and record them. I started off when I was maybe 12 and wasn't any good, but I was just exploring the software and figuring out how I can write songs. I was doing that a lot when I was in school and was probably supposed to be doing my homework. Then I just started working with any producer that would work with me really. I was going into London meeting a new producer, doing sessions all the time just to try to figure out what this songwriting thing is. I think when you start to work with people that's how your name goes about a little bit more and hat's how I started getting a bit of interest. I was like ‘what the hell is a record label, what's a publishing deal?’ But these adults seem to be very interested in my music so I ended up signing my life away when I was like 17. I finished my A-levels and then last year I put out my first song ‘Mirror Talk’”.

There is no doubt that Griff is a role model. Even though she is very young and her best work is ahead of her, Griff is influencing others. Going back to that Women in Pop interview, maybe Griff did not have the sort of role models in her musical youth. She has sort of become who she needed from her musical influences:

“We're more than just a broken heart. That’s so true. Now we often hear from artists talking about the unattainability of pop stars growing up. They didn't see anyone that looked like them or they were singing about things they couldn't relate to. But again, you champion the loner, the outcast, the secret in all of us. In doing so, do you yet feel like you’re becoming the musical role model that may have been missing in your youth?

Oh woah. No. Absolutely not.  I think I'm just doing what feels right and what I really enjoy doing. Do I feel like a role model? No. Not at all. But maybe I am, I don't know. Hopefully young girls are listening to my music and really connecting. I hope in a way that I'm a role model, but I don't feel that kind of weight or that privilege.

I think that makes you a role model because if you set out to do it it comes out contrived. You just mentioned the girls, how important is it within your own career trajectory to support young women and women in general in the industry?

It's so important. Especially as the thing everyone says to me is ‘you're a girl and you produce’. I'm always like is that even a big deal? But I think it is a big deal because you don't see that. I want to find more ways to just encourage girls to do it all. I want every girl to have the attitude that you can do it. No one really knows what they're doing, so you just got to go for it and be good at it. When you realise that no one knows what you're doing, suddenly you are qualified to do everything and it's great”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: The Ivors Academy with Apple Music/PA

I am also want to come back to the interview from The Forty-Five. Quite a few people who have interviewed her have raised this subject of (Griff being) a role model. The fact that she produces her own tracks is something that will inspire many other artists:

“Although Griff says she doesn’t have any desire to be a role model, some of the Griffiths family’s young charges did try and copy what she was doing while they were living with her. “They always used to just burst in and start playing,” she laughs. “Or they’ll pick up something and pretend it’s a microphone because they’ve seen me singing.”

The 20-year-old’s family environment has generally always been supportive of her and her brothers pursuing creative endeavours. Their dad used to be a gospel singer who would “always sing in church back in his heyday” and pushed them in the direction of music. Griff started playing piano aged six, determined not to be left out of the lessons her elder siblings were getting. It was because of them she took her first steps into producing too, hijacking the copy of Logic her dad had bought for them so she could record the piano covers she learnt to kill time.

The fact that the rising musician has the ability to produce her own tracks is something that’s often celebrated about her – a far too rare instance of a woman in pop music possessing that know-how. She says she was blissfully unaware of the gender divide in that area until she started going to studio sessions, noting sadly that the assumption now is “when you go to the studio, the producer is a guy”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Ulrike Rindermann for TANK Magazine

Before coming onto her 2019 E.P., Mirror Talk, I will round off this role model section by going back to the interview from The Line of Best Fit. Griff is not consciously setting out to be a role model. She hopes that girls and women from all backgrounds feel motivated and encouraged to do their own thing and pursue their dreams:

“The prospect of inspiring younger artists from under-represented backgrounds also excites Griff. But, at the same time, she hopes she won’t need to be that role model. “I don’t want to be the reason that suddenly young girls, young producers, or young Black girls, Chinese girls, wanna pursue what they wanna pursue,” she says. “I just want young girls to feel inspired and know that they can do it, just because they can by themselves, without having to know there is a whole generation before them who have.”

Professionally, however, it is 2021 that looks set to be Griff’s moment. Commencing with the announcement that she bagged 5th place on the BBC Sound of 2021: “It’s absolute madness,” she says. “It’s probably one of the most surreal things that has happened in my journey in music so far.”

The honour notoriously comes with a weight of pressure, and so too does the unmapped path a new artist like Griff finds laid ahead of her. “I think I have like a quiet fear that it could all just erupt tomorrow; like tomorrow I could get dropped,” she says. “I think there’s just that constant looming of unknown whenever you’re an artist and pursuing something creative like this.” But, with her classic composure, she adds: “But, I think that’s the fun of it. So, I’m not scared of the unknown”.

Before coming up-to-date regarding Griff’s work, I will go back to her excellent 2019 debut E.P., Mirror Talk. Specifically, the sense of autonomy on it. Rather than have hordes of people putting it together, Griff was the driving force. In this ELLE interview, Griff talked about how people perceive women as producers/men selling female Pop:

“She plays the guitar and piano, writes all her own songs, sews her own clothes (including her Brits dress), oh and she’s a self-taught producer. On the new EP, the only song she didn’t produce is ‘Black Hole’. For Griff, it’s very important that everyone knows this. She wants to give other women the confidence to explore producing given the staggering male dominance in the industry.

According to studies, only 12.5% of songwriters are women and of only 3% of music producers were women in the top UK 100 charts by British artists. Griff believes that if it had not been for her own music, she wouldn’t have had the confidence to step into production as a sole producer.

‘If you're a girl and you can sing or you’re musical, you are automatically the product, because the industry is built off of men selling female pop artists,’ says Griff. ‘No one ever looks at a woman and thinks, ‘Oh, maybe you're just the producer’, and that’s what pushes girls away from exploring it”.

A little random section I want to bring in is Griff’s musical loves. Sticking with that ELLE interview, she talked about (in June) what she has been listening to and who she really wants to collaborate with:

“What I’ve been listening to recently…

At the moment, it’s been Whitney [Houston] on repeat, mostly ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’. When I found out I won the Brit award, I took myself the cornfield behind my house, put on some Whitney and popped Prosecco. I usually only listen to music when I’m travelling so in the car it’s been ABBA and Haim. Their song ‘Now I’m In It’ came out when I was in LA so it helps me imagine sunnier times.

Lorde’s return has also made me revisit ‘Royals’. I remember hearing that and just thinking wow, she is so unbelievably talented to have made such minimal production so impactful, she just uses drums and vocals.

The first album I owned was…

Fearless by Taylor Swift. When you’re young and haven't experienced love yet, Taylor’s lyrics are so wonderfully heart-breaking and dramatic, so much fun. My parents gave me guitar lessons aged five in the hopes I’d go into classical music and do grades, but as soon as I learned chords it was a lost cause because I spent all my time learning Taylor Swift songs. Around the house my parents played a lot of R&B and soul; Stevie Wonder, Mary J. Blige and Kirk Franklin.

The first gig I went to was…

Melanie Martinez at the London club Heaven when I was 13 at Heaven. It’s mad because that’s where my London show is in December so I’ve really come full circle. I’ve put out so much music this year, so it's going to be so great to make them come to life finally, in a room with people.

I would absolutely love to work with...

Dave. I don't know how that would sound and it could be an awful idea, but I just think he's one of the best acts in the UK at the moment. His album Psychodrama is so beautifully structured and every single song is powerful”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Zachary Chick for Wonderland.

Griff is an award-winning artist who is being heralded as a phenomenal artist. Quite right. Even though she has won a BRIT award (as their Rising Star for this year), there is controversy and debate regarding the validity of awards. Whether there is tokenism involved. It is an interesting debate that takes nothing away from the much-deserved recognition that Griff received. When speaking with CLASH in May, the subject was raised:

“Wading through her most formative years as an artist – signing to music behemoths Warner Brothers aged 19 to securing a breakthrough BRIT Award a year later – Griff is self-aware of her situation. So, when our conversation naturally turns to the controversy of award shows, the singer all too knowingly nods, smiling. “I think everyone knows these things are political but for some reason, we're still addicted to engaging in it. Even though we all know it's bullshit, I’m still over the moon that I won a BRIT Award,” she tells me.

Pausing to think, the singer picks on the much-debated criticism of award industry tokenism. “It's a weird double-sided coin and with tokenism. I get that these institutions have been run for years and are now experiencing this rapid increase in progressive thought of this new generation and are trying to catch up, so when they try and catch up it feels like tokenism and I have grace for that,” she adds.

But, for the 20-year-old creative, award shows aren’t her defining line. If anything, they’re quite the opposite. “As an artist, I never got into it to win a Grammy or win a BRIT, so I don't hold any of it that close. If you are part of it it's fucking incredible but if you're not, it doesn't change the fact that I’m still trying to do what I do regardless of it.” She adds: “There's still a long way to go, but I'm encouraged by how much change I’ve experienced. The fact that with my nominations for the BRITS included Pa Salieu, Rina Sawayama, and me who's half Jamaican and half Chinese. We get frustrated. It's slow but it is changing”

As our coveted award ceremonies become increasingly contested by onlookers and dejected artists, many turn to the question of personal privilege to redress equality in the artistic playing field. “When you're a person of colour who has grown up around middle-class white people your whole life, I’m conscious of it. I know that I’ve grown up within a certain level of privilege. But also, I don't have the privilege because I’m half Jamaican and half Chinese, especially given the Black Lives Matter movement and Asian hate recently,” Griff reflects. “It's shocking how many people would look at my heritage now and still not be okay with it, but, at the same time, I've grown up in a middle-class area. I'm standing on the shoulders of a lot of sacrifices that my mum, as a refugee, has given”.

One Foot in Front of the Other is a wonderful mixtape that hints at what a debut album might sound like. I love the songwriting through the mixtape, though it is the range of production sounds and styles that interests me most. In this Billboard interview, Griff revealed some of her influences for various songs (in her role as producer):

“I still think songwriting is the thing that I love most,” says Griff, who wrote or co-wrote all seven songs on One Foot in Front of the Other and has a production credit on six of the tracks. Originally conceiving of herself as a songwriter for other artists when she was a teen, Griff says that she quickly changed course while meeting with record labels anxious to bring her on board. “I was being offered publishing deals, but also record deals,” she explains. “They're telling me that they want to put down money and sign me as a developing artist, and that's a huge thing to say no to.”

After signing to Warner Records two years ago, Griff began releasing a series of singles, including the spacious stomp-along “Mirror Talk” and the contemplative piano ballad “Good Stuff”; she reached an artistic and commercial peak last January with “Black Hole,” a pristine breakup single that became Griff’s first top 20 hit in the U.K. As she worked on the songs for her debut mixtape in lockdown, Griff also polished her approach to production for the project, which began with looking up YouTube tutorials as a teenager.

Production influences for the mixtape were wide-ranging: “A song like ‘Shade of Yellow,’ it was like, me turning on my Imogen Heap brain,” she explains. “I was listening to a lot of Imogen Heap, and getting the vocoder out. Lorde was a big [influence] — ‘Heart of Gold,’ for me it wasn't a version of ‘Royals,’ but I've always loved ‘Royals’ because it was just drums and vocals, basically. And so ‘Heart of Gold’ is basically just drums and vocals. Haim was a big inspiration, too. But I just try and use odd sounds, percussive elements and orchestral sounds”.

I am going to come to the review soon enough. It is worth providing this build and backstory, so that one gets a bigger and clearer picture of Griff as an artist and person. Sticking with her mixtape, Griff was asked about its themes and creation by Harper’s Bazaar:  

“It seems like Griff is already doing things her own way. Her new seven-track mixtape One Foot in Front of the Other, which she dropped in June, features songs about healing after heartbreak that range from unique, sticky indie-pop melodies to melancholy ballads. Her style looks like a visual artist’s dream: voluminous dresses in bold hues, structural headpieces, a thick bubble ponytail that falls past her waist. She even made her own outfit for her BRIT performance. (“I used to do it all the time,” the former fashion and textiles student says of making her own clothes.)

Your mixtape is titled One Foot in Front of the Other, and you use a metaphor of walking a tightrope in the titular song. It's also what you're doing in your cover art. What drew you to this imagery, and what does it mean to you?

It kind of just happened. The song is just about, when you get older, your body heals a little less and things start going wrong with your body physically, and I think it's the same emotionally. When you do fall over emotionally and you have a setback, getting back up feels like you're walking a tightrope, and it feels like real vulnerability, but all you can do is put one foot in front of the other. It felt like the right sentiment for the whole mixtape.

I was like, "I kind of really want it for the artwork." And so I learned how to walk a tightrope for the photo shoot, which was quite amazing. With everything I do, there's a slight level of drama. But I think it was fun to do it that way. It felt like the right emotion of what my whole mixtape is; whether it's me writing songs about my love life, my relationship with my family, my future, whatever, it's that same kind of tightrope-walking feeling where you're a bit uncertain and you're a bit cautious, but the only thing you can do is [keep going].

PHOTO CREDIT: Zachary Chick for Wonderland. 

I feel like there were a lot of themes of healing and recovery throughout this mixtape. Was it a collection of songs that you had worked on over the years, or was there an event that spurred this writing process?

They were all kind of written over lockdown. It's not like I went through this major heartbreak, even though it kind of sounds like I did. But they were all written in that place of solitude from my front room while I was trying to get in touch with my feelings. So there wasn't any triggering event, but somehow, all of the songs are still really written from the heart, and that's that, like, tone of fragility and recovery. It somehow felt like what I was feeling at the time.

With the last song, "Walk," the mixtape does end on an encouraging, hopeful note. Was that intentional?

Definitely. I think it's funny, "One Foot in Front of the Other" is like the recovery song after "Black Hole." It's part two. I guess the mixtape goes on this journey where you're finding comfort in something else and figuring out other relationships, and then you kind of end on "Walk," where it's this optimistic thing. I was listening to it all again, and it's almost as if "Walk" is someone else telling the voice of who was singing "One Foot in Front of the Other," like, … "You've got it." So I think that's the subconscious narrative throughout the whole thing.

You wrote and produced the mixtape mostly in your room over the last year. Did you feel like you were distraction free, or was it harder to get in the zone?

Both. It was definitely hard. I was excited at first because it's how I started writing music and I [thought], It's gonna be nice because literally no one can bother me and I'm just gonna write songs. And then, I came [home] and I didn't feel inspired at all, because I guess you're just looking at the same four walls. I didn't feel inspired, so it took a second to get there. You write many bad songs for one good song. Then at the same time, it's kind of my safest place to write, and it's where I feel like I write the most unique stuff. "Earl Grey Tea," for example, I don't think I would ever have written that with other writers, because it's so personal. I think eventually I found my rhythm.

What do you hope people take away from One Foot in Front of the Other?

I hope people feel whatever kind of sadness or heartbreak or emptiness that they feel I've expressed and have almost put into words. And I hope they feel like that's been related to in the lyrics. But then, I also hope that they feel some sense of hope and that when they listen to it, there's just a warmth. … I just want people to feel emotion when they listen to it, whether it's happy or sad or warm or nostalgic. I want people to feel and relate to my songs in their own ways”.

I think having control of her music is important to Griff. By writing and producing, there is something more real and authentic about her music. So many artists have others creating songs that are meant to be personal. That is not the case with Griff. She prides herself on being true to her own voice. Going back to that CLASH interview, we get a sense of what Griff is trying to achieve with her music:

“Keeping intuitively engaged in the arts is a constant when it comes to Griff. A conqueror of music production, writing, and fashion, the rising star’s journey captures the image of a young woman coming into her own under the gaze of effortful, melodramatic pop. No matter what eclectic, heartfelt swelling spectacle the singer convincing pulls off next — she confesses to “actually never having my heart broken — the likes of ‘Black Hole’ stands as a shimmering, playful example of open-ended penmanship that ushers in layered meanings to the mundane; “It's up to interpretation as to how much you want to look into it or if you just want to dance to it.”

Emotional accessibility is something that permeates Griff’s work. A quick listen to her previous hits ‘Good Stuff’ and ‘Love Is A Compass’ showcases the singer’s knack for creating her self-described “emotional, uplifting pop”. If anything, the trailblazing musician embodies the mature, moody melodies and confident style found in her female favourites. “When I look at Taylor Swift, I don't know if anyone was speaking to being a young girl in such an honest, profound way which was inspiring for me,” she explains. “I think it’s a similar thing with Lorde. I love how she has managed to do pop, but keep it left. It's the same with HAIM as well; it's got that really strong girl power feel as they’re in complete control of all their music — it's really authentic.”

Inspired by the intimate sounds of styles of her most appreciated pop acts, the Taylor Swift-approved artist has established her songwriting ethos. “I think the best songs come from when you bare your soul a little bit. I don't think I can put anything out that doesn't feel like it's authentic to me”.

So far, there is a lyric video for One Night. I guess an alternative video will follow soon. The tone and sound of the song switches. At the start, we a scratchy riff and a booming percussive beat that has definitely weight and emotional heft. Griff’s voice is smoky and quite heavy with emotion: “How long can I leave the lights in the ceiling on?/And the static from the TV keeps me company till I'm gone/'Cause I rock back and forth/Reciting words that I've said wrong/I swear I've been doing fine/When I'm busy and got things going on/Oh, so girl, what you running from?”. Even though it is a lyric video, Griff appears and is singing. We get to see the emotions on her face and feel a sense of what the song is about. Those lyrics make me think about what has influenced Griff. There has been an event or something that has hit the heroine quite hard. She is going through something at the moment and doubting herself. A lost love or strained relationship seems to be on her mind. The chorus changes to this energised and huge sound. There is this rush of positivity and light that takes the song up to a new gear. The vibrancy and rush of the composition backs words of doubt and regret: “Oh, maybe there's something in the midnight hours/The midnight hours, you know/And maybe there's something in the dead of night/When I'm sleeping alone/Where I always see your face/God, I wish I didn't though/Can I have one night, one night, one night/Where it's just me alone?”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Cal McIntyre for NOTION

One Night is fresh and has a sound that reminds me of Pop and Dance from the 1990s and early-2000s. I am not sure who has got inside of Griff’s head and what is causing this stress. That message of wanting to have one night without recurring visions and questions is very powerful. Griff asks herself some very searching questions: “Is it 'cause I've been feeling guilty all along?/Or is it the gods just tryna tell me to move on?’/'Cause while you're haunting me, that's what you've done/Oh, so girl, what you running from? (Oh)”. With a euphoric vocal and a heavy beat/bass, One Night seems designed to make one dance; to bring people together and create celebration. A lot of great Pop songs have lyrics that are pretty heavy or have anxiety at the heart that is balanced against a vocal and composition that is much more giddy and sunny. It is an interesting emotional and sonic blend. Griff definitely needs a release and sense of freedom: “So I, I know what it feels like/So I can wake up in the daylight/And my chest ain't heavy/'Cause you're not there with me/Tell me when that I will be”. It is clear that there has been this breakdown and things that Griff and her estranged lover have said. Maybe some bad decisions. There does seem to be lingering feelings of affection among the pain and doubt. Whilst one can dig into the lyrics and ask whether Griff has found resolution and peace, you also get carried away on the tide of the sound. Such is its energy and positive spirit, one is helpless but to move along and surrender. A song that you can tell Griff has put a lot of effort and herself. One Night is another fantastic and accomplished song from a young woman who is among the best Pop artists of today.

Prior to wrapping up, there are a few other things that I need to cross off of the list. There is going to be talk about a debut album. Having released a mixtape a couple of months ago, Griff will want time to write an album at her own pace. I will come back to the interview from The Forty-Five that I referenced at the start. They asked Griff about a debut album:

“And has she thought ahead to what a debut album might look like? “It’s just so much music, isn’t it?” she grins. “I want to release an album when everyone’s ready to digest that – especially now we don’t have attention spans for that much music, unless you’re obsessed with an artist.” Though she admits, despite being a child of the streaming generation, full-length records are still important to her and she wants her debut to be “one of the most thought-through pieces of music that I ever put out”.

It’s an ambition that taps into what Griff calls her “overall goal” – to put out the best music possible. “I want to write songs that feel timeless and like they’ve impacted lots of people,” she says. In both her tunes and her visuals, she has big aspirations. She wants to become known as someone who is always “a little bit ahead or a little bit more interesting” than the trends of the day. “It’s such an impossible task,” she laughs. Based on the evidence so far, though, she’s very much on the right track”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Riccardo Castano for GLAMOUR

I will end by mentioning an artist that Griff is pretty keen to collaborate with: Taylor Swift. Perhaps it is not a surprise that Swift is a fan of Griff’s music. Going back to that Billboard interview, the subject of Swift arose. Griff met her at the BRITs:

“I’m so in awe of Griff- you GOTTA go listen to the EXCELLENT Shade of Yellow solo written and produced by Griff,” Taylor Swift posted on her Instagram story on June 18, the day One Foot in Front of the Other was released. One month after meeting Swift at the Brit Awards, the pop superstar’s co-sign of her debut project gave Griff a much-needed shot of confidence.

“I was so down that morning, just really anxious,” she explains. “Like, ’S--t, it's out. I can't tell if it's good or bad anymore, because I've heard it so many times.’” Reading Swift’s message about “Shade of Yellow” allowed the singer-songwriter to exhale. “I was like, ‘Oh, okay. It doesn't matter what anyone thinks. Taylor likes it’”.

I shall leave it there. Griff is surely one of our most promising and prolific talents. She is someone who throws herself into the songwriting and production. With many years in front of her, I feel that she can take time regarding a debut album. There is this thing of people wanting material all of the time! If rushed, she might not produce an album that is meaningful and as good as she wants. One Night is a typically excellent song that highlights her limitless talent! I shall leave it there. Go and follow Griff and listen to as much of her music as possible. A sensational artist who is here for the long stay, it has been great reviewing…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Rashidi Noah for VOGUE

HER latest slice of gold.

___________

Follow Griff

Official:

https://www.officialgriff.com/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/wiffygriffy

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/WiffyGriffy

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/wiffygriffy

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5RJFJWYgtgWktosLrUDzff?autoplay=true

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIY8ucMI3c54m9P35x6UZOw

ALL UNCREDITED PHOTOS:

Griff

TRACK REVIEW: IDER - embarrassed

TRACK REVIEW:

 

 

IDER

PHOTO CREDIT: @danikm

embarrassed

9.4/10

The track, embarrassed, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWBsgXvXHSg

GENRES:

Indie Rock/Electropop

ORIGIN:

London, U.K.

The album, shame, Is available here:

https://weareider.bandcamp.com/album/shame

  LABEL:

IDER

TRACKLISTING:

Cross Yourself

cbb to b sad

Knocked Up

obsessed

BORED

waiting 17 03

embarrassed

Midland’s Guilt

__________

THIS time around…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Daniela K Monteiro

I am spending some reviewing time with a duo that I have been supporting for a little while now. London’s IDER consist of Megan Markwick and Lily Somerville. They have just put out their acclaimed second album, shame. I will come to that soon enough and a track from the album that I wish to explore more. Before then, I want to take things back and look at how IDER got started. There is great chemistry and connection between Markwick and Somerville. As this Gig Goer interview from earlier this year explains, the stage is a very important arena for IDER:

“Somerville and Markwick began their musical relationship during university, songwriting and playing acoustic gigs under the name Lily & Meg. Despite the shutdown of the touring industry in 2020, they still consider performance one of the sustaining pillars in their creative process.

“The stuff that we talk about in our songs… I feel it’s important for us to share that with people and understand other people’s experiences. A massive part of feeling connected to [our] music is living it through other people,” Somerville says.

There’s a fine-tuned synchronicity to the way Somerville and Markwick interact on stage, weaving energy out of thin air and taking strength from the other’s presence. Their songs contain mesmerizing harmonies that provide a guiding heartbeat throughout their catalog. Here are two individuals, immensely talented in their own right, coming together to form the cohesive listening experience that is IDER. This utterly breathtaking dynamic extends into a visual space, powerfully showcased in their music video for Mirror, linked below”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Lottie Turner

It is great to see how successful IDER are now and the sort of fanbase they have! There is no doubting the fact they are one of the country’s best groups. A phenomenal duo whose music has a unique edge, I think we are going to hear a lot more from IDER in the future. When The Independent spoke with them to promote their debut album, Emotional Education, in 2019, we learn more about Markwick and Somerville’s meeting. There is a closeness and sisterly bond between them that comes through when you hear their music:

“While still students, the pair became regulars on the Cornwall gig circuit. But by the time they graduated, choices had to be made. At the urging of a manager they had met locally, the pair moved to Markwick’s native London (Somerville is from the Midlands), where they began working with producers and were eventually signed.

The two now share a two-bedroom flat they describe as “glorious chaos”, one that is overflowing in creativity, improvisation and ideas. It sounds a bit like something out of Homeland, with bits of paper taped haphazardly across every surface, only instead of elaborate conspiracies scrawled over them, they’re lyrics about absent fathers, childhood nostalgia and good sex. “One room is stuffed with all of our clothes and the other with all our instruments and is our studio,” Markwick explains. “It’s just a lot of sh*t everywhere, but it’s great. And we wrote the whole album in there!”

Both women wrote the entirety of Emotional Education themselves, and they’ve developed a fruitful back-and-forth. Many tracks begin as solo endeavours, inspired by personal experiences and feelings, before the pair come together at a certain point in a song’s development to help edit and shape.

“Part of the collaboration is knowing when to step back and let the other person run with something,” says Somerville. “We write a lot separately,” adds Markwick, “but we’ll also act as editors for one another, and ask the right questions to push each other further. We understand each other’s language in a way”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jack Bridgland

Not to labour too heavily on the subject of the connection and harmony between Markwick and Somerville. I feel it is a key dynamic. Before I move on to a new topic, there is another interview that I want to drop in. Back in 2018, the duo spoke with NME about how their friendship is essential to their music. It is central to what makes them gel and bond so closely. As they explain, not only is the chemistry central to everything they do; the importance of harmonisation extends to every live performance:

“How important is your personal chemistry when you’re writing and performing?

Lily: I think that chemistry is everything. I would say it’s the most important thing. It’s at the centre and the heart of what we do. The strength of that is what creates everything that we create. When that is at its strongest is when we create the best stuff and perform the best.

And how does it feel to share that in a live context?

Megan: It feels great, but we’ll often perform imagining the audience isn’t there. That sounds like such a cliche, but it’s so important. The audience could be there or not, but we’d still be vibing off each other and focusing on each other to make the harmony as strong as possible. As an audience member that’s what I’d want to see. I’d want to imagine that if I wasn’t there, that would still be happening”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Rory James

I said I would move on to a new topic, though this one is fairly similar in nature. I feel some bands and duos sound a little flat because there isn’t a great connection or sense of trust. One feels that they are on different pages and, perhaps, are lacking a degree of trust. There is an innate and strong understanding between Markwick and Somerville that is hard to ignore. In this interview from last year, the duo explain how they built a sense of trust:

“You’re connected with each other when it comes to music. In what other ways are you connected with each other?

Megan: We’re very good friends and have the same sense of humor. That’s the first thing that comes to my mind and is probably the most important one. When you have a long working relationship, you have to be able to laugh with one another. We can also finish each others sentences and pick up vibes. We’re a little bit witchy.

How did you build that trust in one another when it comes to performing?

Megan: We practiced with that trust challenge where you have to catch each other when falling backwards and then she dropped me. No, for real. What do we do?

Lily: There was definitely a natural chemistry when we first met and sang together. Performing is something we both loved doing individually, and when we met we really had that strong connection, so it was natural taking it into our performance space. The more our friendship and work accumulation had developed, the more our songwriting and performance became better. That all goes hand in hand. When you write, there’s an element of trust and understanding the movement or dynamic between each of us. There’s a lot of looking in the eyes, which comes from singing and writing together”.

I am keen to progress to IDER’s debut album and talk about that a little before coming onto their new work. Before I move along, there is an interview from The Line of Best Fit that provides something interesting. Markwick and Somerville discuss how lockdown has inspired some of their music. We also learn of the new ‘IDER 2.0’ phase and evolution:

“The secret to this friendship is trust and communication,” says Markwick. “Who we are in our music is based around our friendship and the fact we can be so honest with each other. So, when we’re making music, we bring out the best in each other.”

Somerville and Markwick are speaking to Best Fit via Zoom from their shared London flat. It’s a setting that will, of course, be familiar if you’ve seen the enchanting video for the duo’s comeback single “Saturday”, released back in October. Directed by their longtime friend and collaborator Lewis Knaggs, the video, filmed in their basement, was a haunting, claustrophobic affair, perfectly capturing the song’s themes of lockdown-induced anxiety.

As well as being 2020’s finest lockdown-inspired song, “Saturday” also marked the arrival of what the duo describes as “IDER 2.0”. “It’s still us,” says Markwick. “We’re not starting from scratch. This is the next chapter for us. We feel like we have a real ownership over what we’re doing, more than ever. We co-produced and mixed everything, we’re releasing the new record independently. It’s a really exciting time.”

What’s remarkable is how “IDER 2.0” actually began in the most inauspicious of circumstances. Back in February 2020, Somerville and Markwick, having finally completed the lengthy touring commitments for their debut Emotional Education, had no immediate plans beyond letting their collective hair down. They booked flights to their favourite hedonist capital, Berlin, and arranged to stay at a friend’s flat. For three weeks, at least, the duo had, they fondly recall, “an amazing time. We went out every night. Met so many people. We wrote loads of new music. It was really inspiring”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Lottie Turner

Following their 2017 E.P., Gut Me Like an Animal, came the 2019 debut album, Emotional Education. Although IDER are keen to explain how they have moved on from that album in a sense, it is an important one. Emotional Education was one of my favourite albums of 2019. It was when I first discovered IDER. Coming back to that interview from The Independent, one discovers how the themes and lyrics on the album spoke to the realities of being twentysomethings:

“Both acknowledge the industry’s compulsion to conceal the less glamorous aspects of emerging stardom, but to not talk about their day jobs would clash with their very identities as artists. Emotional Education, the pair’s debut LP, is a gorgeous, lived-in ode to twenty-something ennui, built on the remnants of bad relationships, toxic parental figures and very millennial feelings of angst, restlessness and dissatisfaction.

Lyrically personal yet universal in its emotional reach, the record puts into words a generation’s worth of self-doubt and uncertainty. Standout tracks like “Mirror” and “Clinging to the Weekend” explore the highs and lows of becoming lost in a relationship, while “Saddest Generation” and “You’ve Got Your Whole Life Ahead of You, Baby” attempt to reckon with mental health, depression and perpetual unease in a world full of older people insisting we ought to get over it. “It’s a coming of age record,” Markwick explains. “It’s our early adulthood in one album”.

I think that last line is relevant: the debut from this promising duo was about their early adulthood experience and exploration. It is a brilliant debut that garnered a lot of positive reviews. It definitely brought more attention to their music. Since then, a lot has happened in terms of their sound and lyrical approach.

I will come on to shame when I can. I am sticking with Emotional Education for a bit longer. IDER spoke with Bristol in Stereo in 2019. Whilst, as the article states, Emotional Education did not provide big answers or truths to life’s upheavals, it was very truthful in terms of the friendship between Markwick and Somerville:

“The self-professed “sisters”, who met while studying Popular Music at Falmouth University in 2012, have long reckoned with the idea that songwriting is about more than just making music. The themes explored in Emotional Education have been natural reactions to, or the retellings of, their own life stories.

“There was never any set intention of what the album would be about,” Somerville continues. “I think, in the sense that the music that we write is based so much on our friendship – and how we are able to be so honest with each other – this is how we’re also able to be so honest in our music. That’s essential. So [the album] was always going to be real and honest and raw. We really pushed for that.”

If Somerville and Markwick’s songs on Emotional Education don’t provide solutions to life’s upheavals, such as the repercussions of having an absent father on ‘Busy Being a Rockstar’ or helping a friend who’s struggling with their mental health on ‘Clinging to the Weekend’ – not that it’s incumbent on them to do so anyway – then it’s at least a companion for turbulent times. It’s especially so in the context of young adulthood. Are the anxieties of the so-called ‘quarter-life crisis’, something they’ve discussed much among themselves and their friends?

“Yes, and the question I often ask is: is [this anxiety] particular to our generation?” Somerville says. “Or does it just appear to be because it seems like the last generation have all got it sorted? I don’t know. But I do think that we’re at a point now in Western culture where we just have so much choice and so much opportunity and it’s crippling. Particularly with social media. There are so many options, there’s so much freedom, but also so much pressure to be something and achieve something and be a certain way,” she says. “I do think it’s like quite a difficult time to be young and figure out who you are in that kind of setting. It’s not just about survival anymore. It’s about, like, ‘who are you?’ and ‘what are you going to do for the world?’”

Much of this examination of identity rears its head in IDER’s single, ‘Mirror’, which was released last October and features on the album. Born of a relationship breakdown, the chorus lyrics read: “I keep looking in the mirror, ’til I see myself, I see myself […] I wake up in the middle of the night, I don’t like the stranger in the bathroom light”.

I feel lockdown has been different for every artist. Some have found it beneficial in terms of how they write and what they have got from it. Others have found it very hard. All can agree that it has been very disruptive and turbulent. DORK caught up with IDER in April 2020 to see how the (at that point early) lockdown was affecting them and their music:

“Have you had a chance to think about new music at all? It must be easier now we’re all on lockdown.

Lockdown has actually been pretty mental – we were staying at a friend’s place in Berlin after tour, and both caught coronavirus so had to quarantine out there. It was intense! We’re back in London now and yeah singing together, as always, is keeping us sane.

Are you able to write and record songs while at home? What’s your set up like?

We have a cute set up in our bedroom which we’ve had for a while, where we can rehearse, write and demo.

How has self-isolating impacted you guys so far? Have you had to cancel much?

It’s definitely been tough; we’ve both experienced our mental health taking a knock. We have not become bakers, fitness fanatics, fine artists and have avoided IG Live like the plague, so we’re battling with daily feelings of guilt. But feel very grateful to have each other and discovered a new level of compatibility. We were due to support Tegan and Sara across NA this summer and unfortunately that has been cancelled”.

Coming back to that earlier Gig Goer interview, IDER discussed how their music had changed since Emotional Education. Perhaps the fact the duo co-produced shame accounts for that shift:

“The shift to a more internal music-making process is a fascinating development. “Our way of working has evolved in favor of this situation,” Somerville points out. 2019’s Emotional Education is an absolutely gorgeous debut album, playing into the duo’s strengths of vocal harmonies, pulsing beats and dreamy soundscapes. shame differs by playing into the strengths of a more self-sufficient version of IDER. “The biggest difference is that we’ve co-produced [shame]. It just feels and sounds—even more than our first record—like us. It has a really strong sense of IDER and what that sounds like. I think that’s probably quite natural, you grow into your own sound,” Markwick says.

“We’ve really enjoyed that process and creatively we’ve felt very free in saying what we want to say, in things sounding how we want them to sound.”

Somerville and Markwick are unapologetic, blunt and confident. It is apparent in their presence on stage and off, and there’s a beautiful assurance to their shared experiences and working relationship. It comes to the surface through deeply personal lyrics, yet another key difference from their earlier days as Lily & Meg. “We’d often dodge the actual point… because maybe we weren’t as confident in what we want[ed] to say,” Markwick adds.

“With [Emotional Education] we were quite obsessed with the ‘right’ way of doing things. It also came from a fear of ‘this is the first album we’ve ever made.’ This time around it definitely feels much more like: ‘fuck it, this is how we want it; this is how we want it to sound and it sounds good to us.’ It definitely feels like the most IDER yet.”

Finally, IDER 2.0 is upon us. We were treated to a stripped down performance of Cross Yourself, lead single off of shame, at this year’s virtual SXSW music festival. With additional production by Salka Valsdóttir (Daughters of Reykjavík, CYBER), the single’s strongest feature is the gorgeous juxtaposition of flowing harmonies alongside punchy lyrical and percussive elements. “Cross Yourself is a reflection on how we search for purpose,” IDER shares, “how we often attach meaning to things or like the idea of something external to believe in, in exchange for believing in ourselves.”

IDER are owning their art and taking responsibility for their message. shame will be their second album, but it will also be their first free from the industry-imposed limitations that can come from working with a major label. With any creative endeavor there is risk. It is this risk—along with IDER’s self-assuredness, vulnerability and openness—that has us grasping for more, unable to let go”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Matilda Hill-Jenkins

I am getting closer to the actual review itself. I feel it is important to give some background and lead-up to where a particular artist is now. It provides context and greater depth that allows us better understanding. Coming back to that interview from The Line of Best Fit, and there is a section that relates to social media. The duo discuss why they cut back their social media interaction during lockdown:

“The subject of shame pops up again, inevitably, as the duo discuss their relationship with social media. Ambivalent about social media at the best of times (they’ve spoken candidly about its impact upon their mental health), Somerville and Markwick, over the past year of lockdown, had firmly cut back on their online activity.

“During the lockdown, we tried our best to cut down on social media,” says Somerville. “You poke your head in for a few minutes and it’s just incredibly overwhelming. I read something Matt Haig said about this, about how this constant bombardment of information is so unhealthy. It’s like there’s this enormous event in the media every day, ten times a day. He was asking how are we supposed to initiate change when we’re constantly being hit by new information, new traumas, 24 hours a day? I agree. It’s like we’re all in this constant state of adrenaline, and not in a real state, as humans, to create change. Last summer, when all the protests and online campaigns happened around Black Lives Matter, it did feel like a real change, like a genuine shift. But the fear is that something new can quite quickly take its space. How much long-term change can we make when the nature of social media is so fast, so based around our short attention spans?”

All this talk about the online world leads, inevitably, to IDER’s craving for the real world. It’s been well over a year since the duo played their last official live show, wrapping up their Emotional Education tour in Dublin. For all their reputation as a great recording outfit, a band that treat the studio as their musical playground, IDER have always been a most formidable live proposition. During the writing and recording of shame, it was the prospect of playing those songs live, when normality resumed, that really motivated the duo”.

It is noticeable how there is a new direction with shame. I feel it natural that every artist changes between their first and second albums. It is a sense of curiosity I suppose; not wanting to stand still and repeat what you did first off. Perhaps lockdown and the pandemic accelerated IDER’s sense of autonomy and independence. Once more coming to that interview from The Line of Best Fit, Markwick explains how IDER have shifted and grown since their debut:

“As Markwick alluded to earlier, it’s a collection of songs marked by a newfound sense of autonomy and ownership. Both in a business sense (it’s being released independently, with distribution from Believe) and, of course, from a musical perspective. All written, recorded and co-produced by the duo (with additional production from Salka Valsdóttir), shame builds upon their debut’s sleek synth-pop blueprint whilst adding layers of thunderclap percussion, tropical pop exuberance and dense, quixotic soundscapes.

“We felt we could be more experimental this time, especially with the production,” says Markwick. “I think that’s only natural, for a band to gradually grow into their sound and become more sure of their identity. When you’re making your debut, you can become focused on doing things the right way. This time, though, we felt free to go wherever we wanted. If something sounded right to us, we just went with it.”

IDER have been very much vindicated in trusting their own instincts. Much like their debut, it’s a record that rewards with repeated listens – especially in the lyrical department. At once intimate and expansive, these songs will resonate with anyone who’s ever felt cripplingly insecure in the first flushes of love (“Embarrassed”), is searching for purpose (new single “Cross Yourself”), or who’s struggled to reconcile with their youthful idealism (“Knocked Up”)”.

Even though it is not the song I am reviewing from shame, I feel BORED is a very important one. As we discover in this article from Beats Per Minute, the track arose from a sense of frustration with the music industry:  

“‘BORED’ was written in a stream of consciousness when we were feeling particularly pissed off with the music industry; all of the lip service and the many cooks in the kitchen having an opinion for the sake of it. But on a more general level, the song addresses areas of corporate power, false advertising and the wider issue of ‘perfection’ and control. The chorus acts as a relief with the line “won’t you fail with me” – our mantra to embrace failure in order to succeed.”

Underscored by a rattling and rolling drum line, Megan Markwick and Lily Somerville take the opportunity to reel off all the things that’ve been pissing them off, a bit like Bob Dylan in “Subterranean Homesick Blues” or R.E.M. in “It’s The End of the World…”, but with a contemporary pop flair. From the personal (“I’m bored of my phone and the way I use it”), to the political (“I’m bored of the way we think we’re saving the planet”) to the trivial (“I’m bored of the coffee I buy at the station”), and many clearly aimed at music industry professionals they’ve experienced, too (“I’m bored of the wages you stuff up your nose”), they present a breathless list of modern pressure points. Despite the audible sneer in their delivery, they never raise their voices above ice cool, generating more power and presence with each new item. This tension breaks in the free-fall chorus, where they step back for a moment, collect themselves, and simply sing “won’t you fail with me?” Given all the stresses they’ve just laid out, it’s a mightily alluring proposition”.

I am going to move it on and review embarrassed. It is my favourite song from shame. I think it is one of the most honest and striking tracks from the album. One can clearly envisage the scenes being sung on embarrassed. I really like the introduction to the song. There is an electronic pulse that sort of sounds like a guitar mixed with a sitar. It is an unexpected flavour that hooks you in. I was not expecting that sort of start! With a great percussive beat underneath, there is such richness and layers to the introduction. That sound continues as the first verse comes in. The words come out as a flow; almost stream of consciousness. The delivery is quite breathy and sensual, yet there is a sense of anxiety lingering underneath: “How much of my clothes can I take off?/How much of my body can I show you?/I don't wanna waste this moment in case you like me/But I'm scared I'll make you go and/You're looking amazing in your Friday night best/And I'm thinking 'bout dropping the cards from my chest/When they call last orders and it's time to go home”. After that verse has been delivered, a trippy and almost Trip-Hop beat emerges. The line “Don’t leave me alone” is sung twice…though there is a gap between each line. Following the first verse – where there were no big gaps and it had its own tone -, that line is punctuated and seems to be of the utmost importance. Not being left alone. Seizing this moment and not wanting things to go wrong. One can feel a real sense of emotion and need in that single line! By singing it twice, it is reinforced. The second time it is performed, one feels even more of a punch and sense of gravitas.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Rory James

I am not sure who this person is that the heroine meets. Is this a friend or someone that means a lot, or is it a first-time encounter with someone who is quite intoxicating? The second verse provides some clarity. It does appear that this person has been in the frame for a little while now. The combination of intimacy, fear, desire and hesitation creates this incredible mood and sense of tension: “How much of the truth can I tell you?/How much of the mystery is part of the game?/You've been the top of my favourite for so long now/But suddenly I feel like I don't know your name and/I wanna slip these words right out of my lips/How I'm thinkin' 'bout droppin' the pants from my hips/I can't count the timеs I've imagined this”. It seems like there is this transitional need. Someone who has been a friend for a while is now being seen in a different light. The vocal gets a little lighter and hotter as this declaration is delivered: “I don't wanna be your friend no more, I don't wanna know you like this/I just wanna kiss you on your floor/I don't wanna feel embarrassed/I don't wanna be your friend no more, I don't wanna know you like this/I just wanna kiss you on your floor, I don't wanna feel embarrassed”. Quite a lot of story and background is packed in. We get a real sense of this complicated situation. Two people in different places. You are hoping that there is some sort of breakthrough.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Lottie Turner

One definitely get a sense of history between the two: “I'm so shy at saying goodbye when I really care, I think I'd rather die/And I never knew what baggage was until I said it was over before I tried/I'm so annoyed I'm shouting about this, why can't I put my heart where my mouth is?/I see your face in the crowd you look so embarrassed/Fuck is this the first time you're hearing about it?/I don't wanna be your friend no more, I don't wanna know you like this/I just wanna kiss you on your floor, I don't wanna feel embarrassed/I don't wanna be your friend no more, I don't wanna know you like this/I just wanna kiss you on your floor, I don't wanna feel embarrassed”. The vocals for the aforementioned section, again, have a different sound. I like how we get these different passages. Rather than repeat the vocal sound and feel, each verse has its own feel. Darker and more sensual than anything that came before, one can feel this real sense of movement and emotion. After delivering the lines “I don't wanna be your friend no more, I don't wanna know you like this/I just wanna kiss you on your floor, I don't wanna feel embarrassed”, there is another change. Those lines have processed vocals and repeated like a mantra. As the chorus, we get the sense that things as they are stressful and not working. This palpable need to find satisfaction and end the tension. One is gripped until the end. I wonder how things worked out and whether they got together? I really like embarrassed. It is a brilliant song from IDER’s…

FANTASTIC new album.

___________

Follow IDER

PHOTO CREDIT: Matilda Hill-Jenkins 

Official:

https://weareider.com/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/weareider

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/weareider

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/we.are.ider/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/2LOwKJMjuv7VsprtYaFzl0?si=DL2LqrrTRIufq_anfwCCxw&dl_branch=1

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv8KgX89OA0yyPVAgoxx5lw

Bandcamp:

https://weareider.bandcamp.com/

ALL UNCREDITED PHOTOS:

IDER

TRACK REVIEW: Amyl and The Sniffers - Security

TRACK REVIEW:

 

 

Amyl and The Sniffers

PHOTO CREDIT: Jamie Wdziekonski 

Security

9.6/10

The track, Security, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5DZA2NLYis

GENRES:

Alternative/Indie/Pub Rock

ORIGIN:

Melbourne, Australia

The album, Comfort to Me, is available from 10th September. Pre-order here:

https://amyl-and-the-sniffers.myshopify.com/

LABEL:

B2B Records

TRACKLISTING:

Guided by Angels

Freaks to the Front

Choices

Security

Hertz

No More Tears

Maggot

Captial

Don’t Fence Me In

Knifey

Don’t Need a Cunt (Like you to love me)

Laughing

Snakes

__________

THIS is a band…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Charles Engelken for DIY

that I have been meaning to review for a while now. Amyl and The Sniffers consist of Amy Taylor, Bryce Wilson, Dec Martens and Gus Romer (formerly Calum Newton was in the band). Hailing from Melbourne, this is a rare chance for me to review an Australian band. Not that there is a scarcity of great Australian talent: the country is producing some amazing talent. I think the media do not pay as much attention to the country as they do the U.K. and U.S. That is a shame! Even though Amyl and The Sniffers come from Melbourne, they are an international band who have a big fanbase in the U.K. The band have spent time recording in the U.K. and performed here a bit. I am going to focus for a bit on their lead, Amy Taylor. Before that, it is worth highlighting Amyl and The Sniffers’ creative process. For this, I am bringing in an interview CLASH produced in 2019:

“Singer Amy Taylor writes lyrics live in the rehearsal room, while Declan and drummer Bryce Wilson hammer out lean pop-punk riffs that manage to be both incendiary and uncannily danceable. They have this one song about having a pushbike stolen, and I wonder how it came about.

“Nobody’s bike actually got stolen,” recalls Declan. “That never happened. There’s a band back in Melbourne, mates of ours, called WOD. The singer of WOD ripped off the bass player’s girlfriend’s haircut, like, just straight up copied her look, and then wrote a fucken song called ‘I Stole Your Haircut’."

 "They changed it to 'Bike' because they thought it would work better I guess, and we thought it would be funny to write a response.”

Apparently the whole poppers-name thing does raise the odd eyebrow when going through customs, especially in more drug-paranoid places like the USA.

“But, like my mum always says,” begins Declan, adorably, “If they let a band called ‘Megadeth’ in then they should absolutely let Amyl & the Sniffers in.”

And by the way, if any poppers manufacturers are thinking of endorsing the band: “Absolutely, if you give us a million bucks each. I’d probably be the face of poppers for a few hundred, to be fair.”

They’re having fun on their adventures, that much is clear.

“We’re always the worst people in the room. We’re always the loudest, the drunkest. Our tour manager especially is an absolute nuisance. A rascal. He sprays us with beer, and like, always eats more food than anybody. Like, more than whole other bands put together."

So they're keeping it real. “We’re just doing what we used to do back home in Australia, at the pub, but with more encouragement.”

As we finish chatting, and as I sense we’re getting on quite well, I tell Declan Martens my favourite joke about Australian people. Basically: What’s the difference between Australia and a glass of milk? If you leave a glass of milk out for a bit it’ll develop a culture”.

In Amy Taylor, we have this incredible lead that is a fireball of energy, anger and personality! One of my concerns is that, in this modern age, we do not really have these band leaders who are controversial or have that magnetism. Once was the time when one would find these figures with ease. Now, because I think music is more sanitised and the scene has changed so much, it is very rare. Taylor is definitely someone who has the spirit of Punk running through her veins. In 2019, Oyster spoke with Taylor. They asked her about Punk, and how music sort of came into her life:

“Amy Taylor is everything I wish I was. She has bleached hair and her mouth is always open. She takes up space and doesn’t apologise. She stands in front of people and screams from the soft centre of her heart and the angry pit of her stomach. And then she lands a Gucci campaign. As the frontwoman of one of Australia’s favourite young bands of the moment, Amyl and the Sniffers, she relentlessly demands beer, power and “to be treated right”. In our interview, however, she demands nothing. She talks honestly, ripe with contradiction, says she isn’t “heaps smart” (arguable!), and details the band’s self-titled debut album, which has been punching all of us in the head since its release in May.

 Hayley Morgan: Is punk fantasy for you? I mean, when you were growing up did you see it as a sort of place where you could go and be exactly who you wanted to be?

Amy Taylor: That’s hard to answer because I’m not sure that there’s just one meaning of punk — it’s subjective, I reckon. For one person, it could just be a genre; for another, it’s rebelling against the government; for another, it’s the way they dress; for another, it’s staunch activism. It really can mean anything and it depends on who’s looking at it. I’m like a lot of people and I’m in a constant limbo of thinking nothing matters. As in: live free, do what you want, we’re all gonna die, so what does it matter anyway? Which is true, but on the other hand, I have the need to help people who have it worse than me, or who are getting fucked over worse than me. The world’s really crazy. But, to answer that, and it’s obviously just my opinion, I reckon the world can be anything extended from your mind. I think legit anything and everything is a fantasy — everything is a choice and just thoughts. That’s true to me at the moment anyway. I mean, the whole world is like a scam, or a fantasy, like a video game or something. I definitely think the music scene and going to live gigs was one of the places where I could be me. It’s a social setting, but you don’t have to talk to anyone. Everyone’s there for a common reason and has something in common, so there’s a connection, but you don’t have to be a certain way. You can just be as you feel and the energy of a song can let you be you. I’m influenced by a lot of different genres and different things, and what I love and what I want to be is always changing. So, it probably isn’t singularly punk music that has been a place for that, but it’s 100% one of them.

PHOTO CREDIT: Matilda Hill-Jenkins 

What do you reckon it was about your upbringing that opened the gates to music? What gave you the guts to get up in front of a crowd and belt out what you’re feeling?

I don’t really know. It’s not like I was always confident — I couldn’t have done it when I was in high school. I first got into going to shows when I was about 14. There wasn’t much to do in the town where I grew up, other than go to the beach, which was nice, but I went to a hardcore all-ages show or some shit and I loved the anger and energy, and I was attracted to the violence. It scared me and also made me really excited. I’ve always felt comfortable just doing things that I like or wearing shit I like. I just felt comfortable being me — sometimes more than others and other times I feel like a fucking wanker. But when we started, especially around the boys in the band, it never crossed my mind what other people would think and I liked the challenge of trying something new. And, to be honest, it just doesn’t scare me. I really don’t give a shit if I make a mistake — I think mistakes are magic. It’s just nice to express energy, and I love music so it’s not really something that crossed or crosses my mind. That’s something I was never taught.

Would you say that being onstage grants you permission to do or say stuff that you normally wouldn’t?

Sometimes. I’m not heaps smart, but the music world and touring world has taught me a lot of shit. So because I know more, I’ll say more, whereas if I don’t know, I try to keep my mouth shut. I definitely feel powerful onstage — when I first started, and we’d play to not many people, it was sick. I could just nick someone’s beer and they wouldn’t complain. But I think saying stuff on stage is the same as talking behind someone’s back — you should always be able to say it to someone’s face. Anything I do onstage, I would want to feel just as confident to do it offstage. Not that I always do. I’m only one person in the end.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Charles Engelken for DIY 

I ask this not looking for a feminist pull quote, but rather looking for a positive update: is being a woman in punk, onstage and in a crowd, still a bit shit?

Hmm, you know what? Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. Again, it’s never something that crossed my mind before I started and I never really let it get to me. I don’t give my energy to any of that shit. I don’t think you can control what people say or do or think. I think leading by example is better. I just focus on what I want to be doing and how I want it to look. I love taking up space with my femininity. But at the same time, I’ve definitely punched a few blokes for being too handsy while we’re playing, and people definitely talk shit all the time, but why would I give that power? There’s plenty of space for everyone and, even if not, I’ll still exist. Willie Nelson wore a shirt once that said: ‘Why teach a pig how to sing? You’ll annoy the pig and waste your time’”.

I am keen to bring in more interviews that spotlight Taylor, as she is someone who is compelling and always great value. Someone very honest and without a filter – in a good way -, you get this very genuine person who reminds one of those band leads who were filled with personality and punch. As I said, one does not really see it much now. One can tell that Amyl and The Sniffers are going to be around for a long time yet.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Matilda Hill-Jenkins for Loud and Quiet

I think the authenticity we see in Amy Taylor comes from her upbringing. By all accounts, she had a very ordinary childhood. A very working-class background. When Loud and Quiet chatted with Amy Taylor a couple of years back, she revealed (among other things) details about her childhood, how the band clicked, and what drew her to Punk:

“I don’t know how to say this without coming across like a bit of a dickhead, but my family are like, really Western Suburbs. Even though we lived in a really hippy spot, we were all about beers and cars. Basically, we were ‘us’ if you know what I mean?

My dad is a crane driver, so he gets to work all over. When we were kids, he used to work the tip, and I remember him bringing back all this cool shit; like stuff that he found in the skips or whatever. Mostly it was just random shit like couches, but I can remember him bringing back some really cool stuff like bikes and whatever. One time he brought home a billy cart, which was really fun, and I can kind of remember him bringing home a big carton of out of date Coca Cola for some reason.

My dad loves old cars, so our lives revolved around eating ice-cream and looking at fucking muscle cars, which, to be fair, I really loved growing up. I think that seeped into my parents’ music taste. I mean, they both have a great taste in music, but they’re not music nerds or anything like that. Mostly they buy records with titles like ‘20 of the best beer songs’. Y’know, like the ones with a picture of a beer can on the front that’s just old rock, like KISS and Toto and what have you.

I moved there when I was 18 or 19 or whenever and I absolutely love living there. I don’t get to be there all that much these days, but whenever I’m back home in Australia I try to spend a least a couple of days there. There’s always plenty of really good up and coming bands to check out and plenty of people who are up for fucking about and playing music.

When we first started, we all lived in the same house together. The boys all played in other bands, but one night, as I had a drum kit in my room for some reason, we started fucking around making music, and our group has started from there.

I think that’s why I’ve always been attracted to punk. I can remember the feeling of finding this space where you were allowed to be really gnarly and shit, and being like, ‘oh shit, this is what I need’. I mean, playing live lets me get this aggression out of me.  Don’t get me wrong, I try to treat everyone with respect – like give people the benefit of the doubt or whatever – but if people are being an arsehole, I don’t kind of see it as fun. It opens up a new avenue for a bit of rage”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Charlie Hardy

One interesting thing I want to bring up is what it is like interviewing Amyl and The Sniffers. It is not only their leader who keeps you on your toes and makes for a memorable interviewee. The entire band seem to be pretty rowdy and boisterous! HAPPY caught up with the band in 2019. It is perhaps unspringing that, as a pub band, they do not have the same routine and discipline as other groups. It appears that there is no limit to their stamina and energy levels! This passage from the interview caught my eye:

“At about 2:15pm, drummer Bryce Wilson and guitarist Dec Martens met me out the front of the pub with a pack of Tooheys longnecks in hand. We sat on the side of the road with our longies, chatting about their Sydney gig from the night before.

After a huge set at Sydney’s Paddington RSL with C.O.F.F.I.N and Dress Up, Dec and Bryce slept in the hallway of their hotel, while vocalist Amy Taylor and bassist Gus Romer continued partying with the other bands.

10 minutes or so later, two Ubers pulled up outside The Unicorn. From them emerged the remaining two members of Amyl & The Sniffers, two members of C.O.F.F.I.N, and three members of Dress Up. None of them had slept, and they were all still pissed”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jenn Five for DIY

I am going to work my way forward to the new song, Security. It is from their upcoming second album, Comfort to Me. I will be interested to see what the album is like and whether it is a push away/evolution from their debut – or whether the template it roughly the same. In the space of a few years, Amyl and The Sniffers have strengthened and progressed. Coming back to that interview from Loud and Quiet, Amy Taylor looked back in a sort of amazement at the fact the band, on their first E.P. or two, were very different to what we hear today:

“Based in Melbourne, her band have emerged from Australia’s east coast fertile punk scene with a love of hot pants, mullets, faded metal t-shirts and a sound that sits somewhere between AC/DC, The Runaways and Dolly Parton. However, while the band’s fashion sense and musical influences might recall the low-rent thrills of the 1970s pub rock scene, Amyl and The Sniffers mostly blow through any misplaced nostalgia with a Ramones-like commitment to playing punk rock that is loud, fast and razor sharp.

Due to release Monsoon Rock, their debut album, on Rough Trade in May, Taylor is the first to admit that the band is currently in the middle of a transitional period. Writing, self-recording and releasing 2016’s Giddy Up EP in the space of 12 hours, they’re trying to take a little bit more time in the studio these days. Then again, if the recently released title track is anything to go by all the added tea breaks have done nothing to dull the band’s relentless, breakneck energy.

“It’s kind of funny to listen to that first EP now,” laughs Taylor when we talk about how the band has developed from their first few releases. “I mean, I know it’s only been a couple of years but we couldn’t even play our instruments properly when we started. It’s crazy to think how far we’ve come”.

As things are opening up more and we are seeing artists gig again, Amyl and The Sniffers will have a busy diary! It has been pretty hectic for them since they started out. This DIY interview struck me, as we get a portrait of a very immediate and youthful band who, seemingly, have few boundaries. That is something that makes them so engaging and fresh. However, there is great discipline in the camp. Even though the interview was conducted in 2019 (as many I am sourcing from were), they have grafted hard to get where they are:

“2018 was essentially one non-stop tour for the band, travelling to the other side of the world and back to capitalise on the early hype of their EPs. The sheer speed of this ascent to fame meant that they were left a little overwhelmed, Dec says, perched on a windowsill. “It was pretty much like being thrown into the deep end with it all. We were still learning what sort of toll it takes on your body and your mental health, constantly moving and touring and performing every night.”

It’s to be noted, however, that the guitarist makes these declarations of newfound maturity with a glazed, hungover stare into the middle distance. “I got back to the hotel at 9.30 this morning. Just… doing drugs,” he shrugs.

PHOTO CREDIT: Sacha Lecca for Rolling Stone 

His point is not that he’s realised he needs to tone down the excess to cope with the stresses of constant touring, he says. More like the opposite. “I’ve definitely stepped it up a little bit now that I know what it takes. I feel more comfortable being able to go out and party a bit more. I had this epiphany the other day that the van won’t leave without me.”

Though Amy’s volatile charisma and raw, endless energy made them explosive from the outset, Amyl and the Sniffers have also had to put in the graft. “Amy was such a good performer from the get go, just to keep up and keep my spot in the band I had to get good at guitar,” admits Dec. “So I practised a lot, just to make sure that we had more than one strength, or at least there wasn’t a weakness.”

Their album, for example, is more coherent and direct than their EPs. Amy’s lost none of the brash humour that made ‘Big Attraction’ and ‘Giddy Up’ so enjoyable, but on their next release she demands to be taken more seriously. She demonstrates the full extent of her ambition, and of her abilities, lifting the Sniffers’ vicious brand of rock ‘n’ roll from scrappy punk to something more cohesive and breathlessly exciting. The riffs have got tighter, and she seizes the opportunity they present.

Tonight, the live set is chaotic, but never out of their control. After ten seconds, the crowd are banging their heads, but it’s not quite the pandemonium we’ve come to expect. As Dec spins a rollicking guitar solo halfway through opener ‘Monsoon Rock’, Amy spots that the fuse has yet to be lit, and duly launches herself amongst them. If no one else is going to start the mosh, she seems to think, it might as well be her. She’s only in the audience for a few seconds, but the damage is done”.

I want to spend a bit of time on the incredible debut album, Amyl and The Sniffers. It introduced so many people to the band. It was, in my view, one of 2019’s best albums. Circling back to that HAPPY interview, Amy Taylor and Dec Martens discussed what it was like finishing their debut album:

“HAPPY: Congrats on getting the album done. How does it feel?

AMY: It’s so exciting. We’ve finally done a full-length. It’s so great to get out new music.

HAPPY: You re-did all the songs on it, right?

DEC: Yeah, we did actually. How’d you know that? We demoed the whole album in December 2017 with Joey from King Gizzard at the Flightless studio, and from that, only Cup Of Destiny got put out. The rest of them we weren’t really happy with. We were still new to the whole recording process. Along the way, we got more labels signed, and we were touring a whole lot more, so we ended up recording the whole thing again in November last year, 2018.

HAPPY: For the new recordings, you recorded with Ross Orton in Sheffield. Had you ever worked in that kind of environment before?

DEC: No, that was the first time.

HAPPY: What was it like entering that world?

DEC: It was cool.

AMY: It was still pretty low-key. It was just one room, and Dave the engineer lived there. It just felt like a bedroom that was done up.

DEC: Yeah, it was really similar to a bedroom recording. It was really quite simple. We were still pretty pressed for time, so we were doing one song a day. It wasn’t like we were sitting around discussing what we were going to do. So in that way, it was pretty similar to every other recording we’ve done. We’re used to that smash-it-out method. The big difference was that this space was purpose-built for recording. When we did it with Gizzard, it stank of Gizzard sweat. No ventilation in that room.

HAPPY: Why Sheffield? Was that a label thing?

DEC: Yeah, well that’s where Ross lives, and Ross has worked with our label before. Our A&R at Rough Trade are friends with Ross, and he’d never done a Rough Trade album before, so he wanted to do one. Then the people at Rough Trade said we’d be a good fit, and we just did a video chat with him, and he was cool. So we said, “yeah, let’s go with this guy.” We already had flights to England booked, so we thought we might as well go along with it. And it ended up being a really good fit. It’s not exactly who you’d expect us to record with, but I’m really glad we did.

HAPPY: So capturing the live sound was the main goal of this album?

DEC: Yep, that’s our strength. I think we’d all admit that. It’s definitely not the songs… our songs suck. Just kidding. But we’re defined by our live shows, so the goal was to keep the record as live as possible.

HAPPY: Overseas, particularly in the UK and Europe, everyone’s really into Aussie pub music…

DEC: Yeah totally!

HAPPY: Why do you think that is?

AMY: I think people just like something different. People think it’s exotic”.

One might assume the view that Amyl and The Sniffers are quite a ragged band in terms of their look. Not to step into cliché territory but, as an Australian pub band, how many would pin them as stylish and cool!? Maybe there would be a few…though many might peg them as being a bit tatty and ultra-casual. In fact, Amyl and The Sniffers are a stylish bunch! The MALESTROM chatted with the band a while back. The subject of fashion cropped up:

“TM: How important is style to the band? Because you have quite a definitive look…

Dec: It’s not super important, but it’s something that we value if you know what I mean. When we first recruited Gus to be in the band, before we heard him play bass, he had a leg up on everyone else because he did had a mullet. It’s just this thing I’m really passionate about and I think Amy is too, we had to do some convincing with Bryce.

For me I never did it to be different, that’s just how I wanted my hair and everyone else should have their hair this way too. If it became mainstream and really popular, it wouldn’t bother me.

We all talk about each other’s looks and clothes and we go shopping with each other and every time someone gets new clothes we compliment if we like them and help each other choose what we get.

So I guess the look is important, but not in a way that we take it too seriously. It’s just all part of the passion and the music and the sound and the look you know”.

As much as Amyl and The Sniffers love recording and laying down their music, one knows that they live for live performances. That chance to get out there and connect with the crowds. Sticking with The MALESTROM, and some important touring questions were posed:

“TM: Do you guys have a rider that you ask for?

Dec: So we just ask for normal beers, no ales, just lagers, Pilsners. And then a bottle of vodka or Jameson depending on how we feel, what the night before was. Usually, if it’s the night before a big night then we have vodka and if we’re going to have a big night we have Jameson’s. And we also ask for fruit and vegetables for the next day and a couple of corn chips.

TM: What’s your go-to lager? Do you ask for Aussie beers?

Dec: In Australia we get VB, that’s my favourite beer. Usually, in America, we get PBR and Modelo. In England, it’s just Red Stripe and Fosters.

TM: Do you miss any Aussie home comforts when you’re out on tour?

Dec: The Last tour I took Vegemite with me, but I didn’t use it as much as I thought I would. And every time I flew into America they’d always open up my bag and check it. So I thought I may as well not bring that anymore.

I mean we’re only away for six weeks this time, so there’s nothing you really miss. Also the Crobar in London, we just went there, they have VB, so we had all the Rough Trade family buying us VBs all night”.

I have never seen Amyl and The Sniffers on stage; something that I want to rectify if they are playing in the U.K. anytime soon. From what I have heard and read, they are one of the most intoxicating bands to watch. One imagines that their live sets are even more electric than what we hear on record. GIGWISE spoke with the Melbourne crew in 2019. They talked about their connection to the stage; what it was like being signed to a pretty big and reputable label:

“Nevertheless, it’s on stage where Amyl and the Sniffers feel more at home right now.

“I’d definitely say we’re more of a live band,” declares Romer. “I think this album represents a whole new thing compared to the previous two EPs and single releases. The production is way different, and even the songwriting process has changed as well.”

Singer Amy Taylor, a diminutive presence in her own right, is quick to reaffirm this. “We’re definitely more of a live band. Even our first recordings. We only put them out because we wanted to get booked so bookers knew what we sounded like and bands too so we could play with them. It’s the best feeling ever! Even if there were only ten people watching us every night I’d still feel the same way.”

 Now firmly at the forefront of Rough Trade’s glowing roster. Not only for 2019 but also well into the future. While signing to such a prestigious label would be a daunting prospect to some, Amyl and the Sniffers appear to have taken it all in their stride.

“There were a fair few labels talking to us at the time,” admits Romer. “Geoff (Travis) heard about us after The Great Escape then he saw us in Hamburg along with Jeannette (Lee) from the label. After that, Rough Trade was the only place we wanted to be. They’ve done some incredible releases and have an amazing history. They take super good care of us and everyone is lovely. It’s awesome.”

“We love working them now. We’ve become part of the family,” adds Taylor. “It’s a really strange thing for me. Coming from Australia, I didn’t know that much about overseas record labels so it was really exotic and foreign coming to meet them but I’m so glad we went with them because that’s what it’s like; being part of a family. They come to our gigs and we just hang out.”

Having experienced Europe and in particular the UK on a regular basis over the past year or so, this part of the world has become something of a second home to the band. So much in fact that the prospect of relocating is something they’re seriously considering”.

The video for Security sees Amy Taylor in a graveyard and psyching herself up. It is an interesting visual start! Shot and directed by John Angus Stewart, one is instantly intrigued. The song itself begins with punched and rousing percussion; a sound that awakens you and gets the feet moving. I love the simplicity, charm, vividness and realness of the lyrics. Even from the first verse, you are caught by Taylor’s amazing voice. It carries so much weight and honesty: “Security will you let me in your pub/I’m not looking for trouble/I’m looking for love/I’m not looking for harm/I’m looking for love/Will you let me in your hard heart, let me in your pub”. There is a great, hypnotic wave of a riff that propels the song. The band have always been masterful when it comes to hooks. Perhaps Security is not quite as raw and stripped-back as some of their earlier songs. Security is great because it is raw and biting, yet there is a bit of polish that means the song sounds somehow bigger and more important. That may seem strange. I listen to the track and it balances Amyl and The Sniffers’ Punk/pub ethos, combined with the sound of a modern studio/recording facility. The video is Taylor, essentially, jiving and moving around the graveyard. I am not sure why that concept was chosen, although I do like it and how you are sort of gripped and mesmerised by her performance! I am not sure whether the heroine is talking about a relationship where games are being played and there is this sense of deceit. One is definitely interested to dig deeper into the lyrics. The second verse got me thinking: “I distracted you with all of my bullshit/I covered myself in distractions/Colours and patterns, you couldn’t see the real me/I wanna deceive you, you’re stupid I’m fast”.

One is caught by Taylor’s excellent vocals. She puts so much into everything she does! The band are on the same level, in the sense that we get so much grunt and swagger. Security is a song one will want to come back to again and again. “Will you let me in your hard heart/Let me in your hard heart/Let me in your pub” has that mixture of romantic and, well…something else. One can rely on Amyl and The Sniffers to make you smile and keep things real! There is emotion and romance together with something less heady and more grounded. The next verse or two is intriguing: “You looked at normies different to me/You looked at them with trust/I looked at normies different to you/Cuz you looked at them with lust/I see them lurking from all of the angles/The egos say they can prey/You liked the colours and the patterns I’m wearing/Poison you like the exotic snake”. It seems to be this sense of a friend or lover looking at people more normal and straight – in terms of their attitude, fashion and personality. Taylor is someone more exciting and perhaps a little more risky. She is definitely a more exciting prospect - though one who has a bit of edger and bite. When you look at the lyrics again, it seems to be Taylor, simply, being held back at the entrance to a pub.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jenn Five for DIY

Perhaps she is being given looks and seen as a bit troublesome. Rather than cause trouble, she is looking for love and something calmer. Maybe she has seen someone in there and has an eye on a bloke. Trying to reassure those who feel she is problematic, you are supporting and backing Taylor. The video keeps you invested to the end. There is not a lot to it beyond this setting of the graveyard and Taylor dancing. The band are terrific on Security. The guitar and bass have real attack and wind to them. The drums rumble and spoil for a fight. At the centre is Amy Taylor, who delivers one of her most impassioned and nuanced vocal performances. I am looking forward to hearing the Comfort to Me album. One can definitely hear how the band have come on since their earliest work in terms of their proficiency and songwriting. Security is a real gem. Finishing on the lines “I’m not that drunk/Let me into your pub”, one cannot help but get behind the band. If you have not discovered Amyl and The Sniffers and like what you hear on Security, then go and follow them and see where they head next. I feel they will keep on putting out albums and add many more people to their admiring legions of fans. Hailing from Melbourne, I am also invested to spend more time in Australia and see what other bands are doing great things.

Just before wrapping things up, it is worth looking ahead to September. That is when the world will get Comfort to Me. Amy Taylor has written a very lengthy description and story behind the album’s creation. Before then, and from the Amyl and The Sniffers website, here is a brief description of Comfort to Me:

“Late in 2020, Amyl and The Sniffers went into the studio with producer Dan Luscombe to record their sophomore album, ‘Comfort To Me’. Written over a long a long year of lockdown, the album was influenced by and expanded on a heavier pool of references - old-school rock’n’roll (AC/DC, Rose Tattoo, Motörhead and Wendy O Williams), modern hardcore (Warthog and Power Trip) and the steady homeland heroes (Coloured Balls and Cosmic Psychos).

Lyrically, the album was influenced by Taylor’s rap idols and countless garage bands. Seventeen songs were recorded in the Comfort to Me sessions and the top 13 made the cut. They were mixed long-distance by Nick Launay (Nick Cave, IDLES, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and mastered by Bernie Grundman (Michael Jackson, Prince, Dr Dre)”.

I am pumped to hear what their second album is all about. On the evidence of songs like Security, we are hearing new elements come into the mix. That said, there has not been a drastic change (not that there needs to be!). Amyl and The Sniffers grow stronger with every release. I know that their upcoming album is going to scoop a load of positive reviews!

I want to get to a feature from DORK. Few details were spared when Amy Taylor described the process of Comfort to Me, and how the much-anticipated album came together:

“All four of us spent most of 2020 enclosed by pandemic authority in a 3-bedroom rental in our home city of Melbourne, Australia. We’re like a family: we love each other and feel nothing at the same time. We had just come off two years of touring, being stuck in a van together eight hours a day, and then we’re trapped together for months in this house with sick green walls. It sucked but it was also nice. We spent heaps of time in the backyard listening to music, thrashing around in shorts, eating hot chips. The boys had a hard time being away from the pub and their mates, but it meant we had a lot of time to work on this record. Most of the songs were really intuitive. Main thing, we just wanted it to be us.

“In the small windows we had in between lockdowns, we went to our rehearsal space, which is a storage locker down the road at National Storage Northcote. We punched all the songs into shape at Nasho and for the first time ever we wrote more songs than we needed. We had the luxury of cutting out the songs that were shit and focusing on the ones we loved. We were all better musicians, as well, because that’s what happens when you go on tour for two years, you get really good at playing. We were a better band and we had heaps of songs, so we were just different. The nihilistic, live in the moment, positivity and panel beater rock-meets-shed show punk was still there, but it was better. The whole thing was less spontaneous and more darkly considered.

“The lyrics I wrote for the album are better too, I think. The amount of time and thought I put into the lyrics for this album is completely different from the EPs, and even the first record. Half of the lyrics were written during the Australian Bushfire season, when we were already wearing masks to protect ourselves from the smoke in the air. And then when the pandemic hit, our options were the same as everyone: go find a day job and work in intense conditions or sit at home and drown in introspection. I fell into the latter category. I had all this energy inside of me and nowhere to put it, because I couldn’t perform, and it had a hectic effect on my brain. My brain evolved and warped and my way of thinking about the world completely changed.

“Having to deal with a lot of authority during 2020 and realising my lack of power made me feel both more self destructive and more self disciplined, more nihilistic and more depressed and more resentful, which ultimately fuelled me with a kind of relentless motivation. I became a temporary monster. I partied more, but I also exercised heaps, read books and ate veggies. I was like an egg going into boiling water when this started, gooey and weak but with a hard surface. I came out even harder. I’m still soft on the inside, but in a different way.

 “All of this time, I was working on the lyrics. I pushed myself heaps and heaps, because there were things that I needed to say. The lyrics draw a lot from rap phrasing, because that’s what I’m into. I just wanted to be a weird bitch and celebrate how weird life and humans are. The whole thing is a fight between by my desire to evolve and the fact that somehow I always end up sounding like a dumb cunt.

“So anyway, that’s where this album comes from. People will use other bands as a sonic reference to make it more digestible and journalists will make it seem more pretentious and considered than it really is, but in the end this album is just us — raw self expression, defiant energy, unapologetic vulnerability. It was written by four self-taught musicians who are all just trying to get by and have a good time.

“If you have to explain what this record is like, I reckon it’s like watching an episode of The Nanny but the setting is an Australian car show and the Nanny cares about social issues and she’s read a couple of books, and Mr Sheffield is drinking beer in the sun. It’s a Mitsubishi Lancer going slightly over the speed limit in a school zone. It’s realising how good it is to wear track pants in bed. It’s having someone who wants to cook you dinner when you’re really shattered. It’s me shadow-boxing on stage, covered in sweat, instead of sitting quietly in the corner”.

It has been great reviewing Amyl and The Sniffers. Go and pre-order Comfort to Me if you like what you hear. They are a band who are going to be around for a while. One cannot help but support and root for them. They are one of the most exciting and fresh band around. They may have started (all those years ago) with quite a modest fanbase. That has all changed now. If you are new to them or have resisted dipping your toes into the water, then change all of that and…

JOIN the growing army.

___________

Follow Amyl and The Sniffers

Official:

https://www.amylandthesniffers.com/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/amylandsniffers

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/amylandthesniffers

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/amylandthesniffers/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3NqV2DJoAWsjl787bWaHW7?si=sEKsjDPaQjmK403PL15BSA&dl_branch=1

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr7iv49zibCciRCzlFauotQ

Bandcamp:

https://amylandthesniffers.bandcamp.com/

ALL UNCREDITED PHOTOS:

Amyl and The Sniffers

TRACK REVIEW: Joel Culpepper - Remember

TRACK REVIEW:

 

 

Joel Culpepper

PHOTO CREDIT: FELIX

Remember

9.5/10

The track, Remember, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjvhYLf0q3Q

GENRES:

Alternative R&B/Soul/Trip-Hop/Funk

ORIGIN:

London, U.K.

The album, Sgt Culpepper, is available via:

https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/joel-culpepper/sgt-culpepper

RELEASE DATE:

23rd July, 2021

LABEL:

Mr. Bongo

__________

THIS time around…

I am spending some time with one of the best young artists around. Even though I only discovered Joel Culpepper’s music relatively recently, he has been recording for a long time now. I feel his music at the moment is the strongest it has ever been. With his new album, Sgt Culpepper, out and receiving so much love, there is definitely a lot of eyes cast his way. I am going to make my way to the album soon enough. Before then, there are a few things that I need to cover off. I am interested in Culpepper’s childhood and when he started singing. In this 2017 interview, we discover more about Culpepper’s upbringing and when singing came into his life:

“C: We start, as we always do. The beginning. Where were you born? How was life as a kid and what were you like?

J: I'm a south east London boy. Originally Peckham until I hit 11 and my mum was like "nah we're moving..." I don't think she wanted me to get in with the wrong crowd and I was already a known face on the estate. Not in a bad way but maybe with her being a probation officer, she saw a pattern about to emerge. I'd like to think I was a good kid in a mad city. I cried when we left... Moved to sunny Catford. New school, new friends, new everything.

PHOTO CREDIT: The Flash Pack 

C: Peckham! Very early for a tangent but was this around the same time when the TV show "Desmond's" was on?

J: Yep! Actually got my haircut in Desmond's. Obviously not the TV set but it was based on a real barbershop. I went there once, they butchered me.

C: Ahaaaaa! That's amazing. That's a Top 5 show for me, I had to ask.

Alright, back to you. So mother was a probation officer, was it just you and your mother growing up?

J: No. Me & my elder sister. My mum raised us. My mum separated with my ol' man but he had a pub in Peckham at the time so I would go and visit him. Very popular man, always had his friends wrapped round him.

C: I see. So, how were you exposed to music back then? Was it you listening to whatever your sister or mother listened to or did you have a more independent ear?

J: I remember quite vividly my sister bringing home two LP's. Boyz II Men and Mary J Blige. Eventually, H-Town was in there, Heavy D (who my mum fancied) and it just sort of grew from there. Mum played Luther [Vandross] a lot in the house... A lot bro!!! But also a lot of Whitney, Gloria Estefan. Wow, a lot of memories there.

C: Heavy D huh? I see you Mama Culpepper!

So that's a very eclectic mix. A lot of soul, R&B, little bit of Hip-Hop in there. Putting a pin in what music shaped you for the time being. When did singing come in? Because I've assumed is that you started out very recently, sometime within the past 5 years. Am I wrong there?

J: I've been singing a while, it just took me awhile to find my voice I think. Everyone I knew and their gran sang, so I didn't even wanna admit it caught me the way it did”.

Sgt Culpepper, as I say, is the new album from the London-born artist. I have been listening back to his first two E.P.s, Skydive and Tortoise. When he spoke with The Soul House in 2019, Culpepper was asked about these terrific works:

“Culpepper’s first EP Skydive came out in 2012. While enjoying his early material, I note that his more recent music seems darker, grittier, and edgier both sonically and lyrically. Culpepper agrees: ‘I love that you feel that as well.’  While Culpepper was scoping out his artistry in his early material, he has since become convinced that he wants his music to be as raw and free as possible. ‘I now have a sledgehammer and I’m going to town! It’s important to break the rules.’ But he clarifies: ‘You need to know them first.’

Skydive garnered some industry attention. Culpepper sees Jimmy Hogarth – a London-based songwriter and producer (Duffy, Amy Winehouse, Estelle) – as the first industry veteran to see potential in him. Together they produced ‘Don’t Mean I’m In Love’, a track from Culpepper’s most recent EP Tortoise (2017), in a single take. Culpepper also has a personal friendship and professional relationship with Guy Chambers, a formidable writer, musician and producer best known for his work with Robbie Williams.

Culpepper’s sophomore EP Tortoise (2017) was another turning point. And understandably so: it showcases Culpepper’s raw vocals and songwriting chops. I quiz him about two of the standout tracks from the album. ‘Far From Your Average’, which tends to open Culpepper’s shows, is the best James Bond theme that never was. It is dripping in gravitas. The song was produced by Rich De Rosa (Rita Ora, Example) and Morgan Nicholls (Gorrilaz, Muse). Culpepper describes how the song draws upon a series of bad relationships as well as a general dismissive attitude he observed from others about his prospects as a performer. ‘The message that I want to convey in the song is “you should have never underestimated me”.

I want to focus on the Tortoise E.P. for a little bit. Even though the E.P. took a while to make, one can hear the effort that has gone into it! I have been listening to it in preparation for this review. One can hear Culpepper growing and building as an artist from his earlier work. His voice especially sounds at its very best. Returning to the first interview I quoted from, Culpepper spoke about creating Tortoise:

“So with that, knowing that you can really do this, we can move a little closer to now, what would you consider your next milestone?

J: I've done the EP thing and I'm ready to put out a body of work. A concept album. I've been working hard at it & hopefully I get it right. Just trying to stay away from the pressure of making it great and make it honest, something I like.

C: Ah yes! We'll get to the album but I'd like to talk "Tortoise" if you don't mind. Actually, I had a question in mind but this one is better. Why "Tortoise"?

J: Because I saw a tortoise ornament at a mates house when I was round for tea. Beautiful looking thing but not in a loud or obvious way. And then I realised I've eaten dinner here a thousand times but never noticed this tortoise. It's always been here. I sort of liked the idea in finding an identity with it. It hides in plain sight and always consistent. In the story of the Tortoise and The Hare it was underestimated because it was never counted in the race. The perceived weakness was almost used as a strength for the Tortoise because the Hare never saw him coming which makes the Tortoise more dangerous than anyone, what a threat.

My EP took 4 years to make but I think it's subtle release continues to creep on people, maybe something that wasn't expected I'm not sure. Well I hope it does anyway. Artists that really move me are not necessarily fast but they do impact. I want impact.

C: Very nice! Always love a backstory. I especially love that last bit about taking time. I'm completely fine waiting years for my favourite artists to drop their next project. As a writer I believe the longer you marinate on something, the better it becomes. But there are exceptions”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Lauren Luxenberg for CLASH

One of the most arresting and distinct elements of Joel Culpepper’s music is his soulful voice. We have a few soulful singers in the U.K., though I have often associated the U.S. with having the best Soul singers. Maybe I need to readjust that. Culpepper is certainly an artist with a rich and powerful voice that captures you. Coming back to that interview from The Soul House, Culpepper questioned whether he was a Soul artist:

“When I ask whether Culpepper thinks of himself as a soul artist, he answers directly: ‘I do soulful music and I’m inspired by a lot of soulful artists.’ However, he argues that soul music is somewhat ubiquitous. ‘I think soul music is everywhere in every kind of genre… I’ve found it in Beach Boys; I’ve found it in Tame Impala.’ He therefore stresses the importance that the genre be seen as progressive, drawing comparisons to how the jazz scene has evolved in the UK.

Given his position on the many faces of soul, I ask Culpepper what he deems as the common denominator in soul music. Though acknowledging that there are various factors, he pins down the voice as key. ‘It doesn’t need to be a voice that is massively acrobatic. It has to have a resonance, a tone that definitely has a bit of melancholy to it.’ He specifically calls out Dan Auerbach, lead vocalist of the Black Keys, as an example of this. When I ask him who he regards as the definitive soul voice, he answers with Donny Hathaway. ‘He has the perfect blend of happy and sad. It’s in his voice the minute you hear it.’ He argues that this duality is another characteristic feature within soul, noting the interdependence between joy and pain in the Negro Spirituals. ‘They sang to alleviate pain, to deal with suffering, to feel a level of joy.’

 The specificity with which Culpepper discusses soul music is unsurprising given his upbringing. While his parents themselves were not musical, he was exposed to soul music as a child living with his mother in South-East London. ‘I used to watch my mum downstairs eyes closed with the stereo system on just playing Luther Vandross.’ He also namechecks the likes of Teddy Pendergrass, Diana Ross, and Whitney Houston as particular favourites in his household. His father was a particular fan of Randy Crawford. Using his parent’s tastes as a starting point, he went further back, discovering the likes of Prince, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, and James Brown. It was at an uncle’s prompting that he first heard Donny Hathaway.

Culpepper went on to study the likes of Jill Scott, Musiq Soulchild, and Eric Roberson as they spearheaded the neo-soul movement. Initially disheartened that he did not sound like Boyz II Men like his peers in church, it was upon listening to D’Angelo that he began to harness his own falsetto and understand the capabilities of his voice. Thought of as a promising dancer and visual artist, friends and family gradually came to see Culpepper’s potential as a musician.

I direct our discussion onto the British soul landscape. Culpepper’s appraisal is positive and optimistic. ‘I think it’s growing; I think it’s re-defining itself.’ He points to singer-songwriters Jordan Rakei, Tom Misch, and Michael Kiwanuka as champions of this progressive streak.

Sticking to the topic of British soul, I refer to the mainstream success of artists like Duffy, Adele, and Sam Smith initially marketed as ‘soul’ or ‘soulful’. I float the argument that the industry has a problem marketing black British soul singers specifically. He agrees. ‘Black soul singers have always had a tricky time. Artists that I feel that should be on everybody’s lips and minds as living legends [are] people like Omar [and] Terri Walker. [They] deserve more props and respect for the music they’ve made but also the way they’ve paved some major roads for artists like myself to even exist.’

He also cites Lynden David Hall, Shaun Escoffery, and Beverley Knight as other important figures in British soul. In fact, Culpepper supported Ms Knight at the London Palladium as part of her I <3 Soulsville tour in 2017. He describes how Knight has ‘shown [him] such love and support’ in every encounter they’ve had”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Dan Knott

I am going to quote a lot from Music Glue. Sort of an official website for Culpepper, there is a great section that tells us about Sgt Culpepper; we discover more about the man behind it. Rather than cut it up and make it sounded a bit fragmented, I have brought in the entire thing:

“Joel Culpeppers’ subconscious knew that he was capable of making a great album before he did. A long-held joke with himself, “SGT CULPEPPER” is a pun that hints at the leadership he was wary of embodying, the relief when you realise you’re capable of all that you feared.

“‘SGT CULPEPPER’ just felt right as a title for so many reasons; ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ is recognised as one of the first concept albums obviously, but it’s also me finally being in this position to go, yeah, you've finally been approved to make an album, and here are all the soldiers involved,” he says. “The team of producers, the strategy and allegiances and legacy, with me having to steer it all; there’s an internal battle when you step into those public positions. It’s conflicting; you feel like you can do it, but at the same time you're scared of the outcome, even if it’s positive. And I feel like ‘SGT CULPEPPER’ is that story - who is this guy, and what is he all about?”

Born in Peckham before moving to Catford, South East London, Culpepper’s journey of musical self-discovery began as an ardent fan. From a very young age, he was raised on the work of the legends – watching from the top of the stairs as his mother swooned to the soulful vibes of Teddy Pendergrass on the record player, attending church during the growing era of Kirk Franklin and Fred Hammond’s Gospel cool. Friends were getting down to Chart RnB and American-import Hip-Hop, but for Joel, a true sense of belonging came with the discovery of both Prince and Neo-Soul, a fusion that shaped his ear for soaring falsetto and loose-swinging beats.

 “Musiq Soulchild, D'Angelo, Jill Scott, Indie Arie, Erykah Badu, The Root, Dwele…it was literally like I’d found the world,” he smiles. “I got a little bit obsessive with it actually, a little too streamlined. But I had started to develop my own tastes, and then Prince suddenly became on my radar. With him, I learnt that the most powerful thing you can do as a performer is to allow yourself to be free in the moment – just do you and be present. Once I knew that, my performance flew.”

Having attended Croydon College as a performing arts student, a wide-eyed, 18-year-old Joel had seen enough episodes of MTV’s Making The Band to know that America was the place to be. Staying with an Aunt in the Bronx, he took to the streets with 100 demo CDs, thrusting them into the hands of likely industry types who showed interest in his style. Despite major label interest no deal was signed, but Joel returned to London with a much-needed sense of self-belief, the knowledge that he could put himself out there and survive. Now in his thirties, he believes that that early near-miss might have been the best thing to happen to him, allowing him to stay true to the kind of compassionate artist he wants to be.

“I do think friendship is a big thing for me; I lead with that and the music is second,” he says. “I want to understand who the person is that I'm working with and what they're about and if we can be pals. Not in a like 'please be my friend!' way, but everyone that I work with I respect; they’ve become family to me. Sometimes it takes time for the musical aspect to reveal itself; it did with me and Swindle. ‘Woman’ was maybe two years into our friendship, but we knew when we had something that felt right.”

 An indispensable member of the Culpepper family, producer Swindle (Ezra Collective, Mahalia, Kojey Radical) plays a pivotal role in Joel’s creative expression, right there with him from the laidback 2017 EP ‘Tortoise’ (including the aforementioned ‘Woman’, the Colors Show performance of which has racked up 13-million-and-counting views) to the joyful style and ambitious focus of ‘SGT CULPEPPER’. Having mythicized the format of an album to impossible levels, the pressure Joel put upon himself to create his own ‘What’s Going On’ or ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’ created a kind of perfectionist-procrastination, the sort that can be difficult to snap out of without a good pep talk. Swindle, it seems, was that great friend.

“I don't know if it was anxiety, but there was definitely a responsibility to make a record that can do all these multiple things, you know?” says Joel. “It's got to have a strong identity, it's got to be impactful, it's got to be genuine but crossover. An album isn’t just a collection of songs; it’s a whole story. Where are the messages? Where is it nice, where is it sweet, where is it sour? It needs to pull and push and I think I just overthought it and became intimidated by it. My relationship with Swindle kind of changed that; recognising that we had not only great chemistry in our friendship, but at work too. I started collecting all these producers via unplanned scenarios, becoming friends and then naturally involving them in the record. When I finally asked Swindle to executive produce, it was him basically going 'Thank God. I've been waiting for you to ask forever, let's do it'. So, yeah, it took a while, but I think it needed to.”

Two years in the works, you can hear every note of the thought that was poured into ‘SGT Culpepper’, every participant holding an implicit understanding of what they wanted to achieve as a team. Inspired by the multiplicities of Joel’s Gemini star sign, it is a record that is split into four sections - the battle, the surrender, the love and the lesson, each guiding the listener through a process of acceptance and healing. Every aspect of that essential push and pull is addressed, from the skittering jazz-soul frustration of ‘Dead Bodies’ and ‘W.A.R’ (“I’m tired of having to turn the other cheek”) to the summery, lovestruck effervescence of ‘Kisses’ and the double-entendre of ‘Break’, simultaneously written about a struggling romantic relationship and the weathering nature of the Brexit debate. “It was the first song I had for the record, and I was just so proud that I’d achieved this kind of Soul Train, Al Green, Sly and The Family Stone moment.”

Across the record, you can hear the hand of all manner of collaborators and producers – Tom Misch, Redinho, Kay Young, Guy Chambers, Joker – but somehow, it all comes together to feel inherently Joel, the sort of record that would have slotted seamlessly into his Mother’s vinyl collection. Whether it’s the ‘Bennie & The Jets’-esque Piano on ‘It’s In Your Sex’ or the Smokey Robinson nod on ‘Tears Of A Crown,’ every reference is lovingly curated from a place of personal significance, a recognition that it is okay for him to play host in the journey through his life. It’s abundantly clear that he’s a soul man, but despite the caperings of lead single ‘Thought About You’ (featuring Joel and viral comedian Munya Chawama in impeccable 70’s disco dress), he was keen for his love of all things old-school not to come off as mere pastiche.

“It’s a really fine line - you don't want it to be try-hard or like, 'we get it, you like Soul'. I wanted to nod to things that had influenced me, but it also needs to work on radio in 2021. And that's where having the people within your team and the producers and the right sort of creative involvement kind of helps to steer it back in a direction that's authentic to yourself. We’re all very aware that I’ve probably listened to Curtis Mayfield a few times, but I want the audience to know other things about me as well.”

One of the most formative things to know about Joel is the time he has put in supporting the generation coming up behind him. Having worked in schools as a learning mentor for young people with challenging behavioural needs, it once again informs the importance he places on community spirit, rooted in the wisdom that it takes a village to raise a child. The experience runs through ‘SGT CULPEPPER’s desire to elevate other people’s stories, but really shines on the album closer, ‘Black Boy’, an unabashed celebration of all that it takes to be unique in the ever-growing pressures of the world.

PHOTO CREDIT: Michal Augustini for EQUATE Magazine

“I feel there have been so many important songs that address black men, but I wanted to hear a song that universally celebrated being a black lad with an upbeat Minnie Riperton, summertime vibe,” he says. “When I was writing I kept going back to this one memory of a boy I worked with, just this one morning when he was running late, bowling through the playground with such a confidence and an air about him. He had his older sister's leopard-print coat, a pink lunchbox, these ankle-swinger trousers with no socks on. Some of the kids were saying stuff, but he was just head forward, bowling through, didn't care. I'll never forget me turning around to the other teachers and them going 'he's got it, int he?' Like fair play mate, you've sussed out life. That lived with me; we spend our whole adulthoods trying to find ways to be that uninhibited, and he’d cracked it at 10 years old.”

“I just wanted him to have that message. I felt horrendous for leaving that job, but in my head, I just kept thinking, I don't just want to be the guy that just spoke about doing music – I want those kids to see me doing it. It’s very much me coming to terms with this contradicting feeling of responsibility that I want to carry, where you feel nervous but know you can spearhead it if you try. ‘Black Boy’ is very much in a space of nah, you're meant to do this – go ahead and tip the crown. ”

Standing on the shoulders of the musical giants we all know and love while also bringing his peers and mentees with him, Joel has found a way to craft a love letter to a community that lives simultaneously in the past and future, a retro-modernity that never feels stifled or contrived. Having conquered his uncertainties, is SGT Culpepper any closer to figuring out who he is?

“He's a leader, but he's also someone that doubted himself at points, as we all have. He’s showing you his weaknesses as well as his strengths,” Joel says. “I just want to tell that story through these chapters of this individual, the many sides to the one coin.”

“I think what matters is the experiences and the relationships that you form with people, the people who inspire you to really notch things up every time. I haven’t always been the ‘one to watch’ or the person on everyone’s radar, but there are so many people who are making me feel like you don’t just get one shot, like there’s a way to enjoy the journey. And that's the beautiful thing; I feel like I've only just gotten started.”

PHOTO CREDIT: The Flash Pack 

That is quite a lot of information from the same source! I wanted to highlight it, as we get a rich and detailed story and background. I will move on very soon and review one of the tracks from Sgt Culpepper, Remember. I am excited to see where Culpepper heads next and how far his career can go. I know he will have tour dates coming up. Go and check out his social media channels to keep up with all the happenings. CLASH featured Culpepper earlier in the year. An interesting source of inspiration was key when making the album:

“On the album, they’ve tapped into the processes favoured by the masters of soul to create a cohesive body of work. “We went to watch Hitsville: The Making Of Motown in the cinema. There’s a blueprint that you follow in order to create those kinds of albums. We went to a remote studio, we stayed there for a week, we brought in musicians who played across the whole thing. Swindle was adamant that we spoke to each producer and made sure they understood the picture we were painting too. There was definitely a Quincy Jones element to the way we attacked this.”

Thematically, there’s a real urgency to the glimpses of ‘Sgt. Culpepper’ we’ve been given so far. ‘Return’ finds Joel meditating on thoughts of payback over a driving bass (“Hear them voices a calling / Trying hard to ignore them / But I wanna give in / Get up / And get lawless”) while the upbeat vibe of ‘W.A’R’ can’t mask his disdain at the treatment of marginalised groups. Justice and forgiveness is explored on the funk-licked ‘Poetic Justice’. It’s prescient music, reflective of testing times”.

There has been a lot of brilliant music put out this year. So many artists have been nodding to the past in quite a big way. Laura Mvula’s album, Pink Noise, was nominated for a Mercury Prize. It travels back to the 1980s in terms of its sonic inspiration. With Joel Culpepper, I can tell that artists like Stevie Wonder and D'Angelo are important. I selected Remember to review as it is my favourite song from the album.  We get this cosmic and spacey sound. With a synth sound creating this intergalactic and evocative sound, there is a definite sense of build. Even though it is not necessarily tied to the theme and story of the song, it is a nice introduction that sounds great. I am a big fan of a good introduction and, with Remember, one is prepared for something pretty special! I do not want to draw too many comparisons, as it takes away from Culpepper’s singular talent. That said, with rousing horns and some processed vocals alongside his rich lead, there is a bit of Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and even Daft Punk in the blend. The spirit and energy of the first verse really hooks you in and gets the energy flowing. I am not sure whether the lyrics are based on true events or are aimed at anyone specific. He tells someone that, when they are down and need pulling up, “Remember what I told ya”. That mantra and piece of advice is the key to the song. Also, when they are in a rut and need the key to their life (a Stevie Wonder nod?) then, rather than being despondent and defeated, recall the advice Culpepper offered. It is a brilliant structure that ensures the lines stick in your thoughts for a long time. They are punchy and soulful. If love ain’t enough and things are looking bad, then they (whether it is a lover or friend) can hold onto some sage advice. I was intrigued what Culpepper said and whether he was holding his secret words back.

His vocals and sensational and filled with meaning and compassion. He wants you – again, whomever it is -, to feel loved and not be down. Culpepper’s voice grows hotter as the song steps up a notch when we hear the words come back again. Of being stuck in a rut and needing to be pulled up, there is an extra layer or two in the mix (there is a female vocal providing backing; I couldn’t see online whose it is). The build and power that emanates from the song is incredible. It is definitely motivated by classic acts. One can hear some of his influences in there, yet the most dominant sound is Culpepper’s unique D.N.A. With some great backing vocals and this belief that, despite what is happening and how things look, there can be this resolution, Remember very much seems like a song for these times. One of the biggest weapons of the song is the repetition. Rather than there being a lot of story and different lines, we get the catchy and memorable chorus that one cannot help but feel energised by. There is a nice section just before the three-minute mark that some big bass sounds and a great low, processed vocal that drops things down a bit. From the high-pitched vocal and sound before, the pace is still there, yet the tone has shifted a bit. I was not expecting it. It lends a nice new layer. I love that section. Culpepper sings “Do you remember?” and, again, I wonder what he said before and what this person needs to remember. One of the key strengths of Remember is its rhythm and how funky it sounds. I have not even mentioned Funk music and its relevance to Culpepper. Fusing classic Soul, Funk and Disco with something now and fresh, Remember is a song that contains a lot of depth and nuance – in spite of the fact that it has a simplicity and does not have too many lyrics. It is a terrific song. To me, it is the highlight of Sgt Culpepper. The album has been getting a lot of love. I would advise everyone to seek it out. I really like Culpepper’s earlier work - though I feel he is at his strongest and most astonishing on Sgt Culpepper. Without a doubt, he is one…

OF our very best artists.

___________

Follow Joel Culpepper

Official:

https://www.musicglue.com/joel-culpepper/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/jculpeppermusic

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/joelculpeppermusic

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/jculpeppermusic/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/2PEsLlEk8HIw0NFPSENdQs

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMxUnfbL8YKW_IfvIYYaO7g

ALL UNCREDITED PHOTOS:

Joel Culpepper

TRACK REVIEW: Tinashe - Bouncin

TRACK REVIEW:

Tinashe

Bouncin

9.3/10

The track, Bouncin, is available from:

https://open.spotify.com/track/3FPj7V0TGXHNkdxPmMoa1A?si=8a8efd9faa1140ae

GENRES:

R&B/Pop/Alternative R&B

ORIGIN:

Kentucky, U.S.A.

RELEASE DATE:

9th July, 2021

LABELS:

Tinashe Music Inc./Equality Distribution

__________

IN this outing…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Dennis Leupold

I wanted to review an extraordinary American artist who I have been following for a bit. Kentucky-born Tinashe put out her album, Songs for You, in 2019. It is her fourth studio album. With news that another album is on the way, it is exciting to see what she delivers. Tinashe released the single, Pasadena a few weeks back. I am going to review her latest track, Bouncin. Before I get to that, I want to take a chronological approach - and work my way from Tinashe’s early life and albums. I want to bring in an interview from SPIN from back in 2015. We get a nice section of biography up to that point:

“Though she’s only been making waves in Top 40 for the past two years, Tinashe — born Tinashe Jorgenson Kachingwe in 1993 — is no stranger to the Hollywood circuit. With four mixtapes under her belt (plus a 2007 to 2011 stint in the Stunners, a bubblegum-sweet girl group that she joined at age 14), she’s been putting in long hours since she was seven. Her parents — mother Aimie, a physical therapist and professor who tweets regularly from the appropriately chosen handle @TinasheMomma, and father Michael, a Zimbabwe born professor of theater — moved from Chicago to Los Angeles when Tinashe was only eight years old in order to further support her dreams of stardom.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jasper Soloff 

“When we were in elementary school, she would always do the school talent shows, and that was when people realized, ‘Oh, she might do something with this,’” her best friend, Alicia (who declined to give her last name), remembers of Tinashe’s early drive for success. “She’s always been ambitious. Even when she was in school, she was always in the top classes. I mean, she has a Grammy as the background on her phone.”

With her family and friends on board, Tinashe pursued acting first. Following bit roles in flicks like The Polar Express and Akeelah and the Bee, the teen scored her biggest onscreen break in 2008 when she joined the cast of Two and a Half Men as a recurring love interest for the schlubby Jake, played by Angus T. Jones.

After her one-year Men stint wrapped up, Tinashe turned her focus solely to music. The Stunners disbanded for good in 2011, and she figured the time was right to pursue a solo career. She uploaded In Case We Die — her debut mixtape — to her website in February of 2012. All but one of the 15 songs were written by her, and she produced most of the set as well. Critics took notice; MTV’s Brad Stern said that the collection “recalls the moodiness of the Weeknd or Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy — an incredibly impressive sound to achieve.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Pat Martin 

“I am creative but I can be accessible, and I can be cool,” Tinashe says. “It’s very rare that people are able to be all of those things. But I am.”

Rather than letting the year escape her, Tinashe capitalized on the buzz. In July, she signed a major-label solo deal with RCA — her current home — and dropped her second tape, Reverie, that September. A year later came Black Water, which opened her up to a swath of new collaborators, including now-familiar names like Boi-1da, Ryan Hemsworth, Vinylz, and Dev Hynes.

“When I was first getting to know her, she reminded me of Left Eye,” says Cambridge-Mitchell, who worked with the legendary R&B group TLC in the ‘90s. “Her presence, her personality and intensity, and her clear focus, goal-oriented everything. She’s very much like if Left Eye and T-Boz were one person.”

“Whatever it is that she wanted to do, she was gonna get it done,” adds Trevor Jerideau, Tinashe’s A&R rep at RCA. “If she couldn’t get to a specific producer that she admired, she’s going to make that beat herself. She’ll go on YouTube and try to figure out what kind of software they were using or how to actually construct that track and make it. She sourced all those [mixtape] beats. She did. I knew that she was going to get to where she had to go, and where she wanted to go, regardless of anybody standing in her way”.

Even back in 2015 (a year after the release of her debut, Aquarius), we could see this incredible talent that was primed for bigger things. Even though Tinashe’s music has changed since 2015, one could see this ambitious and passion artist back then.

I said I was going to go chronologically but, actually, I want to quote from a Bustle interview. Here, we get a comparison of Tinashe now compared to when she put out her debut single, 2 On. This is an artist who cannot be boxed in; someone who is taking control:

“Tinashe still loves to get “2 On,” but now seven years after that debut single, she’s focusing more on herself. The triple-threat entertainer essentially built herself a wellness retreat while hunkering down during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I was vibing over here,” Tinashe tells Bustle, laughing. “It was like a resort. I had all my plants, I was waking up early and doing dance and workout classes on Zoom. I took that period as an opportunity to focus on things that I really didn’t have the time to.” Her emphasis on self-care — soundtracked by Thundercat, Erykah Badu, and mental health podcasts — inspired her new album that’s focused on movement and spirituality.

After a string of mixtapes that established her DIY-R&B roots, Tinashe made her mark with “2 On,” a Billboard charting trap-pop banger of such epic proportions that Twitter references it in memes to this day. Her 2013 major label debut album Aquarius, a bulletproof collection of glacial, atmospheric R&B and devastating pop ballads, showed she was a force to be reckoned with. And yet, her label apparently didn’t think so, sending her into long periods of inactivity and constant delays of her sophomore album Joyride, which came out two years after its scheduled 2016 release.

 When she left the label, her supporters breathed a sigh of relief. “I think it was just a gut instinct, in terms of it was what I needed to do,” explains Tinashe, whose latest singles dropped July 9 (“Bouncin”) and June 9 (“Pasadena”). “I didn’t feel like the relationship was progressing in a way that was really productive or good for me mentally, so I thought, ‘I need to do what will fulfill me.’ And that's retaking control of my vision, rebuilding my confidence as a creative, and focusing on why I made music in the first place.”

Her first album as an independent artist, 2019’s Songs For You, proved that Tinashe can’t be boxed in, ranging from the electro-disco grooves of “Save Room For Us” and “Perfect Crime” to the hip-hop swagger of “Cash Race” and “Link Up,” where her alter-ego Nashe rears her head. Now, as the world opens up and she prepares to perform again after the cancelation of her planned 2020 tour, she’s about to give us something more spiritual: 333.

“333,” a number she’s casually inserted into teaser videos over the years, is now becoming a album of the same name, inspired by the impact that her “angel number” has had on her. “I think it’s always felt like a good omen to me, something that feels like there’s good things coming in the future,” she says. “It reminds me that I’m always on the right path and the universe is looking out for me at the end of the day.” 333 will continue Tinashe’s exploration of genre, with a renewed focus on high-tempo and hard-hitting beats that will make you move. “I think that’s so underrated in how important it is spiritually and emotionally, just to be able to dance and have fun in our day-to-day lives,” she asserts”.

I want to stay on the subject of control. This is something that a lot of women in music fight with. Either they are too easily defined, or they have to battle for artistic control or they are manipulated or sold short. For Tinashe, it seems that she is finally in control and she is doing things her way. Look at this 2018 interview from Vulture. This is, perhaps, the first year of her career when she turned a corner and was relaxed:

“I need to regain control,” Tinashe says, eyeing a speaker across the room in the New York offices. She catches the irony of her comment quick enough to clarify that she’s talking about a playlist she curated, which someone at her record label, RCA, tinkered with without consulting her, because she could just as easily be describing the last three years of her career. Since 2015, the 25-year-old singer has been talking to anyone who will listen about her forthcoming sophomore album, Joyride. It was intended for release that year. Then 2016. Then 2017. Then …

Singles sparked up, then fizzled out; a tour for the album was attempted, then canceled; in 2016, she released a mixtape, Nightride, for free. Amid the delay, Tinashe would lash out at her label in private messages to fans on Twitter, accusing RCA of prioritizing labelmate Zayn Malik’s debut solo album over her own work. To get their attention, she leaked her own lead single. A collaboration with Britney Spears and invitation to dance in a Janet Jackson tribute, at Janet’s request, followed. Still, there was no album to show for her troubles. In a week, the wait will be over: Joyride arrives April 13, still on RCA.

 Given the long road and detours it took to get here, it’d be fair to expect a chip on Tinashe’s shoulder – some lingering resentment or paranoia that the other shoe could still drop. But she’s surprisingly unbothered when she arrives at New York in late March, with a small entourage wholly invested in her interests. A publicist lets it be known that the artist has vetoed any looks that are too frilly. Great care is taken to queue up the right music (a mix of YG and Belly, plus that “weird” new Lil Dicky song) for her to slip into her natural, dancer’s zone for the photo shoot. She is impossibly flexible, holding contorted poses long enough to elicit gasps from the room. For the first time in a long time — and maybe ever — what Tinashe wants, Tinashe gets. The singer spoke to Vulture about her setbacks, not being a music industry prisoner, dating in the age of Instagram, and creative control”.

It is amazing and shocking to think what she went through! I guess that Tinashe’s experiences and fight is one common to women in the music industry. I am glad that Tinashe seems to be in a better and more comfortable place in her career. She is one of the strongest and most inspiring modern artists. No doubt she is giving strength to so many other women!

I do want to remain on this subject for a bit. There is a 2020 interview that was conducted during quarantine. Tinashe spoke about 2019’s Songs for You. It is clear that she has more freedom and control. That being said, there are still quite a lot of other cooks in the creative kitchen:

“Tinashe likes to live in the moment, but when we speak over FaceTime in mid-March, she’s quarantined like the rest of Los Angeles. It’s early in America’s spread of the new coronavirus and, luckily, she’s got her home studio. “It’s my career. It doesn’t stop,” she says of what she frequently refers to as “making art” as opposed to “making music.” Her spring tour may be postponed, and will have to be rescheduled, but that doesn’t mean she’s chilling.

“I’m typically the type of person who hates being told what to do,” Tinashe says from her house in the Hollywood Hills. She’s fresh-faced, hair barely mussed, in a teal hoodie that matches the gel on her nails—quarantine chic. “Anytime someone mandates me to do anything, I don’t want to do it.” She lives alone with her cat but frequently has collaborators, family, and friends over to eat her cooking on Taco Tuesdays, and work in her backhouse studio.

A Tinashe song starts with a vibe, an unearthed emotion. She works out how she feels in songwriting: “That’s the best part.” There’s no premeditation. To keep things one hundred percent her, she doesn’t ask anyone outside of trusted friends or family for their opinions.

PHOTO CREDIT: João Canziani for Vulture

“I think that’s where you kind of get lost and confused,” she says. “And, at least for me, when I’ve listened to too many people in the past, that’s kind of been negative towards my creative process.”

Songs for You is 15 tracks of true Tinashe, which is to say at moments stripped down and leaning into vulnerability (‘Remember When’, ‘Save Room for Us’), and at others providing boss bitch commentary, for example on the too-damn-catchy hit-the-club ‘Link Up’. Some songs could be seen as vengeance on a jilted lover (the album’s first track, ‘Feelings’, or ‘Hopscotch’), but what comes across, more than ever, is Tinashe’s ability to write total bops that benefit not only her but the people she’s got on the song (‘Die a Little Bit’ with British rapper Ms. Banks and ‘So Much Better’ featuring G-Eazy).

“I have way more confidence in myself as a songwriter,” Tinashe says. “As the head of creative, I really kind of steer the ship, as opposed to maybe when I was younger, when I would work with people who are more successful than me, kind of allowing them to dictate where the session went or the song went. Now I don’t want to waste any time doing that. I look at it differently. Like, let’s just get to what I want to create”.

It quickly becomes evident that Tinashe is relishing being her own creative director now and having the upper hand in shaping everything about her career and output.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jasper Soloff 

But it’s also still a process. Though she has 20 different producers on Songs for You, she is the only woman producing on her own album. (Outside of the Ms. Banks track, she’s the only woman, period.) “I’ve still probably only met a handful of female producers and engineers—I can only name a few,” she says. This is the only time she seems at any level of discomfort during the interview, thinking through it as she talks, serious and unsmiling. “It’s definitely something that’s still a very, very, very, very, very, very heavily male-dominant area to work in, so I’m just doing my part as much as I can to encourage more young people to get into that side of music. Not just as an artist but also as a producer and engineer.” She’d like to work with more women, she says: “I could do more.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Paola Kudacki

It’s all about feeling comfortable enough to experiment—to make something for the sake of making and finding the gems that deserve the polish. The week of release in November 2019, Songs for You peaked at #147 on the Billboard 200, but Tinashe is less concerned with churning out chartable pop hits than her label ever was. She’s unbothered by the kind of validation that the greater industry uses as benchmarks.

“My biggest goal has been to try to push people out of their comfort zones creatively when they come in the studio,” she says. “What would you do if you weren’t worried about making money and you could just do what you want, like we’re 15 again? Let’s be on that. I encourage that. I think that leads to better art because when you take into account the opinions of other people, your art inherently suffers because you lose that sense of exploration and risk; you’re trying to calculate too many things. By eliminating that as a factor, I think that music gets better”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Sony Music

I shall move this on now. Scratch what I said about a linear approach to biography! I am going to skip back to the excellent 2018 album, Joyride. Her third, it remains very underrated in my opinions. Circling back to that Vulture interview…we get a sense of what it was like making the album:

“Sometimes the narrative surrounding albums overshadow the actual album. Is that a concern with Joyride?

There were a lot of setbacks. I made the mistake of even talking about the project too soon. When I look back on the entire journey of it, I’m very thankful for the time that it did take. It pushed me to create the version of the album that is coming out now. It was important that it ended up taking as long as it did.

“You’ve written this album throughout your early 20s. How was it excavating your thoughts during such a transitional period to make this album?

I’ve changed a lot since 2015. There have been highs and lows. At the beginning, I was super excited about it and anxious to put out a project [snaps fingers] right off the bat of my first album. That’s probably why I initially told everyone about it, which is a mistake I’ll never make again. Then there was a period when I got down on myself when the project didn’t come out when I said it was going to. I felt embarrassed and that people were disappointed. I had to delay my tour because my album didn’t come out. I planned that tour way too soon. After that, I had a mini confidence crisis where, for the first time, I could feel thoughts of doubting myself seeping in. That was disturbing. Then I had to go through a third evolution mentally where I had to regain control.

PHOTO CREDIT: James Bailey 

At that point, I decided to build a studio house in the [Hollywood] Hills that was going to be my creative sanctuary where I just honed in on finishing the project. No more fucking around. I’m gonna make sure this is the way I envisioned it. Once I brought in producers and writers, we were in there every day being creative — painting, writing, graphic design. We set the vibe, had Taco Tuesday parties. That was a huge turning point for me. Once that summer happened, I regained a huge sense of confidence and purpose: Okay, I’m doing this. I really made this happen. I’m gonna make my best music ever. That’s what we did.

You’ve talked before about this need to prove yourself. Prove what to whom?

I don’t know. I always feel like an underdog. Underestimated. I feel like I have to prove that I’m serious and here to stay, that I’m not just a cute girl. Sometimes I think people think I’m stupid or that my art is not real art. Those things always bother me.

Where is that criticism coming from?

Myself. When you’re a super perfectionist, set unreasonably high expectations, and don’t hit them, you can be hard on yourself. I’m my harshest critic because I put the most pressure on myself. But I also manage it pretty well, all things considered. I never let it break me. I think I thrive under pressure.

Do you feel you had full creative control over this album?

Um, yeah. Yes. At this point, for sure. There were times along the way were there were creative discrepancies, but I’m happy to say that this project is all me. Everything from the cover art, to the sequencing, to the number of seconds in between the tracks, that’s me. I even started DMing Little Dragon, as a fan, around 2014 and eventually got them for “Stuck With Me.” I was so excited because this is the only feature I’ve ever facilitated on my own. And through Instagram! Shout-out to the DMs, making things happen”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: João Canziani for Vulture

I am keen to review Tinashe’s latest single - though I think it is important and useful knowing more about her and how she has got to this point in her career. Interview Magazine asked Tinashe about being involved in the production process for Joyride:

“BARR: What can you share with fans that they can expect from Joyride?

TINASHE: I’m excited for fans to hear. I think it has a lot of great energy. It’s something that you wanna play that makes you feel good, and it’s something that I hope everyone will appreciate, because I’ve definitely put a lot of work and energy into it for a while, so I’m excited for everyone to finally hear it.

BARR: I know that you like being involved in the production process, but that’s not always easy on a major label. Did you have a hand in the production on Joyride?

TINASHE: Yeah. I think it’s important to have a hand in every single aspect of your career, from the creation of the music, to the art, to the music videos, to the production of the music, everything. It’s just my vision has really come through with this project, and I’m excited for people to see.

BARR: How have your fans reacted to the wait for Joyride?

TINASHE: They’ve been very dedicated. I have some fans back there who have been fans forever. I know them by name, so that’s meant a lot to me to have those kind of people supporting me”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Parker Woods

Stockings on Joyride. SPIN caught up with her and observed that the album was a definite step up. It seems that, to that point, it was her most personal album:

“If it’s not already clear, Tinashe swears she’s gunning for worldwide superstardom on Joyride, a still very much in-progress album that aims big in its production, songwriting, and ambition. The final track list has yet to be revealed, but early demos include gorgeous ballads like “Fires and Flames” as well as collaborations with Houston R&B up-and-comer Dpat (“Coldish”), and London soul singer Joel Compass (“Touch Pass”). She’s also enlisted former mixtape cohorts Boi-1da (“Not for Nothing”) and Dev Hynes (“Ghetto Boy”), as well as power-players like Hit-Boy and Travi$ Scott (the title track). Joyride — which is due sometime in late January or early February, according to Tinashe’s team — also notably boasts its share of proper pop singles, including the already-released Chris Brown duet “Player” and “Prisoner,” a scorcher produced by members of Max Martin’s camp, Wolf Cousins.

“It becomes the story of my life,” she says of the record. “People always want to make an artist so uni-dimensional. People either hear my radio songs and think I can only make music that sounds like that and I probably have no substance and no lyrical content and no point of view, or it’s that I’m only supposed to be an underground, indie, ‘mixtape-in-my-bedroom’ artist and the fact that I’m making anything that’s commercially accessible makes it garbage, which isn’t the truth. It’s definitely become a process trying to convince people that yes, I am creative but I can be accessible, and I can be cool. It’s very rare that people are able to be all of those things. But I am.”

Hitting that happy medium is a daily task Tinashe’s constantly adjusting to, but she says she’s thus far had the support of her label the whole way through. “Being a pop star is, at the end of the day, the ultimate goal,” says Lisa Cambridge-Mitchell, the singer’s product manager at RCA. “But, you don’t become a star — putting aside the ‘pop’ part — on a song. You become a star because you show dimension. You become a star because you show depth. You become a star because you’re interesting. All these planets have to align and then, holy s**t, you’re a star!”

The Face interviewed Tinashe in 2019 and asked about her split with RCA. Although there would have been positives being with RCA, breaking away seems to have been liberating in a sense:

“After Tinashe initiated exit talks with RCA, news broke earlier this February that she had officially split with the imprint that she called home since 2012. But by that point, she’d already begun work on her fourth album, Songs For You. Released in November, it marked her first full-length project as an independent artist. The moody tracklist, headed up by the sneering Die a Little Bit featuring Ms Banks, calls back to her earlier mixtape work, bubbling with ideas that, true to form, careen between genres. This time, the reaction was surprisingly different: Songs For You vaulted to No. 1 on the iTunes album chart, and non-single Save Room For Us featuring MAKJ launched to the top spot on its R&B chart.

For Tinashe, the record’s success signalled that trusting her gut and forging ahead on her own had been the right choice all along. ​“If I want to put something out or I think this is the song or move, it’s not overanalysed, it’s not strategised to the point where it takes the soul out of it. It’s not hyper-curated,” she says. ​“It’s just instinctual.”

 That also meant abandoning the need for chart success. It’s something she fell into and struggled with in the years signed to RCA, and you can’t help but notice that tracks like Superlove reached for a persona that simply wasn’t her own. ​“It came to the point where I was chasing whatever a hit may be and trying to sell these genres or box myself in sonically, which I never felt fit who I was,” she says. ​“With this project, it was important I get back to creating something that was important for me. But at the same time, I also had the realisation that that is what my fans want as well. That’s what they are going to respond to the best, is stuff that feels really legitimate to who I am.”

Tinashe kept the circle small on Songs For You, curating a select group of artists to appear on the project, including G‑Eazy on the pearl-clutching So Much Better and 6LACK for the pillowy Touch & Go. But it’s more a display of her range, from the hyphy-adjacent Hopscotch to the acoustic closer Remember When. Fans took note: ​“I think people have seen the fact that I’ve been through it a little bit and haven’t stopped, and that’s inspiring to people,” she says. ​“That’s probably what’s shifted the conversation from, ​‘Tinashe is whatever, her music is whatever,’ to ​‘This is actually dope, she’s dope, we’re rooting for you’”.

Songs for You is an album that people need to get. One can hear a much freer and bolder artist. In terms of the themes that she tackles on the album, there is a difference compared to her previous three albums. This was explored in a Rolling Stone interview:

“Tinashe wasn’t always the type of artist to lead with her political beliefs. It’s not that she didn’t have her convictions, but trying to keep your recording career alive inside a company that’s not built for you to succeed tends to be a full-time job. She parted ways with RCA in 2019, the label she announced signing to seven years prior. If the last few years of her existence focused on achieving creative and contractual freedom, 2020 seems to be about transparency. Over the phone, the Songs for You singer is as passionate about changing systemic racism in the music industry as she is about Black Lives Matter protests. “I think I’ve always been this way, like this is just who I am,” Tinashe says. “But I do think that having the freedom as a creative takes away the fear about how you move, because you realize that it’s now it’s your responsibility.”

“There’s a freedom in standing up for what I believe in and speaking candidly about things that I think are important and just losing that fear, because a lot of the reason why people don’t is just because they have these irrational fears about how I guess things will inevitably affect them, but it’s not worth it,” she continues. “It’s it’s much more important to be honest, especially at this time. I think it’s so important that everyone is honest.”

Her latest song, “Rascal,” is tinged with a sense of rebellion. “They don’t know the road that we’ve been on,” she sings. “Bitch that ain’t a joke, I’m a villain.” For some corporate overlords, Tinashe is indeed an antagonist for the major label system. But for others, she’s an artist that escaped from the machine intact and is now speaking on what it takes to not be swallowed whole”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Pat Martin

I am coming up-to-date and getting nearer to 2021. Since thew last big round of promotional interviews was in 2019, it is intriguing picking up on some. Billboard spent time with Tinashe and asked her about her 2019 contemporaries – in addition to how she thinks her career has progressed:

“With that said, who do you consider to be your contemporaries in music? Would you say Jhene Aiko is in your class?

In a way, yes. She just makes much vibier music. We came up around the same time and started putting stuff out around the same time. We were definitely very competitive with each other early on.

Do you feel that your lane has been marginalized in a way? I look at you or a Jhene and see huge social followings, quality music, but it may not sell the way people would think. Am I missing something?

I think that was what I felt when I was being this "R&B girl." I sometimes feel like they put that title on to limit you. R&B is a very niche genre and it hasn't been the most popular genre since the early 2000s or late '90s. It was a slow process of losing track and getting off course.

How would you describe this stage of your career?

I cleaned house and got rid of both my label and my management. I got rid of my entire team and built it from the ground up. Getting rid of my management had to be the most difficult thing I've ever done. I was with them for seven years and that's like family, but I felt like I had to grow and try new things and take a risk.

PHOTO CREDIT: João Canziani for Vulture 

Once I made those changes, I felt completely different. I felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders and I had no pressure in the studio anymore, which changed the game for me. I remember when I was on a major label, you’d go into the studio with a producer and you get one day and you feel like we have to make a f---ing hit. We got the next eight hours to do it big, and by adding that pressure, it genuinely taints the creative process.

It felt very different in the studio and I didn't have to be like, "Let's make a radio smash." I was just throwing paint at the wall and seeing what sticks. I was doing it all from my house, which is amazing. It was really natural. I'd be there just rolled out of bed in my sweatpants, so when people came into work with me, they were like, "Okay, this isn't any of that Hollywood sh--. This is real." It was as if we were friends in high school and like, "Let's make some songs." That energy carried through”.

Do you still care for that mainstream success?

It's just different now. I care, of course, because everyone wants to be successful, but that's not my goal with creating. My goal in general was to get back to my roots and do everything the right way. And to allow people the chance to discover me for who I really am”.

Last year could not have been an easy one for Tinashe. Like all artists, she was hoping to perform and get out there. With an album relatively fresh under her belt, she was stopped in her tracks by the pandemic. I shall come to that more in a bit. I will return to the Rolling Stone interview. They (last year) asked Tinashe about her current output:

“What’s the new music been sounding like?

I really wanted to create stuff that felt really happy and brought, you know, joy because I was obviously feeling really depressed. We’re stuck in the house. This is unprecedented depression that we all kind of felt collectively before we normalized this. Now, maybe it’s not as bad. I think it was I really wanted to make songs that for me, felt really hopeful and exciting and fun. So there’s a lot of danceable beats and stuff you still want to play that makes you feel good. That’s kind of been my main focus. And also, like not writing literally about being in quarantine.

What’s your thoughts been on how the major labels have responded to calls for equality and equity in the wake of all of this social upheaval?

I think it’s great. There’s some first steps that definitely some people and some companies have taken that are amazing and are progress, but I also honestly kind of think it’s funny. There’s such a long way to go and it’s so deeply rooted and so systemic in the music business and in these major label systems, that it feels kind of just tone deaf and off a little bit to me. And obviously a little bit of just like performative activism and not real getting down to the issues. I obviously don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes, but I’ve seen a lot that makes me want to hope for a complete restructuring of how it’s operating”.

It couldn’t have been easy coping during lockdown. Even though it was a tough time, Tinashe kept busy. In this CLASH interview, we find out about a challenge that Tinashe devised:

“Obviously, these are unprecedented times to be doing an interview. Where are you now and how are you adjusting to quarantine?

I think pretty well. It’s not too disruptive of my typical day. I’m still able to be creative for the most part but obviously, it's still emotionally taxing.

During this, it's still been a good time for TikTok and you’ve put together your own challenge with Link Up. As a choreographer, can you describe approaching the creation of a TikTok challenge?

I think it's just about doing something that’s within people’s grasps that they can understand without being a professional dancer. It’s about everyone participating. That’s the ultimate goal. Of course.

And how do you feel fan reactions and submissions have been?

They’ve been so cute. I can’t think of any that have stuck out more than others, but there’s been so many good ones.

Do you think it's helping people get through these strange times?

I think just people are starved for positive content and they want to see stuff that makes them feel good and smile and is something happy, a happy distraction. That's where that falls in.

And you’ve already been ahead of the curve with the work-from-home stuff. I remember your VR concert back in January, and with all going on with self-isolation, Twitter is now saying you were ahead of your time. How was that experience and do you think it could be the future of concerts?

Yeah. I was really interested in working on being able to bring live experiences, like on demand, to basically people who maybe don't live in major markets or can't easily access concerts.

The performance element for me is such a huge part of who I am as an artist. I just want to be able to get that across to even more people and I've been brainstorming how to execute that in a way where people still feel like they're engaged in the show.

Because obviously, that’s a one-time, you-can-never-see-this-again experience, kind of like in sports. It’s what's intriguing about it or what makes it so special”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Charlotte Rutherford

Just before getting to Bouncin, I want to explore the subject of sexuality. Pride posted an article where they reacted to an interview Tinashe provided to Gay Times. She explored her bisexuality and busting stereotypes:

“In a recent cover story for the latest issue of queer UK publication Gay Times, the "Save Room For Us" singer talked about how although she didn't assign herself a label when it came to her own sexuality in the past (mostly because of other people and their lack of knowledge when it comes to bisexuality), she is comfortable enough now to call herself bi.

"It’s not that I don’t like putting a label on it, but when you say you’re bisexual, a lot of people think...they just have a lack of understanding about what it is. And I tend to shy away from terms (I guess this is the theme of my life!) that make people want to categorize me or put me in a box," she told the mag. "I don’t like that shit. But — but — I can still give you a general sense of yeah, I’m bisexual. I’m somewhere on the spectrum. You know?"

She continued:

"It’s not like all bisexual people like men and women equally — or like all bisexual people are a certain type of person. Human beings are so versatile. I don’t understand why we’re so obsessed with categorizing each other."

 "I never wanted people to think that I used it for attention. There are so many f—ing stereotypes about being bisexual that made me want to shy away from talking about it. I’m much more open to having those discussions now."

This isn't the first time Tinashe has publicly discussed being a part of the LGBTQ+ community.

Back in 2011, when the singer was 18 years old, she tweeted about how she likes both boys and girls, and about how she has so much love to give.

According to Rolling Out, she also wrote a (now-deleted) Tumblr post in 2012 where she talked more about how she didn't necessarily want to have to label herself.

"I don’t necessarily want to put a title on it, ‘cause as soon as you put a title on it, people, you know, put it into a category where it has to be 50/50," Tinashe wrote. "But I definitely know that I have an attraction to everyone and I love everybody."

And she also opened up to Huffington Post back in 2016 about not having to assign labels to things.

"I feel, like, nowadays, people are a little bit more understanding of the fact that other people don’t necessarily want to assign themselves one particular thing or another," she said. "That’s all a part of how we’re growing and progressing as a society. I think it’s exciting that we don’t have to be so black and white, because the world isn’t black and white."

However she wants to label herself, we're so, so glad Tinashe is comfortable enough to share her journey with her bisexuality openly with the world! And we have no choice but to stan!”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: FOX Image Collection for Getty Images

This takes us to the latest song from Tinashe, Bouncin. There is talk of a fifth studio album and when that might come. There is a coolness and swagger to the first verse. With this great vibe and rhythm, you are caught on the flow: “Watch it bouncin' on the ground, got my edges sweatin' out/Turn it up extra loud (Oh)/Yeah, tonight we steppin' out, been a minute since I found/Someone who could hold it down (Oh)/What you really talkin' 'bout? I been sendin' dirty pics/Hope they make it to the Cloud (Oh)/Watch it bouncin' on the ground, got my edges sweatin' out/Bou-bouncin' on the ground (Bou-bouncin' on the ground)”. Tinashe sounds laidback, although there is this urgency and edge that one cannot ignore. Mixing confidence with rawness and the explicit, it is a memorable opening passage! I am not sure whether a particular person compelled the song and where it derives from. Whilst the first verse sees Tinashe’s voice quite low, smooth and sensual, it is higher-pitched and more breathy in the following section. It is a great switch that one will not see coming. The imagery will flood into the mind and provoke images. It is clear that Tinashe is in control and calling the shots: “Cuban links, all the gold on my neck/Shinin' brighter than a spotlight/Might intimidate ya/Don't, I'ma see you later/Callin' me, all of these hoes on my neck/Lately, I don't even call back/Might intimidate ya/Don't, I'ma see you later”.

Beautiful, banging, hard-edged, seductive and sexy, Bouncin is a song that demands several listens. It is a track that is not really that similar to anything she has produced before. I really love her vocal throughout. To me, Tinashe is one of the most interesting voices in music. Maybe there are similarities to FKA twigs when she sings in a higher register. To contrast that, there is a processed vocal that is lower and slowed – as it sings “Bouncin' on the ground (Oh)/Bouncin' on the ground/Bou-bouncin' on the ground”. Tinashe providing this sensual and beautiful interjection creates this nice contrast and depth. The chorus comes back in and one gets a new appreciation for her range. I said that there was a sense of swagger. Maybe it is not cockiness. It is definitely alluring and deeply engaging. I love listening to Tinashe sing. She has so many layers and colours to her voice! From the chorus, there is another gear change. Things become bigger and more evocative. From the more tender and cool bounce of the chorus, there is more of a bright Pop embrace when she sings: “Just like this/Got that magic touch, you can call me Midas/This is what it's like when you're on my list/Shoot don't miss/Love it how it feels when we're just vibin'”. It is clear that Tinashe has someone in mind. A desire for satisfaction and companionship. Bouncin is a song that lays out its objectives - through there is a degree of mystery. The heroine is definitely direct and in control: “Don't fight it/Cancelled all my plans, all the side chicks/I know what I want so come try this/Baby, read my lips/Lemme make your night, top it off with a kiss”. To end the song, the chorus comes back in and we get the great blend of the processed low vocal with Tinashe’s smoky and beautiful vocal. A tantalising taste from her forthcoming fifth studio album, I will be interested to see what more comes from her. Bouncin is an amazing song that you will want to play again and again. It is a track that ranks alongside…

SOME of her very best work.

___________

Follow Tinashe

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/Tinashe

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/OfficialTinashe

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/tinashenow/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/0NIIxcxNHmOoyBx03SfTCD?si=C-cFp_msRPWrovwsqlm8xQ&dl_branch=1

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-W8ijF4CaFAwqNUpB__qPg

ALL UNCREDITED PHOTOS:

Tinashe

TRACK REVIEW: Janelle Monáe - Stronger (from the Netflix series, We the People)

TRACK REVIEW:

 

 

Janelle Monáe

PHOTO CREDIT: Clara Balzary for The Gentle Woman 

Stronger (from the Netflix series, We the People)

9.6/10

The track, Stronger, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOqMvZmuLxM

GENRES:

R&B/Soul/Gospel

ORIGIN:

Kansas, U.S.A.

RELEASE DATE:

1st July, 2021

LABEL:

Bad Boy Records LLC

__________

THIS is going to be quite…

a detailed and deep review. I know that most of mine are but, when it comes to Janelle Monáe, there is a lot to cover off and explore! In time, I will get to her new song, Stronger. It is taken from the Netflix series, We the People. I have been waiting for a chance to review Monáe. She is one of the most captivating artists in all of music. Her new track is typically awesome and memorable. I will work my way to that. Right now, I want to look at her earlier life and what it was like growing up. I will discuss her sexuality after (as I think that it is important). As we learn from this interview with PAPER, growing up where she was, it was challenging to raise the issue of her sexuality:

“Monáe grew up in Kansas City in a Baptist church, with a Christian family and in shoes very different from the ones she walks in now. She remembers being quite young when she realized she was queer, and although the vocabulary wasn't there, the feelings were. "I was like eight," she remembers. "I don't think I actually knew how I identified. I knew that I was attracted to women, girls, men, boys. I knew that." Like many LGBTQIA+ people raised in more rural and religious areas, Monáe found it difficult to ask those questions without feeling ostracized.

"I've seen people get beat up because they were considered to be 'too feminine' or 'too masculine' for how they identified," she says. Some of those people were family friends, including a gay male friend of her aunt's, whom she watched be shunned from his community. "It was because of Black men who thought he was trying to come onto them, but he wasn't," Monáe says, "It was their own ignorance and insecurity and fear that led them to lash out. When I saw that..." her voice trails off. "To be a gay Black man, and Black men are like the 'heads of the households' and I'm a Black woman, this young kid. I thought, then it's really over for me”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Clara Balzary for The Gentle Woman 

By all accounts, it does seem like Monáe had a difficult childhood. Like a lot of artists, Monáe’s parents were not always there. She didn’t have the most stable family life. When she spoke with The Gentle Woman last year, we discover how the church provided an outlet and way for Monáe to channel her talents. We also get a bit of background and history regarding Monáe and where she moved to after she left home:   

“Her father, Michael, was a truck driver who was largely absent and left her mother, Janice, when Janelle was less than a year old. Janice worked cleaning houses and as a janitor. Her mother remarried, and had a second daugther, Kimmy.

Growing up, Janelle sang in the local Baptist church and performed in talent competitions and musicals from a young age, but she insists that she was no wunderkind. “Honestly,” she says, “there were so many talented kids around me, and at that age I was intimidated more than anything.” A precocious storyteller and writer with an avid interest in science fiction (to which she was introduced by her paternal grandmother via The Twilight Zone), she joined a young playwrights’ programme in school and began writing her own musicals, including one inspi-red by the trippy 1979 Stevie Wonder album Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants.

Though she was adept at singing, acting and writing, she was hardly spoiled for choice when she finished school. “Nobody was coming to Kansas City offering record deals,” she says drily. “We were the last place that people would think to look. So I didn’t know if I was just going to be in the music industry proper, but I thought that there could be a place for me on Broadway.” She applied to the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York and was accepted on its bachelor of fine arts course in musical theatre. “I was just thinking about what I could do now. And I was like, Yeah, I can sing and act, so that’s what I want to do full time.”

In New York, Janelle shared a small apartment in Harlem with an older cousin who worked night shifts at the post office; they took turns sleeping in the single bed while the other was out. Janelle worked part time as a maid in Manhattan to make ends meet.

But while she was grateful for the opportunity to learn how to sight-read music and properly dissect a role, it wasn’t lost on her that as the only Black woman in her year, she didn’t look like everybody else and wasn’t being represented on the page. “I didn’t see the roles that I liked,” she says. “I didn’t see the new, fresh opportunities for Black voices on stage. And so I was just like, Fuck this, I need to actually spend some time living”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Pari Dukovic for GQ

I am going to change topics in a second. I do feel like Monáe’s background is important in terms of her music and how she approaches life now. It does seem, quite evidently, how there wasn’t necessarily this open and accepting attitude within the family when it comes to talking about her sexuality. Many other artists grow up and spend a lot of their life unable to find that supportive voice from their family. Building on the interviews I have already sourced from, Monáe spoke with The Guardian last year. Even though it was difficult to talk about her sexuality, it was necessary for personal growth:

“The conversations she had with her family about her sexuality were hard, mainly because she anticipated pushback. She hates arguing with her loved ones, but not as much as she hates passive-aggression. “We can all be guilty of it and it’s one of my pet peeves. I love my passive-aggressive people as humans, but it is something that is triggering for me, because I grew up in a family where if there was something bothering us, you knew about it. There was no stomping around the house; there was, OK, let’s discuss this. I think the harder a conversation is with the people that you love and care about, the more necessary it is for growth.”

And who knows, she says; sometimes people surprise you. “I have an aunt who is such a Bible thumper – and no disrespect to them, I love Bible thumpers – but she was the first person at the Dirty Computer concert. She was right there in the front row, hugging me and telling me how proud I made her. This was the one I was so convinced would not look at me as her niece that she loved. But our relationship has gotten stronger”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Pamela Hanson for InStyle

Not only is Janelle Monáe a terrific songwriter. She is also a fantastic actor. To tie in with We the People, I wanted to spend some time with Monáe as this screen star. In some ways, she has an aspect of David Bowie: creating these different personas and looks, both on screen and on albums. Coming back to that interview from The Gentle Woman, and we find out about Monáe’s screen progression; how she came to the attention of Prince - also how there is this mixture of the rooted/down to earth and otherworldly (with Monáe):

“Janelle, 34, first fell to earth, Bowie-style, in the mid-2000s as an otherworldly new androgyne on the scene, a genre- and gender-bending musical prodigy who one critic referred to as “James Brown reborn in a more advanced female future”. Her breakthrough album, 2010’s The ArchAndroid, was a sci-fi-inflected, haute-conceptual blend of pop, funk and soul – a declaration of intent that seemed at once indebted to precursors such as George Clinton and Sun Ra and a harbinger of things to come. In interviews she often spoke of being sent from the future, and it was sometimes hard not to take her at her word.

The ArchAndroid attracted the attention of Prince, who became a mentor, as did Stevie Wonder (he and Janelle performed together, and a recorded phone conversation between the two of them appears as an interlude on Dirty Computer). Since the release of The ArchAndroid, Janelle – singer, songwriter, entrepreneur, actress, producer, social activist and fashion iconoclast – has kept enough plates spinning to rival a circus performer.

In short order, she performed at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards in 2011 alongside the artists Bruno Mars and B.o.B, became a spokesperson for Cover Girl in 2012, and was featured the same year as the guest vocalist on Fun’s “We Are Young”, which became a number one hit across the world, exposing her to a larger mainstream audience. Her second studio album, The Electric Lady, was released in 2013 and appeared to benefit from her growing visibility, reaching number five in the Billboard 200. There were successful guest appearances with everyone from Pharrell Williams to Grimes and Kelly Clarkson and a 2014 performance at the White House with artists including Aretha Franklin. And Janelle’s electrifying stage presence and epicene style, which brought to mind Little Richard as styled by Marlene Dietrich, positioned her as the tuxedo-wearing, pompadour-crowned saviour of pop music.

Janelle made her feature film debut in 2016 with supporting roles in two movies, the Oscar-winning Moonlight and Hidden Figures, which won the coveted nod for best ensemble at the 2017 Screen Actors Guild Awards; to both she brought a palpable intelligence, grit and what Julie Taymor refers to as the “feminine power of listening and being supportive”. By then, it felt as if the impish performer and avowed time traveller had been part of our pop-culture consciousness for aeons.

Over the years Janelle has adopted a post-human persona (often in the form of her sometimes cloying alter ego, Cindi Mayweather, a messianic android from the year 2719 who falls in love with a human), but her roots are undeniably terrestrial. Janelle Monáe Robinson grew up in Kansas City, Kansas, in an extended family that included 50 first cousins. “There were a lot of us,” she explains, touching her ear, a tic-like gesture that she repeats throughout our conversation, “and we all pitched in as needed. I watched over my little cousins; my older cousins watched over me. My aunts made sure I had clothes for school, and my mom did the same for her nieces and nephews. One of the things my family instilled in me is the importance of community”.

I am going to move on to Monáe’s sexuality and how integral and important that is to her identity. I want to stick with acting briefly and come back to that interview from The Guardian. Whilst the film did not pick up huge acclaim, Monáe’s turn in The Glorias was particularly impressive. She spoke about the importance of the film:

“Her choice of acting roles is equally loaded. Later this year, Monáe will appear in The Glorias, a biopic of Gloria Steinem based on her 2015 memoir My Life On The Road, in which different actors, including Julianne Moore and Alicia Vikander, play the feminist in different phases of her life, with Bette Midler as Steinem’s fellow activist Bella Abzug. It covers similar ground to the recent TV show Mrs America, with at least one big difference: that of Monáe’s character, Dorothy Pitman Hughes, who co-founded Ms magazine with Steinem and was an activist and community organiser of equal standing. She didn’t appear in Mrs America, just as she has, relative to Steinem, been largely airbrushed out of history. “That’s why representation matters and that’s why I said yes to this film,” Monáe says.

Steinem herself approached Monáe to ask if she’d play Pitman Hughes. The two women had met, years earlier, at an awards ceremony, where Monáe had the chance to thank Steinem. “Talk about someone who’s timeless,” she says. “She’s so spry, and on it, and involved, and knows about what’s going on today – she’s an icon.” Most impressive, to Monáe, was the fact that Steinem lobbied hard for the Pitman Hughes character to have a central part in the film. (Monáe spoke on the phone to Pitman Hughes, now 82, and found it both inspiring and professionally helpful to hear her “talk about her relationship with Gloria; the things they had to endure”.)

Monáe was also, because Pitman Hughes has been so erased from public memory, “excited that her story was being told. And the fact that Gloria was adamant that Dorothy was in it really let me know what kind of person Gloria is. Dorothy is responsible for helping Gloria to be a great public speaker – she had stage fright, and because Dorothy was a singer, she was able to help her. She was one of the first black business owners in Harlem and was able to teach Gloria more about the black community”.

Let’s move on and explore Monáe as this very special and original artist. I already compared her to David Bowie. I don’t think this is unfair or exaggerating. It is clear that, compared to her peers, there is something about Janelle Monáe that is timeless and iconic. She is such a bold, multifaceted and powerful artist. Once more, coming back to the interview from The Gentle Woman, we get a sense of how Monáe has evolved as an artist:   

“Which is not to say that everything about Janelle has remained constant. For one thing, her music has evolved from the sometimes wilfully impenetrable retro-futurist stylings of her early releases to the more commercially viable, eminently danceable pop-funk offerings on Dirty Computer, such as “Screwed”, featuring Zoë Kravitz, and the catchy Prince-inspired single “Make Me Feel”.

She may be, to quote Spin magazine, “a canonised artist without a classic album”, but the absence of commercial superstardom has allowed her the creative freedom to mine the intersection of the personal and the political, and subjects of Black womanhood, identity expression and sexual fluidity, with funky abandon.

“She’s always been somebody who I would consider pretty fearless,” says Mikael Moore, her long-time manager and collaborator, “but if you look at her evolution as a songwriter, as a performer and vocalist, as an MC, I think it shows the risks she’s prepared to take as an artist”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Ralph Lauren

Part of Janelle Monáe’s appeal and status comes down to her fashion. Rather than being an anodyne or boring artist, she has definitely crafted her own style. In reviews, I like to dig deep with artists and spotlight them from different angles. It provides us with more story and layers. There is an interesting Vogue article that responded to Monáe’s involvement in a special Ralph Lauren event:

“Whether it’s taking over Central Park for his 50th anniversary or staging a one-night-only Art Deco nightclub extravaganza, if there’s one thing Ralph Lauren knows, it’s how to put on a show—even when, as with his spring 2021 collection which debuted this evening, there’s no live audience. To mark the occasion, Lauren enlisted the help of his regular collaborator Janelle Monáe for a black-and-white film performance in the grandiose setting of his Beverly Hills store, here transformed into a smoky speakeasy while Monáe does her best Frank Sinatra in a double-breasted tuxedo and singing a swoon-worthy rendition of “All or Nothing at All.”

“When it comes to music, I consider myself a time traveler,” Monáe told Vogue ahead of her showstopping performance. “I can find the beauty of music in every era, but being able to dip into this made me just fall in love with Old Hollywood and film noir. We went back and forth on a lot of songs from that era, and one of the songs I hadn’t heard before, but Ralph asked me to take a listen to, was this song called ‘All or Nothing at All.’ And it was sung by a lot of the greats, but the rendition that I liked the most was actually a young Frank Sinatra’s rendition.”

Over the past few years, Janelle Monáe has become one of Ralph Lauren’s most visible ambassadors, whether performing at the fall 2019 Art Deco nightclub spectacular, or wearing a breathtaking hooded gown covered in crystals to last year’s Oscars. But Monáe’s relationship with the brand in fact stretches back over a decade, to soon after the release of her first record, 2010’s The ArchAndroid. “They were one of the first brands to embrace me, before I did any movies, before I even had my second album out,” Monáe remembers. “At a time when I couldn't even afford to buy a suit, I remember them gifting me one. They’re like family, at this point, and this event is, to me, one of the most special collaborations we've done thus far.”

Despite Monáe’s keen instincts for fashion as a means of self-expression—it only takes a brief look across her shape-shifting style from album to album to see that it’s one of the most important tools in her arsenal—her interest in performing as part of this season’s show was also due to her appreciation for Lauren’s constantly evolving vision of what it means to be an American brand today. “I think that an American brand should be inclusive, and understanding that we live in a melting pot, which is why I love the models that were chosen,” says Monáe. “I love the thought behind making sure that we had different forms of beauty”.

In terms of politics, things have been turbulent in America the past year or so. There is a fascinating interview from Gay Letter where Monáe was asked about the protest around the murder of George Floyd and what it is like working in music as a Black queer artist in 2021:

“Janelle Monáe has always felt ahead of her time. She’s an artist who seems made for every era she’s in. Janelle released her first music (a demo titled The Audition) in 2003. Three years later she formed a joint venture with her own label Wondaland Records and P. Diddy’s Bad Boy Records. She’s been nominated for eight Grammys but has maddeningly not won any even though her 2018 album Dirty Computer is considered a masterpiece by many critics and fans. In recent years, Janelle has stepped into acting with roles in Moonlight, Hidden Figures, and the Amazon series Homecoming. She’s also stepped more into herself. After a transformative skydiving experience, Janelle decided to open up publicly about her sexuality.

We spoke to Janelle in two conversations, one mere days before the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and then another time after the protests against his murder and broader police brutality had erupted in cities across the country. On both occasions we found her to be thoughtful, open, and fully engaged. She is “building and squadding up” and ready to work as hard as ever to demand justice for the thousands of black people killed by police each year. She was crystal clear about the message she wanted to share with the world during our conversation and during this Pride month: “All black lives matter.”

How are you doing? It’s so hard for me to answer that question, honestly. But I just ate, so that’s good. In general, I’m not in a good space. As many of my people are seeing what’s happening to our brothers and sisters, it’s just hard to shake it. It’s hard to shake the anger; it’s hard to shake being upset. It’s hard to get past the video footage and the evidence that police have killed our black brothers and sisters and nobody is charged or convicted. It’s hard to accept what police are giving us, what the administration is giving us, and what those in positions of power are giving us. And we’re not accepting it.

PHOTO CREDIT: Kelia Anne for PAPER 

How have you been protesting over the last few weeks? I am in Los Angeles. I was down there when the tanks rolled out, when the National Guard were out. I have been helping out, passing out lunches for COVID relief, but in terms of my involvement, I have been very much involved in working with the activist Tamika D. Mallory and her movement Until Freedom. We are demanding that Greg Fischer, who is the mayor of Louisville, fire charge and convict the officers who killed Breonna Taylor. They still haven’t fired the officers for murdering Breonna. They had no reason to be at her house. That’s really where I have been putting most of my energy, speaking out for black women who have been murdered”.

What’s it like to work in the mainstream entertainment industry as a queer woman of color in 2020 compared to when you started in 2003? Here’s what I believe: I believe that I was sent from the future. I absolutely believe that, because even hearing you say 2003 for me, during that time, I felt ahead of what was happening. It always bothered me. It always made me feel like I had to stop time, like I had to figure out how to slow my ideas down. I always felt like people were not ready for an artist like myself. I still feel like that right now and it’s hard to digest. It’s like how do you put an octagon in a rectangle? And I say that humbly. I also say that knowing my potential and knowing the work that I put in and knowing that my team, who I’m so thankful for, have been my support system and talked me off ledges when I’ve just felt super alone.

I think that right now a lot of people are discovering new things. I just celebrated the 10th anniversary of The ArchAndroid and honestly what feels like the past for many is the future for us. By “us” I mean those who understand the power of telling stories through science fiction. Those who absolutely believe in the mythology of The ArchAndroid, because I’ve seen some of those things happening. Even right now I feel like I write too much science fiction to be dealing with this reality. It feels very close to the world that I warned people about and I don’t love that. I don’t love it. As a result, because we are here, I feel like I’m an artist on assignment. I feel like the universe moves me where I need to go. It’s never been about just recording songs. It’s been about realizing and maximizing the potential of an idea in its totality. Whether that’s doing an album and doing a film with it, or being in roles that are parallel with the things in the music that I’ve talked about since forever. So yes, I feel like I’m still an artist on assignment. I never know my impact until years later. I’m always looking forward and that can pose a challenge, and also a benefit.

When you were more open about yourself and your journey and sexuality, was the response you got from loved ones, or people you care about, surprising? Actually it was. The people who I thought would be more judgmental or turn their backs on me or abandon me, didn’t! No nuclear button was pressed, and in your mind, I don’t know how you identify, but for me, it’s kind of one of those things where you think about it so much, you’re always thinking about how am I going to talk to my mom about this, how am I gonna talk to my religious great-grandmother about this. You know all these people that prayed for me and loved me and had been there for me, my pastor, who is my first cousin—like how am I going to talk to all these people about this? Are they gonna get it? Are they going to abandon me? You think about it more. In your mind you’ve already made up stories about how they’re gonna respond, so it becomes anxiety fueled by you. It becomes depressing, the thought of it and you don’t want to deal with it. Part of my process was making sure that my childhood self, that people had come to love and know, showed up and told them where they were at the time now. About how evolved my childhood self is. I’m still the same child that loves you and cares about you; however, these are new things I’ve discovered about myself. In fact, I’ve always known but did not feel the support in discussing”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Clara Balzary for The Gentle Woman 

As Monáe is lending her music to the series, We the People (where we “Learn the basics of rights and citizenship with upbeat songs by popular artists like Janelle Monáe, H.E.R., Adam Lambert, Brandi Carlile and more”.), it is worth discussing her attachment to and involvement with politics. Coming back to the interview from The Guardian, they look ahead to (at the time) the new film, Antebellum:

“And there’s no question that Monáe is among the most thoughtful and politically engaged artists of her generation. The new movie in which she stars, Antebellum (due to be released later this year), is a horror vehicle that combines aspects of Get Out, Westworld and 12 Years A Slave. It’s a hard film to write about without giving spoilers, but it’s a high-concept project, half set on a plantation in the American south during slavery, half in the modern world, in which Monáe plays a successful writer who becomes the target of an outlandish racist conspiracy. The themes – how the past is not dead; how entrenched racism is in the US – are always apposite, but particularly so now, when the president is stoking white nationalism as part of his re-election campaign. “I read the script and thought, OK, this is a movie that’s connecting the dots from the past to the present and the future,” Monáe says. “And what the future could possibly look like, if we’re not careful.”

She is talking about America’s white-supremacist roots, a conversation that has, until recently, existed mainly on the fringe. In the wake of the death of George Floyd in May, the discussion has moved to the mainstream, along with the one around defunding the police, and while there are, Monáe says, “a lot of people late to the party, I’m happy that we’re having these conversations. You can’t talk about white supremacy, systemic racism, police brutality, without talking about chattel slavery, which is America’s original sin. My ancestors were forced to come to America and work for free, and the first institution of policing was the slave patrol, which was meant to hunt down and kill black people who had run away. So when we’re screaming, ‘Defund the police’, that’s what we are speaking to: we are reminding people, as this film does, that the police were not meant to protect and serve our community; they were meant to terrorise us. It’s a system built on traumatising black folks.”

Monáe is far more eloquent on the subject of America’s racist history than the writers of Antebellum, Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz. The two men also directed the movie and, in spite of Monáe’s excellent performance, it has a cheap, exploitative feel to it. The sexual violence is hackneyed; the character development thin. The movie would, one suspects, have been vastly superior if Monáe had written it herself. She is a fine actor, with a career that took off with her role in Moonlight, Barry Jenkins’ Oscar-winning film of 2016, and received a boost a year later from her role as Mary Jackson in Hidden Figures, in which she played a mathematician at Nasa, alongside Taraji P Henson and Octavia Spencer”.

It is important to now move to the subject of sexuality. If it was quite hard to be open with her family (to start) about this, Monáe is bringing it more to the forefront. It is less about her own personal experiences and relationships. Monáe, as we find out in the PAPER interview that I quoted from earlier, represents the entire L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community:

“This isn't the first time Monáe, someone at the epicenter of pop culture, has recentered the narrative to focus more on one of the most othered groups in the LGBTQ community instead of herself. Although Monáe can only attest to her own experiences, she has actively made sure to advocate, and make space, for her entire LGBTQIA community. Her performance of Dirty Computer's "Americans" on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert opens on Pose star Mj Rodriquez, who's trans, before the camera slowly pulls out to reveal a group of POC femmes holding each other. She sings a song that says:

Until women can get equal pay for equal work
This is not my America
Until same gender loving people can be who they are
This is not my America
Until black people can come home from a police stop
Without being shot in the head
This is not my America

Monáe publicly dedicated her two Grammy nominations to her "trans brothers and sisters," who she says "are shunned from these sorts of events." Institutional award shows, including the Grammys, are inherently and historically spaces of white, cis, male privilege. While they have recently gotten Blacker, our understanding of diversity must always continue to grow more intersectional. This is part of what Monáe is working toward herself, and advocating for from her audience.

PHOTO CREDIT: Pari Dukovic for GQ 

But it isn't these accolades that make Monáe proud. In fact, it was her choice to do something scary, to take a risk and tell the truth, and thankfully that resonated. "I'm just happy that my personal story has also been personal stories for so many other people. There's so many young people who grew up in the South or Baptist families, who were told that they won't be accepted by Christ. They can listen to this album and feel hugged. They can feel loved. They can feel seen. They can feel heard. That's the most beautiful thing." Monáe's fans were not just able to find parallels with her journey, but able to find validation in being "dirty." With this album she extended an open hand.

Right before dropping Dirty Computer Monáe came out as pansexual in Rolling Stone, calling herself a "free ass motherf*cker." She reinforced that notion with songs like "Make Me Feel," "Crazy, Classic, Life," and "Django Jane." She solidified it every time she championed free gender expression with her clothing, and drove home the point when her boob winked at us this past Met Gala. Monáe is so exceptionally herself, so sacred in her skin, which shines not only through her music but in her powerful roles in 2016 films Moonlight and Hidden Figures Her character in Moonlight, Teresa, a pseudo-guardian to the young, Black, gay protagonist Chiron, sees many parallels with Monáe herself. She is strong, proud, protective, nurturing and poised. But that wasn't always the case”.

  PHOTO CREDIT: Pamela Hanson for InStyle

I want to come back to acting. I could have included this before. I do feel like, with Monáe, we have this modern-day equivalent of David Bowie. I think that Monáe’s acting feeds into her music. I have often talked about the relationship between acting and music. How there are similar traits and disciplines in both fields. Not that many big musicians, however, have a prolific screen career at the moment. She spoke with GQ in 2017 and revealed a particular reason why she was so keen to be seen on the screen:

“Not much about Janelle Monáe says “Homo sapiens.” The tailored intergalactic-butler uniform. The massive voice in the maybe-five-foot frame. Even her skin looks airbrushed. So it isn't surprising that when asked how old she is, she replies, “I'm timeless.” Maybe she's an android. “I look at androids as the future Other,” she says, her empathy for the marginalized extending to A.I. “I feel a responsibility to speak out for the Other.” In her new film, Hidden Figures, about a different kind of Other—badass black women working for NASA in the 1960s—Monáe actually plays a computer. (NASA called its mathematicians “computers.”) Her character doesn't take shit. Neither does Monáe. “I want to redefine what it means to be young, black, wild, and free in America,” she says. It's jarring to see someone so in control of her image submit herself to the demands of a studio and director. But Monáe doesn't flinch at temporarily shelving monochromatic space diva for important movies like the awards-season hit Moonlight. Of course, she also has bigger ideas: “I want to see more black people. Not just in films like Moonlight. Big-budget films, too.” And since the life span of an android is probably, like, 500 years, Monáe will have plenty of time to give the Hollywood muckety-mucks a run for their money”.

There are a couple of other things I want to cover before coming to the review of Stronger. I will finish this section by returning to the interview from The Gentle Woman. We return the subject of Antebellum and why it was particularly challenging for Monáe:

“Coming to terms with the residual effects of the past is at the heart of Antebellum, in which Janelle plays a modern-day author who is transported back to the 19th century to live as a slave in the American South and come face to face with her ancestors.

Janelle was widely praised for her roles in Moonlight and Hidden Figures (The New Yorker called her turns in these films “quietly expert”) and the histor-ical drama Harriet, in which she plays the fictional Marie Buchanon, a free Black woman and the owner of a boarding house who helps Harriet Tubman adjust to life after escaping slavery.

But it is her role as Veronica/Eden in Antebellum that has been the most challenging, Janelle says. “Emotionally, spiritually, physically, it’s the toughest role for me to date.” The production involved shooting on a former cotton plantation in Louisiana. “It wasn’t easy for me at all to say, ‘Yes, I’m going to film on a plantation.’ I didn’t want to be anywhere near that. I knew I had a job, though. It was important to highlight the burden that Black women carry to deconstruct systemic racismand white supremacy every single day.People have to understand what we are dealing with and how the past is directly connected to our present. And how the past is not even the past.

“How our ancestors, my ancestors, have been treated historically,” she continues, “is connected to what we are experiencing now with the riots across America. The police are mistreating us; the microaggressions at work and in public – everything that we’re dealing with now is a symptom of past structures that were created to oppress us.”

What got her through filming, she says, was thinking about the special women in her life, such as her great-grandmother, to whom she is still extremely close, as well as public figures she admires, including the activists Brittany Packnett Cunningham and Angela Davis and the outspoken US congresswomen Maxine Waters and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also known as AOC. “When I thought about all of these voices, these women of colour, these Black women, I found the strength. It was important for me to represent a Black woman who was not going to be silenced, in the same way that these Black women and women of colour are out there protecting the rights of marginalised communities in spite of getting death threats, or being publicly called a bitch at work in the case of AOC.”

In addition to continuing to agitate on behalf of Black Lives Matter (her 2015 song “Hell You Talmbout”, in which she names Black Americans killed by police or in racial attacks, has become the movement’s unofficial rally cry) and supporting activists such as Kimberlé Crenshaw and Bernice King, Janelle is also the guiding force behind Fem the Future, an organisation she formed in 2015 to create opportunities for young women to get into the film, television and music industries. “It doesn’t have to be in front of the camera,” she explains. “We’re trying to create more well-balanced humans – people who can compete at a high level in all areas and create art that is centred around stories around women, and Black women in particular. How do we all come together and create more noise? Everybody has been in their corners, but people are realising that we are stronger together and the drum needs to be louder”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Kelia Anne for PAPER 

I have spent some time comparing Monáe with Bowie. In fact, if one were to think of an artist that Monáe is quite closely associated with, then they would arrive at Prince. In fact, Monáe was mentored by the late genius. She was in conversation with The Guardian in 2018. She revealed what it was like to continue her career without her mentor:

“Monáe says the toughest part about staying living in the present in 2018 is moving forward in a world without her chief musical mentor. “It’s difficult for me to even speak about this because Prince was helping me with the album, before he passed on to another frequency,” she says. His sudden death was “a stab in the stomach. The last time I saw him was New Year’s Day. I performed a private party in St Bart’s with him, and after we sat and just talked for five hours. He was one of the people I would talk to about things, him and Stevie Wonder.” Both were among her earliest champions. Before The ArchAndroid was released, she sent each of them a copy, on CD-R, with a handwritten track list.

Prince not only encouraged her then, he lobbied for her first BET awards appearance and he performed on Electric Lady; when he died, he and Monáe were “collecting sounds” for Dirty Computer. “I wouldn’t be as comfortable with who I am if it had not been for Prince. I mean, my label Wondaland would not exist without Paisley Park coming before us,” Monáe says. She laughs a little. “He would probably get me for cussin’, but Prince is in that ‘free motherfucker’ category. That’s the category when we can recognise in each other that you’re also a free motherfucker. Whether we curse or not, we see other free motherfuckers. David Bowie! A free motherfucker. I feel their spirit, I feel their energy. They were able to evolve. You felt that freedom in them”.

The final thing to discuss before coming to the latest Janelle Monáe song is to look back at the Turntables single. Apart from the song,  That's Enough (from Lady and the Tramp (Original Soundtrack), there had not been much from her since Dirty Computer in 2018. Turntables, in a way, had brought Monáe back to a more creative mindset. This was discussed in an interview with Variety from earlier this year:

“You’ve said that prior to doing the song, you had not been in a creative mood or wanting to be in the studio. What pushed you into being motivated?

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be in the studio. I really wanted to be in the studio, but I think like so many of us, my mental health had to be taken care of. Recording and writing music is such a part of my normalcy, and from the pandemic to the election to voter suppression, nothing going on in the world felt normal to me. So I just had to really understand what kind of world we were going to be walking into, and I had to get my mental health together.

After I watched the film, I got a sense of determination. I knew where I could take that rage, that energy, that fear, that hope, that anxiety— I knew where I could put all that those emotions into, and it was writing the song “Turntables.” I got my marching orders from Stacey. And I guess I started to finally understand that, to use an analogy, if we’re all on a boat, then it’s time to turn the boat. And if Stacy’s asking me for help, I have to show up. Because this is our opportunity to make a turn for the better and really put the power in the hands of the people”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Pari Dukovic

Stronger is the latest single from the soundtrack for We the People. There is something pastoral and almost Folk-y about the start of the song. It has this dreamy and somewhat medieval sound that then switches to a funky and scratched electric guitar flavour. I like the introduction and the fact we are taken in different directions. The first verse of Stronger is certainly powerful and striking: “Most of my friends want a little peace/Some of my friends want a little solace/Even when we struggle and we get kicked down/We pick each other down with a little polish/All of my friends want a legacy/Don’t wanna be left out/Every time you think we get a little weak/We get a little bit stronger”. When the song moves to the chorus, there is this beautiful soulful and gospel vocal chorus. Rather than Stronger being this angered and aggressive song, Monáe projects power and urgency in a different way. Her delivery has this quality of being mesmeric, smooth and nuanced. One listens to the song again and again and you are hooked into the delivery. The words get into the head and you will find yourself repeating the chorus mantra (“Ah, we the people, we the people/The people getting stronger”). Earlier, I dropped in some interview information where Monáe discussed her relationship with the church and how important that is. In some ways, Stronger seems like a sermon or this biblical release.

If Stronger, maybe, looks to the past and how there has been this fight for freedom for African-Americans, it also applies to the modern day. The notion of being accepted and finding liberty: “Some of the friends taught me how to dream/Some of the friends taught me how to fight/Even those times when we don’t agree/We know we all tryna save the same day/We don’t the life without the liberty/Not gonna be left out/Every time you think you got the best of me/We get a little bit stronger”. When the chorus comes back in again, it seems even more powerful and engaging. The blended voices and the hook of “We the people” gives it this powerful and stirring quality. Listening to Stronger, I wonder whether Monáe will write more songs like this for a new album. Not that Dirty Computer was lacking in material about politics and injustice. I really like the latest track, and I feel that it is among Monáe’s finest work. One can love the compositional blend, where we get bass, handclaps, a beat and that strutted, scratchy electric lick. Voices build and blend in as Monáe delivers another incredible verse: “Now they cast their votes ’cause the people wanna speak/And they checking their balance ’cause the people wanna eat/What they do process ’cause they seek equality/And we pay for the world so the people in the streets/And they love America, where the people wanna be/And they all know their rights from the sea to shiny sea/From the sticks to the ghettos, yeah the people gonna sea/That the people hold the power and together we’re a little bit stronger”. Monáe’s voice gets heavier and more impassioned as the song reaches its closing stages. You get this real intensity and physicality. The final line – “We don’t want the life without the liberty” – is one of the most important. I think that is what Stronger comes down to: the idea that there needs to be freedom and liberty. Stronger can be applied to the situation in America today and Black Lives Matter – as much as it applies to the struggles of the past. With Stronger (for the excellent Netflix series, We the People), Janelle Monáe has released...

 PHOTO CREDIT: Erik Carter

ONE of her very best songs.

___________

Follow Janelle Monáe

 PHOTO CREDIT: Sophy Holland for Variety

Official:

https://www.jmonae.com/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/janellemonae

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/janellemonae/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/janellemonae/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6ueGR6SWhUJfvEhqkvMsVs?si=yzZNu2P1RBGjJ_4QuemK0w&dl_branch=11

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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdxFg3dVeT50SsT1v3ptxTQ

ALL UNCREDITED PHOTOS:

Janelle Monáe

TRACK REVIEW: Leon Bridges - Why Don’t You Touch Me

TRACK REVIEW:

 

 

 

Leon Bridges

PHOTO CREDIT: @rambo 

Why Don’t You Touch Me

9.6/10

The track, Why Don’t You Touch Me, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqgMx3eWdYg

GENRES:

Soul/Neo-Soul

ORIGIN:

Texas, U.S.A.

RELEASE DATE:

18th June, 2021

PHOTO CREDIT: Justin Hardiman 

The album, Gold–Diggers Sound, is available from 23rd July, 2021. Pre-order here:

https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/leon-bridges/gold-diggers-sound

LABEL:

Columbia

__________

THIS is an interesting review…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Bobby Bruderle

as I am featuring a video which is the first of two parts. I am not sure whether the concept for the second part of Why Don’t You Touch Me will be vastly different from the first. The single is out in the world, yet it is interesting that there are two videos for the song. I am referencing the video that went live on Friday (18th June). Keep your eyes open for the second part next week. Why Don’t You Touch Me is the latest song from Leon Bridges. Ahead of the release of the album, Gold–Diggers Sound, we have this gem of a single. I last reviewed Leon Bridges back in 2019. I think it is important to talk about his latest track. Bridges (real name Todd Michael) was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1989. After one year, his family moved to New Orleans, Louisiana. They spent a year there before moving to Fort Worth, Texas, where Bridges grew up. I am going to work some background into this review. Before I get to the song and lend my thoughts, I want to highlight Bridges and explore various sides of his career. It is worth noting when he discovered music. In this Under the Radar interview, we learn more about Bridges’ earliest musical tastes:

“Jake Uitti (Under the Radar): When did you first discover music as a young person?

Some of the earliest memories for me was when my mother would go pick up my father from work and she would play the Sleepless in Seattle soundtrack. There was a tune by Harry Connick Jr. by the name of “A Wink and a Smile.” I remember as a kid thinking it was kind of like an older tune, not knowing that was a modern record of the time.

PHOTO CREDIT: Tom Schirmacher for GQ 

What do you think originally drew you to older sounds or aesthetics?

Man, I think a lot of that comes from—I would say the seed was planted initially through my parents. My father was really into Otis Redding, Curtis Mayfield, and Sam Cooke and my mother was into Anita Baker and Sade. It’s just one of those things—throughout our lives we store so much music and influences and it ultimately just pours out into the art. There was a time in my songwriting journey where I just felt compelled to shape my songs around soul music, along with the community of musicians I used to run with. So, it was a mixture of things I attributed to that sound.

You’re known for playing a million open mics as you were coming up. But where do you think your work ethic comes from in this way?

I think a lot of it, for me, was just like when I was in the restaurant industry. I think the motivation in that time was that I needed to get through the day. And then also not wanting to be deemed as lazy amongst my coworkers and managers. A lot of it is totally almost innate. Something that’s always been ingrained—my mother is a big factor in instilling that within me and my siblings.

I worked as a bartender, waiter, and line cook for many years. Did you work in the front of the house or back of the house?

I worked in the back of the house as a dishwasher. I mean, my whole job trajectory is pretty small. I worked at Six Flags amusement park in Arlington, Texas. I subsequently worked this place called Rosa’s Café and then Del Frisco’s and then I transitioned to doing music for a living. I think working in the back is humbling. It was humbling for me. Even now, I look at it like those types of people who are in those jobs, they keep the world going. So, I think it created that perspective to where I never belittle anyone based on who they are or what they do. I see the humanity within everyone”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: @Rambo

Although Bridges was born in Georgia, Forth Worth, Texas is his home. It is in his blood. In 2018, Bridges was interviewed by Schön!. He was promoting his second album, Good Thing. It is interested how living in Texas influenced his music and the attachment to the state:

“That’s too bad since you just bought a house in Texas as well! How do you feel Fort Worth and Dallas have influenced your music?

I think, being from Texas, I was lucky enough to fall into the music scene and meet some really awesome songwriters and musicians. To be around guys who were doing Rock ‘n’ Roll, Blues music and mixed country, that really made an impression on me when I was coming up into the music scene and that’s reflective in my music. I love to incorporate blues and country and that’s just what the South is about —that’s what Texas is about. I really like to incorporate that stuff [in my music].

Do you ever see yourself leaving Texas?

Texas is home but I do see myself that the further I progress in my career, it might be a little problematic to stay in my city — only because, I mean, it’ll be hard to really move around and stay incognito the further I progress. But I do want to keep it home for as long as I can…

So is it kind of sad or bittersweet that you feel you can’t stay? I mean I know home is always going to be there but…

Yeah… it will always be there but it is a bittersweet thing but, you know, it’s kind of a good problem to have. It’s awesome that people feel that way about me and my music but then it’s also a problem when I want to go to a grocery store but, you know, I’m just uninspired because I know that if I go by myself it’s going to turn into a thing. But it’s fun”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jack McKain

Just to go back to musical inspirations. I think one of the things that people noted with Bridges’ debut album, Coming Home, was that there was clear influence in there. Maybe he was wearing those influences on his sleeve too much. The same could be said of our very own Michael Kiwanuka on his debut, 2012’s Home Again. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing! The only problem is that it can be harder to craft your own identity and stand out. I will explore this topic a bit later. Before that, this interview with Esquire caught my eye. In it, they illustrate how the former dishwasher took off and was performing alongside some musical greats:

“Bridges, a native of Fort Worth, Texas, debuted in 2015 with the retro-soul rave-up Coming Home. The sepia-toned album took off, and suddenly the former dishwasher and community college-dropout was sharing stages with the likes of Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder and performing for President Obama at the White House. He booked Saturday Night Live and earned a Grammy nomination for Best R&B album. And last year, his song “River” went viral thanks, in part, to a placement on the Big Little Lies soundtrack. (Cue his second Grammy nomination, this time for Best Music Video.) He became the newest savior of soul music. “Every tagline was, ‘Sam Cooke Reincarnated!’” he recalls. “I felt pressure. Out the gate, the expectations were high.”

But Bridges always saw himself as more of a disciple of Arthur Alexander, the lesser-known, country-soul pioneer of the ’60s, than Cooke. “His delivery was very subtle—and that’s actually what I’ve always been about,” he says. “I struggled with wanting to make it clear that [being a soul artist] doesn’t mean I have to be screaming on stage like a preacher.” As for that keeper-of-the-flame mantle, Bridges wishes we could all, well, relax: “I just want to let the music be music”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Tommy Escobar

When Leon Bridges was promoting Good Thing, naturally he would look back on his debut and see how far he had come – and how he had progressed as an artist. There is a marked difference between what we hear on Good Thing and what the sound of Coming Home represented. Bridges discussed this more with CLASH in a 2018 interview:

“From Texas to the world; subsequently, his modern brand of authentic nostalgia was making waves - the debut album, ‘Coming Home’ arrived in the summer, its vintage tones proving irresistible, and Bridges found himself in demand across the board from radio, TV and the White House. After performing there at a Ray Charles tribute, Bridges was later personally endorsed by President Obama, who included Leon’s ‘Smooth Sailin’’ on his summer 2016 playlist. It was the crowning achievement of a first chapter that was frenetic and undeniably promising, yet one Bridges was committed to progress from.

“When I wrote ‘Coming Home’,” says Bridges, looking back from the vantage point of February 2018, “I felt that it was necessary to tell my narrative through that sound. I wanted to honour black music, and everybody knows that story, but that was what that was. But even at that time, I was always in love with modern R&B music, and so I had to make that decision. I didn’t want to make a ‘Coming Home Part Two’ because I knew that if I made a ‘Coming Home Part Two’ then I wouldn’t be able to gain a bigger fan base, or I’d feel like I wasn’t being true to myself if I would have made a ‘Coming Home Part Two’”.

The difference between his debut and its follow-up, ‘Good Thing’, is striking and immediate; the strapping falsetto in ’70s strings-laden opener ‘Bet Ain’t Worth The Hand’ is a remarkable departure, and stylistic surprises don’t stop coming - there’s the jazzy trip-hop of ‘Bad Bad News’, the clipped beats of ‘Lions’, and the synth-heavy pop-funk bangers ‘If It Feels Good, Then It Must Be’ and ‘You Don’t Know’, two moments certain to startle the retro fans.

“I just kinda felt this weight of expectation from the fans - a lot of my fans, they want that specific sound, and they’d be content if I made that same sound for the rest of my life,” he says of the pressures he faced when considering change, and attributes a realisation he experienced at the 2016 Grammy Awards, where he was nominated for Best R&B Album, as the catalyst for the new musical direction he’d take. Considering his fellow nominees, he noted: “I just thought to myself that I have the talent to be in the same conversations with the Brunos and the Ushers and all those guys, but still stay unique. So that was the whole motivation behind this project: how can we take the elements from the first album but evolve the sound?”

Every artist evolves between their first and second albums. Listening back to Coming Home, one can definitely detect signs that Bridges was a star. That was fully realised on the follow-up. Ahead of the release of the much-anticipated third album, Gold–Diggers Sound, we can see how Bridges has grown as a writer and performer.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Sasha C.

I do wonder what the sound of Gold–Diggers Sound will be. We have heard some material from it and, from what I can tell, it is another step on from Good Thing. There are fresh directions and sounds in the mix. Coming to an interview with GQ, Bridges noted that his debut album was selling to predominantly white audiences:

“By his own admission, Bridges was a "baby" when Coming Home dropped in 2015. He was in his early twenties when he recorded it, down in his hometown of Fort Worth, Texas. "I was very sheltered," he says. "I wasn't in a relationship, any relationships at the time. I didn't really, um…go out and drink and all that kind of shit." In the three years since, Bridges has toured the world, been nominated for two Grammys, attended President Barack Obama's last birthday celebration at the White House—"surreal," Bridges calls it, before launching into a surprisingly excellent impression of our former president—and returned with another album, Good Thing, which is due out early this May. The new stuff shows just how much Bridges has grown up: He's debuting a new, contemporary sound, one that more accurately reflects who he's becoming. That person is more mature, more in control, and more aware of himself and the way the world sees him.

Coming Home, Bridges says, found predominantly white audiences. "It's uncomfortable live to look out into the crowd, and during my song 'Brown Skin Girl'—that's part of my patter, the whole thing is like, 'Where's my Brown Skin Girls at?'—and...there aren't any." People didn't seem to think Bridges' music was black, or black enough. "There are people who say ignorant stuff like that," he says. "Which is a crazy thing to hear." The new songs are sexier, more authentic and original and aware; Bridges explicitly changed his sound to find a more diverse audience. If you're a fan of Coming Home, you'll recognize that smoked-honey voice. The music, however, is something different—wholly modern, though visited by the ghosts of the past. You can hear a parade of Bridges' inspirations all over Good Thing: "Fuckin' Usher, Ginuwine, James Blake, Portishead, R. Kelly, Townes Van Zandt, Willie Nelson," he says”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Fumi Homma for CLASH

After the arrival and success of Good Thing, there was an upswing in Bridges’ career. He was being seen more as an individual artist. Maybe there was this learning curve between his two albums. When he spoke with the Evening Standard, Bridges looked back and critically assessed his debut record:

“Bridges was weighing up whether to invite Obama to his 30th birthday party this month in Puerto Rico when he ‘ran into his older daughter, Malia, at this bar in New York and she was like, “Oh my God — Oh my God, I really love your music, I gotta come up to a show,” and I was like, “Yeah, bring your dad!”’

It’s a typical snapshot of Bridge’s dishrags-to-riches fairy-tale story: an everyman blessed with a voice so breathtaking it lifted him from small-town Texas, washing plates in a Tex-Mex restaurant, to the White House, then round the world on continent-spanning tours. But now that it’s calm and quiet he tells me that he really misses home.

‘That’s definitely my light at the end of the tunnel during touring, that I can go home and be with my friends and family,’ he says, pointing out the various tattoos on his body: 817, the area code of his home town, Fort Worth; an outline of Texas’s state line; his mother’s name, Lisa Sawyer (also a song title), which he had inked in New Orleans.

It has been a steep learning curve. Coming Home was a revival of the 1960s soul era sung by a young, modern man from the South — but critics wondered if he could write anything more original. And so came Good Thing last year: funkier, fresher, a ‘melting pot of different sounds’. Bridges has loved touring it, but bad reviews stay with you. When he played Brixton O2 last November, a major newspaper reported ‘a chant that struck up during a jazzy section mid-gig, urging Bridges to stick to his old material’.

‘It’s like, when I was doing their first stuff, it’s like I wasn’t authentic enough, like I was biting off the soul artists from the past,’ says Bridges, who also blames technical issues for the poorly received gig. ‘Then when I try to do something a little bit different, modern and more unique, in a way, it’s like people weren’t feeling that. But, you know, if the fans didn’t f*** with new s*** they wouldn’t go to the show.’ Making ‘an unpredictable move’ was vital to ‘just have longevity in my career’, he says”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Tom Oldham

I am mentioning sonic and career development to show how far Bridges has come. The same can be said of how he has matured and changed since Good Thing. It is important to chart and examine his steps and rise. I want to bring in this 2019 interview, as we get a snapshot of how Bridges’ music has been used on screen. This is true of songs from both of his albums. He was preparing to record songs with contemporaries from Texas: the incredible Khruangbin:

“Much has changed over the past four years. Artistically, Bridges' sophomore album, Good Thing, released last May, saw the singer-songwriter deviate slightly from the kind of finger-snapping, retro-soul nostalgia that drew the requisite Otis Redding and Sam Cooke comparisons. Still, tracks from both albums continue to prove commercially successful, with songs like "River," "Better Man," and "Beyond" making cameos on HBO's Big Little Lies, the sci-fi film Pacific Rim: Uprising, and BBC's The Graham Norton Show, respectively. That's not to mention collaborations with Kacey Musgraves, Macklemore, and Odesza, a tour with Harry Styles, and several Grammy nominations (and a win). Next up, Bridges will return to his Texan roots with the release of two tracks with Houston-based trio Khruangbin. "It's like psychedelic-gospel-R&B-'70s," he says. "That's the best way I can explain it. I'm really excited." Before taking to the stage with fellow Afropunk headliners FKA Twigs, Rico Nasty, and Gary Clark, Jr., Bridges opens up to CR MEN about his biggest influences, the importance of black-oriented music festivals, and what punk means to him”.

I wonder whether there was a conscious moment for Bridges when he changed his writing style and wrote from a different perspective. Perhaps a sense of Bridges coming out of himself and experiencing the wider world resulted in a more open second album. Coming back to that CLASH interview, Bridges noted how his life and music changed drastically in quite a short period:

“Before [all] this, I was very sheltered. I was living at my mom’s house for so long and I had never really been a drinker or partier and all that kind of stuff,” he says. “I had to hide a lot of things, because that’s the kind of environment I grew up in - a religious household. I felt that even writing simple songs about love and all that kind of stuff was not going to be accepted by my mother (the subject of ‘Lisa Sawyer’ from his debut) and the community that I was in.”

“There is more of me,” he says of the album’s character, a true reflection of his personal growth over the last three years. “Instead of writing on the surface, I’m kinda being a little bit more vulnerable with these songs.”

Which all makes for quite a seismic shift, and one that he’s all too aware may leave some disappointed classic soul fans behind - a risk he’s willing to take in the name of evolution. “When I listen to an artist, I want to be surprised by everything they put out,” he reasons. “I just want to show people that I am no longer just the underdog of R&B. I’m a diverse artist and I feel like the album definitely reflects that. I made a statement with the first album, and this is definitely another huge statement, because I feel like people definitely won’t be expecting what we’re putting out”.

I am moving things forward to properly explore Good Thing. One of the most impressive things about the album is how that there is something quite ordinary about it in terms of subject matter. It does not tackle big political matters. Given the Black Lives Matter protests recently, I wonder whether that will work its way into his Gold–Diggers Sound in some form. Bridges spoke with Esquire and talked about how, when it comes to music, everything does not have to be so deep and serious:

“If Good Thing is light on anything, then, it’s politics. Defiant lead single “Bad Bad News”’ sees Bridges stare down society’s preconceived notions of his limits, but otherwise, the set runs parallel to much of today’s conversations, never turning for an intersection. It’s not that Bridges doesn’t have his opinions—we’re living in a time of “bad leadership” he says, succinctly, before remarking that we’re also in a time of oversharing when it comes to our vitriolic stances—but it didn’t feel right here. “What do people want me to do? Write F-Trump songs? That’s not effective,” he says before cautioning, “The time will come and whenever I put that energy into a song, it’s because that’s right thing to do. It will be because I’m passionate about it.”

In fact, Bridges is, in some ways, trying to say less with his music. “It’s cool to accept that not everything has to be so deep,” he says, crediting Young Thug and Drake as masters in turning the Ordinary into Art. “It’s their own world and their own truth and they make it sound super profound,” he says. “Sometimes I feel pressure [to write high-concept lyrics], because I aspire to be like a [Bob] Dylan or a Van Morrison, but I like attacking topics that are relatable.”

That delight in the mundane works, time and time again, on Good Thing. He spools a phone call home to mom into a rapturous reckoning with a relationship’s potential on “Beyond” and considers shirking his friends’ advice and running back to an untrustworthy flame on reverb-lined “Forgive You.” And on the buoyant one-two punch of “If It Feels Good, Then It Must Be” and “You Don’t Know” he finds himself gripped with the thrill of new love and desire. But Bridges saves his best for last. On the stellar album closer “Georgia to Texas” the singer lays his origin story bare—his birth, his mother’s struggle, the hand-me-down-clothes, the lack of money—and in turn, crafts a moving testament to the power of a mother’s love”.

  PHOTO CREDIT: Tommy Escobar

I love Leon Bridges’ debut album - though I was more struck by the sound and production on Good Thing. In an interview with GoldPlec, Bridges was asked about the production and sonic shift on his second album. Being a more popular artist by this time, he had to consider adapting his music for bigger venues:

“Good Thing' is certainly an album with a modern production ethos. Tracks like Forgive You and Bad Bad News incorporate a broad range of contemporary sounds. While not a total departure from the vintage R&B sound, there's an undeniable hip-hop and nu-soul aesthetic to the whole production, complete with less guitar centred song structures.

Are changes were the result of a new writing approach?

"This was definitely a different approach. In the past, I've done a lot of my writing on guitar. This one was different, the producer that we worked with, he had a big library of instrumentals. Some of the stuff we worked on from scratch but a lot of it was instrumentals that he had. He'd play about 20 of them and I'd pick out the one that spoke to me most. That would be the one we'd work on that day. It started off by just creating the melody and how I wanted the phrasing to be and from there we kind of just formed the lyrics. I would say that the whole concept of the song was really just an afterthought."

One thing that hasn't changed for Bridges is the intimate quality of his material. His tracks aren't anthems, nor are they filled with huge bombastic choruses. The beauty of Bridges' music is nuanced, appreciated more and more with repeated listens. However, considering the artist's leap in popularity since his breakthrough single, he's had to fill bigger venues on tour. Bridges shared his thoughts on that transition:

"I recently hired this guy Josh Johnson and this cat Josh Thumberly on the bass. We basically reimagined everything on the album and some of the older material too. There are these moments of funk and of jazz and psychedelia. It's great”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Fumi Homma for CLASH

One thing a lot of people might not have considered when it came to Leon Bridges is how fame and new popularity would have impacted his mental welfare and life in general. He wanted his music to resonate and reach people. There are a lot of pressures and bad sides that come with that new attention. Coming back to the interview with the Evening Standard, we find out how newfound fame challenged Bridges:

“He was just 25, from a city with a population of less than 900,000. Suddenly, he was the centre of attention, and ‘everything from feeling inadequate in a way, to feeling I’m not a good enough singer, or songwriter, or handsome enough. All that s*** played into my depression.’ He couldn’t stand ‘billions of photos being taken’, he worried he wasn’t ‘smart enough to come across as articulate’.

He drank more. ‘I wouldn’t call myself an alcoholic, but, like, for me, I couldn’t perform without drinking because it made me less self-aware when I was on stage. It was just one of those things that, with the lifestyle, was just so easy, like, to drink every day. When I was out it was usually five to 10 shots, a beer, and that was happening every day. Maybe a couple of shots before the show, then after the show, more drinking. Then when I’m at home, more. So I made new rules when I was like, okay, don’t drink during the week’”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Daniel King for Esquire

I want to change gears and highlight something that defines Bridges in a way: his unique style and his extraordinary fashion! Befitting of someone who is a bit of an idol, he is the complete package. Not only is his music full of personality and different layers; the same can be said of his looks. Bridges is authentic when it comes to his fashion choices. As he explained to GQ (in the interview I sourced from earlier), there were some doubters to start off with:

“People have a history of thinking the things that Leon Bridges says and does aren't quite real. Take, for example, his style. "Coming out the gate, it kinda seemed like it was something that was fake and put together, because people don't normally see guys dressed like this," Bridges says. His look mashes up vintage pieces with things sourced from the '80s and '90s—he's got a freewheeling, omnivorous vibe. "I think people now are seeing that it's authentic," Bridges finishes. His inspirations run deep: The singer was moved to start dressing the way he does after he discovered Street Etiquette, the avant-garde style blog founded and run by Joshua Kissi and Travis Gumbs. "Like, I had never seen black men dress in that way," he says, meaning Kissi's and Gumbs' signature vintage-prep looks. "And also being a dancer. Back when I was studying dance in college, we would have to perform certain pieces, and so I was exposed to just a whole bunch of vintage styles and all that kind of stuff." As with his music, these days Bridges has found slightly more contemporary influences. "This cat named Tito Deller, he's from here. My friend Barrio Dandy out in L.A. I mean, I even fuck with A$AP Rocky's thing. I love the whole kind of nineties comeback as well," he says”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Ryan Lowry for GQ

Leon Bridges recently spoke with W Magazine. Not only has it been hard to showcase music because of the pandemic. Bridges has not been on stage and rocking his different looks! That will change soon. In the interview, one can tell that Bridges has been frustrated by the pandemic and the limitations:

“You’re known for having a very strong and unique sense of style. How do you feel about getting dressed for public life again?

Man, that’s been a crazy thing about the pandemic—I haven’t really gotten to showcase the fashion. I’ve been ordering a lot of stuff. I’m trying to figure out what will look good onstage when I start touring again. I’ve recently been inspired by the ’70s. I always love something funkadelic, and I’ve transitioned into wearing more flared jeans. But I’ve also been doing a lot of monochrome, specifically all black”.

I am going to Why Don’t You Touch Me in a minute. I wanted to lead up to the song by presenting a bigger picture. Rather than leaping straight in, it is important learn more about Leon bridges and his story. It is clear that he is a fascinating artist who has transformed and grown since 2015’s Coming Home. There is going to be a lot of anticipation ahead of the release of Gold–Diggers Sound.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Sam Wilson

I think the music has grown bigger and more ambitious since Good News. That is reflected in the videos. Bridges has always released great videos, though there is something more cinematic and grander about them now. This can be seen in Why Don’t You Touch Me. In the first part of the video – whether the second part will have a completely different concept/scope has yet to be seen -, we start on a shot of a building that says ‘Gold Diggers Entertainment’ on it. A woman is outside smoking. We pan in on her as the camera tracks to the right where a man can be seen by a window looking pensive. It then pans back to the woman who throws her cigarette off the balcony and walks out of shot (and inside of the building). Even before the song kicks in, there is this intrigue and sense of tension. I feel the promotions for the singles on his new albums are more filmic and different to what he offered before. It seems that the video concept is this romance that is quite complex. We see black-and-white and colour shots of the lead actors, Alisha Boe and Jermaine Fowler (the video also features JJ (Joshua John), Joshua Crumley, Bill Malina, Nate Mercereau, Ricky Reed). The two leads are shot in black-and-white as they are chatting in a bar. Bridges is in colour as he can be seen on his own. He looks quite distracted and tense. Getting to the music, and there is a simplicity and soulfulness that hooks you in. We get a heartbeat percussion and a gentle electric guitar strum that perfectly accompanies Bridges’ silky and powerful voice. There is longing and questions from Bridges. In the first verse, it seems as though he has been cast aside: “I've been feeling way too undesired/Before the flame went out, all around us was all on fire/I can feel the distance go for miles/But cold is all you are, and it's causing chills/What's with all this?/You won't even talk about it”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Alisha Boe

Whether the video represents a love triangle or not, I am not sure. The leads are vibing in a bar and there seems to be this natural chemistry. Our hero is left alone and he is trying to piece things together. Perhaps things used to be good but, as she has found someone new, it might be coming to an end. Although Bridges does not mention cheating and the relationship being over, one gets a sense from the video that that might be the case. Bridges is definitely looking for answers and clarity: “Can you be honest?/Is you just running out of thrills?/'Cause every time you put me second, yeah/Girl, make me feel wanted/Don't leave me out here unfulfilled/'Cause we're slowly getting disconnected, yeah”. In the video, the heroine can be seen (in colour) walking from an apartment in tears. Whether she has had a difficult conversation with Bridges or another man, I cannot tell. Things are definitely complex. Although our hero is trying his best to impress her, it seems like she has someone else on her mind: “If you still in love all like you say it/Then why don't you touch me? Yeah/I'm dressing to the nines and your eye's straying/Oh, why don't you touch me? Yeah/Why don't, why don't, why don't, yeah, yeah”. Bridges and Jermaine Fowler can be seen outside smoking together. Perhaps they are friends or unaware that they are with the same woman. Alisha Boe is in the bar as she approaches Bridges. There are these shots between the bar and outside to provide this sense of urgency and developing story. It is like a tense film where revelations are about to be revealed. Boe and Bridges are clearly emotional in each other’s company.

It seems that their once-solid bond has been affected. “It's been so hard to stay close/If there's a problem, say so/Tell me why you never touch me no more/Maybe I've been too possessive/Maybe I get too aggressive/Maybe 'cause I bring up what we should've deaded/Hard to be real, but don't deny what you can't feel, girl/Maybe I just need attention/Maybe I'm not new enough to stay in love and so it's ending/Tell me it ain't ending, babe”. Bridges voice is gorgeous throughout! There is so much emotion to be discovered. He is putting his heart out there and feels genuinely moved. The video is wonderfully shot. Again, Bridges is seen alone as the two (new?) lovers meet on a rooftop. I think that the second version of the video might well push the story forward. Maybe it will be told from a different viewpoint and story arc. The truth become clearer as Bridges is on a bed alone and we see flashes of the Boe and Fowler kissing. It is heartbreaking that the visuals tell us that things are over. They play over words that suggest Bridges is trying to keep the relationship alive – even though he suspects that it might be futile: “Can you be honest?/Is you just running out of thrills?/'Cause every time you put me second, yeah/Girl, make me feel wanted/Don't leave me out here unfulfilled/'Cause we're slowly getting disconnected, yeah”. I wonder whether the ending of the second video might be different. In this one, it appears there may be a twist in the tail. We see Boe and Fowler together. The heroine wakes and leaves him alone in bed. There is a great shot of the two floating in the air as their fingers slip from one another. The heroine is walking away and ends up in the shot that we saw at the very start: her on the balcony smoking as her man is at the window. It is a great loop that you do not see coming! At the start of the video, we do not know who these characters are. We have this story that unfolds and ends. It is testament to the direction of Jackson Tisi. Why Don’t You Touch Me is a beautiful song and a very impressive song from Bridges. I think the video adds new elements. It is such an engrossing and stylish video with wonderful performances!

 PHOTO CREDIT: Nate Ryan/NPR

Not long now until we receive a new album from Leon Bridges. I am especially looking forward. In that interview from Under the Radar that I started out with, Bridges revealed the importance of continuingly moving in terms of his sound and direction:

“Let’s talk about the new album! It’s funny, we’ve talked about you being a subtle person, measured. And that’s how the new album is, in a way, too. There aren’t super high peaks and super low lows. So, what was the genesis of the new record and how did you go about crafting it?

So, I would say the inception of this album started with me sitting down with my good friend and producer, Ricky Reed, and we just talked about the success of my album, Good Thing. We talked about the direction I wanted to head. At that time, I saw that if I was to continue making retro music, essentially, then I would just continue to stay stagnant. I could have a good career doing that but I understood from a standpoint that I would have just hit a peak only doing retro music.

But at the same time I understood that my artistry is diverse and there are so many different influences in there. So, I really wanted to showcase that in this new album and so we felt the only way to unlock that was to create this fully immersive recording experience and invite some of the dopest musicians and writer friends to help cultivate this R&B style that was unique to me. So, the whole concept behind this album is basically like pushing my sound forward, pushing the envelope while still having those organic elements in there.

Because I want to be in the same conversations with some of my R&B counterparts, as well. I felt like how some people say, “He’s slept on.” I just felt like—basically, I want to create music that puts me in front of more people while still doing something that’s authentic”.

When you close your eyes and think about the future, what comes to mind?

I foresee for myself, I think I ultimately want to chill out a bit. At this point, I have at least three projects that are essentially done. Next year, I’ll be releasing another EP. I made some music in Nashville. So, Gold-Diggers Sound, it’s a great album but it’s totally not indicative of what the future me-style is going to be. I’m going to continue to experiment and redefine my art as I progress on this journey”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Tommy Escobar

Just before closing things off, there is one more interview that is worth bringing in. Going back to W Magazine, they asked Bridges how the third album would be received by his fans:

“You have a new album coming out soon. Anything you can share about how it will sound?

The new project is titled Gold-Diggers Sound. Gold-Diggers is this unassuming little compound in East Hollywood. It’s kind of in a gnarly neighborhood, but on the inside, it’s a beautiful place. It’s like a hotel, a studio, and a dive bar. I wanted a sound that was R&B, but unique to me. We felt the only way to achieve that was to create a fully immersive experience, so I essentially lived at this place, and I think we were able to find that. There’s understated jazz, there’s more guitar-prominent songs, but it’s definitely more of an R&B-centric album.

How do you think listeners will react to this next phase of your music development?

I’m kind of challenging my fans, because a lot of times artists can be put in the confines of a certain genre, and it can be hard for fans to accept that evolution and growth. And so I just want them to accept the direction that I’m going in. That’s the thing—I always want to stay unpredictable. I don’t think people are going to see this coming, but I think they’re going to love it”.

It has been great reviewing Why Don’t You Touch Me. The first part of the video has been released. I am looking forward to the second part of it! Go and pre-order Gold–Diggers Sound. It is going to be a wonderfully captivating and memorable album from…

A truly wonderful artist.

___________

Follow Leon Bridges  

PHOTO CREDIT: Justin Hardiman 

Official:

https://www.leonbridges.com/

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https://twitter.com/leonbridges

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Leon Bridges

TRACK REVIEW: Lorde - Solar Power

TRACK REVIEW:

 

 

 

Lorde

Solar Power

9.7/10

The track, Solar Power, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsP_lzh2-8

GENRE:

Dream Pop

ORIGIN:

Auckland, New Zealand

RELEASE DATE:

10th June, 2021

LABEL:

Universal Music New Zealand Limited

PRODUCERS:

Lorde/Jack Antonoff

__________

I have a lot to cover off…

when talking about Lorde (Ella Yelich-O’Connor). The New Zealand artist released a new single, Solar Power, earlier in the week. It is taken from a forthcoming album of the same now. Though we do not have many details of that, the title track is a brilliant offering. Many people are calling it a ‘return’. I think artists get these label applied when they take some time out to craft material and do not put loads out year after year – like Lorde has been missing in action and has been discovered! To be fair, her second studio album, Melodrama, was released in 2017. It is not as though she has been away all that long. Unsurprisingly, the Internet and social media went mad when she put out a new song. Although not everyone has been sold by Solar Power, it is a song that has received plenty of love. It has arrived when the weather is pretty hot and we need something uplifting and summer-tinged. I will work my way to reviewing the new single, though I want to look back and bring in some interviews where we discover different sides to Lorde. She is in her early-twenties at the moment, so one can forgive the fact she has taken some time to work on her third album. I want to start with an interview that takes us back to when Lorde was young and was turning on to music.

In this 2017 interview from The New York Times, we learn about Lorde’s earliest influences. I discovered a lot of things that I did not know already:

“But sometimes she removed the headphones and let the songs wash over her. She has been fascinated by pop music, relating to it in both intuitive and analytical ways, since early adolescence, when, she has said, she would play tracks by Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado on repeat, trying to figure out their magic. Her taste broadened to include more idiosyncratic sounds, and today she will talk with fervor about Katy Perry one moment, Kate Bush the next. She discusses pop in the language of a zealot and describes “Melodrama” as an act of zealotry. “I have such reverence for the form,” she said. “A lot of musicians think they can do pop, and the ones who don’t succeed are the ones who don’t have the reverence — who think it’s just a dumb version of other music. You need to be awe-struck.”

She brought up “Teenage Dream,” the smash Katy Perry single from 2010, which creates a poignant swirl of lust and nostalgia in under four minutes. “There’s this sadness about it, where you feel young listening to it, but you feel impermanence at the same time,” Lorde said. “When I put that song on, I’m as moved as I am by anything by David Bowie, by Fleetwood Mac, by Neil Young. It lets you feel something you didn’t know you needed to feel.” She regarded me closely. “There’s something holy about it”

 PHOTO CREDIT: Arkan Zakharov for FASHION

I have been listening to her new song, Solar Power, a fair bit. Although Lorde herself has spoken about musical inspirations behind it, others have compared the song to other tracks/artists. I think that Lorde is a very original and individual artist. That said, like everyone, there are artists who have compelled her. It is hard to believe that the twenty-four-year-old artist has released so much and been so busy! I do sometimes worry the pressure young artists are under. I might touch on that more later. Going back to that interview from The New York Times. It is interesting reading about Lorde’s musical discoveries and how she came to be signed:

“Lorde, whose real name is Ella Yelich-O’Connor, was born in 1996, the second of four children; her father, Vic O’Connor, is a civil engineer. Her mother, Sonja Yelich, is an award-winning poet whose work has been anthologized multiple times in the “Best New Zealand Poems” series. Ella was a bookish kid. She led her middle-school team to a second-place finish in the 2009 Kids’ Lit Quiz World Finals, a global competition. Shortly afterward, she sat for a morning-show interview on Radio NZ, estimating that she’d read “a bit more than 1,000 books” in her lifetime. She wrote her own fiction too, enamored of Raymond Carver and Kurt Vonnegut. When I asked her to characterize this work, she said only, “It wasn’t very good.” Sonja Yelich told me that when Ella was 14, she proofread Yelich’s 40,000-word master’s thesis: “People said, ‘You’re crazy to entrust this massive undertaking to your child.’ ” (Yelich has routinely accompanied Ella on her travels and is as much confidante as chaperone. You can see her dancing beside Taylor Swift in a 2014 awards-show cutaway as her daughter performs.)

PHOTO CREDIT: Tom Munro for Vogue

Ella joined student musicals and began performing acoustic Amy Winehouse and Kings of Leon covers around Auckland with a friend named Louis, who played guitar while she sang. In August 2009, Louis’s father emailed a recording of the pair performing Duffy’s “Warwick Avenue” to Scott Maclachlan, an A.&R. executive at Universal New Zealand. Maclachlan wasn’t looking for a guitarist, but Ella’s voice intrigued him. He signed her to a development deal and worked, until a couple of years ago, as her manager. He told me that, early on, he “had very traditional A.&R. ideas of finding songs, finding a producer and putting them all together” — but Ella, whose sense of self was too strong to submit to others’ writing, chafed. “After a couple years,” Maclachlan went on, “we got to a point where it was, like, well, write something yourself. So she did. It was a little clunky, arrangement-wise, but the lyrics were really good. And if that’s working, everything else is fixable.” Ella’s precocity helps to explain the wave of Lorde Age Truthers that arose after “Pure Heroine,” with people speculating, tongue only partly in cheek, that she must be a grown woman. In 2014, The Hairpin obtained a birth certificate confirming that Lorde was, as she claimed, a teenager”.

As I have said with a lot of interviews, it is illuminating and important finding out about the artists behind the songs. Rather than simply review Solar Power and leave it there, I wanted to connect more with Lorde and see how this remarkable and immensely popular artists has grown and progressed through the years. Her debut album, Pure Heroine, was released in 2013.

  PHOTO CREDIT: Arkan Zakharov for FASHION

There is a great interview that FASHION published in 2017 (the year Melodrama was released). Thinking about how she was signed as a pre-teen and how she went on to discover/working with producer Jack Antonoff makes for fascinating reading:

“Lorde was born to artistic parents and raised in Auckland, New Zealand. After an imaginative childhood, she started singing alongside her guitar-playing friend and posting the songs online. (Interesting fact: To this day, Lorde doesn’t actually play any instruments. “I’m hyper-musical, but I don’t really play anything,” she says. “I write the songs with different chords because I know exactly what I want chord-wise, and then I sing out the chords. I’m very musical, just not in the traditional way, I guess.”) She was discovered when she was 12, and then Universal gave her a development deal.

It’s important to remember here that Lorde is only 20 years old. That means she was 12 in 2009—the heady days of Hannah Montana and the purity-ring-wearing Jonas Brothers. But the young artist didn’t want to sing songs that other people wrote for her. She didn’t want to be manufactured. She resisted and was instead allowed to develop her sound by herself.

That sound, as you imagined earlier, changed everything. Suddenly this shy, introverted, creative teenager—who wrote her first album, Pure Heroine, as a kind of journalistic endeavour chronicling the absurdity of adolescence—was a global phenomenon, complete with famous friends and paparazzi and zany Internet rumours. The success of Pure Heroine could have broken her; Lord knows success has damaged a fair number of talented teens.

But it didn’t, obviously. Lorde kept living her life. That isn’t to say she didn’t learn from the experience, though. “The main thing is that you’re the only one who has to go home and still be you and live with what you’ve done that day,” she says. “And so when it comes to making a decision about something, if people say I should go a certain way, I think, ‘You guys get to go home and take off the hat; I never get to take off the hat.’”

Lorde learned things during her time away from the spotlight, too. Most of them, in some form or another, are what constitute Melodrama. You can hear the life lessons—or at least the journey between experience and life lessons—about heartbreak, the weight fame has on connection and the inconsistent yet palpable thrill of attraction as well as the restless energy of being young and alive. Of course, translating all those lessons into music required some help.

That help mostly came in the form of Jack Antonoff, who, depending on your proximity to hip millennial culture, you might recognize as the guitarist from the band fun., the leader of the band Bleachers or Lena Dunham’s boyfriend. Antonoff and Lorde bonded quickly over a shared willingness to start completely from scratch. The goal was to build her album as if Pure Heroine hadn’t happened. “It was such exploration,” she explains. “The instinct is to assume that I wrote all the lyrics and he did all the production, but sonically this album is so my baby”.

I am going to focus in on Melodrama soon. I want to hook in an interview from The Guardian. Not to tread over the same ground too much. It is worth highlighting what happened to Lorde after Pure Heroine was released and how her life changed:

“After 2014, she pulled back and slowed the pace of her life. She returned to Auckland and bought a house on the water. Ever since she was 13, when a friend sent a tape of her covering a Duffy song to Universal Records in New Zealand and she was signed to a deal, Lorde had been managed by a Universal A&R man called Scott Maclachlan. Post-Pure Heroine, she changed management – a simple case, she insists, “of wanting to poke my nose into different areas”. All of her significant songs up to this point (the four that formed a 2012 EP, The Love Club, and the 10 of her debut album) were co-written with a talented New Zealand songwriter called Joel Little. But Lorde and Little also parted company. These dissolutions were amicable, Lorde insists. “It was really just a case of going where the work needed me to go. It’s hard to have ill-will with that. I’m the nucleus of what’s happening. And I’m going to take that to a lot of places in my career. I don’t think there’s anything strange about that.”

Through 2015, it became trickier for those outside Lorde’s sphere to follow what she was up to. She is not much of a presence on social media (vowing at one point that “all words [will] go into songs instead of tweets”), and though she performed the odd one-off show, provided vocals for a Disclosure track, and worked on the soundtrack for a Hunger Games film, she faded from frontline view. Having been seen and heard by the world, she wanted to resume, as much as possible, her old life with her friends. “Hugs and dinners,” she describes it. “Trips to the beach. Going to dumb bars in the middle of intersections.”

She moved into the waterside house in Auckland on her own. “I come from a big family,” she explains. (Her mother, Sonja Yelich, is a poet and academic, her father, Vic O’Connor, is a civil engineer; Lorde is the second of four siblings.) “We grew up in a house full of love and activity and screaming and crying. When I bought the house, people asked: ‘Isn’t it going to be strange living by yourself?’ And I was like: ‘No! I adore the feeling of being able to spread out my brain.’”

Aware that she couldn’t put off work on her second album for ever, she started assembling notes and ideas on the coffee table in her lounge. This was hastily covered with a towel whenever friends visited: she wasn’t especially proud of the half-formed work. “I was writing about nothing. I wasn’t in the right zone. [These songs] would pass off fine, but they meant nothing to me. I was writing stuff that maybe sounded cool, that were trying to be cool. But they weren’t vividly me”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Mary Ellen Matthews

Elle featured Lorde in June 2017. It is another hugely immersive and revealing interview. There are a lot of really wonderful sections of the interview. I was particularly struck by the sections that mention the importance of New York and the connection she and Jack Antonoff share:

“At first, flying back and forth between New Zealand and Los Angeles, she did the dance prescribed to all new pop stardom recruits, going on blind dates with other songwriters and producers, hoping to discover a magical musical connection. But the scene didn't suit. "Everyone's making music in L.A. now—which is great if you aren't the shyest, most introverted nerd," she says, laughing. "I found it a little too social. I made my first record in New Zealand with very little discourse—I was just my own unit. In L.A., it's very, 'Oh, what project are you working on?' I was like, 'I need to be out of this.' " She also needed the right partner in crime, and found one in Jack Antonoff, the Grammy-winning producer and songwriter behind Fun. and Bleachers (and boyfriend of her new pal Lena Dunham), who has worked with Grimes and Taylor Swift, and who cowrote and produced much of Melodrama. And she needed the right city. New York, a place Patti Smith described in 2010 as having become "closed off to the young and struggling," i.e., bereft of real bohemian spirit, provided a sort of counterintuitive blank slate. "There are no musicians here anymore," Ella says. "New York felt like a ghost town musically; it's spooky. It's like a weird pioneer town. And it's cool to be able to rebuild now that everyone is gone."

The city, the collaborative intimacy with Antonoff, the mourning of her teenage self, the breakup—it all combined to allow Ella to hear new sounds again. "I was waiting for that next thing. I knew I wasn't a teenager anymore; I wasn't having those experiences," she says. "Then it was just like this curtain fell, the rain started—all of a sudden, it was an emotion revolution! I was just like, 'Ah fuck, there's all this other shit going on!' " The new sounds she heard were weird. Giant swirls of electronic noise, elaborate melodies, disjointed piano lines leading into dramatic, crescendoing choruses. The lead single, "Green Light," about that moment when you're so close but not quite over someone—"Honey, I'll come get my things but I can't let go / I'm waiting for it, that green light, I want it"—is "a very confusing, strange piece of music with insane Euro dance pianos," Ella summarizes. Her team "loved it," but they warned her, "It's going to take people a while to get." Even her rarefied tribe of creatives was worried. "A lot of my friends who make pop music were like, 'It's very complex, there's a lot of parts; people aren't going to get it.' " But Ella trusted her gut—and her fans. "The one mistake people make is when they assume the audience is less intelligent than they are," she says. "I have so much faith in the pop audience, because I am the pop audience. I was like, I know they can handle this, but at the same time I was like, maybe I'm being crazy?”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Mark Seliger

That takes us up to her critically acclaimed second album, Melodrama. Circling back to that interview from The New York Times and it is clear how Pure Heroine put Lorde on the map. It must have been quite daunting trying to following such a notable debut album:

“Lorde owns a house in Auckland, where she grew up, but for the better part of the last year she has been living at different hotels around New York, trying to finish her second album, “Melodrama.” She began writing it about three years ago, first in her childhood home and later at a villa she bought on what she described as the other, fancier side of Auckland’s Waitemata Harbor. Lorde has a neurological condition known as sound-to-color synesthesia — when she hears certain notes and sounds, corresponding colors appear — and she describes making music in intensely visual terms. “From the moment I start something, I can see the finished song, even if it’s far-off and foggy,” she said. Her goal is to correct the colors and sharpen the contours until the precise configuration of chords, rhythms, emotions and textures she has been glimpsing all along snaps into focus. “It’s about getting the actual thing to sound like what I’ve been seeing.”

The album that made Lorde a celebrity, “Pure Heroine,” came out in 2013. It was a marvel of understatement — unhurried electronic beats, pared-down harmonies, empty spaces. Her lyrics brought an unlikely incandescence to avowedly mundane snapshots of suburban teendom. “Pure Heroine” sold more than one million copies in five months, making Lorde the first female artist with a million-selling debut album since Adele and establishing her as a wunderkind pop auteur. Kanye West introduced himself as a fan; Taylor Swift became a buddy; David Bowie clasped Lorde’s hands in his and proclaimed that listening to her music “felt like listening to tomorrow.” The question nagging her here in New York, as she worked to meet the new album’s June release date, was what the day after tomorrow sounded like”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Perou/The Guardian

Melodrama is such a stunning and nuanced album. I went on a dig to see how the album was constructed and came together. That, invariably, takes us back to the interview that The New York Times ran:

“As Lorde worked on “Melodrama” at home in New Zealand, she papered over a wall with notes for songs, like a sleuth tacking up scraps of evidence, trying to tease out their connections and fill in their blanks. This allowed her to “skim the whole album,” she said, and “to make sure I was touching all the bases I wanted to touch: ‘Oh, I haven’t said this, so let me find a good place to do it.’ ” She soon devised color codings for each song, with different hues denoting different themes. “A song about partying would get a certain color,” she explained, “but it might be a sad song, and that got its own color, too.” As she studied the wall, patterns and imbalances emerged: not enough red here; too much yellow there. On her kitchen table she arranged yet more paper, editing and shuffling lyrics around. When friends visited, she hid the table beneath a patchwork of hastily arranged bath towels and instructed them to steer clear.

Pop music has always been a result of teamwork, but in recent years hypercollaborative approaches have become prevalent, with stars bringing legions of contributors to bear on single songs. One writer might provide a vocal melody for a prechorus; another might supply one redolent turn of phrase for the second verse. Lorde’s process is strikingly solitary by contrast. She does not play an instrument, which means she must eventually enlist the help of collaborators, but even then she amasses personnel slowly and sparingly”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Christopher Polk/Getty Images for Coachella 

There is another big interview that gives us some insight into Melodrama and its inspirations. NME spoke with Lorde in 2017. Melodrama’s starting blocks and perspectives are definitely not your run-of-the-mill things!

“Reflecting her disorientating experiences with fame, one of Lorde’s early ideas was to write the album from the perspective of aliens stepping outside of a hermetically sealed environment for the first time. She ended up drawing inspiration from a more familiar source: her friendship group and their interactions (taking “field notes”, as she puts it). “A lot of being in America was about watching people’s faces and realising I didn’t really know what they were saying,” she says. “I would meet American boys and be like, ‘I don’t even think I’m being an accurate version of myself because I’m so confused by who you are.’ A lot of going back to New Zealand is about knowing how to decode people again.”

Lorde invited her gang round to her new house and, well, things got messy. The idea of a house party ended up forming a narrative thread to link the songs, which jacknife through intense, intoxicated highs and slumping lows, hook-ups and break-ups. ‘Melodrama’ captures the wild, wired energy of being young enough that a night out still feels like anything could happen. “I do believe in the transcendent nature of partying, still,” she says.

At the same time, things in the outside world were fast heading south: the refugee crisis, Syria, environmental catastrophe, Trump… An interesting time to be the official voice of the youth. “Oh boy,” says Lorde, rolling her eyes and laughing. “And young people have never needed a specialised spokesperson – one young voice – less than right now… I’ve always known that it’s bulls**t when people would say ‘voice of a generation’. I’d be like, ‘I’m gonna nip it in the bud now… This is not what this is, and it will never be that.’”

‘Melodrama’ is very much a personal statement. “The first record was ‘we’ and ‘us’. And this record is ‘I’,” she says. “The focus does close in. I think that was necessary to get to the level of frankness that’s in there.” And yet the world’s horrors seep in, mixing with the fevered feelings. “I hate the headlines and the weather,” she sings on ‘Perfect Places’. “But when we’re dancing I’m alright.” Recurrent words in the lyrics are “party”, “rush” and “violence”. “It’s about contrast: really big and grand, and really tiny and intimate. Going from the personal, emotional stuff to the headlines and the web. It goes from the world  to my bedroom. You’re talking about literal, out-there violence and, like, heart violence”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Perou/The Guardian

Let’s move slightly away from the music and Melodrama. I have read various interviews where the person interviewing Lorde has described how she comes across. Some say she is quite nervous, whereas others have different perspectives. I wanted to raise it, as a lot of people might not know about the woman behind the music. There are a few interviews that I want to highlight. The first, from Elle (which I sourced from earlier), tried to sum up Lorde:

“Face to face, Ella comes across as a poised, gracious, and grounded human being—the kind of person who worries you didn't get enough of the "amazing" maple butter that came with the pancakes. But she also seems a little skittish. When the waiter appears for the third time at an inopportune moment midconversation, jostling her train of thought, you can see the disruption radiate throughout her body. It's hard to reconcile this person with the one a three-second Google image search pulls up: posing for photos with Hailee Steinfeld at Dior; standing in for Kurt Cobain alongside Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic at Nirvana's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction; hanging backstage with Drake and Jaden after Kanye West's 2015 celebrity pomp-fest Yeezy show. How does an artist who says celebrity is fundamentally at odds with her creative process balance the demands of being Lorde with the emotional sanctuary required to be Ella? "New Zealand," she says, eyes stock-still pools of blue. "That's why I am so passionate about going home. Most of my friends are people I knew before I was famous. I'm very thankful that I never feel like the smartest person in the room, or the coolest person in the room, or the funniest. When I'm there, I'm just there. People forget that I've done anything. They say, 'Ella's this weird old dowager with a nice house’”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jack Davison for The New York Times

It is interesting reading how various interviews describe Lorde and comment about her gestures and interaction. Coming back to the NME interview. They give another perspective regarding an artist who can beguile and impact everyone she meets:

“Lorde, as I’ll learn over the short time we spend together, is very self-deprecating. Clad simply in a dark sweatshirt and trousers, she’s also quick to laugh, eloquent and very down to earth. And of course, she’s also massively famous. In the past four years, she went from teenage songwriter to millennial figurehead. She befriended Taylor Swift, Lena Dunham, Karlie Kloss. She curated a soundtrack for one of her generation’s defining film franchises, The Hunger Games. She made Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list of world-shaking young people. She was asked to help induct Nirvana into the Hall of Fame, and then to pay tribute to David Bowie at the BRIT Awards, where Gary Oldman, by way of a no-pressure introduction, announced her as “a young lady who David himself said was the future of music”.

I also want to bring back the great 2017 interview from The Guardian. They provide a commentary about Lorde that I felt warranted a mention:

“Eccentricity was, and remains, central to her appeal as an artist. It seems perfectly right, in the desert today, that her outfit should admit no surrender to the conditions. It’s 99F (37°C) outside, but Lorde wears an oversized black T-shirt, a complicated tangle of necklaces, Adidas Superstars, and blue jeans so wide in the leg that, when she moves about, she has to be supporting about a kilo of denim. “One of my favourite things,” she says slowly, watching me scribble notes about her outfit and no doubt anticipating this paragraph, “is reading in magazines what I wear from the perspective of a male journalist. Always interesting.”

She is like this: relentlessly alert. In conversation, she plunges into new ideas with the enthusiasm of an undergraduate enrolled on her dream course. She searches for the better-expressed phrase or analogy – which isn’t always necessary, because she’s very good off the cuff. (On the difficulty of maintaining a friendship with someone as famous as Taylor Swift: “It’s like having a friend with very specific allergies. There are certain places you can’t go together. Certain things you can’t do. There are these different sets of considerations within the friendship. It’s like having a friend with an autoimmune disease.”) And though her youth finds an outlet, for instance when she agrees with something and yells, “Totally!” or “Truly!”, she expresses herself for the most part with the fluency of someone at least a decade older.

“I’m like an old witch when I talk,” she says, her Kiwi accent flattening certain vowels. “I do meander. But I always come back around”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jess Gleeson

Just before getting to reviewing, I want to return once more to the interview from The Guardian. Although it was conducted four years ago, hearing Lorde discuss her ambitions and aims is wonderful to read:

“There has even been a perverse satisfaction in not being able to win over everyone this time. Lorde is like one of those kids who were slightly too clever at school; they find it difficult to stay motivated when tasks are too simple. So if not everyone has yet been won over by the 2017 incarnation of Lorde, that leaves more winning-over to be done as an incentive for the rest of the year. “I’ve talked to other artist friends about a moment in their careers when they’ve felt themselves stop getting better. So it was almost nice, in a way, to come to this second record and realise: ‘Ooooh, I can still be crap at this.’ It meant there was still so much to learn.” She says she’s come to appreciate that a second album, though an appallingly pressurised thing in the moment, should only be a part of a wider career collage.

“I want to be really, really good one day,” Lorde says. Her legs start to twitch again. Her arms begin to flail, making their shapes. “I think I’m pretty good now. I think I’ve made a good start. But I want to be Paul Simon.” She thumps her hands down hard on the table. “I want to be Leonard Cohen.” (Thump.) “I want to be Joni.” (Thump.) “Fucking.” (Thump.) “Mitchell.” (Thump.) “And that takes time”.

I am going to assess and dissect Solar Power. Lorde herself has revealed the influences behind the song. We also discover which two modern-day queens appear on backing vocals:

“Lorde offered a full breakdown of her long-awaited new single, “Solar Power,” during an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music One Friday, June 11th.

The track, Lorde said, was borne during a summer on Martha’s Vineyard, when she came back from a long day of swimming and began playing around with a Yamaha DX keyboard. She said the melody reminded her of Robby Williams’ song “Rock DJ,” and when she later took the song’s skeleton to producer Jack Antonoff, she set about capturing a distinct summer vibe.

“We had all the windows open. It was summer. And then we just followed it through,” Lorde said. “I sampled cicadas on my phone for the last few summers. I was like, it has to have the cicadas in it. I really wanted to capture [that] there’s something so specific about the New Zealand summer.”

Along with the Robby Williams nod, Lorde cited Primal Scream’s “Loaded” as a major influence on the track. While Lorde said she arrived at the melody organically, she cited the 1990 Madchester classic as “100% the original blueprint for this,” and said Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie even offered his approval.

PHOTO CREDIT: Christoph Gateau/Picture-Alliance/DPA/AP 

“I wrote the song on the piano and then we realized like, this is, it sounds a lot like ‘Loaded,’” Lorde said. “It’s just one of those crazy things that like, they just were the spiritual forebears of the song. I reached out to Bobby and he was so lovely about it. And he was like, you know, these things happen. You caught a vibe that we caught years ago. And he gave us his blessing.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Lorde spoke about inviting Phoebe Bridgers and Clairo to provide backing vocals on the song, marking the first time she’s had other vocalists sing on one of her songs. “I just knew it had to be a gang,” she said, adding, “the sentiments were not just mine alone to deliver. So yeah, it really it’s everything I hoped it would be in terms of having other people on it. It’s fun not to be alone. Finally.”

And Lorde offered a bit of a teaser for her forthcoming album, saying it, too, was inspired by both a steady process of rejuvenation and New Zealand summers. “I think people realize that about me now, I’m one who has to go away and figure it out and I’ll be back and I’ll bring you a full universe when I come back, but it takes me a minute,” she said. “And I feel like you can hear that in the work and the whole album”.

I love the Solar Power video. Directed by Joel Kefali and Ella Yelich-O’Connor (Lorde), it is such a bold, bright and brilliant video! I think of the song as a call for human connection and a way of distancing ourselves from distractions and technology. The lyrics are definitely among Lorde’s most-quotable and best. Some people have spotted elements of George Michael’s Freedom! ’90 and Primal Scream’s Loaded. In the first verse, Lorde’s voice is huskier and almost whispered. We see her, at first, lying on the beach with some women around her. She gets up as the camera follows her in a single shot. There is a sparseness to the production and vocal which allows for greater impact and a sense of focus. Rather than throw layers and too much in right away, the first verse is quite unadorned and simple: “I hate the winter/Can’t stand the cold/I tend to cancel all the plans (so sorry, I can’t make it)/But when the heat comes/Something takes a hold/Can I kick it? Yeah, I can”. Apart from a nod to A Tribe Called Quest’s song, Can I Kick It, there seems to be more to the lyrics than the weather. On one level, yes, Lorde is embracing the beach and the summer heat. (As a New Zealander, she probably doesn’t experience winters and weather quite like we do here in the U.K.) I also feel there is something personal and more emotion-based to those words. In terms of the visual representation, Lorde seems happy and blissed-out on a sunny beach!

One might expect big electronics and a punchy chorus that injects exploded sun into the veins. The real gift of the song is a sense of anticipation. Lorde keeps things quite chilled and sensuous. There is a quality to her voice that draws you in and compels. The video finds her flitting and dancing about the beach (as the camera has not cut away). We get this single take where the heroine is introducing dancers on the beach (set in this paradise setting). The lyrics are sumptuous, almost carefree yet evocative: “My cheeks in high colour, overripe peaches/No shirt, no shoes, only my features/My boy behind me, he’s taking pictures/Lead the boys and girls onto the beaches/Come one, come all, I’ll tell you my secrets/I’m kinda like a prettier Jesus”. I particularly like that last line. There is wit, colour and arresting scenery to be found through Solar Power. There is a build-up to the 2:00 marker. The video keeps with this single shot, as we see men by the sea with a raft - and Lorde appears alongside a couple of women. I was not expecting the concept we have in the video. I feel it works really well and it is beautifully shot. The fact that Lorde co-directed the video is great. Not cutting away and having too busy a shot means that there is this fluid and calming effect.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Universal Music/YouTube

The lyrics, as I have said, are brilliant: “Forget all of the tears that you’ve cried, it’s over (over, over, over)/It’s a new state of mind — are you coming, my baby?”. My favourite lyrics bring colours, the beach and technology together in a beautiful cocktail: “Acid green, aquamarine/The girls are dancing in the sand/And I throw my cellular device in the water/Can you reach me? No, you can’t”. Before coming to the turning point in the song, there are lines that made me wonder as to their meaning: “Turn it on in a new kind of bright, it’s solar (solar, solar, solar)/Come on and let the bliss begin/Blink three times when you feel it kickin’ in/That solar power”. The chorus sees Lorde joined by the full cast in a line as she grooves and dances seductively on the beach. I love the vibe of the chorus! There is something exotic, tender and swooning about it. Lorde elongates the song’s title and creates this warm and calming wave. It is a change of sound to the verse, and it provides this sensation that is part sun-kissed, part moonlit. With a light beat behind her, one feels island vibes and this incredibly pleasing sensation. I cannot fathom or understand those who have dismissed the song or felt disappointed by it! Maybe they were expecting something banging and fully-charged. Instead, we get a song that is perfect for the summer. It is a great introduction to the Solar Power album! I have listened to the song numerous times. Whilst I love it all, it is that chorus that I keep coming back to. The video looks gorgeous. Lorde herself looks beautiful and super-cool. It is a feast for the ears and eyes! The blissful and insatiably beautiful chorus rides to the end. It is the perfect end to a triumphant and stunning single from Lorde. I cannot wait to see what the Solar Power album offers!

Before closing things up, I am bringing in an article where Lorde talked more about the Solar Power album and what we might expect:

“The decade-defining artist confirmed that ‘Solar Power’ is the title track from her hugely anticipated third album (no release date or title yet) and says the sun-kissed tune is the perfect introduction to what comes next.

“Every song on the album, I did say it has to sound like the sun, and this one in a big way. It sounds like the beach, the waves, the girls lying on the beach. I really wanted it to have that vibe. The guitars, the drums – everything’s so sunny.”

Despite what’s been “a pretty wild [year] for everyone”, Lorde has been trying to spent a lot more of her time in nature and her time outdoors has heavily impacted the sound and themes of the new album.

“It’s definitely my most complex work – as a producer, as an arranger, as a musician. But I also love how light, playful, and fun it is."

"I hope it makes people go outside and really just get out there and listen to what the natural world has to tell them. That's my goal for this [album]."

COVID forced her indoors for a while, just like everyone else, but "I try and spend all of my time that I can outside, wherever that is."

"I have a variety of secret spots that I go to. But I also spend a tonne of time in the studio. I was in New York with Jack [Antonoff, producer] working on this stuff last summer. So, between the studio and a perfect beach somewhere, that’s kind of my vibe.”

She's even made use of the sun and the sand for the 'Solar Power' video, capturing that "infectious, flirtatious energy that starts to come [in summer]." And there's more where that came from.

“We made a whole bunch of videos for this album,” Lorde explained. “We built literally basically a universe on a secret beach. The first video is me introducing you to the world of the album and the videos, I play a kooky tour guide almost.”

And yes, she’s also seen the reactions that flooded social media when the mASSterful ‘Solar Power’ artwork was unleashed earlier this week”.

I am looking forward to a third studio album from one of the finest artists of this generation. As people have labelled Solar Power as a ‘return’, maybe there is that pressure on Lorde to excel and deliver something even more astounding than Melodrama. If the title track is anything to go on, she is moving in a different musical direction. Most artists evolve, though I am particularly curious about Lorde and what she will deliver on Solar Power. It must rank alongside the most-anticipated albums of 2021 – I assume that it will come out later this year? Solar Power is another remarkable song from…

 ART CREDIT: Sam McKinniss

THE always-brilliant Lorde.

___________

Follow Lorde  

Official:

https://www.lorde.co.nz/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/lorde

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/lordemusic

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/lordemusic/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/163tK9Wjr9P9DmM0AVK7lm?si=XCFMjHqdQcC0obMxrdD0Dg&dl_branch=1

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ALL UNCREDITED PHOTOS:

Lorde

TRACK REVIEW: King Princess - House Burn Down

TRACK REVIEW:

 

 

King Princess

House Burn Down

9.5/10

The track, House Burn Down, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip6Suz5wHXs

GENRE:

Indie-Pop

ORIGIN:

Brooklyn, U.S.A.

RELEASE DATE:

1st June, 2021

LABELS:

Zellig Records, LLC

__________

AS it is Pride Month…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Lea Winkler for W Magazine

I am especially excited that I get to review King Princess. The genderqueer/gay artist (who uses she/her pronouns) has just released an awesome new single. Real name Mikaela Straus, King Princess is one of the most exciting young artists in the world. Her debut album, Cheap Queen, was released in 2019 to huge acclaim. I wonder whether she will follow that album this year. I want to spend some time discussing King Princess’ sexuality (as I think it is important to her identity and music) - but there are a number of other things to address. Before I get to anything else, I want to spend a little bit of time exploring King Princess’ (I shall refer to her as such rather than Mikaela Straus) upbringing. In an interview with FADER from 2019, we learn more about the earlier years:

“Straus was born on December 19, 1998 and raised in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Her parents were in a metal band: her father Oliver played drums, her mom Agnes sang. “They’re divorced now so maybe the band dynamic wasn’t the best for them!” she laughs. Nevertheless, her mom did convince her dad to buy a house in Williamsburg — they would live upstairs and turn the basement into a recording space. Eventually Straus’s dad bought a proper studio nearby and founded Mission Sound, where everyone from Arctic Monkeys to Jack Antonoff to Animal Collective have recorded. “It was magical,” recalls Straus. “I would play with the console and it felt like a spaceship, and you know, if you’re a dykey kid, those are the right toys.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Salacuse for NME

Matt and Kim, who recorded there in 2009, remember Straus as a 10-year-old. “We started talking about how cool it must have been growing up in Williamsburg. She replied with something like, ‘It was way better before these condos started showing up!’” Matt recounts. “Kim and I were shocked, because she seemed like she was 30 years old already. She was really outgoing, and not nervous around adults like some kids are… she could just hang like she was any of our friends.”

Straus attended an artsy private school in Chelsea, Manhattan. Her early experiences in formal music class were “very kumbaya, very choral,” and her teacher kept yelling at her because she was singing too loud. Once upon a time she was cast in a production of Oklahoma, but was asked to leave for being too rowdy. Straus started off playing drums like her dad, before progressing to the guitar, piano, and bass. There are dozens of recordings of her from age five onwards, but it wasn’t until she was in high school that Straus wrote her first proper song. “That’s when I started being fully gay and eating pussy,” she says. “That’s when the songs started flowing out of me, because I had something to say”.

There was more from that interview that continued the story. There is another interview that I will get to soon that also discusses the young life (she is young now; I mean childhood) of King Princess. I am always compelled to look at the upbringing of artists, as I feel that feeds into their music and it is a very important consideration.

Many people might recognise King Princess from her awesome debut single, 1950. It is hard to make an impression right form the start. Most artists take a while to establish themselves and may take quite a while to reach a lot of people. It is tough in a very crowded and varied music industry. With King Princess, she came in very hot! It was not like the songwriter was fresh out of the blocks and got lucky. As we read in a High Snobiety interview, music was always around her:

“Although she seemingly popped out of nowhere with her debut single “1950” last year, she’s been surrounded by music all her life. The daughter of a recording engineer, Straus spent much of her childhood at her dad’s Mission Sound studio in Brooklyn, which she says was essential to her development as a multifaceted musician and entertainer.

“It was really helpful to just watch people be musicians and play instruments – the biggest part of me, as an artist, is that I just love to fiddle around and play instruments and produce,” the singer tells me. “If I hadn't had so many examples of incredible musicianship as a kid, I probably wouldn't have put an emphasis on that. I could have just been a singer, or a dancer.”

Even at a young age, Straus was captivating, and clearly had talents that needed to be shared with the world. At age 11, she was offered a record deal that she declined, wanting to develop her own sound before signing. Meeting her now, as a charmingly precocious 20-year-old, it’s clear she has a singular vision that has been crystalizing throughout her adolescence and young adulthood, which makes working with her a breezy pleasure.

But since the release of her debut single and its corresponding EP (Make My Bed), it’s been clear what King Princess is all about – an unmistakable sound with earnest, clever lyrics, expressing all the woes and wishes of a young 21st-century queer person. “Pussy Is God,” which emerged late last year, is a standout track. It’s a total earworm, but not the kind that relies on saccharine pop tropes. Instead, it’s got slap bass, catchy piano riffs, chopped up vocal samples, and almost gospel-like harmonies”.

I am going to jig the timeline slightly so that I can take us up to 2020 before going back to Cheap Queen in 2019. I am keen to cover biography and show how King Princess has risen and developed as an artist since the earliest days. Even though last year was tough for musicians to make an impression – because of the pandemic -, it was one where King Princess solidified her excellence and hit new heights. In an NME interview that I will source from a few times, we discover more about her 2020 – in addition to why the video for her single, Ohio, was so evocative and memorable:

“Nailing the particulars of love fading and falling to pieces, her 2018 EP ‘Make My Bed’ and last year’s full-length record ‘Cheap Queen’ ooze an aching sadness, harking back to old school balladeers laying their pain bare for a chattering, smoke-filled room. Yet new single ‘Pain’, released earlier this week, is a rollicking pop song that teams an upbeat melody with devastating lyrics (“I feel it now / Pain”).

She set the table for this new approach earlier in 2020 with ‘Ohio’; the song is a thrashing headbanger that captures the excess of classic rock. The accompanying music video shows King Princess first as a glamorous drag queen performing ballads for a room of cheering, shirtless men, before transforming into a prowling rock star. Delirious stage invaders are hoisted away by security. In between smashing up guitars, and getting her hairspray touched up mid-shredding solo, King Princess makes out with her girlfriend at the side of the stage, and runs around, as she put it to NME, “titties out”.

Before moving along, it is prudent to remain where we are in terms of discussing King Princess’ rise to prominence. Even though she didn’t just arrive out of the blue, she was quick to establish herself. A lot of people also knew about her before the arrival of Cheap Queen. Although her 2018 debut single, 1950, announced us to the remarkable talent, Cheap Queen was the big revelation and success. Grabbing from this interview in W Magazine, King Princess was thrust into the spotlight very shortly after the release of her debut album:

“In the last few years, Straus’s career has taken off: she broke through in 2018 with “1950”— an unhurried, melancholic pop gem—and followed up the next year with her debut album, Cheap Queen. The album’s heady mix of raspy rock songs and velvety, R&B-inflected ballads—at once viscerally tender and compulsively catchy—signaled Straus’s unflinching emotional vulnerability and gleeful sexual indulgence, not to mention a reserve of heartache beyond her years. Cheap Queen made Straus a rising star, even allowing her to crack the Top 20 on Billboard’s Top Alternative Albums list. But it was King Princess—with all her bawdy, winsome rock n’ roll charm, prowling the stage each night in a semi-transparent white tank top—who made Straus an industry darling overnight. Within months of the album drop, Straus released the mournful track “I Know” with Fiona Apple and announced a spring 2020 tour with Harry Styles. She became an artist’s artist, a scrappy beacon of old school rock grandeur who immediately set about ripping open the last fraying seams of a once tightly buttoned up industry. “A lot has changed in the last few years, but to be honest, I’ve been preparing for this my whole life,” she laughs. “I sat in this bedroom as a kid and planned out all my Saturday Night Live performances and Grammy speeches”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Salacuse for NME

That takes us to the remarkable debut album. With sexuality, soulfulness and funkiness, King Princess dissected and explored themes of sexuality and identity in a unique way. She definitely caught the attention of critics. Cheap Queen was crowded as one of the finest albums from 2019. Going back to the High Snobiety interview, King Princess reveals the process of writing the album:

“She describes writing her debut album Cheap Queen as “chronological” and “very feeling-based with just what was going down in my life.” Its lyrics are deceptively simple, often so straightforward that they land as if you’ve heard them before. There’s a balance between bangers and ballads, with many songs integrating both vibes at the same time. Interestingly, from a production standpoint – even on the level of the software she uses – King Princess’ music-making process revolves around the dichotomy of being a cheap queen. “It's a mixture of cheap and expensive, always,” she explains. “You want things to sound cheap, but very good, and that's hard to do. But I think Ableton allows me to do that”.

Over 13 tracks, the album presents another kind of juxtaposition, buried beneath caked-on makeup: strong vulnerability. On a very basic level, King Princess herself radiates a confidence that’s almost impermeable – but there are soft spots, too. “Tough on Myself,” the album’s opener, posits a vulnerable strength from the beginning, as Straus laments how hard she is on herself while longing after someone. Or, in her own words: “I think after this record cycle, I've become a lot less tough on myself, because I was making this whole thing and wanting it to be perfect. It was a hard thing to do, starting with a song like ‘1950’ and then all of a sudden being tasked with making a body of work that lived up to that. In reality, the album needed to be a step up in my artistic growth, rather than an album full of fucking hits. It just needed to be me”.

Straus’ favorite lyrics on the album display a good glimpse into the general atmosphere of Cheap Queen: “And I'm alone / Watching my phone / Thinking 'bout you, baby,” on “Watching My Phone,” and, “I could get you back / And we could probably reenact / But I’m a better fag, and you’re an amateur,” on “You Destroyed My Heart.” Both capture the notion of strength in vulnerability. They also happen to brilliantly communicate the zeitgeist of being a person in their early twenties at the end of the 2010s”.

In an interview with FADER, quite a bit was revealed regarding the themes and inspirations behind the songs. The story and history of Cheap Queen is really interesting:

“Released in late October, the songs that make up Cheap Queen chronicle a tumultuous year for the 21-year-old singer. At the beginning of those 12 months she was in love, and then she was heartbroken; when the year closed out she was in love again, but with someone new. It was the year Straus released her first piece of music and soon found herself squinting into the bright lights. She was a rising star in her own right, but also the plus-one to a romantic partner already established in the celebrity firmament. This was the year Mikaela Straus became King Princess. “I wouldn’t have this record without this last year and all the shit that went down,” she says, leaning in. “I never want to not write music about my life because it’s so painful and so cathartic. It’s because of the music that I’m fine. The music is the closure”.

“Straus says “Isabel’s Moment” is the record’s beating core, and while it’s true that the singer’s romantic relationships aren’t necessarily central to the work, the shards of her broken heart glitter and gleam all over Cheap Queen, because heartbreak is a motherfucker. Sometimes you feel it coming, unease creeping like fire curling the edges of yesterday’s paper; sometimes, even when you know you’re on shifting ground, you still feel blindsided, a suckerpunch that leaves you gasping. “Watching My Phone” is one of those crushingly relatable moments: A study in power, balance, and control, and how sometimes, even if you know that person isn’t your person, you love them anyway, and you love them too hard.

“Yeah that’s the one, let’s talk about her,” Straus says unblinking. “Tears, seriously. I wrote it three days before this break up. It was the darkest night. Sometimes I think I’m a demon-wizard who knows exactly what’s going to go down all the time and the music is my prophecy”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Danielle Levitt for GQ

Not to necessarily emphasis this subject because it is Pride Month, though King Princess is definitely an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ icon. She is someone who inspires others. Through June, so many L.G.B.T..Q.I.A.+ artists will be celebrated. As I said right at the start, King Princess is genderqueer. In the NME interview, we discover why King Princess neither identifies as male or female:

“King Princess (who uses she/her pronouns) is genderqueer, meaning that she doesn’t identify with either of the binary male and female genders. She sees herself as sitting somewhere roughly in the middle – but notes that “some people do not view being genderqueer as half-and-half”. She’s not interested in diluting this from her work.

“Rock’n’roll is about sex,” she continues. “When you see somebody being raunchy, sexy and dirty and doing it of their own accord, it hits this point in some people that makes them feel uncomfortable, because it’s not the type of manicured sexuality we have been fed. I’ve always sexualised myself, and I don’t think very much about what men think about my sexuality; it doesn’t even occur to me. I don’t exist in a world, luckily, where I have to be like, ‘Can I show my titties today?’ I just do whatever the fuck I want. Nobody on my team is being like, ‘Hey – tone it down.” She adds with a laugh: “Nobody would dare!”.

  PHOTO CREDIT: Lea Winkler for W Magazine

Even in 2021, it is tough for queer artists to be themselves and be as expressive as they would like. There is greater visibility now than there was years ago, though there is still some way to go. Not to suggest that queer artists are not accepted. Conversations have grown and, especially during Pride Month, we are discovering so many L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artists and hearing their stories. In an interview with GQ, King Princess touched on the nature of queerness and how it (as part of her identity and her career) has impacted her:  

“Being queer in and of itself is political, even when you don’t want it to be – a fact that Straus was forced to quickly reckon with as her career hit a sudden upswing. ‘I knew I was going to be politicised, but it wasn’t my thought when I wrote 1950. I was like, “This bitch broke my heart, I’m gonna need to write about it.”’

Straus wrote, performed and produced much of Cheap Queen, which she released in October. It’s a ripe, raw rumination on the wreckage of a relationship: what went right, what went wrong, and how you deal with it. As with any break-up, there are sobering flits of mourning and many manifestations of grief. The emotional spectrum of Cheap Queen is vast and messy, a lot like real life. Isabel’s Moment, featuring Tobias Jesso Jr, clings to the hope that a romantic flame might just reignite, while Do You Want to See Me Crying? lashes out: ‘I feel better with my heart out, and you’re probably just a fan now, babe,’ she sings. Hit the Back, which Straus describes as a ‘bottom anthem’, is about as frivolous as it gets, invoking the surrender of oneself not just to the rhythm, but also to a lover. The title track is littered with vocal samples of an anti-lesbian public service announcement from the 1930s, and finds solace in friendship when romantic love burns out, while You Destroyed My Heart takes a more sinister approach: ‘I could get you back and we could probably reenact, but I’m a better fag and you’re an amateur”.

‘I hate when they compare me to other gay people and they’re like: “These are the ones!” I don’t need you to compare me to all these gay people, honey, put me in the ring with some straights,’ she says. (Straus calls everyone ‘honey’.) But, she demurs. ‘Queer people are from this incredibly rich tapestry of artists and musicians. I’m so proud to be a part of that lineage. When I do get politicised in those moments, I think about that. I’m in a very lucky position to be where I am right now. I’m not in danger. People aren’t writing in disgusting tabloids about how I might be gay, because I’m literally like, “I eat puss!”’

 PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Salacuse for NME

There are more interviews that I want to quote from regarding King Princess and her sexual identity. Growing up, it was hard for her to identify with queer artists, as there were not to many out there. Maybe there were, though they were not as visible and assimilated as today. So many powerful queer artists have emerged in the past few years. Going back to the FADER interview, and this subject is explored more:

“Aside from Gaga, there weren't many role models Straus identified with when she was growing up. Now King Princess can be pinned to bedroom walls alongside queer pop icons like Christine and the Queens, Troye Sivan, Hayley Kiyoko (that’s Lesbian Jesus to her fans), Halsey, Shura, Kim Petras, and Kindness. These artists are leading conversations previously held only in hushed tones — if they were held at all. Straus explains that when she was younger she didn’t relate to women, but that finding a group of girls in high school where she felt accepted, not tokenized, was a game-changer. I ask her how she would describe her gender.

PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Salacuse for NME

“I had a really long talk with my friend about this yesterday: I think I’m a gender-queer person — I’ve always liked being called she, and she for me is more like the royal she. I feel like I’ve never felt connected to my female body, I’ve never felt entirely female. I sometimes feel like I’m an observer to femininity more than a participant. It’s hard because for a long time you exist in this binary where if you’re not trans or fully transitioning, and you’re not cis, that middle ground isn’t considered real.”

She continues: “But it absolutely is because gender is a spectrum and I know how I feel when I wake up every day — it’s different, it changes, I’m in-between, and I’m so thankful because it’s such a beautiful perspective”.

“It’s when you’re asked, How does being gay influence your music? Imagine being asked that!” she exclaims. “How does being straight influence your writing? No girl. It doesn’t. It’s just life. Sometimes I see something that’s written about me and I’m like, Was it really that necessary to spend 90 percent of the interview talking about what it means for me to be a gay artist? Is it maybe more important that I’m producing my own music?”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Lissy Elle

The final interview that covers queerness and King Princess’ sexuality comes from TEETH. Among the topics discussed, King Princess talked about sexuality and how it can identify artists:

“Did you have role models who fulfilled this aspect for you growing up?

Yeah, I did, but when you don’t see people who look like you in mainstream media, you get diet forms. It’s important to hear same-sex language. Artists that we all go back to, like the Bowies, are people who seem to move seamlessly between gender. I’m like, wouldn’t that be fun if there were more people like that! It’s a no-brainer.

It would be nice to get to a point where the sexuality of an artist wasn’t definitive.

Totally, but we’re not there yet. It’s still a discussion because otherwise, people forget that it’s still an issue and there are still kids out there who aren’t safe. But there is a lot of great stuff coming out right now and the gays are killing the game. I’m happy to be a part of that movement.

You don’t want it to define you, but at the same time, it is a self-defining thing.

It’s also such a point of pride if you allow it to be. I knew I was gay from a young age and came out really young. I found people who are queer to fill that familial need in my friends, but not everyone does.

Do your friendships and community inspire your work?

Yeah! What I love about the people I surround myself with is that there is a commonality between us. We’ll go and see drag shows and freak the fuck out. We’ll go and see movies. I love having people that you can talk about art with. It makes me feel like I can fully be an artist and feel like I’m fully in it and supported by these people. I’m so inspired by my friends, I think that they are some of the best love stories that you can have”.

One aspect of King Princess that is, perhaps, not covered and talked about that much is how she takes control in the studio. She would call herself a studio/tech geek. Someone who has a fascination and clear bond with production and the studio, alongside producers like Mark Ronson (who I will bring in soon), she helped to craft the sound and brilliance of Cheap Queen. Coming back to the NME interview, we discover more about King Princess and production:

“Deep down, Straus is a hardcore studio nerd: she waxes lyrical about Neve mixing consoles and Magnatone boutique amps. Growing up, acts such as Missy Elliott, Cyndi Lauper and The National would record at Mission Sound, and she found as many excuses as possible to loiter in the studio – when Arctic Monkeys came to record 2009’s ‘Humbug’ (and 2011’s ‘Suck It And See’) Straus would wander in to ‘borrow’ some milk. “I would make sure I was in there as much as possible, really,” she says. “That’s where I wanted to be. I didn’t want to be anywhere else.”

Straus co-produced every song on ‘Cheap Queen’. Misconceptions – particularly the sexist assumption that she wasn’t producing her own stuff – grated. “People will say: ‘So what’s it like having Mark produce your stuff?’ I get constant questions like that. Regardless of whether I’m collaborating or writing and recording stuff solo, there’s no Wizard of Oz figure making the music behind the scenes.”

She adds: “There’s obviously more pressure on female-presenting people to either sit back and do fucking nothing, or do everything. There’s no middle ground; you’re either the figurehead of this team of fucking writers per song, or you’re doing everything.” Of her own approach, she explains: “I collaborate, but at the end of the day it’s my ship”.

There is not enough conversation regarding sexism in studios. There are vastly more men in the studio compared to people from other genders. How many genderqueer producers are out there!? Maybe things have evolved recently, though I suspect that studios are still very male-heavy. This is dissected and illuminated in a fascinating interview from The New York Times Magazine:

“The provocateur persona can seem a front, a superheroic avatar constructed to insulate Straus from a rough and sexist industry. Ronson notes that when they first met, Straus talked about gear on a level that was almost over his head. “She’s used to going into a writing session and people just condescending to her,” he says. “I think part of it was nerding out, and part of it was she needed me to know that she knew how to engineer and produce records.” But even if its roots are defensive, Straus’s attitude has evolved into something genuinely subversive. What she is crafting in King Princess, in and around all her bluster, is a potentially new kind of rock star, or at least an old kind of rock star for a new age”.

Straus all but grew up in a recording studio. “It was everything,” she says of Mission Sound, the Williamsburg spot her father founded in 1995 and still runs. “It looks like a spaceship,” she says. “I’m so horny for that. I just love gear and equipment.” As a kid, tucked away and playing with musical toys in that dark, womblike space, Straus could forget how isolated and friendless she was. The only child of divorced parents, a kid with “horrible authority issues,” Straus had good reasons to feel like an outsider. “I was confused why other people couldn’t understand that I just wasn’t a girl and I wasn’t a boy,” she says. “I was really confused as to what gender I was until … now. Until tomorrow.” Her future, though, seemed clear. “You know what’s not a fun person to be around at age 7, 8, 9?” she asks. “Someone who knows they’re going to be famous. That kid is challenging. I was a lot. I was brutal. I had a band in high school that I was brutal to, and I’m still that way, like James Brown — you get billed if you play wrong. That’s my vibe”.

Just before getting to themes like Mark Ronson and New York (they are not connected), I want to spend a bit more time with King Princess as an artist. She has such a captivating personality. This has been covered in interviews. Bringing back the interview from The New York Times, there seem to be no barriers and limitations regarding what King Princess says:

“In the time we spent together, I saw her mime masturbation after talking about how hot she thinks the singer Rosalía is (“She gave me a hug, and I was like, ‘You smell good.”); declare that if she were a man, she would “have a small [expletive], but it would work good”; and announce that she wants to give her girlfriend a cast of her vagina for their anniversary. In between takes at the video shoot for “Ohio” — a slow-burn ballad that descends into an unhinged rock jam — she asked several members of her team to smell her armpits (noting that the left one was noticeably more rank than the right) and talked colorful smack about other artists, esteemed music-industry institutions and an ex-girlfriend’s new girlfriend. “I want you to come to my apartment after this,” she said, staring me down during a moment of tenuous calm as her makeup artist sprayed a fine mist of glittering fuchsia across her cheekbone, “because I can tell it’s inconvenient for you.”

“There’s a bit of a ­Gallagher-y thing to it,” says the producer Mark Ronson, who released Straus’s debut on his own Zelig Records, referring to the fractious Gallagher brothers from Oasis. “She’s talking so much [expletive]. But when you’ve got that razor-sharp wit, you can get away with it”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Arielle Bobb-Willis for The New York Times Magazine

I love how there is this confidence and attitude from King Princess. Rather than being outspoken, she is very honest and undiluted. In a social media age, so many artists are guarded regarding what they say, lest they risk being judged or criticised. As much as I love the music and the process behind her songs, it is really interesting finding out more about the personality of one of modern music’s most fascinating artists. Drawing in the W Magazine interview again, we learn a little more about the person behind King Princess:

“Straus may be a little cocky, but she’ll tell you that part herself. What becomes clear from talking to her is the depth of her obsession with—and her trade knowledge of—the less glamorous side of the industry. She’s a gearhead who spirals easily into enthusiastic soliloquies on the majesty of an out-of-production guitar amp or the artistic genius of a certain chewed-up session musician. Straus has a long list of the engineers and producers she’s wanted to work with since she was a tween, and these days she’s burning through it. “The truth is,” she jokes, “I only planned up to here.” Even after topping her own childhood expectations, the pressure to deliver release after release can be hard to manage. “This kind of career is so addictive, and if you’re after success you’ll only fail. But getting to work with all these insane people has reminded me that there is quite literally no wrong way to do this. I just want to constantly improve on my craft”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Lissy Elle

Maybe some people are not aware that Mark Ronson was one of the producers on Cheap Queen. I am not sure how the two came to know one another. Although King Princess has innate ability and talent when it comes to production, it appears that Ronson has helped foster that and provide advice. We learn more about this in an interview from Los Angeles Times:

“Still, King Princess insists she’s glad she waited to link up with Ronson, who said her demo exuded a type of street smarts that reminded him of Lady Gaga and Alicia Keys when they were starting out. “No shade,” the singer said, “but if I’d been signed and developed from 15 or 16, I would not be a happy person. My parents were amazing about not selling me into child labor.”

The delay also gave her time to hone her sound, which on “Cheap Queen” seems to beam directly from her heart even as the music juggles varied beats and textures. Tobias Jesso Jr., the cult-favorite singer-songwriter who wrote several songs with King Princess and contributes backup vocals to a dreamy ballad called “Isabel’s Moment,” commends the “emotional honesty” of her stuff — the way she uses her powerful voice, with its dramatic swoops from low and throaty to high and breathy, to deliver “an undiluted-ness that feels real.” (Other pals featured on the album include Father John Misty, who plays drums on the swinging “Ain’t Together,” and Romy Madley Croft of the xx, who co-wrote “Homegirl,” a warmly sensual promise to “give you my body at home.”)

King Princess — based these days in L.A., which she called “a spooky town full of celerity demons” — said she thinks of herself as a producer and instrumentalist more than as a singer. But she acknowledged that the rawness of her voice is an asset, one she’s grown proficient enough with that when she records a first-take vocal, she makes sure to use a good microphone, since it’s likely to end up in a song’s final mix.

Ronson, with an eye on his protégée’s future, said he’s been trying to convince her to “get off the Juul” and “learn how to manage her voice so she doesn’t lose it 10 years down the road”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Ryan McGinley for Interview Magazine

It is not long now until I get to reviewing House Burn Down. As King Princess hails from Brooklyn, New York is very much in her blood. Sticking with Mark Ronson and the two spoke with one another for Interview Magazine in 2018. New York (and its different boroughs) was covered:

“RONSON: You strike me as someone who doesn’t have a problem ending it.

PRINCESS: Yeah, I was the one who wanted the final word. There is definitely a behavioral pattern where I can take it to ten. I think that’s the New York side, too. Kids here are confrontational and strong-headed.

RONSON: Did being a Brooklyn kid and going to school in Manhattan put a chip on your shoulder? Do you feel like it gave you the ability to adapt and blend into anything

PRINCESS: I definitely pretended to play the part for many years. Being from Brooklyn, it was like a little respite thinking that I would go home to a neighborhood the kids in my school were scared of. It also allowed me to isolate myself and work on new lyrics.

RONSON: Is there another moment in the history of New York that you ever wish you could time travel to?

PRINCESS: I definitely romanticize history, like being in the New York writers’ circle in the 1950s. But in reality, it would have probably been fucking horrible—to be gay and out then, trying to make a living in New York. I would love to have been in New York in the ’70s. I would want to see that type of debauchery”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jessica Lehrman Photography

Even though he is (thankfully) no longer President, I was interested discovering what King Princess though of Donald Trump. America will recover from Trump’s term, though I was curious to learn how King Princess felt about him and America under his rule. This was discussed when V MAGAZINE spoke with her last year:

“The problem right now [is that] I’m seeing so much negativity around our options [with] who to vote for. I’m seeing a lot of people on the Internet go— ‘Okay, Trump is evil, but Joe Biden’s evil too, so we’re going to lose either way.’ To that I say, ‘if you’re starving and your options for food is something you don’t like or poison—you’re gonna pick the thing that you don’t like, and you’re going to eat it to sustain your life instead of eating poison.’ That’s what this election is about; the lesser of two evils. It’s about taking something that is a shitty situation overall and using your voice to reclaim a semblance of power and equality in this country. We are at an imperative point where we can either choose not to vote because everybody sucks, or you can literally [choose to] do the right thing and vote for the betterment of this country. Because, quite literally, it can get worse.

“We are living under a dictatorship and basically everyone who isn’t a white male is at risk. Women’s reproductive rights are at risk. The protection of Black and brown individuals is at risk. The protection of trans and queer people is at risk. The protection of immigrants is at risk. Everyone is at risk unless you are a white man. We’ve never experienced so many different forms of heinous oppression in this country. We’re under attack, and there’s no better time [than now] to be unified”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Meredith Wohl

Let’s get down to the awesome new song from King Princess, House Burn Down. I am not sure whether the song is going to form part of a second album – or whether it will be included in an E.P. or remain a standalone single. I think that King Princess writes some of the most expressive and exuberant Pop music. House Burn Down starts with a taut and funky beat and a cool guitar line. The pace is a little slower, but there is plenty of drive in her vocal performance. One can feel an explosion and rise imminently. The first verse is interesting: “Had me in the palm, had me in the palm of your hand/You could throw me down to see how I land/And I'm the type of bitch running 'till my next heartbreak/You still pull me 'round to see what I'll take”. The song becomes more layered and the guitar more squally and beefier as the chorus comes in. I wonder what inspired House Burn Down is about and whether it was affected by a former lover of King Princess. It does seem that, whomever influenced the track, they are quite challenging. I have come back to the song a few times to see if I could get a picture of the person behind the lyrics. The fact there is a little bit of mystery keeps you invested and guessing. The chorus is definitely striking and bold: “Oh woah-oh, I'm just waiting for this house to burn down/Oh woah-oh, and I'm just waiting for my luck to run out/Oh woah-oh, and if you tell me that you're leaving/Imma need a better reason than you hate the way I'm being oh oh/I'm just waiting for this house to burn down”.

I do like the contrast between the more soulful verses and the more Pop-orientated chorus. After the fiery and bright chorus, King Princess picks up the story. I have brought in interviews where we hear of quite a bold and confident person. House Burn Down suggests someone who, despite having these qualities, is not immune to hurt and heartache. Whereas things might have been good in the past, this relationship is getting harder and there are challenges in the way. It appears that things have taken a slight turn for the worse: “I'm the type of bitch always gotta dry her eyes/'Cause someone said somethin' I didn't like/Maybe I've been catching, maybe I've been catching good days/When you're sweet to me like lemonade/Oh woah-oh, I'm just waiting for this house to burn down/Oh woah-oh, I'm just waiting for my luck to run out/Oh woah-oh, and if you tell me that you're leaving/Imma need a better reason than you hate the way I'm being, oh oh”. I love how there is this dynamic where we get something calm and soulful, before one feels the build and there is this huge burst of energy! Before the chorus swings back in at the end, there is a section that speaks of contrast and complexity: “Damn, you're good when you say you love me/Damn, you're good when you give me nothing/Damn, you're good when you say you love me/Damn, you're good when you give me nothing (woo), ow”. I really love House Burn Down and have spun it a fair few times. It has a similar sound to tracks on Cheap Queen - though King Princess sounds more confident and assured than ever before. There has also been development in terms of her sound. I wonder whether the relationship being discussed in the song is stable or whether King Princess was talking about a rough patch that has resolved itself (or not_. It has this sense of mystery and tension that makes one return to the song to see if they can get to the bottom of it. House Burn Down is a typically fantastic song from the always-compelling King Princess.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Cal & Aly

I will wrap it up very soon. Just before signing off, there is one more thing I want to highlight. I am coming back to the GQ interview I quoted from earlier. It is evident that her fans love her and she commands so much respect. There is a passage from the interview that really stuck with me:

“That confessional honesty has resonated with her legions of fans. Backstage at Ogden, Straus keeps a shrine of gifts that listeners have given to her, including white sneakers with hand-painted roses and an empty bag of seaweed snacks, her favourite, pinned to the wall. Outside, the line snakes down the block as doors set to open, something that her tour manager Trevor says has happened every night of this headlining trek so far. The concertgoers themselves range in age and appearance – many present as female and queer – but their fandom gives them common ground. ‘I like that she just owns her shit,’ says Karen, a schoolteacher from Colorado Springs. ‘It’s honest, she’s telling her story, whatever that is. People are becoming more progressive and open-minded. It’s becoming more popular to just not give a shit.’

Around the block at a nearby bar, where the Super Bowl is now in the third quarter on the screens, some fans are waiting the queue out with a few beers. ‘She’s queer as fuck,’ says one ticketholder named Annabelle. Her friend Anna elaborates: ‘There’s not a strong representation of people who are people who are also genderqueer, and not just straight- presenting. The best [...] that millennials had was Katy Perry’s I Kissed a Girl, which was “fauxmosexuality”. Representation is trendy right now, but it’s great to see it be genuine and not just constructed by Netflix”.

I love House Burn Down, and I hope that we get more music from King Princess this year. She is such a tremendous artist that has a very long career ahead of her. If you are not aware of King Princess or only dip into her music occasionally then…

 PHOTO CREDIT: JALQ Photography

FOLLOW her now.

___________

Follow King Princess  

 PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Salacuse for NME 

Official:

https://www.kingprincessmusic.com/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/KingPrincess69

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/KingPrincess69

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/kingprincess69/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6beUvFUlKliUYJdLOXNj9C

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd3ucTRSzlJYkANVcg73Dcw

ALL UNCREDITED PHOTOS:

King Princess

TRACK REVIEW: black midi - Marlene Dietrich

TRACK REVIEW:

 

 

black midi

PHOTO CREDIT: Matilda Hill-Jenkins for Loud and Quiet

Marlene Dietrich

9.7/10

The track, Marlene Dietrich, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-GM18LE1lA

GENRES:

Progressive-Rock/Jazz/Avant-Garde

ORIGIN:

London, U.K.

The album, Cavalcade, is available via:

https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/black-midi/cavalcade

RELEASE DATE:

28th May, 2021

LABEL:

Rough Trade

PRODUCERS:

Black Midi/John ‘Spud’ Murphy/Marta Salogni

TRACKLISTING:

John L

Marlene Dietrich

Chondromalacia Patella

Slow

Diamond Stuff

Dethroned

Hogwash and Balderdash

Ascending Forth

__________

IT is quite right that many…

are showing so much love for black midi right now. Their second album, Cavalcade, is receiving rave reviews for its originality and hugely impressive sound. It is a different thing compared to their 2019 debut, Schlagenheim. At eight tracks, their new album has concision and no waste. Each song is different and, when you listen to what they are producing, there is so much inventiveness and magic in their music. I am going to get down to reviewing a track from the album a bit later. Before that, I think it is worth providing some black midi background. I am also keen to look back at their debut and the sense of expectation and reception it received – I will work my way forward and get to Cavalcade after that. If you have not heard of the band, then black midi are an English rock band from London, formed in 2017. The band consists of Geordie Greep (vocals, guitar), Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin (vocals, guitar), Cameron Picton (vocals, bass guitar, synths) and Morgan Simpson (drums). An interview from The New York Times this month gives us some introduction:

“Band members cited copious musical influences. Simpson, 22, had been playing drums in his Pentecostal church since he was 4 years old, learning all the flexibility and drive that comes with live gospel music. Picton, 21, started as a guitarist but had a revelation listening to Motown bass lines. Greep, 21, absorbed his father’s record collection — progressive-rock, classical music, country — but was also fascinated by the whiz-bang impact of scores for cartoons.

black midi honed its music with regular gigs at the Windmill, a pub in Brixton with a reputation for nurturing innovative bands. The group still touches down at the Windmill — most recently with a 2020 Christmastime benefit webcast to support the club through the pandemic. For that concert, black midi merged with Black Country, New Road — billed as Black Midi, New Road — to perform Christmas carols, Minimalistic improvisations and, well, “Born to Run”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Martin Goodwin for The Guardian

I remember the buzz surrounding black midi back in 2019. Before they put out their debut album, so many people were discussing their music and bigging them up as a band to watch very closely. Certainly, when you hear what they produce, it is very different to anyone/anything else. Not quite Rock, (their music) draws in Jazz, Experimental and so many other sounds. Quoting from Interview Magazine, and we get a sense of how the band formed and the sort of reception afforded them in 2019:

“Black midi began honing their sound shortly after they met at BRIT School, a performing arts school that has seen the likes of Adele, Amy Winehouse, and FKA twigs pass through its doors. There, its members, Geordie Greep, Morgan Simpson, Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin, and Cameron Picton, were encouraged to experiment and improvise. That perfectly imperfect sound can be heard on their debut record, Schlagenheim, which also stands as a perfect encapsulation of the four-piece’s frenetic live show. “It’s like Russian roulette,” says Greep of playing in front of an audience. “It could be the best show you’ve ever done, or it could be absolutely terrible. The main thing is that you can’t have any expectations.”

Zero expectations is how black midi are approaching their future. So far, they’ve shunned attempts at trying to contextualize their music, especially when they’re asked if their bleakly abstract sound might be a response to Brexit. “If that’s the comparison people want to draw, then that’s cool, but for us, it’s just about music,” says Greep. “It says more about the person describing it than the band. In that way, we’re an inkblot test”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Bella Howard for The New York Times

Although there is modesty and that feeling that there is no pressure on the shoulders of black midi, I do feel like there was a real wave of affection for them. They definitely had people interested and curious as to what Schlagenheim would sound like. The album has such an improvisational feel. One wonders how it all formed in the studio. Returning to that interview from The New York Times, we get a sense of what the studio setup was:

“The band carved its early songs out of ideas that arose in collective jam sessions and were reshaped by relentless touring. Material that would end up on its debut album reached a worldwide audience on YouTube with a set filmed for the Seattle public-radio station KEXP during the Iceland Airwaves Festival in 2018. For “Schlagenheim,” black midi expanded its lineup in the studio, using synthesizers and guest horn players, refusing to be confined by what its members could perform onstage. Still, the album clearly captured the band’s manic energy.

When black midi performed “Bmbmbm” on television for the Mercury Prize in 2019, Kwasniewski-Kelvin leapt and tumbled across the stage. The group went on a later tour without him, substituting BRIT schoolmates on saxophone and keyboards. In January 2021, Kwasniewski-Kelvin announced that he was taking a hiatus from the band because he was “mentally unwell.” Although he shares some composer credits on “Cavalcade,” he is not heard on the album, reducing the band to three core members. “It’s a personal situation he’s getting through,” Greep said. “We’ll see what happens”.

I think, to contextualise and better explain Cavalcade, one needs to look back at Schlagenheim in order to compare and evaluate. Definitely, black midi have changed their studio habits and songwriting since that debut. Before that, I want to stick on the band’s formation and their earliest days. Coming to an interview from CRACK of 2019. It makes for interesting reading:

“Initially starting life as “two-hour ambient jams” between Geordie and Matt, the band recruited Morgan behind the kit in their final year at Brit School. A school show was part of a world music assignment that saw them take on Neu!’s krautrock jam Hero. “We must have taken up about half the show,” recalls Matt, “because we made it 15 minutes long. I wasn’t even playing guitar in that one, just smashing a cymbal,” he shrugs.

From there, things freewheeled. Geordie sent emails around to “every venue [he] could think of” in search of a gig. He only one got reply: The Windmill in Brixton. At that point, they realised they needed a bassist. “We only had one rehearsal with Cameron on that day,” Geordie remembers of that first show, in June last year. “But hey, it went alright!” After that, the group began playing at The Windmill with increasing regularity, tightening the screws of that live show and building a word-of-mouth following in lieu of any recorded tracks or social media presence. Months later, an NTS Radio session unexpectedly popped up on YouTube, gathering views like wildfire, crowds clamouring for scraps of information on a band by then dubbed by fellow Londoners Shame as ‘the best band in London’.

PHOTO CREDIT: Titouan Massé 

If it all seemed mysterious, that wasn’t the intention. “People cottoned on quite quickly and we didn’t have much money,” shrugs Cameron of those quiet early months, not even a demo to their name. “And we really were just starting out, as well,” picks up Morgan. “Every little thing is a bonus. We’re not getting ahead of ourselves at all. It’s just one thing at a time.” From there, they were snapped up by producer Dan Carey, a man with a knack for drawing the wonderful out of British indie’s weirdest offerings. “He came up to us after a show and was like, ‘I want to record that one – boom, boom, boom’,” recalls Geordie. That then-nameless track subsequently took on an onomatopoeic description, the lolloping, blues-meets-a-helium-balloon of bmbmbm becoming Black Midi’s debut single.

Now, the group are back in with Carey, working on a debut album. Sessions are going “really well,” Geordie says, reticent to offer up much more. There have been setbacks along the way – a big-time London show at Electrowerkz was nearly derailed by an exploding amp, he explains – but given their ever-mutating state, they’ve learnt from every bump in the road. It lends that debut an unknowable edge. It’s a first-work that could take Black Midi’s sound anywhere.

“If you’re setting out to be a thing, you’re already pigeonholing yourself,” shrugs Morgan. It’s a totally open approach to creativity which feels core to Black Midi’s being. Every show they play finds them morphing further still; no two sets are ever the same. It’s that – more than hype, mystery, or any other buzzword – that makes Black Midi such a beguiling prospect. “We don’t want to be the same in two months, or four months or six months,” says Morgan, looking to the future, before pulling out a word surely no-one would use to describe his band: “We don’t want to get… complacent”.

I think, with the hype that surrounding them from the debut album, there were misconceptions and false labels applied to black midi. It must be quite hard for any band to misconstrued or defined falsely. On that point, the band spoke with Loud and Quiet. The banner headline of the interview sort of says it all: “The industry scrambled over an unlikely hype band just pleasing themselves with awkward sounds”:

“They’re an unusual bunch in conversation. Simpson and Greep do the majority of the talking, and their manner contrasts sharply, the former relaxed and effusive, the latter rather more intense, prone to a withering stare or a monosyllabic answer when my questions don’t interest him. He’s a puzzling presence throughout, steely-eyed and detached, yet not unfriendly. At one point during the interview he produces a packet of obscurely-named biscuits from somewhere within his long, Cossack-style overcoat, and offers them to me sweetly. I politely decline, slightly wrongfooted by his sudden shift in character, to the visible amusement of his bandmates.

I suspect that this slight oddness, the occasional incongruities between the four band members, has only added to their secretive reputation. I ask whether they’ve actively cultivated that air of mystery, and whether they like the label now that it’s been attached to them.

“No, and no,” asserts Picton sharply.

Simpson expands. “It basically just came from one article. We never set out to be hard to find. I guess the whole mystery thing is the lack of activity on social media, but that’s not a lack of anything – we’re posting what people wanna see, just the information that’s needed.” It’s true: look at their social media presence, and it is fairly sparse, but they do share all their live dates and link to where their music is available online. They’re not hiding anything.

“But yeah, that NME article, saying we’re mysterious, was one of the first things that was written about us, so it set the tone for what followed,” says Simpson. “But it’s just made up.”

Picton laughs wearily. “That article was funny as well, cos they were like, ‘the band have no recorded music whatsoever, you can’t hear them anywhere’, and then at the bottom it linked to the NTS session, which then linked to three other tracks that you could’ve listened to at the time. They were all studio quality too – it was a live recording, but it was in a proper recording studio”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Edwina Hay

It is amazing to think that, with two incredible albums under their belt now, there was a sense of modesty or caution around Schlagenheim. I guess it is dangerous blowing one’s own trumpet so early – lest the band be seen as arrogant or there is schadenfreude if they fall. Staying with that Loud and Quiet interview, the band did talk about their feelings and expectations for their debut:

“As I wrap up the interview, we discuss what comes next for the band, once this album is released. In a good-humoured way, they’re a little evasive, keeping their cards close to their chest.

“Hopefully it’ll sell a million copies,” Greep says, his deadpan tone inscrutable as ever. After all, it’s unlikely that a band as challenging as Black Midi will truly break through to the arena-level mainstream, but their rise has been meteoric so far; stranger things have happened. “Then we’ll retire and chill out.”

“We’ll all go and live all over the world and rehearse like twice a year,” suggests Picton. “Make an album out of that and put it out whether it’s shit or not.”

Simpson is a little more sincere. “An album is literally just a snapshot of an artist at that time. Up til the release of the album, that’s been our sound. Hopefully in two years’ time, it’ll be different.”

“As long as it keeps changing, we’ll keep going,” agrees Greep. “Don’t wanna be zombies playing the hits”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Matilda Hill-Jenkins for Loud and Quiet 

I shall shift things forward to Cavalcade. I suppose, like so many other artists, black midi did not want to repeat themselves on their second album. Whereas they were a new band in 2019 and there wasn’t a lot to suggest what a debut album would sound like, by the time this year rolled around, so many knew about black midi and what they are about. I feel it is useful introducing some background regarding Cavalcade:

“Black Midi began writing music for a new album in late 2019, not long after the release of their debut studio album, Schlagenheim, in June of that year. The band chose to have a less improvisational approach to writing their second studio album, in contrast to Schlagenheim which was crafted around jam sessions. Guitarist Geordie Greep said of the process, "People seemed to really like the debut album but after a while we all became pretty bored with it...So, it was like: this time let's make something that is actually good." Prior to the recording sessions for the album, guitarist Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin took a break from the band, citing a need to focus on his mental health; he took part in the writing sessions for Cavalcade, however. Saxophonist Kaidi Akinnibi and keyboardist Seth Evans, who were a part of Black Midi's recent touring lineup, were a part of the album recording sessions. The band first recorded "John L", the opening track, with Marta Salogni in London.v Afterward, they recorded the rest of the album with John "Spud" Murphy at Hellfire Studios in Dublin during the summer of 2020”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Stas May for Interview Magazine

One of the most notable evolutions between the two albums is that black midi have adopted a broader sound palette this time around. I shall come onto the fact that the songwriting and recording is more structured (and less improvisational). One reason Cavalcade is receiving such praise is that black midi are venturing into new territory. The interview from The New York Times tips on this:

“On its second album, “Cavalcade,” arriving Friday, black midi broadens its music even further. The band pushes its dynamics to new extremes, juxtaposing bristling cacophony with sparsity and quietude, while Greep and Cameron Picton, the band’s bassist, sing about societal and physical decay along with the chance that music holds hope. The album even offers one straightforwardly melodic song: “Marlene Dietrich,” a bossa-nova-tinged ballad about the familiarity of pop as a sanctuary in a world of strife. “Cavalcade” is the work of a band that’s determined to defy all routines, including its own”.

There is a great interview from Vanity Fair that I want to reference very soon. The band have such a wide range of sounds and artists they admire. In terms of their listening habits, it is so varied and eclectic. Perhaps Schlagenheim didn’t truly reflect that:

“According to the members of the group, who spoke to Vanity Fair on a Zoom call from their London practice space earlier this month, the biggest change is that they actually composed the songs this time around. “On the first album, most of the songs were more textural than, you know, traditional or whatever. They were more, someone plays a riff and then let’s all play on top of each other and make cool sounds,” Greep said. For Cavalcade, they wrote partly through jam sessions but also by individually bringing in ideas for songs in the more traditional sense. “The whole thing with this album was just making it a lot more melodic but also making the crazy bits a lot more crazy. Making it crazy in both directions—more accessible moments, and more tangible, but also more insane, more crazy, more funny”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Sacha Lecca for Rolling Stone 

On Cavalcade, the humor and insanity is both lyrical and experiential. The record begins with “John L,” a practically scary onslaught of crunching horns, guttural vocals, and clattering percussion, which fades directly into “Marlene Dietrich,” a hazy crooner that could fit in on a.m. radio. Those stylistic veers of flight and surprises persist throughout. “It’s more of a roller coaster,” said Picton.

Bassist Picton, sporting a mop-top of curls and red-painted fingernails, said he did read a handful of reviews for Schlagenheim and thought they didn’t do a great job of capturing the breadth of the band’s listening habits. They don’t only listen to noise rock, for example, and aren’t particularly obsessed with the genre’s history. “I think it's just funny when people say, like, ‘Oh, yeah, these guys are definitely influenced by X band,’” he said. “But then it’s just a band that we’ve never heard of. It’s some random American band that was a regional success, and we’ve never heard of it in our entire lives, and the only people that like it are nerds on weird corners of the internet.” (So what do they listen to? “A banger is a banger,” Picton quipped.)

It might seem a little strange that a couple of talented teenagers could tap into exactly what keeps rock nerds hunting through the archives without necessarily realizing it, but their explanation is two-fold. The band met at the BRIT School, the government-funded music school known primarily for producing pop stars like Adele and Jessie J and for the profound influence its well-trained musicians have had on the British record industry at large.

PHOTO CREDIT: Neale Haynes for The Times

I really like Schlagenheim, though one feels that it could have been slightly tighter and edited. It didn’t quite have that concession that one would hope. Maybe this is natural for a band who had so much energy and such a rich sound. Cavalcade sees them address that in spectacular fashion. The band spoke with THE FACE about the changes adopted for their new album. Concision is very much at the heart:

“All of those disparate influences come to bear on Cavalcade, where the speed-prog of Chondromalacia Patela settles into an indie-jazz groove presided over by Greep, who’s now singing like a choirboy chansonnier before some Actual Headbanging takes the musical reins. It’s like every aspect of Scott Walker’s four-decade career in 290 action-packed seconds.

As the vocalist says, ​“the idea [moving on] from the last album to this album was to go further in both directions: have the crazy bits be crazier, and also have the more melodic, consonant bits be more accessible, or poppier or whatever. And just to have that wider dynamic. And, yeah, the sense of space, or have some room sometimes.”

Also, be concise. Eight tracks will do it, and if one of them, Hogwash and Balderdash is only two-and-half minutes, so be it. Because black midi years are like dog years – they pack a lot in. Or, as Simpson, says: ​“It’s all about intent, isn’t it? You don’t want to do a half-arsed version of a 12-minute song and it be OK. Do a five- or six-minute version and make it really, really good”.

With some streamlining and changes comes an album that is more structured. That is not to say that black midi has become tame or conventional – they are still very much as odd and unique as they always were! Whereas improvisation was God back in the Schlagenheim era, there has been a conversion. We learn more about that in this interview from The Quietus:

“The band that once seemed evangelical about the infinite power and possibilities of improvisation have now ditched it in favour of structured songwriting. The forced downtime of the pandemic brought about a much-needed break and reflective pause period for them. “It was a welcome change because things had been so hectic,” says drummer Morgan Simpson. “For a few years we hadn't had the time to be in a space together for a few weeks to try and create something new. So we fell into patterns of jamming and rehearsing but the productivity levels weren't as high because it was hard to get in the zone when you knew you had a 5am flight to catch.”

Greep: “If you're playing and touring all the time you get into a sense of wanting to have some control over things and not wanting to do anything wrong,” he says. “When you get into a situation with unlimited time, you really start to think about what you want to do in music, to ask what kind of music you want to make, and then realising how many times you have actually thought about that and been honest about it. So we were making a conscious effort to change the music.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Yis Kid 

The move away from improvising is less of a leap than some may think, the band say. “The whole notion of being an improvisational band was pushed a bit harder than was actually the case,” says Simpson, with bassist Cameron Picton adding, “People pick up on certain aspects of your story and you don't really have much in the way of control over what gets picked up on.” Greep also echoes this. “That was the story, like we’re this band who make it all up as they go along, the whole album you can hear them thinking it up as they play it, all the words are made up on the spot and stuff”.

At moments on the record the band sound unrecognisable from their previous incarnation. “The songs now have proper chord sequences and there's actually melody,” says Greep. “We had a bit of that on the last album but a lot of the time if you have monolithic songs that are just burning away with effects over the top you can't really sing in a melodic way. So my voice in this style lends itself a lot better to these songs.”

Picton contributes as the writer and singer of two tracks. There’s the lush, hypnotic and deeply textural ‘Diamond Stuff’ that sounds almost slowcore-like in its starkness. The antithesis to this is ‘Slow’, which would be more aptly titled as ‘Raging Jazzcore Fury’. Across the album there’s still plenty of the band’s usual taut, intense, guitar work that marries no wave ferocity with prog proficiency, but it’s where those songs lead that results in such a constantly surprising listen. There are moments of real tender beauty on the album that will have those who hated the band’s earlier work wondering what the hell is going on but just before you’re sucked into a more serene and pretty world, things explode and confound once more. As you’ll hear on 'Chondromalacia Patela' which sways from a gentle jazz-tinged post rock groove into an eruptive force that sounds a bit like if Swans and Magma joined forces”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Yis Kid for CRACK

I do want to focus on a few sonic inspirations behind Cavalcade. I mentioned earlier how Schlagenheim did not quite incorporate all of black midi’s musical tastes. Stereogum spoke with the band. I have selected a few of the band’s choices regarding influences on Cavalcade:

“As musically dense as Cavalcade is, it’s also got a lot of different ideas colliding. Black Midi were tight-lipped about the meanings and themes of the songs on Schlagenheim, but from the jump they introduced Cavalcade as a multi-faceted, festering series of characters and scenes. A lot of different inspirations went into that. Ahead of Cavalcade‘s release, the current members of Black Midi — Greep, Cameron Picton, and Morgan Simpson — called us to talk about what they were reading, watching, or listening to when concocting the contorted, vivid world of Cavalcade. The band approached this a specific way: Each member chose three of their own influences, and then all three selected one they collectively held close. Read below to hear some of the stories and thoughts that made Cavalcade what it is.

Igor Stravinsky’s “Cantata” And Olivier Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise Opera

GREEP: When I was young, my parents used to play Stravinsky’s music a lot. When I was 12 or 13, there was a music teacher I really, really liked at school. We got along really well and he showed me all these cool types of music. I thought, “This guy is a great man.” Then he left and he was replaced by quite an old, cranky teacher. Someone I didn’t respect very much. I thought, “This old guy, he’s not all that.” A lot of time with my original music teacher, I used to go up at lunchtime and chat music with him. That’s where I learned a lot. With this new teacher, I couldn’t. Slowly but surely I found he wasn’t so bad. He knew a thing or two. One day he says, “Let me put The Rite Of Spring on.” Because it was him that was playing it, I really wanted to hate it and think it was complete crap. It was shocking to hear, because it’s a crazy piece of music. I was like, “Yeah, you’re nuts.” But really, I was like, “This is really good.” There was something there compelling me to listen to it. As we were listening, he said, “I would give anything to be able to listen to this for the first time again.” I thought, “Whoa, that’s pretty mad.”

IMAGE CREDIT: Anthrox Studio 

Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks

SIMPSON: A friend of mine in secondary school was really into art, and he showed me that painting. I wasn’t into art that much at that time. I do remember that being one of the few paintings where I thought it was very cool. A few years ago, I went to an exhibition, “Soul Of A Nation: Art In The Age Of Black Power” at the Tate Modern. After the exhibition, there were postcards in the shop, and Nighthawks was one of them. It wasn’t related to what I’d just seen, but it jumped out to me. In that moment, I felt a sense of tranquility that I’d never really felt looking at a painting before. That’s why I love it so much. It’s actually my laptop background. It’s just some peeps hanging out drinking whatever it is.

I’ve probably done the thing a lot of British people do and subconsciously look over the river. When I thought about my influences, I’ve gone for all American ones without consciously thinking, “Wait, there’s loads of British ones that could also be on that list.” It just shows the influence you guys have on our country”.

  PHOTO CREDIT: Bella Howard for The New York Times

The final thing I will investigate before reviewing the track, Marlene Dietrich, is how black midi have succeeded in spite of their unusual sound. Going back to the interview from The Quietus, the band cite a possible reason behind their success. We also discover a recent fundraising event black midi were involved with:

“Considering the kind of music Black Midi make, it’s left some perplexed that they’ve graduated to such a level of acclaim, developed a rabid fan base, slid straight into prime time radio playlists and ended up being the most experimental band in years to land a Mercury Music Prize nod. “I think it’s right place, right time,” says Picton when asked if they’ve ever wondered why they’ve broken through the kind of barriers that a lot of other alternative bands face. “Plus, making good behind the scenes decisions and having a good team.”

However, they also credit the privileged situation they had being at the famed BRIT School together. “Having two years where we had free rehearsal time whenever we wanted it at college,” says Picton. “Having those two years to just do all the stupid shit - do all the embarrassing stuff and get it out the way.”

The band has been involved with fundraising to help The Windmill in Brixton, a venue where they once had a residency and grew their reputation. These have manifested in live collaborations with pals Black Country, New Road. Is there any future there for a proper collaborative album? “Probably at some point,” says Greep. “If there's another band who are really good in the same city, who you also really get on with, there's no reason not to get together and do something proper. It's just making sure you don't do it for the sake of it and you have a solid reason for doing it.”

For now, the band is focused on their own material. Which is already at a stage beyond their second album. “Hopefully by the time we start playing shows again we'll be onto the next one with even more new songs to play,” says Greep, with Picton suggesting album three is already about 40% done. It puts them in a position where their return to performing live offers up as much potential for reinvention as their latest album has done. “We relished making this album and not even having to think about how we'd play it live,” says Simpson. “It's just about keeping it exciting,” Greep adds. “We don't want the live show to be a product that we as a band can completely envision before we're there. There's nothing worse than going to a show and knowing what you're going to see before the show even starts”.

It is important to move on to reviewing a Cavalcade track. I have selected Marlene Dietrich, as it is one that really interests me. Whereas some tracks on the album enter with an explosion, Marlene Dietrich welcomes in soft guitar. One gets this romantic-cum-riparian sound that is delicate and beautiful. From a band who excel when they ramp things up, they also prove they can do something more modest and level-headed. I feel a lot of the focus goes on black midi’s sound. Not too many focus on their lyrics. On Marlene Dietrich, there are some terrific lines. The first verse sets the scene: “Marlene Dietrich/Under soft lights/With a taped back face/Our soft spoken queen/Takes her place on the stage”. One gets caught in the sway and gentle grace of the song. The acoustic (or Spanish?) guitar plucks and stutters as the bass provides some liquidity. Strings come in as we get this gorgeously rich and cinematic sound. In a song about the German-born American acting icon, it might be hard to find a particular angle. In its simplicity and lack of layers/strangeness, black midi allow the song to breathe. “As the big curtains open/The last troops run in quick/For the one and only/Marlene Dietrich/She whispers demurely/“from The Blue Angel”/The song we all know/The one that we’ve paid for”. One gets a really fascinating picture. I listen to the song and was imagining the scenes and images. Marlene Dietrich is a really arresting and incredible song that is quite different to everything else on Cavalcade. I feel the song contains some of the best lyrics the band have produced so far.

There is a slight tension one feels, half-expecting there to be this snarling guitar or wig-out. Without mania or experimentation, the band keep things straight and focused. Whereas Schlagenheim  was improvisational and one feels this sense of a band doing it live without too much honing, a song like Marlene Dietrich is more composed and nuanced. I wonder how long it took to write the track. It has so many standout lines that one cannot help but fall inside of: “Fills the hall tight/And pulls at our hearts/And puts in her place/The girl she once was/In that suit of ’33/Soundtracked by disapproving commentary”. There is wit, intellect and fantasy mixed together in a track that almost seems like a film in itself – appropriate, given the nod to a cinema queen. The strings are especially beautiful! There are guitar lines, a great drumming layer; all wrapped together in this symphonic, lush song. It is nice to hear a track from black midi that wins you over with its heart and soulfulness – as opposed something angular, multi-part and accelerated (not that there is anything wrong with that). My favourite section of the song definitely provoked a smile: “And my shuddering neighbour/Turns and roughly rouses me/He says, “While a kiss on the lips may not make a frog a prince,/An orgasm renders any queen a witch:/Metamorphosis exists!”. Where as some lines are quite easy to interpret and hit you because of their beauty, there are others that leave you wondering: “Damn all us idiots/Damn us till death/Relentlessly trying to untie our knots of/Rivers and roads that defy all sense”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Daniel Topete

I have listened to Marlene Dietrich a few times, and it impacts me differently every time. The second track on Cavalcade, it arrives after the frenetic and epic John L. That track almost seems like a Bernard Herrmann score on speed! It shows great bravery and consideration to then follow that with a track that is almost the polar opposite. The final lines/verse are as striking and brilliant as those which came before: “But her hands loosen all/And her voice brings you youth/Her cheeks cradle the holy breath/That pumps the lungs of her Mackie Messer”. Running in at under three minutes, one could definitely listen to a lot more of Marlene Dietrich. Although Cavalcade is eight tracks-long, five tracks run at over five minutes – the swansong, Ascending Forth, clocks in at just under ten minutes. The second-shortest track on the album (Hogwash and Balderdash take the top honour), Marlene Dietrich is my favourite. It ends mention of ‘Mackie Messer’. Mack the Knife (or The Ballad of Mack the Knife; (German: Die Moritat von Mackie Messer) is a song composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht for their 1928 music drama, The Threepenny Opera. It adds another layer and twist to a fascinating story: “And she beats the heart of her Mackie Messer/And she walks the stage with her Mackie Messer/And she makes us smile with her Mackie Messer”. On an album with so many pearls, I especially love Marlene Dietrich. It is a song that you will come back to again and again.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Martin Goodwin for The Guardian

Before wrapping up, it is probably worth looking ahead and seeing what might come next for black midi. As we learn from The New York Times’ interview, the guys are already working towards a third album:

“While preparing to tour again, band members have also been writing songs for a third album. “One thing that we all really want to do is enhance the pretty and beautiful and melodic side of things,” Simpson said. “But also go even more to town with the crazy, super intense loud stuff. We really want to try and just maximize both ends.”

As band members talked about their music, the word “crazy” kept coming up. For black midi, it’s a point of pride. “I think it’s better to go crazy, full crazy, and fail, than just do something you know you can do,” Greep said. “We’re just going further in all directions”.

Not only is there new material brewing; the band are also looking to get back onto the stage. Referencing the Vanity Fair interview from earlier, black midi discussed performing live and the challenges faced post-Brexit:

“As for Black Midi, the band is looking forward to getting back to what it does best, performing live. When we talk, they’ve just finished rehearsing for two shows on Friday night, their first in-person performances since early 2020. Like most stunning natural phenomena, Black Midi does kind of have to be seen to be believed. Offstage, they’re a group of unassuming, agreeable friends in their early 20s with an easy rapport, but onstage, they’re a chugging machine that always seems on the verge of collapse. Greep is the wiry, barking archetype of a post-punk front man, Picton has unshowy mastery of his instrument and a metronomic sense of rhythm, and Simpson is, simply put, one of the most physical, electric drummers around.

IMAGE CREDIT: Anthrox Studio  

They discussed the challenges for touring bands presented by Brexit and the aftermath of the pandemic, but Greep is pretty confident that there will always be an audience for what they have to offer. “This isn’t chart music or anything,” he said. “But I think there’s always going to be that niche of live music, music that’s played with instruments and everything that sounds like it can fall apart at any minute. Because people just like that”.

I will end things here. There is so much (justified) praise surrounding Cavalcade. It is a great album that will surely rank alongside the best of this year. I wonder whether there is increased pressure on black midi to exceed themselves or change for a third album. I feel they will take some time to craft an album that is true to them. Make sure you grab a copy of Cavalcade (there is a link at the top of this review) and follow them on social media (links are at the very bottom). I am excited to see where black midi head and what is in store. Venues will open up very soon, so the band are going to be keen to get their new album out there. In a year that has delivered so many tremendous and instantly-engaging albums, black midi have given the world one of the best. They are so hard to pin down and can not be compared with anyone else. Let’s hope that we see much more music from them. When it comes to their music, one can never predict…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Yis Kid 

QUITE what they will deliver.

___________

Follow black midi  

PHOTO CREDIT: Matilda Hill-Jenkins for Loud and Quiet 

Official:

https://bmblackmidi.com/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/bmblackmidi

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/blackmidi

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/bmblackmidi/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/7Hvq85OU8T7Hsd63zNBwaL?si=I1rkvdVLRfaZpOx8gHfHkQ

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWuegzhqjvEMF0vXANcqgrg

Bandcamp:

https://bmblackmidi.bandcamp.com/

ALL UNCREDITED PHOTOS:

black midi

TRACK REVIEW: Biig Piig - American Beauty

TRACK REVIEW:

 

 

Biig Piig

American Beauty

9.1/10

The track, American Beauty, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBW_loUsZOI

GENRES:

Alternative/Indie

ORIGIN:

London, U.K.

The E.P., The Sky Is Bleeding, is available via:

https://music.apple.com/ph/album/the-sky-is-bleeding-ep/1562691636

RELEASE DATE:

21st May, 2021

LABEL:

RCA

TRACKLISTING:

Remedy

Tarzan

Baby Zombies

Lavender

Drugs

American Beauty

__________

THIS is a review…

I am excited about. I am a big fan of Biig Piig (Jess Smyth). I am going to get to her new E.P., The Sky Is Bleeding, and a track from it that I am keen to explore. She is an awesome talent and someone who evolves from E.P. to E.P. I want to approach Biig Piig from a number of angles and discuss a few things that, I think, give us a bigger impression of a stunning artist. I want to start with that name. Some people may know the origins already. If not, then it was brought up in an interview with Loud and Quiet:

“The name Biig Piig was the product of an inebriated night with mates – a name she read on a pizza menu. It started as a joke, until she uploaded her first track to Soundcloud with the name. Now, it’s stuck.

“I feel like the more I hang out with myself, and the more I hang out with my music, it’s becoming more apparent that’s what I am. I’m just a big mess, in a nice way,” she says. “Everything, my whole life, has been a big scramble. The big pig… the big mess… but in a way, that’s the sweetest thing”.

I am looking at social media and a lot of attention is being brought to Biig Piig and her fantastic new E.P. She herself is posting images of her/the E.P. appearing on billboards. It is an exciting time for the Irish-born artist. I think that she has a long future and she will continue to make some incredibly exciting and original music.

I want to spend some time discussing her early life and upbringing. Some may wonder how it pertains to what she is doing now. I feel we get a clearer impression of an artist by doing so. Rather than merely expend a few lines about a song, I aim to go deeper and examine the wider story. I am interested learning more about Biig Piig (Smyth) and what her family life was like. Coming back to the Loud and Quiet interview…and one gets an impression of the family life of one of the most impressive young artists in music:

“Jess Smyth was born in Cork, Ireland in 1998. The eldest of four siblings, she has two younger brothers and a sister. When she was four the family moved to the Costa del Sol. As an infant her brother was struggling with asthma, and the GP recommended relocation to a warmer climate would help ease his symptoms. Her first memories were formed there in Spain, like on her first day at school, aged nine, when she turned up not knowing any Spanish, puzzled at a textbook and listened to the kids around her “speaking gibberish”. She learned the language quickly, and grew to appreciate the country, people and culture, until one day, around the age of 12, a change in local governmental property law meant that her family lost their house (years on, her father is still battling the case). It forced a move back to Ireland, to a cramped, shared family space in a village in county Waterford. Following that, there was a short stint in Kerry before the family bought a pub and resettled in west London. They all live above it, and Jess still sometimes helps behind the bar.

None of this movement Smyth minded. Sure, it meant there was disruption – she’s been up and down school years like a ladder – and there have been tough, isolating, lonely periods, but it has, she reflects, made her “adaptable”.

“It makes you more outgoing; more of a chameleon,” she says in a soft Irish accent. “But also brave because you know that no matter how much you move there’s always going to be people who don’t like you and people who do like you. It doesn’t matter. It’s just about knowing who you are and enjoying that”.

Not to repeat myself, but there is another interview – this time for CRACK - that also highlights Biig Piig’s earliest years and how she spend years in Spain. I was not aware of the fact she spent time in Spain. It is another fascinating side to a remarkable artist:

“The oldest of four, she was born in Cork but spent her formative years in Spain, where her family relocated on advice that a warmer climate might improve her brother Paddy’s severe asthma. Her parents got by running bars and restaurants in Marbella and the Costa del Sol, before being forced to move back to Ireland around the time of the financial crash, when the local council revoked their property without warning.

Smyth is impressively relaxed about the whole experience today, be it Spanish bureaucrats forcing her family into bankruptcy or the wrench of starting all over again in Ireland while on the cusp of adolescence. Then there were the subsequent moves to Waterford and eventually west London, where her father still runs a pub today.

“[Moving around] was isolating, but it’s shaped me in good ways,” she muses, sounding as easygoing as she does in her breezy bars. “I don’t ever feel scared to go out on my own. I’m always out and about trying to make friends. And I’m always losing shit like my phone all the time, but I don’t really have attachments to things. Even with people, I think I get attached very quickly and then detach just as quickly”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Darkroom London

Just before coming on to a particular job Biig Piig (I shall refer to her by the artist name rather than her real name for consistency) had that I was not expecting, I’ll finish up by bringing in a bit more information regarding her background and the earliest musical memories. This intriguing and deep interview from our culture sheds some light on the early music listening habits of Biig Piig:

“What are some of your early memories of listening to music?

There are different stages. I feel like I remember listening to Gabrielle when I was really young. My mum used to love her and it used to make her really happy. That was kind of when I discovered that music could really pull someone out of a bad place. It was like watching her sing that in the car when she was going through something really tough, and I feel like just to watch her kind of, like, light up with Gabrielle’s song ‘Sunshine’ … That was when I think I really understood the power of music. I remember listening to her quite a lot, and then when I was like 13 or whatever, I liked a lot of pop-punk and acoustic music and my taste was all over the shop… A lot of old school R&B. It was like – yeah, it was just a mess. And I don’t feel like there was one specific genre that I loved. I think it was just kind of anything that makes me feel good, or not, like songs that really make me feel… Something. But there’s a few different artists; Ben Harper, Bowling for Soup, Genuine – I used to listen to him a lot. Who else? Gabrielle and Van Morrison was played a lot, and Leonard Cohen”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Matilda Hill-Jenkins for Loud and Quiet

Maybe it is not completely relevant to her path into music, though I was struck by the fact that Biig Piig used to work in a casino! Not that this is so alarming. I just wasn’t conscious of it. I love the fact that, with every interview, something incredible comes to light. Coming back to the Loud and Quiet interview. We get to find out more about the casino job:

“When Jess Smyth was working as a poker dealer she met a lot of different people. She’d do five nights straight, clocking on at 10pm, clocking off at 7am. “Apocalypse hours,” she says, “you wouldn’t see anyone.” At one point, at the Leicester Square casino, she was spending intense 90-minute spells officiating tables, dealing cards and keeping order. While she maintained a professional appearance, internally it was often an emotional ride. There would be the drunk guys from Chelsea flashing their cash at the end of their night, career gamblers checking into games like it was a factory job, and chancers. Men – it’s always men, she says – who would turn up with their modest savings in the hope of leaving with a bulging wallet. Those were the tough ones. The people truly taking a gamble. “It was definitely the most emotional job I’ve had in my entire life. I must have cried so many times,” she recalls. “You’d get guys coming up to you saying, ‘you’ve just lost my month’s wages – thank you very much.’ Other guys would be like, ‘I can now take my child to Disneyland!’ It was a big ball of emotion. You have to be like the mum of the table – take everything on, take everyone else’s problems on and hold it together.”

Even though the hours were unsociable, the clientele sometimes challenging and the constant exercising of her brain with the maths exhausting, the money was “grand”. She started playing poker for a short while, but stopped when she got cocky, lost £500 and decided she’d like to see some daylight.

That nocturnal commute from Hammersmith to The Hippodrome was the 19-year-old’s favourite job to date. And even though she’s still young, she’s had a few. The first was probably waiting tables in her family’s restaurant in the old town square in Marbella, Spain. Much later on, once she turned 16, she took a job at Hollister at Westfield shopping centre, Shepherd’s Bush. She reckons she “stuck out like a sore thumb” and quit retail after a couple of months. In between that and the casino she’s worked as a fundraiser for British Red Cross (daytime) and a tequila bar waitress (night time). She also went to Beer School, worked in a draft house and, at one point, was employed as a babysitter for a family in Switzerland for two months.

“I feel like with every job it’s important to learn something new,” she reasons, thinking about her packed C.V. “If you’re not learning something new you’re never going to feel happy about what you’re doing.” Right now, her LinkedIn profile would read: bar worker (helping in her parents’ pub) and musician”.

Not every interview explores previous careers regarding musicians. Although there is no way Biig Piig will be dissolved and there will be this return to other professions, I really like how itinerant she has been. I think all of these experiences have shaped her and fed into the music.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Oscar Eckel for CRACK

Not that there was this consistent love of music from Biig Piig. Most artists face times when they are not completely committed to music or doubt their choices. That happened for the London-based artist. Coming back to the CRACK interview, there was this time when Biig Piig was not enamoured with music and there was this revival:

“Some things do stick though, like her relationships with Lava La Rue and Mac Wetha, fellow members of multi-disciplinary arts collective NiNE8. They met in a music tech class at Richmond College, but fell out of touch when Smyth quit aged 17 to move in with her then-boyfriend (a period she now refers to as “a rough patch”). When the relationship ended, Smyth found herself back in touch with her old classmates by chance, when La Rue invited her to a party. It proved a pivotal encounter.

“[La Rue and Wetha] were having a cypher in the next room,” she recalls. “I’d been in jams at open mics but I’d never seen one like that before, where you have an instrumental playing. I walked into the room, sat down and was having a great time, and then they passed me the mic. I just improvised, and they were like, ‘Woah.’ I thought, ‘This feels sick.’”

The experience reignited Smyth’s creativity after having “completely fallen out of love with music” around the time of leaving college. Where it had previously been pop-punk bands or acoustic balladeers like Lewis Watson and Ben Howard that fed her imagination, she now found herself gravitating towards hip-hop and neo-soul. “I loved the way it was a lot more of a mellow vibe,” she explains. “The way that stories were told and the sounds they used… It just suddenly made sense”.

I will talk more about Lava La Rue soon enough. Before that, there are a few bits of interviews that I will sprinkle in - as they create a bigger picture of Biig Piig and the creative process.

  PHOTO CREDIT: Oscar Eckel for CRACK

In 2020, Biig Piig spoke with LADYGUNN. She speaks about her creative process, being part of a collective and having an interest in Rap and Hip-Hop:

“WHAT IS YOUR SONGWRITING PROCESS? DOES IT START FROM JUST ACOUSTIC GUITAR AND VOICE, OR ARE YOU INTEGRATING PRODUCTION FROM THE BEGINNING?

Things have changed so much since the beginning. The way that it’s working now is my friend who produces beats will send me over some stuff, and I write the lyrics and melodies over that. Right now, I’m very focused on that approach – lyrics and melodies on beats. I still feel very connected to the instrumentation and beat making of it though. When I go into a session with a producer, I’ll just have a strong feeling when something clicks instrumentally.

FOR YOU, DID CO-WRITING AND TOPLINING COME NATURALLY FROM THE BEGINNING, OR WAS IT A TOUGH ADJUSTMENT FROM MAKING YOUR MUSIC PRIVATELY?

That cypher was the first time I had really tried toplining. We were all having fun with it and just rapping and singing over these random instrumentals on YouTube. At my darkest points, music has always pulled me back and that was a really big turning point for me in the way I created my own music. It opened up a lot of new possibilities. I had such a great time, and Ava (Lava La Rue) was like “we’re starting up this collective and would love for you to join. We are just going to play music and make art.” I said, “that sounds so nice. 100%,” and then Lloyd invited me to his house to make music whenever I was ready.

I used to look up random instrumentals like Mike City and these other guys. I loved how I could make the tune my own by redoing all the stuff on top of it. So that’s when I started releasing things. I started putting what I was making with Lloyd on Soundcloud. This sounds super cringe, but I feel like the instrumental stuff is already saying something and the words I make help express that. I’ve always loved that process of being able to sense the emotion in the song and then being able to translate it into words. Since then, I’ve always worked that way. I’m quite happy and comfortable doing what I am doing right now.

PHOTO CREDIT: Daniel Alexander Harris 

WHEN YOU FIRST DID THAT CYPHER AND YOUR INTEREST GREW IN HIP HOP AND RAP WERE THERE ANY ARTISTS THAT WERE PARTICULARLY INFLUENTIAL TO YOU AS YOU LEARNED TO WRITE YOUR OWN BARS?

Yeah, so Eryka Badu was definitely my first influence. The way she flows on a track and uses her words and ad-libs and everything. It just feels like it’s from another planet. It’s so cool. I was also very drawn to Biggie as well and a lot of rappers from around London. I’ve been so lucky to be part of the scene here. It’s incredible. Lord Apex, Finn Foxell – they’re so sick. The talent and the lyrics and the way they flowed on tracks was super inspiring. I think I listened and learned a lot to the people I was around the most.

YOU’VE BEEN A PART OF THE NINE 8 COLLECTIVE FOR A LONG TIME, BUT YOU DIDN’T SIGN TO A MAJOR LABEL FOR A WHILE. WHAT WERE SOME OF THE TOUGHEST PARTS ABOUT BEING INDEPENDENT?

I was very fortunate to have the support from the NiNE8 collective when it came to certain things. Like making the music video for 24K, which I released independently in 2017, everyone was helping me. Even having the producers in the collective to help me make quality stuff was super helpful when I was independent. It was still difficult to get everything together, but there was always a huge sense of satisfaction after pulling everything together. There was a sense of “wow, look what we made.”

Honestly, the tougher stuff was really just paying rent [laughs]. I wanted to spend all my time devoted to the thing that I loved doing, but it’s just kind of impossible when you’re working constantly. Financials were the toughest thing.

YOU’VE SINCE SIGNED TO A MAJOR LABEL AND BUILT A LARGER TEAM. HOW DID YOU MAINTAIN YOUR SENSE OF SELF AND YOUR INDEPENDENCE AS ALL OF THAT GREW?

I feel like there is a feat that everything will change or they will change you as an artist after you sign a deal. But I think I was very lucky because I had built a world around the music I was making already on my own. When I signed, I felt my direction was already clear, and they wouldn’t have signed me if they didn’t want me to make the things I was making. You definitely have to find your footing while you’re trying to communicate with a larger team. You need to know exactly what you want. I think that those who go into it thinking “oh, I don’t really know what I want with it” are the people who get pushed by labels into a certain direction. I think having creative control and being clear that you want that is so important”.

Bringing in a random bit of interview background from Fred Perry now. This was a quickfire interview but, still, some useful and illuminating nuggets came up regarding Biig Piig and her musical heroines:

“Which subcultures have influenced you?

Neo Soul - Harmonies and delivery of lyrics and the space given by the artists for lyrics to fall onto the instrumentals.

Acoustic Folk - The way its stripped back and so raw, earthy sounds I love.

Hip Hop - The stories and ways to capture an atmosphere with the vulnerability of rapping or speaking a truth over a beat is beaut.

Lofi Hip Hop - The structure of the beats and the bass a lot of them use I find really interesting its almost sounds like it was an improvised recording to me sometimes.

If you could spend an hour with anyone from history?

Tina Turner. I went to see the musical about her life recently and she’s so inspiring. Everything about that woman is otherworldly to me.

Of all the venues you’ve been to or played, which is your favourite?

Village Underground, my last London show was just a big moment I think. The venue space itself is really cool, it's one big room but the crowd at that show and the way the room is built just really captured an energy I hadn’t experienced before. It was mad.

Your greatest unsung hero or heroine in music?

Lava La Rue. She’s one of the most inspiring people I’ve ever met. That woman will overcome anything in her way. She honestly lives and breaths the art she makes and always gives a voice to issues surrounding it. She's incredible.

It was either 'Take a Bow' by Rihanna or 'Punk Rock 101' by Bowling for soup.

A song that defines the teenage you?

'Walk Away' by Ben Harper”.

Whilst she is based in London now – and spent some time in Spain -, Biig Piig began life in Ireland. It makes sense moving to a city with more opportunities. It couldn’t have been easy transitioning and upping sticks. In an interview with COMPLEX, Biig Piig talked about moving to London and how she found living in a big city:

“Where are you living at the moment?

White City. I moved from Peckham two or three weeks ago. My mum runs a hostel here so I’m staying here for now. I wanted to move somewhere cheaper and easy-going; I’ll just see how it goes, and then I’ll make a decision where I want to live after the tour. I’m not really a homebody, if I’m honest: I like being out and about. I used to have a thing where I couldn’t write if I was outside of my room, but I’ve learned to adapt that when I’m on tour. I get itchy feet after a few months in jobs, relationships, my home. I’m writing most of the new stuff in studios in sessions, not outside of the studio. When I’m with people who are making the beat, I like to keep everything all in one place mentally.

How changed do you feel by your experience of living in London?

I feel like you really have to know yourself well living in any city or you can quickly become isolated. There comes a point when you just put yourself out there because you can’t second-guess situations, you just have to make connections. I am so lucky to have my group of friends; finding familiar communities is sick. I think if you put yourself out there, you will draw similar people towards you”.

Just to shift gears slightly. There was an interesting question asked in the COMPLEX interview that I felt important to mention. Many artists are asked about relationships and how it affects their songwriting. I am not sure whether Biig Piig is in a relationship now but, when speaking with COMPLEX, she gave an interesting response to the question below:

“You open up about relationships when you are writing—are you happier in a relationship?

It’s great when you’re happy in your relationship, but that doesn’t happen too often. Right now, I’m in a space where I want to see what happens naturally and not pursue being single or in a relationship—just feeling like whatever happens, happens. I’m just chilling. Right now is the right time to be alone. When you’re in a relationship, you don’t always process things right away and so being alone is important when reflecting on what has happened in previous relationships. I think having those thoughts and revisiting those memories is important to process before you dive right into the next thing. When you pressure yourself to be in a relationship, you compromise, and you are forced to give up elements of yourself. I think sometimes people use a relationship as a personality trait, but I have date nights with myself! I pamper myself and watch films. Sometimes friendships can be as influential in relationships”.

PHOTO CREDIT: District Magazine 

One of the most original and impressive things about Biig Piig is her sound. There are elements of Rap and Alternative. One cannot distil it down to genres (even though I have sort of done that at the top of the review). Even though she spoke with ACCLAIM a couple of years back (and her sound has evolved), I wanted to bring it in. It seems that a lo-fi sound came quite naturally to Biig Piig:

“Your music is often described as lo-fi or jazz-lounge. Why did you decide to go along that avenue of sound?

So, initially the way that I started making music was when I went to a party that my friend was having after a show. There was a cypher going on and I’d never really seen that happen before. That’s when we were about 16. It felt so good to be able to free flow over those kinds of beats, they were mostly beats that you find online, so we would take the vocals off these old beats and just flow on top of them. Then I started to want to release music that I’d written over these beats and that was before I realized that there were a bunch of other producers up for collaboration. So I would just take them off youtube and put them on SoundCloud with my stuff on top of it. Then a few producers on Soundcloud that I started to find that I really liked the sound of, I just messaged them. Yeah, it just kind of happened that way I guess.

It was just the organic sound that came out?

Yeah, I think it was just something that drew me in and I don’t know what it is about the sound. I think it’s just the way it feels, like there’s not so much going on, there’s a lot of room for thought, but at the same time the emotion of the track is still prominent, you know what I mean, so I feel like that was the thing that drew me in”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Brynley Davies

There is going to be call and demand for a Biig Piig album. Her E.P.s so far have explored different sonic and thematic territories. Coming back to that ACCLAIM interview, we get a sense of how Biig Piig developed and matured across three E.P.s:

“Your 3 EPs seem like perfect examples of your storytelling ability and wearing your heart on your sleeve. There’s Big Fan of the Sesh Vol. 1, A World without Snooze Vol. 2 and then No Place for Patience Vol. 3. Were you always planning on doing three in a story-like way?

Yeah definitely! I mean initially, I’m a person that has a load of ideas and then when it actually comes down to doing it I’m like, “well, we could do that or we could do all these other ideas”, you know what I mean, I’m not very good at putting myself down and actually being like, “nup, I’m sticking to this plan”. So when it came to the 3 EPs, initially I wanted three of them, definitely wanted three of them, because I wanted them to be about myself and the different sides of myself rather than different stages of my life, but it just ended up being that I wrote them at different years and those years were big years in general. I feel like it was probably just the age that I was at and the things that were going on in my life, and it just kind of ended up being a bit of a diary instead of thought out, trying to explain different angles.

Yeah definitely, from listening to them it’s almost like listening to you grow up over the 3 EPS. I think the first one you kind of start off as – maybe hopeless is the wrong word – but maybe with a want to escape, and then number three your coming into yourself  and your more self assured, or at least that’s what I got out of it. How much of a role do you think moving from teenagehood to adulthood has on the inspiration for young artists in their music, or at least for you personally?

Yeah, I think it’s huge. From the years of like 14/15/16/17 all the way to 25, I think those years are so important and they’re literally the years that you’ll maybe fall in love or try and understand what that is. They’re the years that you’re just curious about everything, and are just experiencing certain things for the first time. Yeah, those years from maybe 15 to like 20, those years are so transformative. What do you think?”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Mélanie Lehmann

I will bring things up-to-date with The Sky Is Bleeding. Following on from the 2019 E.P.s, I feel Biig Piig has developed and progressed even faster and further. 2019 was a very big year for her. When she spoke with DORK in late-2019, she reflected on a busy and transformative year:

“Her first EP ‘Big Fan of The Sesh, Vol. 1’, released last year, was accompanied by a short film that Jess shot herself. “I feel like it’s really important for me, visually, to have everything explained. I don’t know what it is, but when I write tracks, sometimes, I see the video before I see the end of the song. Especially with these three EPs, they were all such important stages in my life that I feel like I need to have those visualised as well.”

Right now, Jess is gearing up for the release of her third EP ‘No Place For Patience’, and it’s an important one for her personally because it reflects all the lessons she has learned in the last few years, often the hard way. “The last two EPs were very much about relationships with other people, and I feel like at the age of 20/21 I’ve realised if you don’t like a situation, as hard as it might be, you have to change it, and that comes with how you see yourself.”

Talking to her about her time growing up it’s clear to see that apart from being an inspiring personality and a wonderful artist, Jess is the kind of friend everyone needs. She will gladly sit and philosophise for hours about the most random ideas (like how speaking different languages might shape your personality) but, most importantly, she will call you out on your bullshit because, most likely, she’s been there. And she’s still learning; another aspect that shines through on her upcoming EP.

“This EP on the surface looks like it might be about a relationship, but it is a relationship with myself. The way that I see myself and maybe that side of me that makes decisions that I can’t stand by. The darker side of yourself, I suppose.”

In her trilogy of EPs, Biig Piig has immortalised all struggles of her teenage years; a process that is both therapeutic and difficult to cope with at times:

“It’s a two-sided thing. In a sense, it helps so much when you write everything down; it’s so therapeutic. You don’t really realise what you’re writing about until you read it after. It’s an escape, and you can evaluate the situation a little bit more. But the other thing would be playing the songs live. Whenever I play tracks that meant something at a dark time, all those feelings come back. So, it feels unresolved sometimes. It’s weird, but when it’s a good show, it’s worth it because you have people in the crowd singing back the same lyrics that tore you apart once and I know I’m not alone in it. They’re helping me heal by just being in the room.”

As far as her plans for 2020 go, Biig Piig is playing it by ear. “I’m figuring it out as I go along. We’ll see how it goes. It completely depends, to be honest, on what people think of the new stuff.” If it’s anything like her previous two EPs, there’s no question number three will be welcomed with open arms. But Jess doesn’t want to jinx it.

“We’ll say a little prayer,” she jokes, but really, there are no prayers needed. With her free-flowing outlook on life and unique take on music, it doesn’t take a psychic to know that we will hear much more of her bilingual raps in the future”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Matilda Hill-Jenkins for Loud and Quiet

I did say that I would mention Lava La Rue. The founder of the nine8collective has been instrumental in Biig Piig’s life and story. Coming back to that ACCLAIM interview, the subject of La Rue arose:

“So I know Ava, or Lava La Rue, has played a massive role in igniting your music career. How has your relationship influenced you and your music since she started inviting you to those cyphers?

So when we were friends in college we’d make music sometimes. It was a lot more like we’d play instruments and stuff, it was a great crack. Then I left school, met this fella, and that was really stupid, and then went down a bit of a fucking rabbit hole with it. Then she literally like – I don’t know what I’d do without her at all, we have this relationship where whenever somethings kind of slipping with one or the other we’ll just catch each other, you know what I mean, and she just caught me at that point when it could have just gone so badly and brought me to that cypher. I just feel like she’s changed everything and then also the NiNE8 collective, we started that up, and that was just to have people close and around all the time that are also creatives. She created that space and I think that was just incredible as well. She’s in every part of everything I did at the beginning”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Matilda Hill-Jenkins for Loud and Quiet

After such a productive and acclaimed 2019, it must have been a kick in the teeth that the pandemic curtailed the energy and momentum accrued. That said, Biig Piig has done really well in 2020 and 2021! She would have wanted to tour a lot last year and showcase the songs from her recent E.P. Coming back to the our culture interview, Biig Piig spoke about lockdown and what she has been doing during it:

“How have you been during lockdown and how have you passed the time?

Lockdown has been a bit nuts. I moved so many times; it was a really hectic time for me. I was in a really intense relationship that ended during lockdown. We were living together and everything else – that was really intense. Creatively as well, I feel like I went through a period where I couldn’t really write anything and I felt really uninspired. And then after the first lockdown, I started to write a lot more and got really back into the swing of it. It felt so good. I think I’m still trying to process the whole of last year, just because my living situation kept falling apart. So I kept having to move loads and that relationship happened and then now I’m living in LA. I really like it and I’ve got a project that I’m really happy with, so it’s great. But yeah, definitely a very weird time. It almost feels like a dream. I feel like I’m looking back at it with such a hazy view because I don’t feel like time makes any sense. I think last year just feels like a whole… Vortex situation. It’s hard to remember details or anything, it’s nuts. But, passing the time, I watched a lot of really shit TV. I loved Selling Sunset. That really uh [laughs] that really kept me busy for a while. What else? Reading a bit? Reading and drinking, which I’m going to stop doing now. But drinking for the first one took up a lot of my time as well. Um, yeah, I think just staring into the void and days just fleeting… Sorry, I feel like this has taken a dark turn! [laughs] No, it was grand. I feel like I will never take life for granted again, so that’s good. Definitely a learning curve”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Oscar Eckel for CRACK

Let’s get down to reviewing American Beauty. An arpeggio guitar line fuses with skittling beats. It is a nice blend of the riparian and urgent. The Hip-Hop beats and honey glow of the guitar strings are appropriate for a song that has a combination of the sensual and potent. In terms of the vocals, Biig Piig is soothing and almost whispered in her delivery. Projecting a line, leaving a gap and then delivering another line builds up this expectation and sense of emotion. The lyrics have this heady and seductive tone to them. Thanks to the soft and tender vocals combined with the compositional cocktail, the first verse really stands out: “When she talks about it she bites her lip/Taste of chamomile honey we all need/Maybe I want to show you/What it’s like/Baby, you're so pretty we should keep the lights on/Baby, you're so pretty we should keep the lights on”. By the time the chorus comes in, the beats and guitar get hotter and heavier. There is this audible rush and a sense of the lights being turned on – the first verse felt dimly-lit and softer; the chorus is brighter and bolder: “American beauty, you tell me just what you like and ill listen/Whisper it to me/They can’t keep you satisfied but I’ll listen/American beauty, you tell me just what you like and ill listen/Whisper it to me/They can’t keep you satisfied but I’ll listen”. I wonder who the eponymous person is in the song. They do seem to be this very exciting and important person that has our heroine enraptured and spellbound. I love the vocal delivery and the fact that, despite it being soft and low, there is a headiness and electricity.

The second verse intensifies the feeling of desire and allure. Whilst one can get a sense of what the lyrics are about and what inspired them, the central figure is still a mystery. The simple composition provides plenty of weight and emotion - though it is the vocal that, to me, really stands out. Biig Piig explores a relationship that is giving her new powers and promise: “Your hands walk down as she grips my hair/I got superpowers in my fingertips/Maybe I want to show you/What it’s like/Baby, you're so pretty we should keep the lights on”. When the chorus comes back in, it seems to take on new meaning. It might be the case that this person has been misunderstood or not satisfied in the past. This idea that Biig Piig will listen and provide this understanding. Whilst there have been other songs released from The Sky Is Bleeding, the closing track ends the E.P. perfectly. I have been following Biig Piig for a while and how her sound has progressed. If you have not heard the E.P. then do spend some time with it. Every track is brilliant and different. Over the past few years, Biig Piig has really grown as a songwriter. I love what she is putting out and I feel we will hear an album from her fairly soon. I shall wrap things up here. The amazing Biig Piig always produces stunning music. On American Beauty, she is at her most exceptional and confident best.  

  PHOTO CREDIT: Oscar Eckel for CRACK

Just before rounding up, it is worth talking about the future and how Biig Piig sees it. Returning, once more, to the our culture interview from earlier this year, one get an idea of what she wants to achieve with her music:

“Do you have any goals in terms of where you’d like to get to with your music?

I mean, I really want to get to a place where I can produce myself, because I’m interested to see what that would sound like. And even producing for other artists, I think that would be really, really cool. I just need to understand what my style would be from the producing side of things. So that’s definitely a big goal for me. And then otherwise, I want to just make sure that I keep making music that makes me feel good. I feel like I really don’t want to lose the love for music, and I don’t think I will, but I just hope that every time this like feeling of excitement and release, stays and grows with everything that I make, and the things that I make in the future. So that’s kind of it. Yeah [laughs]”.

Go and stream and investigate the new E.P. The Sky Is Bleeding. In August, it is coming to vinyl. I would urge people to buy it and spend some time with a phenomenal artist. I am not sure whether there will be an album later this year or in 2022. What is clear is that there will be a lot of people excited to see Biig Piig on the stage very soon. I am not sure whether there is anything solid in the diary yet (so keep an eye on the social media channels for more information). I was keen to explore American Beauty, as it is my favourite track from an exceptional E.P. In Biig Piig, we have a wonderful artist who is…

ONE of our very best.

___________

Follow Biig Piig  

PHOTO CREDIT: Mélanie Lehmann 

Official:

https://www.biig-piig.com/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/BiigPiigMusic

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/BiigPiig/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/biig_piig/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4GoD5FJCgC0lbzde7ly44M?si=XrVYfiwnQwScBkjjfcpdRw

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCknUiQbBajFvNEC0iI28BGQ

ALL UNCREDITED PHOTOS:

Biig Piig

TRACK REVIEW: Laura Mvula - Got Me

TRACK REVIEW:

 

 

Laura Mvula

Got Me

9.4/10

The track, Got Me, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD7LMNCLbwA

GENRES:

R&B/Soul/Pop

ORIGIN:

Birmingham, U.K.

RELEASE DATE:

12th May, 2021

The album, Pink Noise, is available from 2nd July. Pre-order here:

https://atlanti.lnk.to/Pink-Noise

LABEL:

Atlantic

PRODUCERS:

Laura Mvula/Dan Hume

TRACKLIST:

Safe Passage

Conditional

Church Girl

Remedy

Magical

Pink Noise

Golden Ashes

What Matters

Got Me

Before the Dawn

__________

I am not sure why…

I have not reviewed Laura Mvula before. She is one of my favourite artists. With her album, Pink Noise, out on 2nd July, it is the perfect opportunity now! I am going to get to reviewing the latest track, Got Me, in a bit. There are a number of things that I need to explore and discuss before working up to that. Like I do with these reviews, I will sort of start as far back as I can go and then work my way forward. To start, I want to bring in this 2016 interview from The Guardian. In it, we discover details about Mvula’s earlier life and the importance of the Conservatoire:  

“I grew up in a very Christian household,” she begins. “The family unit was… tight. Our socialisation, mine and my siblings, was centred on family, church life, school.” It was “a house of love. But if I was to be critical, I would say that there was a lot of growing-up I wasn’t exposed to.” When she went to sixth form college in Solihull, aged 16, “it was the first time I took a bus”. She says that she enrolled at the Conservatoire, aged 18, with the chief intent of finding a musician to marry.

That can’t have been the reason.

“It was. I wanted a saxophonist.” Mvula shrugs: she was a child of the 90s, sax was cool. Her point, anyway, is that “I was sheltered. Massively sheltered.”

At the Conservatoire she met someone right away. “Themba. Just a stunning human being to look at. He had such presence.” She spotted him while they were singing in the same choir. “I literally said to myself, ‘Yes, thanks!’ Even without speaking to him.” They became friends, then a couple. “We had a lot in common. Fathers in the church. Two siblings. I felt a very instant connection. I wanted to spend all of my time with him – I did spend all of my time with him. Not a lot of studying in those years”.

Let’s track back to 2103, as it was then she released the extraordinary debut album, Sing to the Moon. There are many things that impress me about the album. The songwriting and arrangements are so strong and original. I listen to the album now and it does not ever sound dated or lacking in dynamic pull. Mvula’s voice is what grabs me most. It is strong and soulful, though it also has a certain vulnerability and tenderness. In this interview with FADER, we learn more about Mvula’s voice and why her music features, perhaps, unorthodox sounds – a palette that is unique to her:

“Mvula has a brilliant voice. It sounds effortlessly velvety, especially when she layers it on top of itself, something she learned to do when arranging for her aunt’s a cappella quintet, Black Voices. She continued working with the group until she graduated and was forced to earn a living. To stay close to music, she got a job as a receptionist at the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, which was its own form of torture because the music was “literally all happening behind” her desk. Without the structure of school or Black Voices, she forced herself to use her free time to write. She formed a “neo soul jazz experiment” group that disbanded, and then took up GarageBand at home, recording the songs that would eventually appear on her debut EP, She, released late last year, and her first full-length, Sing to the Moon, which came out this March. “The songs that are on the EP and on my album come out of that time of profound frustration, because the job was one to six o’clock in the afternoon, so in the mornings I would be as proactive as possible, and I started doing these song sketches,” she says. “You know, using my laptop and a USB mic and a little MIDI keyboard, which at this point strangely felt like I had real space and real freedom just to do me.” The songs, which eventually led to a deal with RCA, are ebullient and classy takes on modern R&B.

Many of Mvula’s creations feature bells, harp and timpani, a serendipitous aesthetic born out of the fact that she found those built-in samples in GarageBand to be the most workable in the sound bank. “I was just trying to make the best of what was available to me,” she says. For the final versions, she made her way to a studio, upgrading from Apple’s stock sounds to the real thing. The orchestral bombast gives Mvula’s songs a brilliance that sounds straight out of old Hollywood. While her voice is clearly the star, her ability to envision such lush arrangements is what makes her songs so striking. It’s unusual when a newcomer has not just a totality of vision, but the talent to see it through”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Hollyoak for Interview Magazine

That debut, Sing to the Moon, announced Laura Mvula as a name to watch and cherish. The album is a remarkable debut. It is not necessarily commercial; the kind of songs one would normally hear on the radio. I think this is a good thing. That said, we find out in this interview from The Independent of 2016, Mvula felt apologetic because the songs were not necessarily ‘radio-friendly’:

“The success of Sing to the Moon took Mvula, who grew up in Birmingham and was classically-trained at the conservatoire, by surprise. “I hadn’t really needed to think about things like ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Am I happy?’ before,” she says. “It all happened so fast that there wasn’t really time for me to look at the art and feel anything.” For Mvula, 2013 was a time of wearing off-white clothing and smiling a lot out of fear of coming across too menacing. “I felt strangely apologetic for the kind of music I was making because it wasn’t radio music, but I wouldn’t express any of that in that context because I was trying to get people to be okay with me existing,” she says. Soon, she found herself looking inwards and questioning what she found: “It was important for me to break out and be comfortable with being uncomfortable, which is kind of what my little life has been like until this point”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Emma Hardy for FADER

I want to move things ahead one album to 2016’s The Dreaming Room. I think that many albums work up to a pretty epic final track. When I think of standout tracks, most of them are near the top of the running order. In the case of The Dreaming Room, one can argue the most special and potent track arrived at the end: Phenomenal Woman. This is a song that has huge personal significance to Mvula. Coming back to that interview from The Independent, we get an understand as to why this song is so meaningful and powerful:

“Mvula finally reached a point of metaphorical bladder relief with “Phenomenal Woman”, the fierce new song based on Maya Angelou’s uplifting poem of the same name that she unleashed on fans earlier this month. It was Angelou’s voice that helped free her from the shackles of “striving to be this f**king woman who was acceptable to everyone”, both in music and her personal life. “I was fed up of feeling that I didn’t have any sense of who I am without that, or that person,” she says. “He, or the music, can’t be my validation for existence, surely, because they change. I can’t rely on them.” Something about hearing Angelou reciting her famous poem of triumphant self-acceptance and confidence lifted her. “I had some kind of epiphany as soon as I heard that slow voice, that depth” she says, closing her eyes as if in a trance. “I was about to go into the shower and I was stood looking at myself in the mirror. It was a different kind of looking in the mirror. It was ‘This is She, outwards, inwardly’. Staring at myself and seeing everyone else as I look at myself.” Before long, “Phenomenal Woman” became her personal anthem, a musical protest against the seemingly inescapable stress and pressures of the modern world. “All of us, women and men, are dealing with so many things thrust upon us,” she says. “I wonder how we survive, let alone be fruitful human beings”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Julian Broad for The Observer 

One other thing that I want to source from that interview from The Independent relates to beauty. I think there is still a huge pressure of women (in music) to wear make-up and not look fresh-faced or too unadorned. Mvula is a naturally very beautiful woman - though there was a moment when there was a slight clash. As the interview explains, Mvula highlighted an issue that faces many women regarding natural beauty vs. being made-up and almost disguised:  

“Mvula too is “poisoned” by society’s dictation that women are unacceptable in their natural state. When filming her latest video for the poignant “Show Me Love”, she admits to telling the director that although it is a heartbreaking song, she did not want to look “too raw” for fear of how people might react to her without makeup on. “I showed some friends this video and they said ‘Oh, you’re so beautiful’, but all I wonder is whether the record label will think I look overweight,” she says. It is a sad admission, but Mvula is speaking a universal truth about life as a woman today. “I want a way in that doesn’t mean you have to plaster your face, alter the colour of your skin or change the shape of your body in order to convey a certain message,” she continues. “It’s an interesting journey that we’re on together as women, but we at least need to have the dialogue openly now, even if things don’t change overnight”.

Before focusing more on The Dreaming Room, I am going to stick with The Independent interview. It possess many fascinating passages and intriguing sections. There was an interesting portion of the interview that I wanted to drop in without too much exposition, explanation or context:

“When we meet she is sitting on a sofa in a cosy, quiet room at Sony HQ in London, dressed casually with her signature shaved head but lacking the bright, warrior-esque makeup of her latest marketing campaign. The first thing she tells me is that she is tired, before showing me the stunning visual essay she developed to accompany her new music and to help those working with her to capture a sense of authenticity. Striking photos that inspired her, mainly taken from magazines, are surrounded by scrawled snippets straight from her imagination: ‘This album will be truly dark and beautiful’, ‘Life is not clean-cut’, ‘All images must be glorious and vulnerable at once’. The last song on the tracklist is simply titled “Who I Am”. There is clearly a theme.

Mvula has always loved paper and pictures and scribbling. “There was something grown-up about it to me, as a kid,” she says in a calm, unintentionally majestic tone. “I’ve always enjoyed having something tangible that you can hold and see in front of you. It seems to be how my brain works.” A bigger sound was important to her on this album, she wanted everything to be much more stylised to make the songs come alive. “It’s a selfish thing really,” she admits. “It’s about wanting to be heard”.

  PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Hollyoak for Interview Magazine

I will get to Mvula’s new music in a minute. I feel her previous album, The Dreaming Room, is such an important release that warrants closer inspection and greater dissection. In 2016, Mvula spoke with Matt Mullen of Interview Magazine about the process and creation of a magnificent album:

“MULLEN: It’s been almost a year since, but tell me about the process for creating The Dreaming Room.

MVULA: It was a very different process from my first album in that I really had to take my time, and I’m really not good at taking that time, generally. So the first challenge was to be patient and not rush through writing something that I didn’t feel proud of, or wasn’t sure of. I also went on holiday, and then I was in New York, just hanging, going to friend’s shows, which helped me to create the energy to experience something outside of my own space, so that was good. And then when I felt ready, I started putting down words. Sometimes it would be 16 seconds of music, just because that was all I could manage. But it was a really good exercise in picking good ideas and running with them. Then I started thinking, “What kind of album do I want to make? What kind of sounds do I want to make?”

MULLEN: What kind of sounds did you want to make?

MVULA: I knew guitar was going to be a really big deal for me, because I wanted some of the energy of Fela Kuti, [who] I’ve been listening to a lot in the last couple years. I wanted that spirit to be in the music. I also was experimenting with synthesizers, like old analog synthesizers—I didn’t know what the hell I was doing—so that was an exciting experience, which again is different from the familiar process of writing these things, when I’d just sit at the piano. I think it was also new because of collaboration; I’ve never collaborated before, so when Nile Rodgers said, “I want to be on the album,” I thought it was some kind of sick joke. I didn’t think it was real.

MULLEN: How do you go about choosing collaborators? It sounds like sometimes they come to you, but what’s your thinking behind the kind of musicians you want to work with?

MVULA: Honestly, I must sound almost like an arrogant asshole, but when I say to you that people come to me I genuinely mean it. [both laugh] John Scofield, who plays guitar on the record, is another one. I didn’t realize that I have these resources at my fingertips”.

I will focus more on anxiety and how Mvula has battled it through the years. There is an interesting segment of the interview with The Guardian that I quoted from at the start - it explores the writing of The Dreaming Room and the importance of music:

“Mvula believes that she’s written “a beast of an album in The Dreaming Room. I never thought I’d be able to. I couldn’t be left in a room on my own. So how could I write?” She only got around this obstacle, she says, because for weeks on end Dionne and Mariama “found ways to be in the room with me, but not in the room”. They’ll have to do something similar again, soon, when Mvula takes to the road for a run of gigs. She feels guilty about this (“These are people who have lives of their own”), but at the same time she doesn’t feel ready to give up her career. Music has been “a way to grieve about my marriage, and make sense of what it means that my life has changed”.

With her computer open on the table, it suddenly occurs to Mvula that she can show me some of the curious processes that went into composing The Dreaming Room. While writing, she explains, she often recorded herself using her laptop’s camera – in case she should hit on a “moment in time thing” and later want to recapture it. Many of the videos Mvula shot are hours and hours long. We scroll through them. They tend to show her hunched over a keyboard in casual clothes or pyjamas. One video has her sitting in a desk chair, singing phrases into a microphone, when suddenly she whips off her headphones and disappears from view”.

There is a fascinating interview from the Evening Standard that was published this week. In addition to exploring the influence of the Eighties on her new album, we also get a sense of something that proved traumatic to Mvula: moving to a new label.

“There are a few lyrics on Laura Mvula’s forthcoming third album that will make the listener think she’s been through a nasty break-up. Take this, on Conditional: “I don’t cry no tears for you/I needed love unconditional.” Or this, from the comeback single, Safe Passage: “Never imagined I would ever be free from your story/Staring in the face of it, I finally see I’m everything I need.”

And they’d be right, but this isn’t necessarily romantic trauma. At the start of 2017, the Birmingham musician’s record label, Sony, told her they were dispensing with her services via a brief email. Both of her albums to date had received wide acclaim and prestigious Mercury Prize nominations, and the first, Sing to the Moon, had been a gold seller. Prince had messaged her to ask to be on a track on the second, The Dreaming Room, which he loved, but she had to turn him down because Nile Rodgers was already on it. Talk about a rock and a hard place. So this bad news came as no small surprise.

“I thought I was an important artist. I just remember feeling I’d been unfairly treated, not necessarily with the decision itself but with the manner in which it had been dealt with, which I thought was rude and careless,” she says. “I’d apologised so much for who I was right from the beginning. I’d tried to be the most palatable version of Laura that I could be, and played this game with real class and elegance, so to be let go in that way, I just felt, ‘Hold on a second!’ The least I could have had was a real conversation.”

She made the situation public straight away on Twitter, writing, “So sad Sony have dropped me today…” – an unusually honest way to put it given the tendency for musicians to reframe these situations more positively as their own decision, a regaining of creative control, a conscious uncoupling or similar. Witnessing the shocked public response must have felt a bit like attending your own funeral, a response to “my creative death,” as she puts it. Fellow musicians including Bastille, Charlotte Church and Hozier replied with encouraging words. Rag ‘n’ Bone Man said in the Guardian: “I can’t believe it… She’s by far my favourite songwriter in the UK at the moment”.

  PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Hollyoak for Interview Magazine 

Not to spend too much talking about something as severe and disruptive as anxiety…but I think that it is important. Mvula has lived with it for a long time. I feel it is worth highlighting. Many artists live with anxiety. So many interviews either skim past it or the artist does not feel comfortable discussing it. Going back to that interview from The Guardian, we get a sense of how it has affected Mvula – and how it initially manifested itself:

“At first it was the shortness of breath… Dizziness… Why do I want to run out of the house naked right now?” As time went on the attacks “began to manifest in different ways. It’s difficult to explain. My body starts spasming, I think I’m going to collapse… Difficulty swallowing sometimes… A feeling of struggling to stay in your skin.”

Episodes would occur most frequently when she was on her own. Mvula describes a common thing: “The freak-out in the shower. And I wish that was the term for something good – it’s not. When it happens I feel like my head’s about to explode. So I start shaking it violently, bang the door open, water spills out, this whole episode. When all I want is to have a fucking shower. After that, you have to deal with getting over the shame of calling for help.”

The sudden, disarming grin: “As you can imagine I was not in the greatest condition for what was about to happen in my life”.

Mvula was one of the domestic musical triumphs of 2013. She was everywhere, on chat shows, at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York, on M&S ads, at the Mercury Awards (odds-on with the bookies to take that prize before it went, in the end, to James Blake). She refers to all this as a period of “coming to terms with a new reality. Even to only have a foot in the door, it was a strange, ongoing sensation, one that I couldn’t make sense of quick enough. My anxiety shot up from what it was. It shifted gears.”

If the upset of her parents’ divorce was “the top off a bottle”, the sudden beginnings of life as a public figure brought “everything pouring out, rocket-fast”. Her anxiety – and in particular her difficulty with being left alone – got worse. In London for gigs or other engagements she had to be accompanied at all times by her younger sister, Dionne, who was then a student in the capital. Themba would be everywhere with her in Birmingham. People outside the immediate family were deliberately kept in the dark about her anxiety. “There’s a natural fear that nobody will understand,” Mvula says. “Or they’ll think you’re making it up, or you’ve become a diva. I was ashamed. Embarrassed. Also, at that point, I was so ignorant of what the industry was, I thought: ‘If they find out about that they’ll drop me.’”

As her music career got busier, Dionne and Themba stopped being able to cope. “Everything was moving so fast.” Mvula finally told her manager. He was “heartbroken”, she says, that she’d waited so long. An assistant, Mariama Abudulai, was employed, so that at least Mvula could lean on someone who was paid to be there, with a smaller measure of guilt. Her manager knew Mvula was more or less “debilitated” by anxiety, “but it didn’t go beyond management. And we all know the machine is huge – you have the record label, you have publishing, publicity, agents. You have the video team, stylists, all the people who are making your career move forward. None of those guys knew.” They still don’t.

Two years ago, things got extremely difficult. “Naturally, all this was a huge strain on mine and Themba’s marriage. Then, a year ago, we split. I don’t want to say too much more. This anxiety thing is something that has dictated my life. I know it was a factor in my marriage breaking down. I wish that life could be compartmentalised: ‘That was because of that, and that was because of that.’ Really, I’m not sure. It was a combination of lots of things. I would say… quite honestly, that I failed him. I failed him as a wife.”

  PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Hollyoak for Interview Magazine 

It is heartbreaking reading about Mvula’s battle with anxiety. I feel it helps us learn more about her as an artist and the creative process. Not that the songs are re-contextualised and we misconstrue them. Before moving on to a review of Mvula’s new song, I want to come back to that interview from the Evening Standard. They head back to 2017 and documentary that discussed and explored Mvula’s experiences of living with anxiety:

“She has been very open about those bad days. In 2017 she made a television programme for the BBC titled Generation Anxiety, in which she revealed that she had been living with “a support worker-slash-carer, somebody that could be in my house with me so that I wasn’t alone because of my struggles with anxiety.” In an interview with the Observer a year earlier she spoke of panic attacks in the shower and said that her anxiety disorder was a factor in the breakdown of her marriage to the opera singer Themba Mvula.

“To talk about it in this controlled, story-like manner felt boundaried and yet helpful, because of the reaction it got,” she says. “There were so many ‘Me too’s. People were really liberated by hearing a story similar to their own”.

With a bubbling beat and strut that is reminiscent of Billy Ocean’s When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going, one is instantly in Eighties territory (that song was released in 1985). There is also a little undercurrent of Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean to the introduction. I really love the sound and how it is modern and fresh…though one can also think back to older tracks and get that brilliant, slightly nostalgic hit. There is something blissful and pure about the opening verse: “Woke up this morning with your touch on my mind/Your kisses take me on some heavenly ride/Go with me, go with you, no limit no/I don't regret nothing, with you I belong”. There is a deepness in Mvula’s voice that, I feel, gives the words greater urgency, soulfulness and importance. I love Mvula’s delivery and how beautiful her voice is. The composition races and has this insatiable rush. Bursting and fizzing with that Eighties vibe, the pre-chorus is one that is guaranteed to stick in your head: “Do what you want to do/Say what you want to say/Taking control of me/Don't make it too easy for me/Do what you want to do/Say what you want to say/Taking control of me/Don't make it too easy for me”. The biggest moment, as you would expect, comes in the chorus. I have mentioned how other artists this/last year have put the 1980s into the blend of their music. Jessie Ware and Dua Lipa have done it, as has Beabadoobee and many others. It is great that artists are affectionately nodding to the decade and doing so in an original way. Mvula’s Show Me is this instantly uplifting and hypnotic song that, I feel, is going to be one of the highlights of Pink Noise. The chorus finds Mvula enraptured and struck by something very special and powerful: “You got me/Tremblin' in the palm of your hand/You got me/I'm a slave to the sound of your command/You got me/Tremblin' in the palm of your hand/You got me/I'm a slave to the sound of your command”.

The verses provide something softer and more sensual than the bright and vivacious chorus. There is sexiness and tease. I get vibes of Prince and Madonna. Though, with everything she does, Laura Mvula is very much herself and not someone that is beholden to other artists. I am not sure who inspired the song, though it seems that they are both magnetic in their allure, but also trustworthy and have a real sense of reliability. The second verse finds the heroine losing herself and wanting to be immersed in this bond:  “You see right inside of me no need to hide/Want you to take all and leave nothing behind/Go with me, go with you/No limit no/Beyond this attraction I'm lost in your soul”. By the time the pre-chorus and chorus come back around, one feels bonded and addicted to the track. It is a passionate and colourful explosion that shows Mvula is a very special talent! I think a lot of modern music is too joyless and does not emphasise positivity. It is nice to hear a song that is joyous and makes one feel better. There seems to be no bitter sting or sharp tail to the song - which makes Got Me so much more appealing and unexpected. The compelling nature of the chorus means that it is, in my opinion, more memorable than the verses (which are pretty damn good!). I love Mvula’s voice at all stages, though it hard to ignore the catchiness of the chorus! The verses provide story and that deeper vocal. I like how it switches and we get this nice flow throughout. A song that you will want to come back to time and time again, Got Me is a bright, brilliant and soulful jam that seems to have huge personal relevance. This is a rejuvenated and awestruck songwriter who has created a wonderful song. Safe Passage and Church Girl have already been released as singles. I love then, though I think Got Me is the finest of the trio.

I am looking forward to the new album, Pink Noise. There are a couple of interviews/features I want to source from. It seems like Mvula’s third studio album is going to be a change in direction from The Dreaming Room. CLASH brought us some details and information from Mvula around the release of her recent single, Church Girl:

“Laura Mvula will release new album 'Pink Noise' on July 2nd.

The singer appeared lost to us - taking a step back after her previous major label deal evaporated, she even considered teaching posts in East London.

But then the muse returned. Signalling her return earlier this year, Laura Mvula has now outlined plans for a new album.

'Pink Noise' lands on July 2nd through Atlantic Records, with new single 'Church Girl' easing Laura into a fresh chapter.

Laura Mvula comments: “I am not my story. For so long I identified as the things that happen in my life, the things I do, good or bad. I’m letting go of this mind-made ‘me’. I’m coming home to myself beyond the realm of form. I am not the thoughts in my head, or the things I achieve, or the shape of my haircut. I no longer ‘dance with the devil’ on my back. I’m basking in the light of knowing my true self, the deeper ‘I’”.

A lot of artists are exploring the Eighties lately. There has been a bit of a revival of that decade. One can say that the 1980s has always been at the forefront and it has not gone away. I feel, it terms of Pop and R&B, the sounds of that decade have been making a real impact the past year or two. Going back to the interview with the Evening Standard and we get a sense, of what Pink Noise will offer – and what influenced and compelled this new chapter and stage for Mvula:

“She discovered the term because she wanted to be able to describe the sounds she was going for, which can be better summarised for the layperson by saying simply, “really really Eighties”. The processed boom of the drums opening Safe Passage reminded me of the beginning of Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love, though Mvula says she was going more for Phil Collins’ In the Air Tonight. Weighty analogue synthesizers dominate the songs. The rolling bassline and artificial horn blasts of the brilliant Got Me have strong echoes of When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going by Billy Ocean, no less. The ballad What Matters would fit nicely on the end credits of a John Hughes film and features an unrecognisably smooth contribution from rocker Simon Neil of Biffy Clyro.

It was an invitation to support David Byrne on tour in 2018 that began this bright new chapter. She no longer had the budget for a full band, so she and her musical director Troy Miller did it as a duo with as many synths as possible. “Most importantly, I was not concerned at all with how this was going to be received,” she says. “It literally wasn’t in my thought process. I didn’t have room any more.”

To end, I want to discuss Mvula’s recent gig, Under a Pink Moon. During the pandemic, artists have been adapting and finding ways to reach people. As this article explores, Mvula’s Under a Pink Moon was a definite standout from the streamed gigs that have been happening:

“If what we need is a liberating blast of escapism, we couldn’t do much better than this short but incendiary performance from Laura Mvula. In her first live concert in three years, the musician showcased new songs as well as a bold updated sound to older gems.

When Mvula emerged on the scene with her jazz-classical-soul-fusion debut in 2013 she was showered with award nominations: the BBC Sound Poll, the Mercury Prize, the BRITs Critics’ Choice, two BRIT Awards and two MOBOs. It’s now nearly five years since the Birmingham Conservatoire graduate released her Ivor Novello-winning, Mercury-nominated second album The Dreaming Room.

Plaudits aside, Mvula has been through it: anxiety-fuelled panic attacks, divorce from her musician husband, and being dropped from her record label Sony – by email.

Under a Pink Moon showed her rejuvenated and ready to take on the pop world, under a new record deal with Atlantic. While other “live” streamed shows during lockdown have involved beautifully crafted cinematic experiences sometimes blended, documentary-style, with interviews, Mvula gave us a full-on pop concert, with lit-up stage and visuals, choreography, slinky dancers and striking costumes (mostly black leotards, stiletto boots and shoulder pads). Sparks flew from the moment she emerged, resplendent in a bright pink jacket with enormous shoulders, bursting out of the laptop screen into the living room with drama and emotion, from fragility to empowerment.

Channelling the spirit of her late mentor and fan Prince, a handful of thrilling new songs showed off a new 80s synth-pop vibe. “Safe Passage” shimmered with Aha synths and layers of choral backing vocals. 

The punchy “Conditional” told of relationship woes. “Another blow to the ego, a victim of conditional love”, she asserted rhythmically to driving drum beats and bassy synths. With eruptions of synthesised saxophones, she declared “I don’t cry no tears for you! I needed more. Unconditional!”

Under a glittering mirrorball, her duet “What Matters”, with Biffy Clyro’s Simon Neil, was a seductive, romantic balm, the rock band’s smooth-voiced frontman proving a gorgeous accompaniment to her alternately tender and powerful vocals. The lively “Green Garden” had an 80s funk makeover, complete with pink keytar and exuberant synths.

When she put the pink jacket back on, her different body language had transformed. With eyes downcast and tender vocals laying bare her vulnerability, she began her second album’s heartbreaking “Show Me Love”, with softly pulsing synths and electronic beats in place of the original’s strings. It was moving, and followed by a similarly revamped “Sing to the Moon”, while her gloriously layered vocals remained. The promised news of an imminent album are more anticipated than ever – she dropped a four-track EP of reworked hits, 1/f, immediately after the show. What a comeback”.

I am looking forward to Pink Noise. The iconic Laura Mvula is someone I am keen to feature more, as she is such an interesting and inspiring artist. Got Me is a fantastic and memorable taste of what her new album is going to offer! Make sure that you pre-order it. I shall leave things there. It is always such a treat to receive new music from…

THE wonderful Laura Mvula.

___________

Follow Laura Mvula

Official:

https://www.lauramvula.com/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/lauramvula

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/lauramvulamusic

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/lauramvula/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/0Dy94lW3txJhWQHqNXP1BT?si=4W9Ll3VITIuTE3vWcNLteQ

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE46a9u8GPKAf0V-_RBwvTQ

ALL UNCREDITED PHOTOS:

Laura Mvula

TRACK REVIEW: Squid - Boy Racers

TRACK REVIEW:

 

 

Squid

PHOTO CREDIT: Ashley Bourne for CRACK 

Boy Racers

9.6/10

The track, Boy Racers, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQsyUwziy4Y

GENRE:

Post-Punk

ORIGIN:

Brighton, U.K.

The album, Bright Green Field, is available via:

 https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/squid/bright-green-field

RELEASE DATE:

7th May, 2021

LABEL:

Warp

PRODUCER:

Dan Carey

TRACKLIST:

Resolution Square

G.S.K.

Narrator (ft. Martha Skye Murphy)

Boy Racers

Paddling

Documentary Filmmaker

2010

The Flyove

Peel St.

Global Groove

Pamphlets

__________

THIS review is all about...

one of Britain’s hottest and most exciting new bands. Hailing from Brighton, Squid have just released their debut album, Bright Green Field. I am going to work my way forward to a review of one of the songs from the album. I want to first look at the band’s history. Including their formation and the attention at their feet, there is quite a bit to cover. I think that it is important to look at the start of Squid and how they came together. When they spoke to DIY in 2019 (when their single, Houseplants, came out), we discovered more about their roots – and how their music mixes the manic and playful:

“Today, we find the Brighton quintet – completed by vocalist and guitarist Louis Borlase, guitarist Anton Pearson, keyboardist Arthur Leadbetter and bassist Laurie Nankivell - in a Wetherspoons just down the road from London’s fear-inducing US Visa office. It’s a Monday morning (don’t worry, they’re on the coffees for now) and they’ve all just had their passports stamped, ready to go and instil exactly the same sense of excitement over at SXSW. They might only be a couple of years into life as a band, but the momentum behind Squid over the last six months speaks for itself; unusual and idiosyncratic, theirs is an infectious sonic viewpoint that’s pricking up more ears by the day.

Even Squid's beginnings are typically upside down. Meeting at uni in Sussex, the band members had been vaguely making bedroom, laptop music when Anton noticed an ad for a "slightly weird place" looking for someone to start a young person's jazz night. "So we had to write loads of music to play this gig at the jazz bar," explains Ollie. "We booked the space first and then had to write a set," nods Anton. Soon bored of this traditional set up ("It was like, are we really just confined to always having to play the piano?! Fuck this," recalls Louis), the five pals started branching out to other venues and watched their output broaden in tandem. "There wasn't much cohesion, but it was something to do," shrugs Ollie.

Obvious cohesion, you sense, isn't really Squid's primary focus; ask what's on their collective record players, and they'll cite influences ranging from '80s English eccentrics XTC to German kraut favourites NEU! and minimalist composer Steve Reich. "Arthur's so obsessed with Steve Reich; he's got a new app called the clapping game," begins Louis. "I strongly, strongly recommend the Clapping Music app - available on iPhone and Android," informs Arthur, very seriously. "If you get the highest score on the hard level, then you get to perform Steve Reich's 'Clapping Music' with the London Symphony Orchestra." "He's been really annoying people on trains, but you're having fun – that's all that matters," grins Louis to his bandmate.

But though their interests may land on the more technical end of the muso spectrum, Squid's own output rings with a sense of playfulness, fun and more than a little unhinged mania. "Every song that we've written in the past year has been written in about three hours," explains Ollie. "They come from that slightly pressured way of writing and it gives them energy." Take just-released new single 'Houseplants' for example. Bursting out of the traps with an immediate, propulsive riff, it bobs along merrily before some discordant brass kicks in and then the whole thing temporarily collapses in a vortex as Ollie repeatedly wails the track's title. Picking up frenetic pace over its four minutes, it's a wild trip of paranoia shot through with a glint in its eye. "We just finished uni two years ago and now all of our friends are getting career jobs, so it's a bit of a comment on that," notes Ollie, "but I don't ever think out a whole story. The words are just another instrument. I've got a book with loads of phrases written down." "A phrase book, you might say?" jokes Laurie. "Dos cervezas por favor!" calls out Louis”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Holly Whittaker

There is a fun and quick interview that I want to bring in that gives us more a little more insight into the band. It is from a different DIY interview that was conducted back in 2018 – they released their debut E.P., LINO, the year before:

“Describe your music to us in the form of a Tinder bio.

8 minute songs and a stamina to match.

What’s your earliest musical memory?

Anton: The first memory of us working together to make music was Ollie and I awkwardly meeting for the first time in Louis’ bedroom in Kemptown to mess about with some instruments and laptops.

Ollie: You were very grumpy Anton, not a good first impression.

Louis: I was disappointed and couldn’t envisage a second hangout.

Anton: Arthur and I were also in a funk covers band around the same time. It wasn’t until we played our first gig as a four a few months later that we realised it was the sort of thing we wanted to keep doing together. We knew there was a lot of development needed musically to make something our own but luckily the lovely Laurie joined us a year after and steered us with his trumpet.)

Who were some artists that inspired you when you were just starting out (and why)?

Anton: When we were first collaborating we all in love with a lot of German bands like NEU!, Can etc. I remember us listening to a lot of Esbjorn Svensson and ECM type stuff along with a bunch of ‘ambient’ and post-rock artists, really just a load of instrumental stuff too.

Louis: Unintentionally I think, we started taking more from the current music around us and putting it into our own writing. This seemed to give our set a much higher energy which felt really good - or maybe it’s just that we started standing up on stage. Right now we’re especially loving Baxter Dury, Black Midi, DUDS, Tirzah.

You’re based in Brighton and London - do you feel like there are strong scenes in the cities at the moment? Are there other artists breaking through at the same time that you take inspiration from?

Totally! Seems like London is producing a new hot band every minute. It’s just cool to be on the fringes of exciting and diverse musical goings on in London. It is a big city but all these bands operate in a very inclusive way which is really great, and you’ll see a lot of the same faces whether you’re South or North of the river. In terms of Brighton, it seems like everyone has flown the nest somewhat, but there was always lots going on when we all lived there.

Bands like The Glugg, Leatherhead, Sealings, The Snivellers, Space Cowboys and Garden Centre (I’m sure I’m missing more) were always supportive of whatever was going on and are all such firmly grounded and nice people. We’re also really looking forward to the new Porridge Radio album. It’s being recorded with MJ from Hookworms and I’ve heard the working title is ‘Daddy’”.

Let’s move this on and bring it a little more up-to-date. I think that one reason why Squid have harnessed this incredible sound and confidence is their association with producer Dan Carey. The band are signed to Warp now – which I shall touch on soon -, but they met Carey before he produced their debut album. This 2010 interview with CRACK explains more:

“Having worked exclusively with Speedy Wunderground for the past two years, Squid clearly have a special relationship with Carey. I wonder whether that’s because they think Carey is the only producer versatile enough to wrangle their scattergun ideas into some coherent shape. “I don’t think we really know that yet,” Louis replies. “But he has these Speedy Wunderground rules – like, record it in one take, with the lights off, with no lunch break – that definitely makes us work in a specific way.”

“We turn the lights off and have lasers on,” Anton expands, “and sometimes they go in your eyes and it’s hard to concentrate. So I think we haven’t always abided to every rule.” Arthur takes over: “You need someone who allows you to feel comfortable pushing your own boundaries, and who can help you create a new vision of what’s in your head. That’s what I think a good producer does, and that’s what Dan does. For that moment you’re in the studio, he’s the sixth member of the band”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Matilda Hill-Jenkins for Loud and Quiet 

I want to keep things on Dan Carey for a bit, as the band have a lot of praise and respect for him. Although Squid have innate talent and ability, I think that Carey has helped them find their sound and capitalise on that. The band spoke with Loud and Quiet in 2019 about what Carey brings to their music:

“Funnily enough, I was reading Loud And Quiet a while back and I saw that Lottie and Rosy from Goat Girl did that ‘Bands Buy Records’ video thing. They were talking about recording their album with this guy Dan Carey so I Googled him and this Quietus interview came up with all this stuff about Speedy Wunderground. It just sounded like everything we were looking for so I sent him an email with ‘Changeover Terrestrial Blues’ attached. Obviously didn’t expect to hear anything back. A couple of days later I got a two sentence reply saying, ‘Sounds cool, could be recorded better. When you playing next?’ I couldn’t believe it. I told him we were playing at Off The Cuff and he just said, ‘Cool, I’ll be there. Put me on guest list.’” And that was it. Squid did what Carey dotingly calls a ‘Speedy’ and it seems they couldn’t be happier with the outcome. “In the studio, he doesn’t use a lot of words,” explains Ledbetter. “He does lots of listening and occasionally offers slight direction where he steers you and that’s when he catches it. He’ll say something like, ‘maybe just try this for a little bit,’ and then before we even feel like we’ve started back over again, he just says, ‘we’re done.’”

“Our trajectory would not be anywhere without Dan Carey,” says Judge, “and the fact that he took a punt on some unknown band with 500 likes on Facebook…”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Matilda Hill-Jenkins for Loud and Quiet  

The final Dan Carey-related interview that I want to bring in is from DORK. Ahead of the release of Bright Green Field, Squid discussed Carey’s working methods and how there is this sense of fun and looseness that comes from him:

“Some of that playful nature was aided and abetted by their producer and confidante Dan Carey, who is known for playing about with lasers, lights and just, well, being a bit of a ‘character’. “Dan has a playful persona and has been such a good companion to have and really complements our sound. We have a relationship as a friend with him now, so we can be really open about the music, and that’s resulted in us using some really cool recording techniques,” says Laurie.

The process of forming the album while working with Dan Carey came concurrently for signing with esteemed label Warp Records, something the band are very excited about. “Although Warp is seen predominantly as an electronic music label, it’s more an experimental music label in a broader sense,” says Laurie. “That’s what drew us to them. We wanted a home where we could experiment, to our hearts’ desires”.

Apologies to move back and forward regarding timeline and theme. I think that it is important to get a good spread of information; aspects that relate to Squid’s music and their rise. I am going to move on and address a subject that is quite relevant to their popularity and quality (their album has courted some terrific reviews).

Now they have found a good hope with Warp. They have been signed to Speedy Wunderground and other labels through their career. One can understand why labels would be interested in the band. Coming back to the CRACK interview…there was an interesting section that caught my attention:

“Considering how resolutely Squid swerve definitive readings of their work, it’s unsurprising that they’re as evasive when discussing how many record labels there are currently courting them. “There’ve been a couple of lunches here and there,” Louis concedes and Laurie quips, “some Greggs sausage rolls. Some incognito service station meetings.” Arthur insists, however, that the band’s priority is writing new music for the album.

“This week we’re going to a cabin near Bristol, doing a Bon Iver, but for three days,” Anton grins. “I’ll bring the craft beer,” laughs Ollie. They hope to have an album out at some point next year, but as for the shape that new material might take, well, your guess is as good as theirs. “Who knows, it might end up being so strange that we’ll be forced to self-release it,” Louis says semiseriously, causing Laurie to exclaim, “I’d quite like that!”

However the record ends up sounding, the audience eagerly anticipating its release already extends far beyond the British Isles. “Belgium seem to love us,” says a bemused-sounding Ollie, while Louis seems equally mystified recounting a fan encounter in Germany. “I remember walking through Berlin after playing a gig in some quite nondescript area of town, and this guy just walked past and hissed, ‘Houseplants!’ at us. Honestly, it was surreal.” You sense Squid wouldn’t want it any other way”.

I am going to keep to the same theme and bring in Warp. In another interview with Loud and Quiet, the band detail that Warp, whilst not the most obvious label for them, made sense:

“On paper Squid and Warp records may initially seem an unlikely pairing, given the label’s history of being synonymous with a lot of electronic music, but the band’s post-genre and experimental approach is a snug fit. “When we got the Warp offer it was a bit like, ‘Oh that’s weird,’” says Judge. “But it kind of makes sense. It wasn’t the most obvious choice but it kind of is at the same time. I’ve also been a fan of Warp since I was really young. We used to have a lodger at my parents’ house and he was super into Aphex Twin. I remember him giving me Come to Daddy and being absolutely petrified”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Emma Swann for DIY

The next section that I want to cover is the sense of solidity and equality in the ranks. I think a band succeeds or fails depending on the hierarchy and how it is structured. If there is inequality or poor communication then that shows in their music. In this NME interview from this year, the balance and democracy in the band is outlined and emphasised:

“Lots of bands talk about all members having equal say, but Squid’s musical meritocracy seems their greatest strength. Ask if any ideas were deemed too experimental to make the cut, and you get a unanimous ‘No!’, all three members on the call looking quite proud of the fact. Medieval racketts are just the tip of their iceberg – in 2019, the band introduced themselves to NME as sounding like “The Coronation Street theme tune played on flutes by angry children”, and studio anecdotes range from their wrangling with de-tuned instruments to setting out a sacrificial-style ring of amplifiers, all playing different sounds, a microphone swinging from the ceiling to capture the chaos”.

I want to come back to this Loud and Quiet interview. Not only has making a debut album enforced their bond and confidence; their sense of direction and identity has also been illuminated:

“The process of making this album has helped solidify a sense of identity in the band, too. “When you first start a band you just want to be a band and then as you progress you start to ask yourself what kind of band do you want to be,” says Leadbetter. “I think we started to realise what we want to do is to be in a position where we’re comfortable enough that we can just have as much fun and make whatever music we want. That means that we’re able to do things like this album where things are kind of drastically different.”

Despite some members worrying about how it may be received, there’s a natural confidence in the band in what they’ve created their debut. Leadbetter, who is endlessly positive in conversation, is also thrilled he managed to get his dad on the album. “He’s a professional musician and researcher,” he says. “He specialises in medieval rock and renaissance instruments, so he played the rackett on the album. Which is a bit like a squashed bassoon. We had this idea to layer him alongside the synths to create this mega drone.” There’s also a number of guest vocalists featured, although true to Squid’s form they appear in such a mangled, treated and distorted way that they aren’t recognisable”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Titouan Massé

There are a few things that I need to go over before getting down to a review. Squid spoke to DORK (in the interview from them I brought in earlier) about making their anticipated album. Among everything else that was said, the fact that Bright Green Field is definitely not a ‘lockdown album’, really struck me:

“Squid are the kind of band who can do it all. The five friends from Brighton have established a reputation since they formed five years ago as a band capable of exciting and shocking in equal measure. You never quite know what you’re going to get, and that sense of uncertainty and ambition makes them a thrilling proposition. Their two previous EPs ‘LINO’ and ‘Town Centre’ set the scene for an idiosyncratic band forging their own path, but the long-awaited debut album arrives in the middle of an altogether unique set of circumstances. “It’s the record we wanted to make, and it’s a big thing for us,” begins Louis excitedly.

Despite the sense of excitement surrounding the release of the album, it’s tinged with a bittersweetness as a band so formidable on stage with a reputation founded on some incendiary live shows wistfully dream of what these songs could be like live. A dream that hopefully is now tantalisingly close. “We just can’t wait to play it to people,” says Laurie. “We did a session last week, and it was so much fun playing a couple of tracks, and that was just to a camera, so who knows what’s going to happen when there’s thousands of people there.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Emma Swann for DIY 

In something akin to losing a leg, the band were forced to subtly change their creative dynamic as they embarked on making an album in which precious few of the songs were tried and tested live. It’s a challenge that they met head-on. “We did a bit of experimenting with different techniques,” says Laurie. “We had to do it just track by track. It was probably good to have space between us, but as soon as we could meet up again, we did. We met up in a pub in Chippenham, and they very kindly let us use their function room to write the remaining material.”

Despite the album being conceived smack bang in the middle of that most tumultuous year, it’s not defined by its circumstances. “It’s really important to note that it’s not a lockdown album,” stresses Louis. “A lot of the music was written before we knew there was a big old pandemic ready to swing around the corner. We were lucky in a way as a lot of the music on the album we wouldn’t have been able to dwell on as much if it wasn’t for the time we had to take it idea by idea and track by track in a whole summer of not touring.”

The album ‘Bright Green Field’ contains 11 brand new recordings with no old singles or anything tacked on. It’s all freshly squeezed Squid. “Get it  from your wanky coffee shop!” laughs Laurie. It’s indicative, though, of a band constantly driving forward. “There’s no drive from any of us to look back and regurgitate a style or revisit stuff,” says Louis. Propulsive ambition is at the heart of Squid’s music, and while it can be disorienting as it hops from one extreme of sound to the other, it comes from a place of innate creativity and a melting pot of influences from the five members. There’s a whole lot at work in the Squid sound, and you hear it all on ‘Bright Green Field’. “There’s never been a conscious decision to do something different,” Louis ponders. “Because we each listen to such a different variety of music and we love experimenting, then naturally the music that comes out is in that vein. That’s been a running theme since we started making music five years ago. What’s changed is it’s got a lot quicker and a bit more aggressive on the whole.” “We still make softer and slightly jazzier things as well,” chips in Laurie”.

Many might wonder why Squid’s album is called Bright Green Field. They covered that in the same interview with DORK:

“Another thing that took a long time was finding the right album title before they settled on the evocative ‘Bright Green Field”.  “It always seems to be titles that we spend most time on,” laments Louis with a chuckle. “It came from a reference in a book we were all interested in. It ironically denotes this godforsaken island we find ourselves on and a pastoral self-awareness and self memory. The record and title feel hopeful.”

“We had a list of about 50 titles,” adds Laurie. “At one point, the album was called ‘On Demand’. We were talking about this theme of the uncanny valley where you have this sense of a field in England that denotes something positive in childhood memories, but there’s a brightness to it which makes it seem slightly strange. That fit the mood of the pandemic and a lot of things that happen today that you can’t explain why, like the rise of the far-right. Things that you’re slightly confused about”.

The final thing that I want to mention is the songwriting themes that Squid tackle. Coming back to the NME interview, there are interesting observations regarding the songs on Bright Green Field and the subjects addressed:

“There are also personal fears among this state-of-the-nation stock-take. ‘Documentary Filmmaker’ was written about the experience of visiting a loved one on the same ward where Louis Theroux filmed a documentary about anorexia; the song doesn’t explicitly provide its context in words, but still swells with dissonant sax that perfectly captures the tumultuous feelings one goes through when willing a loved one to get well. It’s a real feat of emotional musicianship, and a display of their vitality as a unit, putting compassion into conversations that can be difficult to start. As the band’s main lyricist, Ollie doesn’t seem especially keen to unpack the more literal meanings of these songs with us, perhaps because he’s still working them out himself.

“If we’re doing anything that feels too familiar or like it’s a pastiche of something, we tend to move on,” he says, explaining that he doesn’t want to “give everything away” in a song. “When we were writing the album I watched a documentary about New Order, where Bernard Sumner said that he often writes lyrics and doesn’t really know what they’re about until other people start weighing in on them. It was a liberating thing to hear, because I think I was driving myself a little bit crazy thinking that everything had to mean a certain thing. It was a nice turning point for me, personally, to hear such a big star say that.”

“I don’t think, lyrically and musically, we’re really capable in some respects of doing a ‘conscious critique’,” Louis chips in. “There are five of us who have different approaches to writing music, and what makes society and reality so surreal is that there are so many different narratives going on, often at odds with one another. Whether it’s musically or politically or just in society, there’s always that sense of bizarreness. And I think we’re all aware of that”.

Circling back to this Loud and Quiet interview, we learn that Bright Green Field is less of a concept of political album; it is more of a transitional, coming-of-age release:  

“However, despite being Ballardian in tone, both musically and lyrically, Bright Green Field isn’t a concept album, nor is it a warped reflection of the strange and unravelling times we find ourselves in during the pandemic. “It’s not usually a conscious decision to write a song about what the world is doing,” says Nankivell. “The way we compose is much more about listening to each other musically. Whether that’s been influenced by the world is usually a subconscious thing rather than being: ‘We’re gonna write a song about climate change, Brexit or Donald Trump.’

“There is a sense of real uncertainty and bleakness but it’s certainly not being reactionary to a microcosm of bad stuff going on. I think it’s kind of unspoken that the music we’ve been making has ended up having an atmosphere of a certain sense of dystopia. The new music just happened to pre-empt a certain feeling.”

Nor would the band go as far to call this a political record, despite it touching upon socio-political terrain. “I’m always kind of reluctant to describe our music as political,” says Judge, who writes the majority of the lyrics. “I’m not educated enough to be this kind of mouthpiece. I feel I’d be doing people a disservice. I’m definitely not the bastion of the disenfranchised youth. There are always going to be political references but it’s not the main talking point.”

What Squid would call the album is something of a coming of age record, with that period of quite profound and intense change that can come as you hit your mid-twenties and begin to reflect on things and see things changing all around you. “A big thing was definitely seeing friends really quickly achieving a lot of what they wanted to achieve in a short space of time,” Borlase says. “And then seeing the changes of lifestyle. It’s kind of a coming of age record but it’s also a kind of coming to terms album – more around the awareness of the reality that we’re living in”.

Boy Racers is a song that contains relatively few lyrics. Its real strength comes from the composition. The introduction is one that twists and turns. I love how unconventional their sound is. You get a real sense of atmosphere and oddity in the composition. It is a wonderfully textured and original sound that builds so much emotion and atmosphere. One listens to the composition and starts to project their own images and possibilities. The first verse is one filled with arresting and interesting lyrics: “Were you mangled by a tree?/Were you a teen girl fantasy?/It's not okay that we can't sleep tonight/With boy racers in our dreams at night/Boy racers in our dreams at night/Boy racers in our dreams at night/Boy racers in our dreams at night/Boy racer, did you see that light?/No?/Okay”. The lead vocal has this phrasing and delivery that means the words and punctuated - and each is given a different approach. Rather than a conventional delivery, Louis Borlase injects every line with something new with the vocal. It sounds quite quirky, though it is fairly ragged and eccentric. There is a lot of passion and beauty, oddly, to be found too. Between the verses, the band summon a transitional composition paragraph that is packed with weight and nuance. Again, one can listen to the music and feel like it is part of the lyrics – a continuation of the story and a different voice. I do love the mix of romance and horror in the first verse. It may seem like a song about speeding teens, though I wonder if there is another angle that Squid were taking; something that is more oblique, perhaps? The second verse is equally evocative and mysterious: “Are you suspended in time?/Does anyone even know what you might look like?/It's not okay that we can't sleep tonight/With boy racers in our dreams at night/Boy racers in our dreams at night/Boy racers in our dreams at night/Boy racers in our dreams at night/Boy racer, did you see that light?”. Maybe a lyrics about dangerous lovers or thoughts. I think that every listener will have their own interpretation regarding the words.

In a more contemplative and less frenetic delivery, the hero delivers something fairly sombre: “I always stayed at home/I always stayed at home/I always stayed at home/I should have stayed at homе”. As much as I love the instrumentation and how the composition evolves and delivers something new for each stage of Boy Racers, the lyrics have got into my head regarding the interpretation and truth. Just before the midway point, we get the best segment of the song. The lyrics stop for now and the band deliver a fade. Things go quieter and we get a section that is spacey and tense. There is a beauty and purity together with something quite strange. It is hard to describe. Showcasing their musicianship and inventiveness, perhaps this a section where the boy racer crashes or we go into a dream. It is such an unexpected and moving passage, one is barely prepared for it. To me, this passage represents a moment of finality. That said, the song is half-way done…so we know that much more is to come.

Among the processed and echoed vocals and some intergalactic touches, one loses themselves and drifts away. In some ways, one can compare Squid with Pink Floyd. There is this experimentation and progressive sound that could have appeared on a classic album from Pink Floyd. Normally, when you get these extensive instrumental segments, you can lose interests and one feels it is to pad the song out. On this occasion, there is so much to be discovered. One is hooked and mesmerised by a disembodied voice and this feeling that we are seeing the carnage and strange feeling post-crash. Maybe the boy racer motif is a metaphor for ageing or people who do not grow up; perhaps those that live recklessly. If taken literally, it seems to be the quiet after the storm. There is this moment where the tension builds and we get this electronic swirl and vortex that hovers, twists and turns. It is another awesome and memorable moment where one can envisage so much and speculate. I love how Squid change gears and they have created this impressive and immersive suite! The composition ends the song and, by the end of things, one needs to process what they have heard! There are some lyrics that I have not already mentioned: “Your face/Doesn't age/And you'rе always small/And you're always small”; “They did things that you'll never know/Sounds that you'll never hear”. It makes me thinking of some people not ageing well; something about those that race ahead in life. Perhaps Boy Racers is more about those who are immature and are living life dangerously and without purpose. However one interprets the song, it is a clear highlight from an album overloaded with gems and diamonds!

PHOTO CREDIT: Ashley Bourne for NME

I am going to wrap up soon. I will point to the future before closing things. Coming back to this Loud and Quiet interview, and one gets the sense that there is this incredible buzz around the Brighton-formed band:

“The band’s ability to digest and distil such a broad range of ideas, themes and topics makes Bright Green Field a bold and ambitious debut. One that is unafraid to take risks and keen to avoid coasting on previous successes, even if it’s resulted in some slight anxiety about putting it out into the world. “I’m a complete worrier,” says Judge, before Borlase adds: “And I’m a complete panicker. I’ve had bad dreams about negative reviews. I listen to the album occasionally and just think there’s so much in here to either love or hate.” While they have tried to ignore the fact they are something of a buzz band, from BBC Sound of 2020 Poll to a record deal with Warp within a year, it is something that trickles into their thought process. “People tend to be a bit more critical with hype bands,” ponders Judge”.

I will end with this DIY interview. One curious thing is how the band did not get to play live a lot prior to recording the album. Perhaps the pandemic has made Bright Green Field a little bleaker than it otherwise would have been:

“Featuring almost entirely unheard material (“I hate it when bands put tracks on albums that have been recorded for ages beforehand - it’s cheating”), influenced by dystopian sci-fi and written for the most part in a windowless barn in Ollie’s hometown of Chippenham, the record looks set to be as much of a journey into the stranger corners of the mind as that image might suggest. Having been forced to ditch their usual process of “write something, try it out live and then go back and tinker with it”, instead Squid had to solely embrace their situation.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Holly Whittaker  

“We didn’t have the live aspect, so thinking about how different all of the tracks might have sounded if we’d have played them live is quite a strange thought,” he muses. “I think it would be a completely different record. Maybe it’s more bleak than it would have been…” But bleak though the end product may be, that’s not to say the band didn’t have their share of fun during its creation. Heading back to London, there’s more than a hint of the mad scientist to the way the band and their producer approached the recording. “There was one moment where we had a thing that looked like a seance. There was a ring of amps all facing the ceiling, maybe 10 in a circle, and then we had a microphone at the top swinging round with the amps all playing different sounds,” Ollie grins. “That was a good one. Arthur’s dad is an expert in medieval instruments and he came down with a wind instrument called a rackett, which literally makes a racket, so that’s on one of the tracks too."

Eccentric but esoteric, unexpected but also with “a nice push and pull to the poppy elements”, maybe Squid’s debut is actually exactly what they’d been pointing towards all along. “Pretty terrifying, a debut album!” Ollie grimaces. “I’ve been having anxiety dreams about it getting one star for ages…” Come 2021, Squid’s star should be rising far, far higher than that”.

I shall leave things there. There are a few exciting British bands emerging that have the potential to craft a long and successful career. Squid are very much among them. Bright Green Field has (rightfully) been lauded and magnified by critics. It is a stunning debut album that has to be among the favourites ahead of the Mercury Prize announcing their shortlist later in their year. If you have not discovered the band then go and check them out and listen to Bright Green Field. It is a phenomenal album from a wonderful young band. When it comes to Squid, I am looking forward to hearing…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Ashley Bourne for NME

MUCH more from them.

___________

Follow Squid

 PHOTO CREDIT: Holly Whittaker 

Official:

https://squidband.uk/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/squidbanduk

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/squiduk

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/squidbanduk/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/685XjGzGztyivfR3fAjoxo

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMLtEqhaPr8q-D_PkFcugzw

Bandcamp:

https://squiduk.bandcamp.com/

ALL UNCREDITED PHOTOS:

Squid

TRACK REVIEW: Self Esteem - I Do This All the Time

TRACK REVIEW:

 

 

Self Esteem

I Do This All the Time

9.8/10

The track, I Do This All the Time, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mtd_jlV61mA

GENRE:

Experimental Pop

ORIGIN:

London, U.K.

RELEASE DATE:

27th April, 2021

LABEL:

Universal Music Operations Limited

__________

EVEN though the song has been out…

since 27th April, I have had time to sit back and listen to Self Esteem’s latest track, I Do This All the Time, and offer something deeper than an instant reaction. The moniker of Rebecca Lucy Taylor  (who was formerly part of the duo Slow Club (which formed in Sheffield in 2006), I think the latest Self Esteem track is the best yet - and possibly hints at a new direction for album-two (although there has been no official announcement, one feels a follow-up to 2019’s exceptional Compliments Please is not far away). Self Esteem has also announced some tour dates for later in the year. Before I get to I Do This All the Time, I wanted to take a peek back to 2019 and the interviews Self Esteem (I shall refer to her as such for the majority of this review, rather than Rebecca Lucy Taylor) conducted. I want to work my way to her new track though, as I do with my reviews, I want to get a bigger and clearer view of the subject; a more chronological approach to Self Esteem – rather than merely expending a few lines about the song. For that reason, I want to talk about the early career of one of Britain’s finest writers and performers. In this Strong Island interview of 2018, we discover more about the earlier years:

“Could you tell me about how you initially got involved with music and who influenced you most?

Well my dad was a musician and in a band when he met my mum. My whole childhood was based very much around music and dancing to it. I borrowed these VHS tapes of queen videos off my uncle Phil and watched them a lot as well as a tape of a Peter Gabriel tour which was pretty theatrical. I watched them over and over and became obsessed with performance but also the beauty and drama you could make with certain notes or beats. And then the spice girls obviously found me when I needed them. They helped me feel positive about my personality. And anyway all that created this monster.

Am I right in saying that you used to be in an indie band for about ten years. Could you tell me a little bit about them? What made you decide to go it solo?

My band slow club started when I was about 16. I’m very proud of what we did but I never felt comfortable at an indie level- or with the rules involved in that. I never felt ok being cool and relaxed. I wanted more. So here we are”.

Can you describe how you felt whilst after you’d released your first single?

It was weird because I lost my grandad the same week. He was The One person who really totally got me if you know what I mean. He was a ‘show off’ too. It felt like the beginning and like he knew I guess? I dunno. It was weird. But I haven’t looked back and I’m very focused. I’ve wanted to express myself fully for over 10 years. I’m trying to make sure I enjoy it but also be thorough”.

I do want to spend some more time with Slow Club (the duo of Rebecca Lucy Taylor and Charles Watson). That might seem like a chapter from the past that is not relevant to what we are hearing now from Self Esteem. I do think that there is this link that warrants further exploration and investigation. I do think that the break-up of Slow Club sparked something and led to the incredible Self Esteem. Whilst one can see comparisons between the two, I think we hear more of the true Rebecca Lucy Taylor in Self Esteem.

To that Sheffield duo, then. In an interview with DIY to promote the debut album, Compliments Please, a little more light is shed more light on why Slow Club ended after years together:

“From 2006 until their indefinite hiatus in 2017 (“We haven’t officially broken up; if someone wants to pay us enough money for a gig, we’ll do it,” she laughs), Rebecca formed one half of Sheffield indie folk duo Slow Club. The band released four albums, toured extensively and received a decent amount of critical acclaim. But throughout it all, the singer harboured the kind of dreams that went beyond mid-level indie gigs and, as the years went on, ‘decent’ increasingly proved itself not to be enough. “I’ve always been mega ambitious, but in the indie world I was made to feel shame about that,” she explains. “I had to stop it – stop all this nonsense! - and stay in my lane a bit. And I made the executive decision to do it because I thought that was the only way to succeed.”

The catalyst that would eventually call time on the band after years of tenacity turned out to be more of a slow realisation than a fiery fall-out. “[When we released] album three, we were on the telly and I had this day where a stylist took me shopping and bought me clothes and it was like, the best day of my life,” she remembers. “It felt like it was going up a bit and I really liked the legitimacy of it, that more people were working on it and it had a direction. But then that didn’t happen for album four and I just knew there was no way to push it to how I wanted it to be, and I was quite tired of trying.” However, over the last couple of years of the band, Rebecca had found a way to help ease these frustrations. Quietly posting bits of her own outside of the Slow Club umbrella - thoughts and observations screen-shotted and put on Instagram and “a secret Twitter where I tweeted raunchy poetry” - the outlet wasn’t a high-profile one, but it satisfied the side of her that was being suppressed by being in a “cool guy indie band”. “The freedom of that made me realise that you can have an output and even though no-one knows it’s you, it gets it out of your body. So I thought, this is how I handle this,” she explains”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jenna Foxton for Loud and Quiet

From the dissolvement of Slow Club came Self Esteem. Although there are musicians who perform alongside her, Self Esteem is more of a singular Rebecca Lucy Taylor experience. As I said, I think that we hear more of her honesty and a greater musical diversity. There are many who are saying that, with I Do This All the Time, Self Esteem has bested her phenomenal work on Compliments Please. It is true that there has been this evolution and shift between 2019 and now - even though I am judging that on the basis of one song. I will get to the track review. First, I am keen to learn more about the start and early seeds of Self Esteem. Because of that, I am brining in another section from that DIY interview:

“Kicking around as a name for ages, from when "me and my bestie were just these trolls scrabbling around in our early 20s and all that mattered was men and what we looked like and it was fucking rank. I assume the name came from having no self esteem, which we didn't because we were just dreadful," the project has now come to encompass the complete opposite of these ideas. An album full of sparse, beat-led bops full of witty, sexy lyrics on the nuances of love and life, forthcoming debut 'Compliments Please' is a record that's unapologetic in its sense of self. "What I might have achieved, if I wasn't trying to please" goes the chorus of lead single 'Rollover'; now, Rebecca's trying to find out. "I kept thinking, I get to stand on a stage and what am I doing? Zipping my coat up, looking at my feet and saying sorry? I can't believe I spent [so long doing that]," she says, shaking her head. "When I was little, everything was a stage; if I was standing on a patio then that would be the stage and the grass would be my audience. And then I'm on an actual stage and I wasted it for years." She chuckles. "It's all very selfish though, and it's all for me. It's all just to make my daily life more fun...”.

I do think that Self Esteem is this very confident and realised project. A fresh identity – I am making it sound like she is in witness protection! – and lease of life, Compliments Please is marked by its authoritative nature and completeness. It is interesting reading an interview Self Esteem conducted with EXPOSED in 2019 regarding the overlap between Slow Club and Self Esteem:

“Let’s go back to when the Self Esteem project first came to you. Did you have a good idea of what you wanted it to be from the start, or did it morph over time?

For a long time everything I couldn’t do in Slow Club was turning into a little overspill car park for my ideas. Being in a UK indie band over that time period, the music industry changed so much. I felt like someone who saw what would make sense to an audience, but there were these indie scene rules that you had to play by. And besides, things were bubbling along nicely enough. But I began thinking to myself: I’m never going to get into bigger venues, I’m never going to be a bigger deal and my ambition is never going to be matched in reality. So what would I enjoy doing more in these smaller venues and spaces? And I always was more of a pop enthusiast and wanted to dance and make art; I love costume and just all that shit you don’t get to do in an indie band.

PHOTO CREDIT: Rachel Lipsitz for CLASH 

Towards the end of the Slow Club era, were you kind of putting things to one side – song ideas, inspirations, etc?

Yeah, you can hear it in the Slow Club albums. I sort of fought a lot more for what I wanted in the early days, then I kind of got in my lane for album three and four – I knew what I was doing there by then and what worked. It used to be enough for me until I eventually felt really frustrated, so I had to do something. But still, Self Esteem was never something that I thought I’d do full-time”.

So in a sense, and without sounding too wanky, you’ve found out more about yourself through this project? It sounds like Self Esteem has been a bit of vehicle for you to throw off some shackles.

Yes, but I also credit my laziness in a way. I think a lot of women need to let their laziness in and just go “Oh, it’s fine.” You don’t have to play by the rules of femininity or live up to society’s expectations. I know I sit here in a lucky position as a musician telling people to do whatever they want; but stopping trying to fit in has certainly changed my life. The name is funny because I thought of it ten years ago, when it wasn’t about being empowered and I lived my daily life worrying about who liked me and how I looked. It was horrible constant stress about everything to do with myself. The name was always just there because I thought it was a funny name for a band, but it’s sort of become a bit self-fulfilling”.

I want to mention this subject because, when writing about girl in red (the Norwegian singer-songwriter and record producer Marie Ulven whose album, If I Could Make It Go Quiet, is getting some serious love right now), I covered the subject of sexuality. She is a queer icon whose music is helping to normalise queerness. That sounds odd that we should even be thinking of it as ‘abnormal’. Bisexuality, queerness, transgender people, homosexuality – are they are accepted and discussed in music as they should be? There are L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artists out there but, even now, I feel that we have a little way to go until the mainstream especially encourages true and honest expression from these artists. I think Self Esteem, as a bisexual artist, is helping when it comes to the conversation and ensuring a natural and fuller integration of sexuality. Whereas some artists in the mainstream – such as Katy Perry – have experimented with girl crushes and kissing a girl to see what it feels like, Self Esteem is not an artist who is ‘dabbling’. In this interview from The Line of Best Fit, Self Esteem expands on that:

“The record explores love, lust and relationships – what Taylor describes as her “bread and butter” – but with a beautiful twist each time. “I actually wrote most of this album quite happily in a relationship and thought I had totally disproved the ‘theory’,” she explains, referencing the ides that breakups create the best art. “But then we did break up. And I wrote ‘Rollout’, ‘I’m Shy’ and ‘In Time’… so the theory is proved, I need to be painfully stressed to write songs!”

PHOTO CREDIT: Parri Thomas for The Line of Best Fit 

She came out as bisexual in 2013. “It was quite late, really,” she says. “I’d had relationships with women, but not long-term ones so it always felt silly and I convinced myself in a way that it wasn’t real.

“I remember singing lyrics that Charles [Watson, Slow Club co-founder] had written about women and I never wanted to change the gender and that was my way of expressing myself. And now I look back and think… wow, you were totally bi."

The track “Girl Crush” calls out performative bisexuality, saying that love is love, and crushes are crushes – just crushes, not girl crushes. “There are songs like Katy Perry’s ‘I Kissed A Girl’ and like that collaboration song ‘Girls’ by Rita Ora. That’s fine, I respect those artists, but those songs are problematic as fuck”.

I agree that songs that almost make light of bisexuality (and queerness) are damaging and not helping to advance dialogue and assimilation. Given the number of fans these artists have and the streaming numbers they rack up, so many listeners are hearing a message that is harmful. Some may say that, in a sense, many young women will experiment - and that these lyrics point to friendship, playfulness and harmless fun. I feel that, as so many L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artists are fighting to have their voices heard, we need to ensure that the subject of sexual identity is not taken lightly!

 PHOTO CREDIT: Rachel Lipsitz for CLASH

I want to stick with the song, Girl Crush. Again, some might say that me going down this route is unrelated to the latest Self Esteem song. I would say that, as fascinating and rich artist, learning more about who she is and what she is about provides us with much more depth and story. In an interview with the BBC, Self Esteem expanded on the nature of Girl Crush:

“Girl Crush, meanwhile, finds her untangling the mess of a drunken lesbian fling.

"I'm not a holiday," she scolds a would-be suitor, in a lyric that's borne of experience.

"I'm bisexual and I'm quite feminine but I'm also quite tall, so I've always found that drunk straight girls gravitate towards me in a club or a party or whatever.

"For years, because I was attracted to them, I'd go along with it. But then I'd be like, 'There's nothing in this for me.' I'm just a good story for people."

The song is intended as an antidote to tracks like Rita Ora's Girls or Katy Perry's I Kissed A Girl - both of which attracted criticism for misrepresenting same-sex attraction as a drunken dalliance or a childish dare.

"I mean, I love Katy Perry, but I Kissed A Girl is everything that's wrong with everything, and it set people like me back a lot," says Taylor.

"So I just wanted to do an anti-I Kissed A Girl song. Just so people know it's not very fun for the queer girl in this situation. It's a bi-bop, we call it. There's not enough of them”.

There is a final article that I want to source from regarding Self Esteem and the discussion of bisexuality. Not only has she talked about bisexuality, but also the nature of being a woman; her femininity and how, possibly compelled by standards and expectations in the industry, she has felt the need to be more ladylike – conform to an ideal that many women are expected to. An illuminating interview from VICE elucidates on how, especially for queer women, fitting into a preordained and expected mould is challenging and unfair:

“You mentioned to me earlier that a lot has changed in the past year. What did you mean by that?

I still grew up when it was like… I “needed” to be ladylike. I was too loud. I was too big. I was constantly being told to “stop showing off”. Then being in an indie band in the mid-2000s, I had to play this role of “sweet, quiet, meek folk girl.” I’m just slowly becoming aware of a few things. Even over the last year, I’ve realised that’s their problem, that’s not my problem. I really like learning to just surround myself with people who don’t make me feel like that.

There are people who I thought were friends that i spent all my time with, but now I’m like “Wow you made me feel like shit.” I don’t want to get too OK with myself, though, because I’ll probably never write a song again [laughs]. But I’m making a better day-to-day life for myself in my own way.

I think I know what you mean. Whenever I step out of the circle I’m most comfortable with – which is mainly women, often queer women – I realise I don’t fit into any of these moulds that I’m supposed to. And it’s about rising above that construct.

Yeah! And it’s not like in the band I wasn’t accepted… they were my friends. But I didn’t always feel comfortable. With my team now, they understand me and don’t and see me as something that needs to be made smaller. Now and again things hit me, and I realise that’s how I used to feel all the time. The other day, we toured with a band and I felt very worried about what I looked like, and that was in relation to what men thought, and I realised that was just a status quo.

So feeling it again suddenly makes me realise how much happier I am, which is a positive thing. But I’m still dealing with those aftershocks of learning how to live without people pleasing. But then I worry like ‘God, am I just a monster now? Haha, like Cruella de Vil?”.

  PHOTO CREDIT: Rachel Lipsitz for CLASH

Let’s work our way to the debut Self Esteem album, Compliments Please. I feel that the album (released on 1st March, 2019) was robbed of a Mercury Prize nod! So complete and lauded was it, I did wonder why it was not shortlisted for that illustrious gong – I think Taylor felt similarly vexed and befuddled! One reason why the album should have been garnered with awards and prestige is that, for a debut album, it sounded like Self Esteem was this act/moniker that had been around for years and was hitting a peak. So rounded and strong was the album, the huge array of positive critical reviews should have given the likes of the Mercury Prize pause for thought. Anyway. I want to look at how Self Esteem is a very different beast to Slow Club. In the interview with The Line of Best Fit, it outlines a moment when we sort of heard shades (in Slow Club) of what we would witness with the introduction of Self Esteem:

“Perhaps this is why Taylor's voice now bursts out of her so loudly and strongly on Compliments Please. Slow Club wasn’t quite cutting it for Rebecca, because she wasn’t getting to do what she really wanted to vocally. “I’m very ambitious and I wanted more from the band. I still felt that one day my big break was going to come, and I felt like it didn’t. So I called a spade a spade and said, 'I love this band, but I need to go and try all the things I’d quite like to try here but I can’t.'”

This might be confusing to Slow Club fans who witnessed Taylor’s voice in full flow on 2014’s Complete Surrender. “It was a turning point,” she admits. “Around that time I had been through an awful relationship, and I’d come out the other side on an almighty high. I wrote a lot of that album off the back of that and I felt really galvanised, and we were starting to do television appearances as well – and I liked it. I wanted to push even it further into that fame, but that’s not what the band wanted”.

  PHOTO CREDIT: Rachel Lipsitz for CLASH

Bringing in an interview with CLASH, and it is humbling and impressive to hear an artist be so self-deprecating. Self Esteem is not a major act in the same way as Taylor Swift or Dua Lipa is. One cannot call Self Esteem ‘niche’ or ‘underground’. I think that her more sophisticated and, perhaps, less commercial sound is one that is richer and more compelling than a lot of music in the mainstream. Self Esteem is an artist who, as she releases more albums, will accrue a massive army of fans and rub shoulders alongside the best of the best! I feel, as a songwriter and artist, Self Esteem is far more interesting than a lot of the world-famous artists. It raises the question as to whether we need to put so much emphasis on the huge Pop artists and shift the paradigm to more nuanced and less appreciated artists. In the CLASH interview, it does seem that, with Compliments Please, Self Esteem was making a statement of intent:

“I’m so lucky that if I write a song there’s a handful of people at least who will listen to it,” she says, with typically self-deprecating honesty. “Same with the gigs. If I’m going to play a gig and stand up onstage then there’s going to be a few people there who will watch it.”

“I did just start to get tired of not taking that as far as I’d like to because it’s an opportunity. Every time you get to do anything if an opportunity to make any kind of art. Fitting in those parameters… the ones I put on myself, like: don’t talk to much, or don’t be too crazy, or don’t share too much. I think I’m just bored and getting older, so I want to make things as big, bold, and beautiful and dramatic as possible.”

 ‘Compliments Please’ is certainly bold. From the nudity of its cover art through to the expressive lyricism its the sound of a potent pop voice pushing herself as far as she can go. That’s the thing with Rebecca Lucy Taylor: she’s funny and engaging, but beneath those jokes (so often at her own expense) lies a ruthlessly intelligent musical mindset, something capable of shifting and adapting to virtually any condition.

“It got to a point early last year where I was like, well, focus on what you’re good at,” she recalls. “And the tangible opportunity was that I had signed to a label and there was budget to make an album. I thought it would be nice to find focus”.

Out now, ‘Compliments Please’ is already defying expectations. It’s a rich, textual pop experience, influenced by Lady Gaga’s sheen and Kanye’s embrace-everything approach on ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’.

Take recent single ‘The Best’: “I really love that one, it feels really weightless. It’s a bit of a contrast to the other stuff, I always want music to be heavy and dark, but we made this song out of nowhere and I like how breezy it is.”

Album closer ‘On The Edge’ is a touching and direct finale, a point where Rebecca’s ever-present humour begins to falter. However even here there’s a playful touch: the distorted effects on such a simple song derived from Andy Kaufmann’s trick of making the TV broadcast of his comedy special come in and out of focus”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jenn Five for DIY

I shall round off the Compliments Please mini-section with a nice interview that I found from Loud and Quiet. First, and bringing in an interview from London in Stereo, and the theory that, as you hear the album, one hears a new and extraordinary form of Pop. One reason why I love Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside – my favourite album of all-time – is that it is stridently and stirringly female and different. There are so many bold and unheard of themes in the album. Few Pop artists were documenting themes such as menstruation, lust and incest back in 1978 (or are today). Not that Compliments Please covers these subjects. What I mean is that it is a very real and open album that does not hide behind clichés or conform to expectations for a Pop record:

“And Self Esteem feels like a new kind of pop — not processed but something proudly, powerfully female. She told herself “if you’re going to do it make it really, really beautiful and powerful and evoke really soaring emotion in people” – and the album is full of gospel choirs, strings, striking vocals and syncopated beats. “I think ‘Wrestling’ was the first time I was like ‘This is what it sounds like’, and then to my mind I’d written the album and it was done. I’d been in a relationship and I was like ‘This is great, I can be in a relationship and still write an album’. I’d always thought I had to be in turmoil to write good stuff. So I thought I’d disprove that theory but then we did break up and I wrote ‘Rollout’, ‘In Time’, ‘I’m Shy’ – all of my favourites. I was, like, ‘Shiitt!’”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Charlotte Patmore

I think that Compliments Please was one of 2019’s best albums. Not only is the songwriting individual and hugely accomplished; there are a range of sounds and textures fused and entwining through the album. In an interview with Loud and Quiet, Rebecca Lucy Taylor outlined what she wanted to achieve with Self Esteem:

“Underneath these stones lie lush strings and big sentiments accompanied by drumbeats more in line with Destiny’s Child than Destroyer. Rebecca’s finally expressing herself one hundred per cent. “I started in the band when I was 16 with Charles and then Slow Club began when I was 18,” she says. “After that it just rolled on and on. I think as we never hit any heady heights there was nothing to fall from, it was a gradual thing. I knew that there were so many things that I wanted to do musically that wouldn’t fit there so I privately wrote songs and started making them with other people. It was always bubbling away but it never felt real or something I could do, I thought it would just be a one off bootlegy EP or something. It was after that third Slow Club album, we’d been on the telly and things got a bit more exciting, we were on a bigger label, I really loved all that and I would like to do that again. Charles didn’t love that and I couldn’t push him. I have this knot in my stomach all the time and feel bad about it. If I am being selfish about it, though, and maybe I should be, compromising your output since you were a teenager is not good for you and I didn’t realise that. I thought that was the nature of the industry but now all that has lifted away”.

The record subtly shifts through genres and influences that act as a clue to Rebecca’s development as an artist, something she’s open to exploring. “I want to keep Self Esteem bombastic and big, heavy and emotional,” she says. “But do I want to do the same thing for every album? Do you know, I can’t remember the last time I was listening to an album and then I couldn’t wait for the next one. The only example I can give you is Alisha’s Attic when I was 11 or something and I loved the record so much but then I was mortifyingly disappointed with the next? The only other artist that I can’t wait to hear the record of now is Perfume Genius. Isn’t that weird? I have just renounced all other music. There is something about the way he writes songs that I just adore. Sonically, he has progressed perfectly”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jenna Foxton for Loud and Quiet

Even in 2019, there was a lot of demand for Taylor. She was keeping very busy and embarking on a number of different projects. I wonder, with a second album (potentially) on the horizon, we will get more side-projects from Self Esteem. Maybe a Table Manners-type (a podcast where Jessie Ware and guests talk about food and family) podcast or a short film. Just before getting to the review itself, I want to go back to the CLASH interview and why having a lot on the go was preferable and natural for Self Esteem:

“But then, Rebecca Lucy Taylor has every right to be selfish – after all, she’s in demand, with a host of projects set to dominate her time over the coming months. “I’m doing a musical,” she says. “I’m developing a musical at one theatre, and then I’m writing my own one, and then I’ve got another meeting about another one. I’m just basically trying to hustle so I can retire! And I love theatre, so I’m trying to combine the two.”

“I’m realising now how much I can write on spec. That’s why I like writing for theatre, because I love being given an emotion or a story that you need a song written about then I can actually do that.”

That’s quite a lot to take on, Clash states.

“Well, I always say if you throw as much shit at a wall…!” she laughs. “It feels a bit like that. But genuinely, that’s how I work. It’s constant and quick and doesn’t stop. So having quite a few things on is when I’m happiest. If I’m stuck on one thing and then waiting for another then I go a bit crazy. So I’m throwing it all up. We’ll see what happens. I hope I’ll get one legitimate job”.

   PHOTO CREDIT: Rachel Lipsitz for CLASH

I am going to dissect and cover the lyrics for I Do This All the Time because, in the tsunami of positivity and affection the song has garnered, some common observations have been made. Many have compared it to the anthemic and mandate-like Everybody's Free (to Wear Sunscreen) of 1999. That song is almost an essay on how to live life. You can learn more about the song that is narrated by Australian voice actor, Lee Perry. It sounds timeless because of its simplicity and the fact that we can all identify with the words of advice being offered. It is an emotional listen. Rather than parodying that song or repeating it, it seems like I Do This All the Time is a more personal version of that song. I also love the fact that the video for the single marks the directional debut of Rebecca Lucy Taylor. It is an accomplished and visually-impressive video that is striking and memorable! I do hope that there are more self-directed videos as, from the off, here is a new director who is as unique and affecting as a she is a songwriter. I Do This All the Time is a song that launches into the chorus. I have said how, with this song, we hear something more conversational and less bombastic. Maybe that cannot be said of the chorus, which is a bright and bold section of the song – the softer and narrated sections occur in the verses. I really like the video We start on a close-up of Self Esteem as she follows the lyrics with her physical actions:  “Look up, lean back, be strong’/You didn't think you'd live this long/Be as one, hold on, steady stand/For as long as you think you can”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jessica Bartolini

She does look and then leans back. The chorus sees Self Esteem looking into the camera and providing quite a thoughtful and serious look. It is only when the first verse arrives that we see her follow the song with her vocals. I like the close-up shot and the simplicity of the purview. It gives the video this intimacy, intrigue and power. If a song like Everybody's Free (to Wear Sunscreen) is a more general look at society and advice for a broad range, I Do This All the Time is a more specific track. In the sense that it is closer to home where and we get this narrative, story-like, fluid arc. There is this Trip-Hop-esque beat that is a contrast from the rush and colour of the chorus. I think that Rebecca Lucy Taylor’s natural northern accent makes the lyrics sound even more engaging and rich than they would be a singer from, say, London. That may sound odd. I just think she has a great speaking voice. It is one that draws you in (I wonder if Taylor has considered doing voiceovers and audiobooks?!): “Old habits die for a couple of weeks/And then I start doing them again/This sun is making me feel like I'm missing out on something/But, if I went to your barbecue/I'd feel uncomfortable and not be sure what to say anyway/It's like when I go to your birthday/Drinks to congratulate you being the age I already thought you were/Or not, I don't know/It's a miracle I've remembered at all/When I'm buried in the ground/I won't be able to make your birthday drinks/But I will still feel guilty/You see, when the air warms up like this/It brings every single memory of you back/And it makes me so sick, I can't breathe/Except I am still breathing, aren't I?/Sometimes, I think that's the problem”.

Whilst the pandemic perhaps curtailed a video that matched the lyrics to the visuals, I feel the close-up on the heroine (who delivers this slight smile and captures you wholly) is much more affective! One focuses more on the lyrics; each listener can visualise the scenes and interactions. The verse-chorus-verse structure of the song means we get the impactful switch of the punchy and singalong chorus and the calmer, reflective tone of the verses. The camera pans out on the second chorus, as Self Esteem hugs a version of herself. It makes me think that this is a song with a very personal bent; Self Esteem talking to herself and offering sage advice. The second chorus is another filled with incredible images and pieces of advice: “Be very careful out there/Stop trying to have so many friends/Don't be intimidated by all the babies they have/Don't be embarrassed that all you've had is fun/Prioritise pleasure/Don't send those long paragraph texts/Stop it, don't/Getting married isn't the biggest day of your life/All the days that you get to have are big/Be wary of the favours that they do for you/They'll tell you I'm wrong, they'll tell you (I do this all the time)/They'll tell you I'm wrong, they'll tell you (I do this all the time)”. I love the chorus because, whilst it has an intensity, it is more choral than it is conventionally Pop. The vocal layers create shivers. In the video, we switch from Self Esteem and her embrace to a view of landscape and scenery passing by. We then cut back to Self Esteem standing alone. The image of her in an empty room narrating to camera is a very arresting visual tool that lingers long in the mind.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jenn Five for DIY

The contrast of he image-rich and slice-of-life lyrics and the elegant and slightly solemn video works wonderfully. The third verse is my favourite of the song: “All you need to do, darling, is fit in that little dress of yours/If you weren't doing this you'd be working in McDonald's/So try and cheer up, I'm not sure/You're moving around too much, you need to stand still/Be more like Mairead, shh/Stop showing off/You're a good girl/You're a good, tall girl/You're a good, sturdy girl/One day I would love to tell you/How the best night of your life/Was the absolute worst of mine”. I started by thinking that Self Esteem was speaking to her younger self and rueing the chance to be carefree and young. Maybe there was a slight recognition of being older and more responsible. As the song progresses, I feel it is more directed at a person. Maybe a lover. There is a lot of wisdom in the lyrics, though one cannot help but cast yourself in the song and seeing the interactions go down. Mortality, youth and living life in your own way will resonate with many. I do think that Self Esteem is offering herself advice. Friends are having babies and doing what society, perhaps, tells them they need to of. Not doing that is nothing to worry about.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Parri Thomas for The Line of Best Fit 

Whilst drunkenness and frivolity can be a little empty, perhaps living for yourself and not worrying about others is more important than feeling you have missed out. The fourth verse makes me wonder whether, again, Self Esteem is sending a message to her young self, or whether she is sending a message to her partner: “Now and again you make complete sense/But most of the time I'm sat here feeling stupid for trying/My hunger times, my impatience equals the problem/You're beautiful and I want the best for you/But I also hope you fail without me/It was really rather miserable trying to love you”. The lighting, colour scheme and camerawork in the video is beautiful. I love how the band are introduced towards the end of the song and we get this live element. The direction is wonderful. I love the expressions and acting from Self Esteem. I have gone back to the video time and time again. This review has been extremely long, I know! I think I Do This Al the Time is a song that warrants this sort of examination and passion. The lyrics are so nuanced and stunning, you will come back to the song repeatedly. Many people will be able to relate to the words. Whether you see the track as Self Esteem having a conversation with herself and offering some common sense and hard truths, others might have another person in mind – a once-loved other that is being gradually cast aside. I Do This All the Time is a wonderful first single from, I hope, a second album that will arrive fairly soon. There is a definite appetite for more Self Esteem music, that is for sure!

Whilst there has been no official date announced and a title regarding a second album, one feels that one will arrive before the year is through. Tour dates have been announced so, with that in mind, will we get a new collection of Self Esteem tracks to go alongside the magnificent Compliments Please?! Earlier this year, DIY chatted with Self Esteem. Even then, the germs of a sophomore album were being discussed:

“Taking all the emotional and psychological fuel gained from a period of “feeling so seen and authentic” into the studio with her, a summer of recording LP2 has now coalesced into an album that “turns the dial up on every component [of her debut] to 11”. “Instead of trying to change it up, I really leaned into the bits that I find euphoric,” she enthuses. “I’m really into extremes at the moment: if you’re gonna sing, fucking sing; if you’re gonna speak, speak clearly. There are no grey areas, and I’m enjoying the pomposity of it a lot.”

Yet if, musically, her latest is a riot of “enormous and choral and ridiculous” moments, then lyrically the singer is taking things to a different kind of extreme - pushing herself to talk about the complicated boundaries of sex and power that dominate our daily lives. “There’s songs about assault, songs about being oppressed by narcissistic men and all of that, but there are also songs about how much I love having sex, and how much I love my vagina. And it’s complicated because that’s what it feels like. Some things don’t make sense together, and some inform the others, but tough shit - that’s where I’m at,” she shrugs. “I don’t know the answers, but I’ve written songs about how I bloody feel and I’ve got a feeling that a lot of people will feel like that too”.

I shall wrap things up there. I do love Self Esteem’s music and, with I Do This All the Time, here is a song that is very much her - but also one that is different to past work. This past year has seen more talk-singing and narration make its way into music. Maybe this is artists (such as Dry Cleaning) wanting to converse with the listener or create something that is more ungarnished and direct. If the songs on Compliment Please were more fiery, compositionally powerful and bombastic, then I Do This All the Time points to a different landscape. Perhaps it is a red herring in the scheme of a new album; maybe a sign of diversification and broadening of the Self Esteem sound. It is very intriguing! I would urge everyone to seek out and listen to the new song. I am a little late to the party reviewing the track (as it is five days old), though I think I am the first to go pretty deep with it. I think the future is very bright for Self Esteem. If Rebecca Lucy Taylor felt that, with that moniker, we were hearing an artist who didn’t believe in herself as much as she should, I hope that the proliferation of praise her new single has received should give her pause for thought! It is another remarkable song from someone who seems to get better and better as time goes on. I am already excited to hear a new album and what we might hear. A multi-talented and multi-disciplined creative, with the always-wonderful Self Esteem, we have an artist who is…

A legend of the future.

___________

Follow Self Esteem

PHOTO CREDIT: Jenna Foxton for Loud and Quiet 

Official:

https://www.selfesteem.love/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/SELFESTEEM___

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/RLTSELFESTEEM/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/selfesteemselfesteem/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3K9muOlJVKLgH4SIwwZiDe?si=o-SoyS7GRzyzqVmGFFrFmg

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqlYv6u4jIp0DFuqkb4PlQg

ALL UNCREDITED PHOTOS:

Self Esteem

TRACK REVIEW: CHVRCHES - He Said She Said

TRACK REVIEW:

 

 

CHVRCHES

PHOTO CREDIT: Sebastian Mlynarski and Kevin J Thomson

He Said She Said

9.4/10

The track, He Said She Said, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyyiJc0Wk2M

GENRE:

Synth-Pop

ORIGIN:

Glasgow, Scotland

RELEASE DATE:

19th April, 2021

LABEL:

Virgin Records Limited

PRODUCER:

Kyle Porter

__________

THIS will be another busy review…

so I better get down to things! Today, I am charged with reviewing the new single from CHVRCHES, He Said She Said. The band hail from Glasgow and formed in September 2011. CHVRCHES comprise Lauren Mayberry, Iain Cook, Martin Doherty and, unofficially since 2018, Jonny Scott. It is amazing that CHVRCHES celebrate a decade together later this year! I remember when their debut, The Bones of What You Believe, was released in 2013. Led by the extraordinary and inspiring Lauren Mayberry – who I shall discuss more of in depth later -, CHVRCHES have released some stunning music through their career. I know they are releasing their fourth studio album, CHV4 (that is a title I have seen on Wikipedia; not certain that is the official album title), soon. I am not sure if there is a set date or tracklisting yet. I want to start by discussing CHVRCHES’ start. In this Sound on Sound feature from 2015, we find out how the Scottish band shot onto the scene and what the musical landscape around them was like:

“Emerging in 2012 from Glasgow’s post-rock indie landscape, synth-based trio Chvrches were a very different musical proposition from the shoegazey scene which spawned them. The propulsive, smart electronic pop of Lauren Mayberry (vocals, synths), Martin Doherty (synths, vocals) and Iain Cook (synths, guitars, bass, vocals) quickly proved to be highly successful, with their 2013 debut album The Bones Of What You Believe becoming a Top 10 hit in the UK and reaching number 12 in the States.

It was a remarkable turn of events considering that the members of Chvrches had for some years been operating in relative obscurity in a variety of Glaswegian indie bands. In addition to film and TV scoring work, Cook was a member of both Aerogramme and the Unwinding Hours, while Doherty was the live keyboard player for the Twilight Sad. Both had known each other since university and had worked together in the studio on and off.

“We’ve been friends for 10 years,” says Doherty. “We’d always worked on different projects, but never really done anything that we could both put our names to. And then I guess it was 2012 when we eventually got in the studio and just thought, ‘Let’s throw some ideas around.’”

“When we were working together on other projects, we knew that there was a good sort of dynamic between us creatively,” Cook adds. “But we never got to really properly explore that until we eventually just sat in the studio”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Mike Massaro

I want to mention their second album in a bit. First, there is a section from an article in The Skinny. Published in 2012, it is interesting to read about a particular photoshoot and how Lauren Mayberry handled a photographer’s request:

“But Lauren’s mission is to write her own narrative. During the shoot, arranged on a flight of stairs, the photographer asks her to stand forward, the boys lurking fuzzily in the background. Straight away, politely but firmly, she’s having to explain that they’re not about “that.” For all their innocent desire to “make music that people can dance to,” they all know what “that” is, and it’s certainly not in the plan. When asked if she worries about how she’ll be perceived, she replies immediately, her large eyes, now cleansed of make-up, wide and insistent: “Intensely. On a nerdy note, I did my Masters dissertation on the idea of femininity in women’s magazines. I know to a point I probably overcompensate because I’m aware of these things, but I’ve been through the looking glass, and I’m afraid. In this industry, if you don’t have your wits about you then you’ll probably end up doing something that you didn’t sign up for. If we did get successful at any level at all I want it to be on the merit of the music we’ve produced.

“What makes it fun for me is having a certain idea of how I want to come across to young women. At the end of the day I want to go home and be able to look friends and colleagues in the eye and be like, ‘this is exactly how you would have wanted me to do it”.

I wanted to drop that in because, even at the start of their career, there was this confidence there. Maybe it was more a knowledge of how they wanted to project themselves and what CHVRCHES was about. One of the most remarkable things about them is how they have developed and shifted their sound between albums.

After the success of their debut, The Bones of What You Believe, CHVRCHES found themselves in huge demand regarding live gigs. Going back to that Sound on Sound interview, and the band were asked about touring and what that was like. They were also posed the question of how they are going to progress musically onto their third album (they were promoting their second album, Every Open Eye):

“A large part of the success that Chvrches have enjoyed can be put down to their relentless touring, which in the wake of The Bones Of What You Believe included seven tours of the US within the space of two years. With the release of Every Open Eye, they will be returning to the road with a similarly tireless schedule, and at the same time working up ideas for their third album with their portable recording rigs.

“The back end of the last campaign, I kind of threw myself into that stuff,” says Doherty. “Iain and I both have mobile rigs. I’m just running Cubase on a Mac with all the soft synths. No hardware on the road really. Iain’s got a Prophet 12 module that he uses, but I’m not so bothered, ’cause I’m not thinking about sounds all the time, I’m just thinking about getting as many ideas worked up as possible. I’ll go with an interesting drum beat, one element and then a vocal, like a verse/chorus, draw the line under it and onto the next thing.

“I use it as a means of therapy over anything else. When you’ve been on tour for two years and you haven’t flexed a creative muscle for months, then you just feel like a promo machine that plays gigs. I’d go in in the morning, say my hellos and then just retreat to the corner of a venue and write and mess around and try things. When you’re on tour for as long as we are, you have to evolve to an extent. Otherwise you won’t write for two years.”

Which begs the question: how do Chvrches imagine themselves developing musically from this point? Given their post-rock background, might that experimental genre begin to creep more into their sound? “You mean, are we gonna chuck out all the synths and get back to the guitars?” asks Doherty. “I dunno. By the time we get there, it might feel right for the proper departure.”

“So,” Cook grins, “it’ll be banjos on album three”.

I need to spend a large chunk of time with their previous album, Love Is Dead. Released in 2018, it is one that saw a lot of sonic and physical change for the Glasgow group. Recoding in Los Angeles and New York (in addition to London), the group brought in producers such as Greg Kurstin, Ice Mike and Steve Mac. Given their success and ambition, this was the group expanding their music and geographical horizons. Despite the fact that they relocated to New York and worked with producers who could add a certain lustre and shine to their work, there was not too much glamour to be found in Love Is Dead. This interview from Classic Pop provides some further explanation:

“It’s 11.30am on a Friday in New York. Spring has started in earnest – but Chvrches, the three-headed pop phenomenon from Glasgow, are here and it’s tipping it down… “This is classic Scottish weather, there’s no denying that,” announces the baseball-capped keyboardist/sampler Martin Doherty as Lauren Mayberry, the band’s upbeat singer, surveys the grey skies. Immediately lightening the mood she beams: “I’m feeling very efficient and productive. I’ve already done my recycling, gone shopping and been to the gym.”

The pair are joined by the perma-enthusiastic keyboardist/guitarist Iain Cook and, despite the rain following them from Scotland, the trio are in a cheery mood… and they have ample reason to be. After two albums made at their own studio on a Glasgow industrial estate, Chvrches now all live in New York – and the change of scenery has made for their most adventurous and defiant pop album yet.

You can take Love Is Dead at face value and luxuriate in an album stuffed with anthemic bangers if you want. But that would be to ignore Mayberry’s progression as one of pop’s smartest lyricists, fitting wise advice and yearning restlessness around a succession of infectious hooks.

Cook’s description of the epic Graves as being: “So triumphant and so defeated at the same time,” is a fine summary of the album as a whole. “That is kinda how I feel at the moment,” nods Mayberry.

With production and writing input from Greg Kurstin (hitmaker for Adele, Foo Fighters and Lily Allen) and pop behemoth Steve Mac, whose credits include Leona Lewis, The Wanted and JLS, Love Is Dead is a record that expands the band’s world, but retains the crackling energy that has made Chvrches a byword for uncompromising intensity.

This is no surprise, considering the trio seemed determined to make their new working life in New York as unglamorous as possible.

PHOTO CREDIT: Danny Clinch

I am not sure how many bands like CHVRCHES – in terms of their sound and where they are from – have moved to New York for an album and undergone such a shift. I guess it seemed like a natural move. Always looking to move forward and search for a particular sound, it is interesting that CHVRCHES wound up in The Big Apple. Coming back to that Classic Pop interview. Whilst Mayberry was fairly eager to get over there, there was one member of the band who needed a bit more persuasion:

“Mayberry was the first Chvrch to move to New York, at the start of 2016, determined to see if the city lived up to the romantic vision of musical inspirations such as Debbie Harry and Karen O. She also needed new vistas to write about.

“I’d written as much as I could at my kitchen table in Glasgow,” she smiles. “I just didn’t want to write the same songs over again. Whenever we start a record I get a psychological block. Even though that block is just psychological, it’s there. And putting myself in a different place gave me a different mindset. Coming here took me outside of my comfort zone.”

The singer was soon joined in New York by Cook, whose American girlfriend lived there. “I had loved the city whenever I’d visited, and I soon fell in love with the place once I was living here,” he says.

And the relationship? “That didn’t go so well,” he grimaces. “I lost a girl but gained a city.”

If it started to seem natural for Chvrches to make album three in New York, their final member needed persuading. Doherty, a self-confessed homebody, was happy in Glasgow with his young family. “Martin did complain about the idea,” admits Cook. But he was eventually won over by the idea of fresh inspiration, however lonely it got being so far away from his family. “It was fraught,” he states simply. “Those first six months were pretty difficult.”

At least the music owed soon enough, helped by some familiar home comforts. Doherty takes up the story: “We went from working in an industrial estate in Glasgow to working in an industrial estate in New York. We transported as much gear over as we could, but New York is ludicrously expensive, so we were working in an industrial unit a quarter of the size of ours back in Glasgow. We were recording during the summer, so it was really hot and sweaty. The mood was pretty intense, which brought a different energy to the songs”.

One might assume that a city like New York would be quite intense for CHVRCHES. Not to suggest they are fishes out of water. More that it is a pretty big scenery alteration from that of Glasgow. I want to source from a 2018 interview from The Guardian. Being in a country who, at the time, had Donald Trump as President must have been alarming and angering for Mayberry. There is a particular (political) section of the interview that intrigued me:

“Apart from the pollen count twice that of Glasgow, New York has been good to Mayberry, who enjoys the anonymity, being able to “mind my own business and be off-grid a bit”. Her boyfriend, the actor Justin Long, has just told her about the Chappaquiddick incident, when Teddy Kennedy drove his car off a bridge in Massachusetts in 1969, swam free but left his 28-year-old female passenger inside. For Mayberry, the key point is: he was still allowed to continue in politics. Whether she likes it or not, she is always “on”. She talks about the rebrand of Playboy magazine: “I know women who are saying it’s really empowering. You can’t reclaim the concept of Playboy: you’ve all got fucking Stockholm syndrome!”

She suspected Trump would get in when she watched the presidential debate that aired after the pussygrabbing incident. “The approval ratings were still up, and people were still listening. They’re talking about illegitimate babies and affairs now, but people didn’t care at the time that he bragged about assaulting women, so…” She still gets a shock when she sees signs saying “no concealed weapons in this movie theater”. She spoke out against Florida senator Marco Rubio’s gun control policy recently in the wake of the Parkland school shooting, and got a tweet from someone who threatened to come to a Chvrches show with an AK47. “Rubio is a weasel,” Mayberry says. She grew up 10 miles away from Dunblane, and was eight at the time of the school shooting there”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: DIY

I think that it is important looking at a previous album when it comes to an artist’s new work. You get that sense of background and build up that can add texture and weight to what they are doing now. Circling back to the Classic Pop interview, Mayberry discussed turning thirty during the making of Love Is Dead - and how she is channelling her anger more now:

“During the making of Love Is Dead, Mayberry turned 30. She didn’t think it would be a big deal – “Being in a band is an extended adolescence, so I don’t know if I’ve reached the level of maturity I should have by now” – but it was perhaps inevitable that such a considered writer began to take stock. “I’m more careful about how I treat people,” Mayberry explains. “I can’t tell if I’m more sensitive to life’s insensitivities, or if they’ve always been there and I just haven’t noticed.”

At the same time, Mayberry says the best thing about starting a new decade is being less concerned how others view her. “A lot of people have a lot of opinions about Chvrches,” she laughs. “And I honestly couldn’t give a fuck anymore.”

As is writ large in pulsing new songs such as Graffiti and Heaven/Hell, Mayberry is learning how to channel her anger. “It’s important to realise certain things are fucked and get really upset about them, while trying to find a different way of manifesting that than anger,” she reasons. “Sitting screaming at each other isn’t going to achieve anything and it’ll rot you from the inside. I’m trying to be manageably angry and productive! Nobody is meant to be happy all the time. If I was cheerful all the time, I’d write crap songs”.

I think that one reason why Love Is Dead is very different-sounding compared to CHVRCHES’ previous two albums is the producers they worked with and the studios they were based out of. It makes me wonder about the personnel and possible producers for the band’s fourth album.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Mike Massaro

Coming back to the interview in The Guardian. Among others, CHVRCHES got to work with the legendary Dave Stewart (Eurythmics) on a particular Love Is Dead track:

“On their very first day working with Dave Stewart, one of the band’s electro-pop gods, a strange thing happened. When the time came for Stewart’s customary martini (6pm), he held Mayberry back and fired up a video clip of Milla Jovovich giving a rousing speech in the 1999 film Joan of Arc. Stewart said something to the effect of: “You could be that, but you don’t want to be. I can see it in the interviews, I can see it in the performances, you want to be this thing... but you’re not doing it.”

Mayberry was miffed. “He was making me wax on and wax off!” she says, thinking of Karate Kid. “I was like, what do you mean, Mr Miyagi? Have I not tried hard enough? But he was right. As a frontperson you are the first point of contact for the band. Are you really connecting with people? Maybe you’re just a little downtrodden, and you’re trying 75%. Does 100% feel too vulnerable?”

Stewart taught the band a lot, but they found the sessions felt old when they came to make the record. With Greg Kurstin, there was a particular naturalness in their personal chemistry. They wrote the first single, Get Out, on the first day and then cancelled the rest of the speed dates. Kurstin “felt easy and safe – safe to try out new things,” says Mayberry. “There was a lot of talk about what people were going to have for lunch. It wasn’t someone trying to pull us into their world, or make a pastiche. The people we ended up connecting with most were the British people – Dave, Steve Mac [who produced the track Miracle, widely described as a banger] – and Greg has worked with a ton of British acts. Maybe there was an understanding of that sense of humour, and that sense of melancholy. We never wanted to be the Scottish band that went to LA”.

Aside from the production team, I feel Love Is Dead is the album where CHVRCHES had a definite plan regarding altering their sound and making that leap. I think, compared to their first two albums, Love Is Dead sounds more stripped and rawer; perhaps closer to how they would sound performing the songs on the stage. This is no coincidence. As they told Classic Pop, getting that particular sound down was very important to them:

“When Chvrches began Love Is Dead, they only had one definite plan. “We wanted to sound more like a live band,” recalls Iain Cook. “We’ve always felt like a rock band and all three of us have long histories in rock, so it was inevitable we’d eventually turn in that direction. We’ve stripped it back for this record.

“We want to be less reliant on backing tracks and computers, so that eventually everything on stage could be played live. That’s not unrealistic, especially with Love Is Dead, which was written with a live set-up in mind.”

Conscious of that, Chvrches’ live line-up has been expanded with the addition of Jonny Scott, session drummer for The Kills. There are plans for a bassist to join the touring band, too. Scott played drums on Gun and Night Sky on debut album The Bones Of What You Believe and was at university with Martin Doherty. “We passed each other in the hall in our first term,” laughs Doherty. “We both had Radiohead t-shirts on, so we nodded at each other. We’ve kept in touch and he is a great keyboardist as well as a drummer”.

Before moving to discuss the new track from CHVRCHES, it is important to talk about quite a dark and upsetting topic. The band’s lead has had to deal with a lot of online abuse and threats through her career. It is something many women (sadly) have to face in the music industry. Whilst I hope things are less intense now, there was a period where Mayberry was encountering a lot of disturbing comments. She discussed with The Guardian (in 2018) why she was not on the Internet much:

“She says that being “short” automatically makes her the cute, infantilised little girl, but her outspokenness results in the “angry” tag and confuses people. “Do you make yourself unpalatable and find yourself out at sea?”, she says to me. “Or do you take internet breaks, when too many people Photoshop cum on your face?”

This last example happened recently, for which reason she is currently “not on the internet”. When Chvrches started out, she used to read all the comments from fans because she managed the band’s Facebook page. When the rape threats started, she screen-grabbed and retweeted them. She got immediate responses: “This isn’t rape culture. You’ll know rape culture when I’m raping you, bitch,” said one. She wrote a piece for the Guardian, in 2013, about online sexism, years before #MeToo made the discussion commonplace: “My hopes are that if anything good comes out of this, it will start a conversation… encouraging others to reject an acceptance of the status quo,” she said. To anyone who asks whether she makes things worse for herself by responding to the trolls, she replies that such questions are part of the problem”.

It got to a point where Mayberry was receiving so much abuse online, the band had to have a list of names and photos at their live gigs to ensure that various people were not allowed entry. In the time of #MeToo, and keeping on that Guardian interview, one has to sympathise hugely with Mayberry and the band:

“I don’t want to sound negative here but I don’t know any lady that was surprised by #MeToo. But I do feel that if you’re lucky enough to already be successful in the industry, you must put your money where your mouth is. If you continue to work with certain directors, or certain producers, then you’re saying a thing, but not being the thing. You can’t turn around and make money from exactly the same system that’s oppressing everybody else.” She pauses, looking a bit melancholic. “See, this is why I can’t have a nice time…”

The unsavoury individuals have not altogether disappeared, and the band now has a list of the names, photos and locations of certain people (“the ones who are the most aggressive and delusional”), which is handed to a security company on tour for due diligence. Venues can’t exclude paying customers unless they’ve actually done something – so, surreally, these chaps come in to watch the show, flanked by security guards. “It’s just someone on the internet till it’s not,” Mayberry says.

“You can’t come to our shows and not be aware of this stuff now. We made this a thing that we talked about. You’re always getting ‘girl in a band’ questions, so at least have a constructive conversation about it. It doesn’t take that long, you know? It only takes two seconds of your life to say: ‘I don’t agree with white supremacy. I don’t agree with homophobia.’ I think about politics, so it would be inauthentic not to talk about it”.

I just want to stick on #MeToo and Mayberry before coming to the review itself. Pitchfork asked about the #MeToo movement in 2018 and whether she has noticed a change in how women are treated at this time:

LM: It’s great that people are speaking up, but I want to see what happens in the next couple of years–if people actually put their money where their mouth is. So many people are being fully genuine about it, but there are some people who are definitely using it as a way of finding some kind of branding niche and that’s kind of fucked up.

Ultimately, that will bring the message toward a more mainstream audience and that will change the way that people think in the future. We have to hope that symbolic gestures like wearing white roses on red carpets will translate into actual action. Will the Grammys actually look around the room, at the people and companies they represent and how they treat people? I don’t know. It has to be more than lip service. Otherwise, we’re just going to end up in the same situation.

Maybe it will make my job easier. There’s definitely a lot of praise being given out for behavior that five years ago was getting me called a horrendous cunt. Maybe you won’t get called a horrendous bitch anymore for speaking out. I do think that’s progress.

There were definitely times on the last couple records where I thought, “There’s a certain point in time where I think I’ll get tired of doing this.” Not playing in this band or saying those things, but being the person that has to say that obvious thing and then has to take the kicking. That takes a toll because you’re still a person. You’re a performer, but you’re still a person.

The absolute last thing I want to explore before coming onto tackling He Said She Said is the sense of expectation that is placed on Lauren Mayberry. Certainly by 2018, she was being judged and commented on with everything she did. Maybe it is the fact she tackles politics and speaks out when needed. Mayberry discussed this with The Guardian (in the same interview I have quoted from) and the types of abuse she was facing. Band member Martin Doherty also makes a very good (and direct) point:

“Now, Mayberry occupies a unique space whereby even the smallest gesture – putting on a frock – is a political act. “I can look back at pictures of us and trace the mental health issues,” she says. “At first we were having fun – the early press shots are a bit more theatrical and escapist. Then I started wearing baggier and baggier clothing, and less and less makeup, trying to make myself as inoffensive as possible, and it didn’t change anything – if anything, the online abuse increased. A couple of days before the first record came out I was sitting in a hotel room thinking: ‘I am so over this, and yet it is what I have wanted to do since I was 17.’”

In summer 2015, she attracted more trolls because she wore a dress in the video for a song called Leave a Trace. Shorts and T-shirt made sense as a feminist, it seemed, but not a black frock and heels. “Hypocritical... slut... bitch... whore...” they said. “Cavemen,” she retorted.

“I see this across all aspects of culture, especially with a particular type of female artist,” Doherty told me earlier. “I don’t totally understand it. It is very deep and very complex and very fucked-up”.

I love the video for He Said She Said. We see what looks like a waterlogged studio that is brightly light. With red and peach tones, there is this spinning device in the middle of the space. Cutting to images of a darkroom and photos being processed, one already guesses regarding the concept and symbolism. Maybe the photos are to do with consent and truth; a woman who has pictorial evidence of something bad happening. With some 1980s-sounding synths and a punchy beat, you are instantly hooked into the song. I have always liked how Lauren Mayberry sings. There is such force and passion in her voice! In terms of tones, she reminds me more of a U.S. Pop singer than a ‘traditional’ Scottish artist. That might sound vague, though there is a distinct sound that one might associate more with artists across the pond. The first verse puts us more in a domestic scene with two disconnected lovers: “He said, "You bore me to death"/"I know you heard me the first time" and/"Be sad, but don't be depressed"/Just think it over, over and/He said, "It's all in your head"/"But keep an ear to the grapevine" and/"Get drunk, but don't be a mess"/Keep thinkin' over, over/I try”. In the video, Mayberry (sporting blonde hair; as opposed to her usual darker hair) has her image cut, stretched and mutated. We see more photos being developed. It is a nice stylistic choice for the video that I feel gives one a new insight into the song. I am always interested in how a video can alter one’s interpretation of song compared with listening to audio alone. There is a nice mix of the ‘80s and the present in terms of the visuals and the song.

Mayberry’s incredibly strong voice is supported by a huge production sound. There are processed vocals and a sense of polish on the song. That said, as with all CHVRCHES music, there is a gutsiness and rawness that pushes the song forward. Mayberry’s vocal here is one of her very best. When she repeats the line “I feel like I'm losin' my mind”, there is something intoxicating and dizzying about her delivery. The band have crafted a superbly rich and colourful composition with spades of nuance and depth. There is contradiction, coercion and conflict on the next verse. When Mayberry sings “He said, "You need to be fed"/"But keep an eye on your waistline" and/"Look good, but don't be obsessed"/Keep thinkin' over, over/I try”, I wonder if there is malice and abuse from the man or whether the comments are more throwaway. In any case, they are lyrics that many women can relate to. I would be interested to know where the band got inspiration for the song and whether Mayberry is coming from a personal angle. The combination of echoed/processed vocals and a straighter layer creates this sort of dialogue. One gets the impression of a sense of madness and haunt in the mind of the heroine. The lyrics definitely are definitely powerful and moving: “But it's hard to know what's right/When I feel like I'm borrowin' all of my time/And it's hard to hit rewind/When I feel like”. With its incredible video and CHVRCHES summoning something very special, He Said She Said is a tantalising taster of their new album. I think the chorus, despite its heady and evocative mantra (where Mayberry feels as if she is losing her mind), is so catchy and has this kick that will have live crowds bellowing it out before too long! It is another belter from the Glasgow band!

 PHOTO CREDIT: Shaun Wootton

A lot of people are going to be looking ahead to the new album. Not too much is known about it at the moment. When speaking with The Guardian last year, we discover more about what direction CHVRCHES are taking:

“What’s the overall vibe for the album?

We sat inside and listened to music that we really loved all year, like Depeche Mode, the Cure and Brian Eno. I wanted the music that was the most comforting to me and that era of tunes was very formative for our band. It’s not the frilliest of Chvrches records, but I don’t think that now is necessarily a time for frilliness.

How have the events of 2020 shaped the music you’ve been working on?

We had a lot of the ideas and the concepts before this year started and got a few weeks of writing in before everything shut down, so we kind of knew what we were getting on with. The theme of it didn’t necessarily change, but it evolved because of the circumstances of 2020. I think it was also helpful for us to be removed from the bullshit of the music industry. Everybody says that you don’t think about that stuff when you’re making a record, but in practice you totally do. You might shut the door, but it’ll sneak in the window. Everyone always has advice and opinions about what you should do; everyone else knows best. But it was nice to go: ‘Fuck it!’

PHOTO CREDIT: Sarah Louise Bennett/DORK 

What was it like to work within the limits of the pandemic?

You have to fix your communication to such an intense degree, because you don’t get the things that you would normally be able to from somebody just being in a room. You have to be communicating at the highest level of efficiency and openness. That was long overdue. There was eight years of band baggage that needed to be unpacked and fixed, and so it was really beneficial for us to have that time apart. As a result, I think this is the most excited that anybody in the band has been about an album since the first record. With the first album there were no expectations on it. I think expectation and pressure does impact people a lot. I can’t speak for the guys [bandmates Iain Cook and Martin Doherty], but for me this year has been an exercise in being less terrified that everything is going to go away. Because it already went away. With the album, it was actually quite helpful to sit in a room with no one else there and actually write down some of the stuff that you’re most terrified of.

Do you feel a pressure to keep up with how quick pop changes?

Iain and Martin like to be across what is happening for production stuff. The vocal production on the Billie Eilish album is absolutely phenomenal – that is an advancement in pop music. We want to be aware of it because there’s just awesome pop music and you can learn something from it. Learn the production tricks but don’t learn the other parts: I think that was the challenge of this album. We did two albums that existed in a certain space, and by the third record it felt like what we were doing had been popularised by other people. How do you run that race next to other people? Well, we’ve realised that we don’t have to run that race. You’re never going to win in a race that is saturated by people who are bigger, better and more popular, so you might as well pivot and go somewhere else”.

I really love He Said She Said. I am looking ahead to see what comes next from CHVRCHES. They are a band who always deliver incredible music. Keep your eyes peeled for sparkling more new music. Almost a decade since the group formed, they have grown into a huge international act. When it comes to the remarkable CHVRCHES, I think that they are…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Christopher Lane for Observer News Review

ONE of our very best.

___________

Follow CHVRCHES

PHOTO CREDIT: Lindsey Byrnes 

Official:

https://chvrch.es/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/chvrches

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/CHVRCHES

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/chvrches/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3CjlHNtplJyTf9npxaPl5w?si=W6sMJfaQQf2yBFdsiqDmcw

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXCfOEJFMa40s-57zxw9MYw

ALL UNCREDITED PHOTOS:

CHVRCHES

TRACK REVIEW: MARINA - Purge the Poison

TRACK REVIEW:

 

 

MARINA

PHOTO CREDIT: Zoey Grossman 

Purge the Poison

8.8/10

The track, Purge the Poison, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5u3kP85LYI

GENRES:

Indie Pop/Art Pop

ORIGIN:

Brecknockshire, Wales

RELEASE DATE:

14th April, 2021

LABEL:

Atlantic Recording Corporation

The album, Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land, is available from 11th June, 2021. Pre-order here:

https://shop.marinaofficial.co.uk/uk/ancient-dreams-in-a-modern-land-collectors-bundle.html

PRODUCERS:

Jennifer Decilveo/MARINA

TRACKLIST:

Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land

Venus Fly Trap

Man's World

Purge the Poison

Highly Emotional People

New America

Pandora's Box

I Love You But I Love Me More

Flowers

Goodbye

__________

BEFORE coming to review…

the new single from MARINA, Purge the Poison, I want to work my way forward (from her earliest moments). Her new album, Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land, is out on 11th June. It promising to be among her best albums. I think that MARINA (Welsh-born Marina Diamandis) is an artist who has evolved since her debut, 2010’s The Family Jewels . She continues to evolve and change. Following the release of her fourth album, LOVE + FEAR,  in 2019, MARINA undertook a multi-leg tour and released a companion E.P., LOVE + FEAR (Acoustic). She began work on a fifth studio album, confirming her plans via an Instagram post in January 2020. The news was followed up by the release of the soundtrack single, About Love, in February - which was featured on the soundtrack to the American romantic comedy film, To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You (2020). It has been a very busy past year or so for MARINA. Before coming to her recent material, I want to take things right back to her life pre-music. In this interview from The Independent in 2005, we discover more about Diamandis before she became Marina and the Diamonds – her stage name before she simply became MARINA:

“In 2005, she had just returned to her home town in Wales after studying in Greece (her mother is Welsh and her father is Greek) and was “obsessed with becoming a singer, almost as if it was a disease.”

She worked in a petrol station for two months to save up enough cash to move to London and once there she put herself forward for lots of auditions, including one for a reggae boy-band advertised in The Stage which was held at a record label’s offices. She went and left a letter with the security guard, which made its way to the A&R team and she got a meeting out of it.

“It’s a very old-school way of doing it but I was really determined,” she says. It was only her first week in town, and even though the meeting didn’t lead to anything, it made Marina feel that becoming a pop star was an achievable goal. “I was like, ‘I can do this’,” she laughs.

The only problem was she didn’t have any material. “I had more the desire than the confidence,” she admits, “but I always loved words and I loved writing at school, so the actual lyrical side of it made sense, it’s just I didn’t really sing,” she says.

She started songwriting and going to open-mic nights. It took about four years to be signed by her current label, Atlantic. “But I needed that time to grow and write and establish what I wanted to do,” she says, “because I came with absolutely nothing”.

Though I like her 2015 album, Froot, it was a bit of a watershed moment where things changed. I am not sure whether it was the intensity of recording and touring that album, or a natural result of having performed and played for many years. Regardless, she did have this realisation when it became clear that music was not that important (at the time) – or that it was not that fulfilling for Diamandis. In a 2019 interview with Rolling Stone, the songwriter explained why things needed to change after she wrapped touring the Froot album:

“After she wrapped her tour for 2015’s Froot, Marina Diamandis — the Welsh pop star who once performed as Marina and the Diamonds — believed she was ready to quit music altogether.

“I felt like Marina and the Diamonds had just become this shell and I was trying to break free of it,” the 33-year-old says, sitting on a couch in Atlantic Records’ New York office. “I just felt completely blocked. It was easier for me to just stop being an artist, which wasn’t the right solution.”

She began taking acting classes, which turned out to be a bad move since she was “accessing that same emotional space that was already dead.” But during her second year away, she pivoted completely: The then–ex musician enrolled at the University of London and took two psychology modules for a period six months. Three months after she completed the courses, which focused on attachment theory, she was back to songwriting.

Now, Diamandis has returned with a shortened stage name — just Marina now — and a new double album, Love + Fear. While her actual studies proved enlightening, it was the experience of being in a university setting that offered the real inspiration. During her music days, she had craved normalcy, feeling suffocated by the limited world entertainers often find themselves in. At the university, she was thrust into a place where “you’re all equal and all different ages and different backgrounds.” The experience was freeing, especially in contrast with her hectic 2010 breakthrough years, an era that saw Marina move from New Wave to full-blown pop on 2012’s Electra Heart.

“I think what happens with most artists who have been around for a long time is that your artistic identity becomes a construct just from the fact that people know you,” Diamandis reflects, noting that the motivations she struggled with when attempting to quit were ego-driven. “I don’t care about being a star or ‘idol.’ I love connecting with humans through music. With pop, a lot of stuff gets caught up in that message, so perhaps subconsciously I’ve made [this album] simple and direct because that’s just how I feel.”

As she’s been getting back into the swing of being an artist again, Diamandis has felt free of the tension that bogged her down during the Froot era. She feels excited about the prospect of releasing music at her leisure instead of waiting for a new album cycle, and even though she misses being in school, the break made her finally appreciate the fact that she can comfortably leave and return to music as often as she wants. But don’t expect her to take another lengthy hiatus any time soon. Now that the floodgates are open, she can’t help but continue to plan for more projects beyond Love + Fear, like her dream of writing a song for a movie”.

Many people fondly remember when MARINA was Marina and the Diamonds. Like Florence and her Machine, the ‘Diamonds’ part, I guess, signified her fans: a precious commodity and supportive army. Even though she has shortened her name to MARINA, the fact that it is in capitals means there is an urgency and intent. I want to bring in a Dazed interview, where MARINA discussed the name change. We also get a glimpse of how a fantastic artist arrived in music, and how she has progressed since her debut:  

“To kickstart a new era, she’s swapped her ‘Marina and the Diamonds’ moniker to release music simply as ‘Marina’ instead. It’s taken her a serious dose of contemplation to reach that point, though, and it’s not without some repercussions. Her name change was quietly announced on Twitter back in 2018, and it threw her ‘Diamonds’ (the nickname she gives to her fans) into a frenzy. It wasn’t an attack on them – they’d simply misread her motive. “It took me well over a year to figure out that a lot of my identity was tied up in who I was as an artist,” she says of her new name, “and there wasn’t much left of who I was.” And so, the effervescent project transformed into something more simple.

But how does someone who’s fallen out of love with the very thing that once brought them joy find a way to adore it again? In Diamandis’s case, she had to learn how to be herself.

2008, when Diamandis first arrived, was a transitional year for chart pop. As major label behemoths took a year off (Beyoncé’s I Am… Sasha Fierce aside), the space was opened up to more low-key singer-songwriters like Adele and Duffy. That polite period gave the Myspace rebels of the new millennia the chance to grab their moment. And so Diamandis, alongside the likes of La Roux and Florence + the Machine, burst into clubs and open mic nights across London, lapping up label interest in the process. Together, they proved that the public were more than willing to invest in ambitious, off-kilter pop stars who weren’t afraid to write risk-taking songs.

Marina’s debut LP The Family Jewels, released in 2010, rode that wave: it was a freakish collection of jangly piano pop that dissected the fickle conventions of fame and success she never wanted to submit to. “I listened to it again about four months ago and realised it was absolutely batshit crazy!” she laughs now. It was a critical and commercial success, but fearing that the shelf life was short for an anomalous pop star like her, she was pushed towards a more chart-friendly sound for its follow-up. After plenty of bartering from label bosses, Diamandis warmed to the idea – but only if she could do it on her own terms.

2012’s Electra Heart was a thundering electro-pop record produced by Stargate, Diplo, and Dr Luke (before the allegations of abuse came to light) that felt more in line with the sounds of the time. It was a sonic shock for fans at first (although its first promotional single, “Radioactive”, remains one of Diamandis’s most underrated bangers), but instead of sounding like a facsimile of every other chart topper about, Diamandis used the medium to create a subversive, satirical narrative about a female Hollywood archetype. “I feel like I kind of used that mode of expression to explore my identity, because it was so shaky in my early 20s,” she reflects now. It worked: Electra Heart became her first UK number one album, and is now certified gold”.

To do a bit of a shift, mental-health is a subject that MARINA has introduced into interviews. Now, quite a few artists are discussing the subject. It is still fairly difficult and, in some ways, there is this sense of taboo. Back in 2017, there were relatively few artists who were highlighting their struggle with mental-health and sharing it with the wider world. Coming back to that Dazed interview, and a very special and inspirational project was highlighted:

“Away from the rigid structure of the album cycle, in early 2017 she started MarinaBook: a project that saw her channel the emotion that once went into her music into blogs about her encounters with anxiety, and navigating life as an artist on hiatus. It’s interesting, I say, that her private life is off limits on Instagram, but is dissected in fine detail on that blog, one she updated sporadically before taking a step back at the end of 2017. “I think that’s why I didn’t go back to it, because it freaked me out!” she says, laughing at how nauseous the experience was for her. She sees the long-term benefits of it now, though. Dissecting the human psyche, both within her music and as a person, has always been something that has fascinated her, so much so that she decided to enrol on a psychology course at Birkbeck University in London. For a few months, if you were to wander into the school's library, you could find Marina Diamandis writing essays on modern psychology and theories of personality.

Times have changed now, and a pop star discussing their mental health so openly is no longer such a taboo subject, but is Diamandis, who rose to fame before this transitional period in pop, comfortable with talking publicly about therapy? “I think so, because I just told you – and we just met!” she grins. “But maybe I wouldn’t have before, because I was always keeping up this perception of an artist that was so narrow. I haven’t done loads of therapy, maybe only two years of it in total, but I, like many in our generation, have had a lot of struggles with my emotional health since I was very young. Perhaps I’ve gravitated towards that subject naturally because I always wanted to solve it.”

“We’re coming into a moment in time when artists are talking about it in real time,” she says. “They will be on tour and say, ‘I’m feeling awful at the moment’, which I would have never have done during Froot. I didn’t feel well at all on that tour.” It wasn’t the critical reception it received, which was glowing, nor the way her fans reacted to it. Instead, “it was to do with family. A relative was really ill, and shortly after that two very dear family members passed away – all in the space of three months. I just felt like I couldn’t cope anymore, but I had a commitment to be on tour. I was on stage every night realising I didn’t want to be looked at, but I couldn’t speak about that publicly because I didn’t want to spoil the illusion for people coming to see you, who’ve paid for a ticket and waited outside”.

I want to swing back to the name change to MARINA and how, even though it was a surface amendment and there was not this massive overhaul, there was actually a sense of rejuvenation that came from it. When  promoting 2019’s LOVE + FEAR, MARINA spoke with NYLON. I am not sure whether the relationship described is one she is still in - or it was a previous romance that has ended. It seemed to coincide with the creation of an album that marked a sea change for the Welsh-born star:  

“Once Diamandis found herself in a healthy relationship, however, it was difficult for her to believe it was real. On "Believe In Love," she confronts how her past negative experiences have hindered her ability to trust: "Losing you is what I'm afraid of," she sings before drifting up into her falsetto, repeating an affirmation: "I need to believe, believe in love." Of the song, she says: "I think when you love someone really hard, any kind of attachment fears you've had in the past really come to the surface, and you have to deal with them. [The person you're dating] can only help you so much—you've got to do the work."

And now? This internal work has paid off for Diamandis. "All I can say is, it definitely gets better," she says. "[These fears don't] go away completely, but—I mean, compared to two years ago, I'm so much more stable." On the album's piano-driven closer, "Soft to Be Strong," she sums it all up: "And I guess I've known it all along/ I found out love has to be soft to be strong."

Although Diamandis spends much of Love + Fear grappling with both personal and existential issues—she even questions the meaning of life on "To Be Human" and "Life is Strange"—there are moments of lightness, too. Diamandis actually seems to have the most fun when cutting out toxic relationships. On "No More Suckers," a sassy, sauntering track laced with piano riffs, she chirps: "Put a stop sign up, you're not getting any nearer/ Wave goodbye to the suckers in my rearview mirror." On "Karma," Diamandis shades a nemesis with a delightful I-told-you-so: "I'm like, 'Oh my god, I think it's karma,'" she jabs before a tropical-sounding drop”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Zoey Grossman 

To stay on the theme, and there was an interesting revelation from an interview with The Times in 2019. The fact that MARINA was not sure whether her fans would follow her after the name change struck me quite hard when I reads it:

“Some people are lashed to the treadmill, but I’m someone who really needs alone time, and space. Artists can be clever at constructing an image they want the public to see. And that can work for a lifetime for some artists, those who don’t want to show who they really are, or to appear to be human. But that’s quite a rigid way to live your life and, for me, it’s too stressful.” Yet she’s happy to re-enter the fray? “Yes, because it feels so different. I definitely see it all as a ‘process’ now, whereas at the time I was, like, ‘This is my life, my art! I’m so absorbed in it.’”

Diamandis admits to worries about whether her fans (the “diamonds” in her old stage name) will come along for the ride; but, as she points out, they stuck with her through multiple musical metamorphoses, so there’s cause for optimism. And she’s refreshingly unapologetic about striking out in yet another new direction, and baffled by those who are happy to make, or listen to, the same old thing.

“It’s so simplistic. What if you are a flibbertigibbet and want to experiment?” A pause. “There’s your tag — the flibbertigibbet of pop.” Hmm. I think she’s a little deeper and more significant than that.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Zoey Grossman 

Not only was there a name change for 2019’s LOVE + FEAR; with this, there was a marked style and sonic shift. I said how there was not a big deal about changing her name, though it does appear that there was an internal overhaul and a personal realisation that fed into her music. When speaking with W in 2019, MARINA revealed more about how her music altered with the introduction of her moniker change:

“Marina has, in fact, kept writing, but she placed it on the back burner until recently, when she began compiling her new two-part record Love + Fear, to be released April 26. She eased her way through the process for her fourth studio album during the past two years, ending up with 16 tracks that she absolutely needed to be on it. Soon, she had the idea of splitting up the songs on the record, finding two parallel threads running throughout. “I found was that there were a lot of songs that came from a feeling of joy or love and then there were songs that came from a place of fear,” she says. The idea for the records tie into a theory about love Marina admires from Swiss psychologist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. Marina reads a quote from her aloud: “’There are only two emotions love and fear. All positive emotions come from love, all negative emotions from fear. From love flows happiness, contentment, peace, and joy. From fear comes anger, hate, anxiety, and guilt. It’s true that there are only two primary human emotions, love and fear. But it’s more accurate to say that there is only love or fear. For we cannot feel these two emotions together at exactly the same time. They’re opposites.’” To Marina, it was a revelation: “I thought, That’s the most universal thing that bonds us all.”

As with her stage name, Marina adjusted her vocal approach on Love + Fear. “I feel like it’s coming from a different space in me, and it’s actually the way that I sing, that hasn’t got the tension anymore,” she explains. To her fans’ delight, a promise of new music came last fall with Clean Bandit’s Latin dance-pop anthem “Baby,” which featured Luis Fonsi and Marina. It did, in fact, signal new music to come. Marina shared two ethereal singles since the beginning of 2019, “Handmade Heaven” and “Orange Trees.” “‘Orange Trees’ was inspired by an island I’m from in Greece, and I think that it just came from a similar place to ‘Handmade Heaven’, which is just the longing to feel less dislocated in life,” she says. The island she’s referring to is Lagos, which is as beautiful as you imagine a Greek island to be. As she was about to visit on a sailing holiday, Marina found herself inspired to write about her home. “I wasn’t living a life where the natural world is a big component and that makes me really sad,” she says. Marina was looking to fix that and find where she was comfortable again. “I think I was looking for that reassurance at that time of my life,” she says”.

Many might think that, after quite a transformative and fairly emotional time in her career, the music on LOVE + FEAR was going to be serious and a little lacking in spark. Coming back to the Fader interview and, conversely, this was very much not the case:

“Acknowledging the LP's incredibly simple black and white cover art, she says “[my fans] probably think they’re going to hear this and it’s gonna be my ‘singer-songwriter album.'” In fact, it's the farthest thing from it. Freed of the rigidity that dominated her first three records, LOVE + FEAR is pure fun. Packed with booming synths and exhilarated hooks, it's her most direct electro-pop album to date, from the tropicana bloom of "Orange Trees" to the twisting retribution of "Karma."

The record also offers a tonal shift in narration; for the first time, it sounds like Marina is singing to the listener. "Sit back and enjoy your problems, you don't always have to solve them," she sings. "Your worst days, they are over, so enjoy your life." From any other pop artist, these sentiments may come across as empty platitudes. But from Marina, who’s spent the bulk of her career handwringing songs about insecurities and self doubt, they feel like a sincere reassurance.

“As you get older, there’s less of a need to hone in on anxieties. We don’t have the time to be introspective when there are more important things happening,” she explains. “I feel a desire to put positive things into the world”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Lauren Perlstein

Like I did with the topic of mental-health, this slight redirection concerns misogyny that MARINA has experienced in her career. Like many female artists, she has faced discrimination and sexism. MARINA spoke with Vice about the subject of feminism and whether there was a particular incident that sparked this being on her mind and agenda:  

“How do you feel now that in the past year to eighteen months feminism has come back on the agenda?

It’s been interesting. Part of me at the beginning felt like, here we go, people hopping onto a trend. But part of me thinks it is for the right reason. The topic is something that needs to be discussed. I definitely feel a shift. As a woman, I think the type of comments that people could make in the past about girls, like jokey, misogynistic comments really don’t fly anymore.

I think a lot of guys are hyper-conscious of being seen as misogynistic now. I’ve definitely noticed that.

Definitely. This next comment isn’t about guys, it’s more about the horrendous explosion of visibility in rape culture in the past few years. It’s a good thing that it’s being exposed. But it’s also grim, because you kind of think, “Is this a part of human nature?” “Savages” is actually about that.

That’s interesting. Was there an incident that sparked this specifically for you?

It was more summing up everything that I’ve been hearing in the news for the past two years. I find it so unnerving, not so much because it was happening, but because it’s natural and that’s what people never talk about.

That’s true.

It’s more about, “How can we solve this problem?” It’s like, how can we discuss that this is an innate human trait? What are you going to do about that? Like, for example, if you’re a pedophile, how about we give them proper support so that they don’t go and rape kids? As opposed to being like, “Oh my God, you’re a pedophile!” What if they were born that way? You know? It’s a really controversial subject. But it’s something that has been going on for thousands of years historically. But that’s just one thing. Rape, again, that has been happening for thousands and thousands of years”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Atlantic Recording Corporation

Coming to the current album from MARINA, Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land, and it appears like that title refers to her harkening back to a better time. Maybe she wants things to change; there needs to be this cultural transformation and greater sense of awareness. I mention that because, in 2021, women are still hugely under-represented in the studio. A tiny fraction of engineers are women. The problem is not much better when it comes to the production side. When she spoke with Vogue, MARINA explained why she wanted a female production team on her single, A Man’s World:

“Last summer, Marina Diamandis made a callout on her social media for new female collaborators. Tweeting out a set of pink-hued selfies to her 2.6 million followers, the Welsh pop artist formerly known as Marina and the Diamonds wanted to know whom she should be paying attention to as she began to think about her follow-up to 2019’s Love + Fear. “Who are your favourite female producers, writers and artists right now? I’m creating my next project...and this story can only be told by women,” the caption read. “I’m looking for you.”

As the first single off her fifth studio album due later next year, “Man’s World” was written by Diamandis and brought to life by an all-female creative team. Produced by Jenn Decilveo (Bat for Lashes, Hinds) and engineered by Emily Lazar (Sia, Clairo, Haim), the soaring pop anthem has Diamandis declaring, “I don’t wanna live in a man’s world anymore,” against a fluttery mid-tempo beat. It sounds as big as the topics she’s singing about, namely the persecution of women and other minority groups throughout history: “Burnt me at the stake, you thought I was a witch / Centuries ago, now you just call me a bitch.”

 PHOTO CREDIT: Atlantic Recording Corporation

There are a lot of songs in your catalogue that are directly sociopolitical, and “Man’s World” reminded me a lot of the way you wrote about rape culture in “Savages.” How do you balance the subject matter of a song like “Man’s World” within a melodic pop structure?

I like building a visual world for the listener to dip into even if the song itself is about a more weighted subject. In terms of what I wanted to convey, I think there’s always been so many different ways to humiliate minority groups in order to stop them from gaining power. For women, that always seems to be by discrediting their work or picking something out about their physical appearance or lifestyle. I see a lot of that as an artist, and I’ve been on the receiving end of that a lot.

Was that part of why you wanted to work with an all-female team on this particular project?

It just felt necessary. I’d been reading this book, If Women Rose Rooted, and just really thinking about women’s stories and how important it is for women to actually tell them. It’s my responsibility to make sure I’m hiring women who represent what I like talking about. “Man’s World” was an opportunity to do that.

How did you link up with Jenn Decilveo as producer?

I was connected to her by my friend Derek Davies at Neon Gold Records. I was looking for a producer and had loved some of her previous work. I’m just lucky it worked out because it’s always a bit of a gamble just going into the studio with someone new. But it was very natural from the start. It was a very instinctive process.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Atlantic Recording Corporation

It is quite alarming knowing that there are so few women in the studio. Maybe there is this embedded culture that pushes women away, or there is simply not enough being done to encourage them into positions that are filled by men. In the interview from Vogue, the problem of imbalance in the studio was covered:

“Women currently make up only 2% of producers and 3% of engineers across popular music. Why do you think this industry has been so slow to recognize women behind the scenes?

In my own experience, one of the reasons I think there are so few female producers is because female artists or songwriters don’t get credit. It’s a very interesting thing that I’ve had to navigate. On the first record I got no production credits because I didn’t even think to ask for them, but the fact is that I helped shape every record and I was precious about getting each song to the shape that I wanted it. If I hadn’t been in the room, these records would’ve sounded very different.

I could see the lines getting blurred when there’s enough people in the studio throwing out ideas.

There’s such a blurred line. Obviously you’re hiring a producer, but that doesn’t mean that your contribution is nil. My experience has varied along the way because on the second record I didn’t really have a role in the production since I was working with massive pop producers. You were hiring them to give you something that you thought you couldn’t produce, which was, like, radio hits in America. Then with Froot, I tried to scale it back and coproduce with one guy. But I think a big part of it is women don’t think they have the right to ask for a credit that symbolizes or represents their contribution. It’s up to us to ask for the credit”.

Produced by Jennifer Decilveo (the new album is produced by Decilveo and MARINA), Purge the Poison is only the second single. I guess there will be another single at least before Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land is released in June. It is nice that so few singles have been released from the album, as it means that we have not heard a lot of it so far, and that will also build anticipation. I really like the video for Purge the Poison, as it starts with slightly trippy images of MARINA’s red shoes, before the image sharpens and the heroine, in a yellow and blue stripped top, appears. There is something neon and Disco-like in terms of the imagery and aesthetic of the video. The song itself has a great beat and production. There is a nice riff that gives the track electricity and groove. The first verse contains some very interesting lines: “All my friends are witches and we live in Hollywood/Mystical bitches makin' our own sisterhood/Whilst society is fallin', we are quietly reformin'/Protectin' the planet, healing our own damage/Quarantined, all alone, Mother Nature's on the phone/"What have you been doing? Don't forget, I am your home/Virus come, fires burn, until human beings learn/From every disaster, you are not my master". These are some of the most striking images and lines from MARINA. Highlighting feminism and gender equality in addition to climate change, they are relevant and eye-opening. I like the rhythm of the vocal. It is quite punchy and soulful; there is this flow that keeps you hooked in the moment. In the video, there is a visual change between the first verse and the pre-chorus. In the pre-chorus, there is a return to the red shoes (which look diamond-studded). The images are less clear and have this slightly hazy and blurred quality. Whilst the composition provides levity and a catchy energy, the lyrics remain potent and hugely charged: “Need to purge the poison, show us our humanity/All the bad and good, racism and misogyny/Nothing's hidden anymore, capitalism made us poor/God, forgive America for every single war”.

Again, there is a new visual by the time we get to the chorus. With some nice vocal inflection, MARINA keeps the song both fresh and exciting. At the same time, it is moving and very stirring: “Need to purge the poison from our system/Until human beings listen/Tell me, who'd you think you are?/It's your own decision/But your home is now your prison/You forgot that without me, you won't go far”. Man’s World, the previous single, dealt with the mistreatment of women and L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ individuals throughout history. On Purge the Poison, there is a similar angle regarding the need for change. The second verse brings in a moment(s) in time that I was not expecting to be covered in the song: “2007, when size zero was the rage/Britney shaved her head and all we did was call her crazed/Harvey Weinstein gone to jail, Me Too went on to unveil/Truth and all its glory, the ending of a story”. Keeping the song flowing, I wondered whether a guitar break or a reintroduction to that fierier sound should have been dropped in on a verse that could have benefited from it. Whilst it is a minor point, there is not a lot of compositional diversity and  surprise – things remain fairly rigid and similar until the latter moments of the song. That said, Purge the Poison is a song whose strengths lie in the lyrics and vocal performance. In terms of the vocals, they are among MARINA’s very best and most nuanced. The pre-chorus offers up a combination of inspirational motivation and stark warning: “It's a New World Order, everything just falls away/Our life as we knew it now belongs to yesterday/Inside all the love and hate, we can now regenerate/Stop how we'd been livin' every single day”. For the next bridge, the composition is turned down and we get this moment that is more hushed and contemplative.

I guess the entire song has had an element of contemplation but, with very little backing, the bridge seems to offer this very personal and emotive moment: “I just want a world where I can see the feminine/We only make up one quarter of the government/Like an angel gone to hell, cast the moon under our spell/Ownin' female power, takin' back what's ours”. Before you know it, the pre-chorus arrives and, with it, a reversion to that hypnotic and fast-flowing delivery:  “Earth is like a white rose, quiet cloud of petals cold/A place so corrupt where angel flesh and blood is sold/The feminine is born as new, studded with a diamond dew/Saw the dawn was comin', everybody knew”. I think that MARINA is a very strong lyricist. It would have been easy to pen some clumsy and slightly cliched lyrics in a song that tackles some very serious subjects. Instead, Purge the Poison has a lot of consistency, weight and memorability. The final chorus offers plenty for us to ponder: “Need to purge the poison from our system/Until human beings listen/Tell me, who'd you think you are?/It's your own decision/But your home is now your prison/You forgot that without me, you won't go far/Need to purge the poison from our system/Until human beings listen/Tell me, who'd you think you are?/It's your own decision/But your home is now your prison/You forgot that without me, you won't go far”. I am looking forward to the release of Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land. I think it will showcase songs as strong as Purge the Poison. It is clear, on this album, that MARINA wants to move away from love and the more personal side of things and tackle larger issues in society – though that is not to say that there will be a complete absence of love/romance themes across Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land. Another terrific cut from the album, I think MARINA will bring in new fans on her highly-anticipated…  

FIFTH studio album.

___________

Follow MARINA

Official:

https://www.marinaofficial.co.uk/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/MarinaDiamandis

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/marinadiamandis/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/marinadiamandis/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6CwfuxIqcltXDGjfZsMd9A?si=UpGFbgAYQS2xcofHCFD0Sw

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO_hWjivU900eBRkSQNtlAw

ALL UNCREDITED PHOTOS:

MARINA

TRACK REVIEW: Holly Humberstone - Haunted House

TRACK REVIEW:

 

 

Holly Humberstone

Haunted House

9.4/10

The track, Haunted House, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ochdwb85T6M

GENRES:

Alternative Rock/Indie

ORIGIN:

Grantham, U.K.

RELEASE DATE:

6th April, 2021

LABEL:

Universal Music Operations Limited

__________

IN this review…

PHOTO CREDIT: Jordan Curtis Hughes

I get to spotlight one of Britain’s brightest young artists. The twenty-one-year-old Holly Humberstone looks set to have a very bright and impactful career. I have been following her career for a while now. She has announced a new E.P., Emotional Grim Reaper, for this year. It follows her acclaimed E.P. of last year, Falling Asleep at the Wheel. I will come to her previous E.P. in a while. Before then, there are a few other things that I want to cover off the list. Like I say with all of my reviews, I like to go deep and look at an artist’s background and their previous work. I will lead my way to Humberstone’s new track, Haunted House, soon. Humberstone’s songs and lyrics are so strong and natural, I always imagined that she began writing at a very young age. As we learn from an i-D interview, that was indeed the case:

“The artist -- who got noticed after sending a demo to her local BBC Introducing show -- remembers sitting in front of the piano as a child, tasked with turning the open poetry book her dad placed in front of her into music. “It was pretty cute!” she says. “I’ve genuinely been writing songs for as long as I can remember. It’s something I loved to do to help me process all the confusing things that were happening to me as I was growing up.” It’s through writing that Holly figures out how she’s feeling, noting that it’s “genuinely such a good form of therapy, as a lot of the time I find conversations really difficult and awkward”. Instead, she expresses herself in song form, always aiming to “make something beautiful out of a bad experience”.

Holly Humberstone hails from Grantham. Aside from the late former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, I am not sure whether there is anyone of note that comes from that part of Lincolnshire. Maybe it is a slightly auspicious honour being linked to Thatcher! In any case, it seems like the area is quite quiet and does not offer that much opportunity for an aspiring musician.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jordan Curtis Hughes

When Humberstone spoke with RAIN last year, the subject of her home city arose. Humberstone was quite honest when it came to talking about the limitations and privation associated with living in the area:

“Mark Benjamin: Many people probably have not heard of your hometown Grantham in Lincolnshire, U.K.. I read you wrote most of the upcoming EP at your childhood home described as a ‘withering country home.’ Tell us about it. How was growing up for you there?

Holly Humbertsone: I grew up in the middle of nowhere with my three sisters. It was pretty amazing growing up here because there’s so much space. All we used to do is play and be creative. We were really encouraged by our parents to do art and music, so there was never really a dull moment. As you can imagine with six of us, it was always a messy house and sadly it seems to be slowly falling apart, but it’s characterful and such a huge part of my identity”.

I am not sure whether she still goes back there now, but I assume that Humberstone is now based in London. Her career has taken off the past year or so…and whilst her home has that sense of comfort and family, it is a bit of a drag commuting to cities like London to play gigs!

I want to go back to the start of Humberstone’s career. Whilst last year and this year have been very exciting and successful years, that has not always been the case. Like so many artists, Humberstone had to commute to play gigs. There was this period where she was honing her craft and trying to get her music to as many people as possible. As this interview with The Line of Best Fit highlights, a meeting with producer Rob Milton was an important moment:

“Humberstone has had the distinctly 2020 experience of having her career kick off during lockdown. After stints on local radio and on the BBC Introducing stage at Glastonbury, Humberstone began commuting up and down to London to launch her career, working with lots of different writers, a process which she described as “too much for me.” She recounts struggling to find her own voice - unsurprising, given she was only in her teens: “When I started writing music, all I wrote was piano ballads about love and heartbreak, even though I was way too young to know about any of that.”

Eventually, she met Rob Milton - a writer and producer, who lived just down the road in Nottingham. He had been a member of Dog is Dead, which Humberstone had “fangirled” over. They set up a studio in a spare room in Humberstone’s family home, and the writing process finally clicked: “It instantly felt more like me when I began to write with Rob. I think maybe it had something to do with writing at home, too - the house is really characterful and old, I think you can hear some of those weird, quirky sounds within the songs.”

She got her big break supporting Lewis Capaldi on his UK tour. In February, Humberstone was playing Wembley Arena. By March, she was in lockdown, back in her childhood bedroom in Grantham: “It was full on, like 100 to zero.” Humberstone recounts. Like most of us, she struggled during lockdown. “I was putting loads of pressure on myself to be really creative, to write loads and be really prolific, but I just wasn’t inspired by anything”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Phoebe Fox

I said that I would mention Humberstone’s E.P., Falling Asleep At the Wheel. I am going to come to that soon. The title track itself resonated with so many people. It took on a life of its own and, to me, it is one of Humberstone’s most affecting and incredible tracks. Her lyrics are always stunning – something else I will explore -, and they seem to be at their very best here. In the interview with RAIN that I have already quoted from, Humberstone explained the significance of the track:

“MB: “Falling Asleep at the Wheel” is such a personal and heartfelt song. You connect a metaphor of falling asleep at the wheel to a romance that maybe you start to feel a stranger in. Lyrics like, ‘you never smoked this much when we first met, light up light light up.’ I love these lyrics! I feel like these vignettes must be based on real life events? Is that right?

HH: I try to write about real experiences I’m going through, and a lot of the time I’m trying to work out how I feel about certain things. Sitting down to write this song was a bit like a therapy session for me; I was trying to make sense of a relationship that seemed to be losing momentum and going a bit stale. I try to write as honestly as possible, as I feel that people latch on to the little personal details”.

I would advise people to check out the E.P., as it is one of the finest released of 2020. It gained huge critical acclaim (and rightfully so). It is proof that, in Holly Humberstone, we have a hugely talented artist who is going to go a very long way indeed.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Phoebe Fox

With this talent and promise has come plaudits and recognition. I am coming onto a BBC Sound of… interview in a bit, as this was one of the biggest honours in Humberstone’s career so far. Going back to the interview with The Line of Best Fit, there was a passage that caught my eye. In the way she is painted, it is clear there is a lot of affection and respect out there for her:

“In these strange, scary times which have forced us all into mandatory solitude, we have increasingly relied on music to provide us with intimacy. One only has to look at the mid-pandemic successes of hushed releases from Phoebe Bridgers, Taylor Swift and Fiona Apple to see that we are seeking out music to act as a cool compress on the nation’s fevered brow: music to commiserate, to soothe, to heal.

Holly Humberstone should be available on prescription. She makes complex pop music that slips effortlessly between piano ballads, dark disco beats and shimmering indie rock guitar. It’s difficult to slot Humberstone’s music into one genre, but she has an instinct for combining a magpie-like musical eclecticism with sturdy, almost mathematical pop sensibilities, similar to the equally precocious Lorde and Billie Eilish.

Despite only being twenty years old, Humberstone’s music is surprising in both its emotional intensity and in the musical textures she deploys. Humberstone has the sort of classically beautiful, soulful voice that could win her a spot on a John Lewis christmas advert with very little effort, but instead she swaddles her voice in skittering beats and strange fragments of processed guitar. The result is Falling Asleep At The Wheel - her debut EP, six songs which are as candid and gentle as they are sonically slippery”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Phoebe Fox

Not that it is a definite indicator an artist is going to go on to big things, but the annual BBC Sound of… is a hunt for the best new artists. Humberstone was recognised and placed second in the 2021 poll. I wanted to bring a few bits of the BBC interview that she gave around the time of being named as one of their Sound of… 2021 artists:

“Congratulations on making the BBC Sound of 2021 list. After a year of being stuck at home, does any of this feel real?

Not really, no. So far, my whole career feels like it has been over social media. I've never done a headline show or anything like that, so I'm really looking forward to being able to play live again in a few months.

Just before lockdown, you supported Lewis Capaldi at Wembley. What was that like?

I didn't expect to be doing Wembley. I was booked for the Europe leg of the tour - and I was terrified because I'd gone from playing to 200 people to 12,000 in the space of a month or two.

Wembley happened when the American support act couldn't come over because of Covid. I was like, "Fine. If you're forcing me, I'll do it!"

So, for people who only know of Grantham as the birthplace of Margaret Thatcher - what was it like growing up there?

It's a really, really rural part of England. Quite old fashioned and feudal. But I had a really lovely childhood because we're in this really old, freezing cold, falling down house about 20 minutes out of town; and my parents always encouraged us to be creative.

My dad's obsessed with poetry, and he used to put little poetry books in front of me - like Leonard Cohen or TS Eliot. I didn't understand anything they were talking about, but I used to make up little songs to them.

Then I started off writing kind of crap songs [of my own], and parents were like, "Oh, this is great, she's doing something creative!" And somehow I ended up doing my hobby as a job”.

I will spend a bit of time with Holly Humberstone’s lyrics. I think this is a cornerstone of her work. She is an exceptional writer who places importance on the power of her words. Coming back to that BBC interview, it seems that she wants people to remember her lyrics:

“When the 21-year-old sits down to write her emotionally-captivating pop songs, she doesn't just want them to be memorable. She wants them to be indelible.

"When we were writing, we said that if a lyric isn't painfully honest and really brutal, then it can't be on the song," she says.

"That's what I aim for: If it doesn't look like a really dodgy, tattoo-on-the-arm lyric, then it doesn't go on."

So far, no-one's actually inked one of her songs onto their wrist ("obviously I'm doing something wrong," she laughs) but it won't be long.

Humberstone's sparse arrangements and effortless vocals focus your attention on those lyrics - a mixture of acutely-observed detail and conversational asides.

"You never smoked this much before we met," she sings on the recent single, Falling Asleep At The Wheel, raking over the embers of a dying relationship. "Don't know how I got you in such a mess”.

Why do you think so many people have fallen for your lyrics?

Being exposed to poetry might have something to do with it - but also, I don't keep a diary, so my songs are my way of working through confusing feelings of growing up and being young. Writing a song clears my head and helps everything make sense. So I think that's maybe why people are connecting with it - because it's just universal stuff I'm going through.

 Deep End is another song that stands out. Am I right that it was written about one of your sisters, when she was going through a difficult time?

Yeah, that's right. I find conversations about mental health really hard, so that song was sort of my way of speaking to my sister and telling her that I don't always understand what she's going through, but I'm always here.

It was a bit of a hopeless feeling at the time but I think after writing it, it was a weight off my shoulders - and she really loved it, as well”.

I’m sticking on that theme for a little bit longer. Coming back to the RAIN interview. There was a question that related to the connectivity and relationship between Humbertstone’s strong lyrics and the sonic make-up of a track:

“MB: You’re such a strong lyricist and songwriter. How do you decide how a song should sound sonically?

HH: I think most of the time the sonics of the song should reflect what’s being said lyrically. Either one can inspire the other for me. For example, when I’m writing I sometimes have a lyric idea first and base the sonics off of that, but sometimes we build a bit of a vibe first and make sounds we love, and then decide what we want the song to say”.

I am working my way forward. There are a few things I need to cover before I get to Humberstone’s latest song. In quite a short space of time, she has gone from this promising artist to someone who has sort of blown up. It could be hard to remain rooted and not get overwhelmed by the focus and adulation that has come her way this past year or too. When she was interviewed by LADYGUNN last year, the subject of sudden success was introduced:

“IN THE PAST FEW MONTHS, YOU HAVE AMASSED A SUBSTANTIAL FAN BASE OF OVER A MILLION SPOTIFY MONTHLY LISTENERS, HAVE PERFORMED ON JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE, HAVE BEEN NAMED APPLE MUSIC’S NEXT UP ARTIST, HAVE MADE IT ON ROLLING STONE’S BREAKTHROUGH 25 CHART, AND MUCH MORE. DID YOU EVER ENVISION YOU WOULD BE WHERE YOU ARE NOW? HOW DO YOU STAY GROUNDED?

No way! The EP is so personal, it feels like my whole life for the last 3 or 4 years and the fact that people are resonating with the songs and my experiences so much is so sick. I think I put quite a bit of pressure on myself though so I’m always thinking of how I can do better next time which isn’t always healthy! I guess I stay grounded because I never feel like I’ve done enough and always need to write a better song”.

The Falling Asleep At the Wheel E.P. was a remarkable one. I still listen to it now, and I recall the sort of buzz there was when it was released into the world. I am very much looking forward to a new E.P. from Humberstone and what she has to offer. Her music is so impactful and impressive. I will round off the review by looking ahead, though I feel Humberstone has many years of music to offer the world.

One of the things I am looking forward to when things ease in this country is live music. Humberstone is an amazing live artist who has already performed on some massive stages. When she spoke with DORK last year, we learn which gig was especially memorable for her:

“Can you remember what your first experiences going to gigs were like?

I remember my first gig so well. I was probably about thirteen and my two elder sisters took me to see Tame Impala in Nottingham. All I remember is being so tiny compared to everyone else there and feeling like I was genuinely going to be squished amongst crowds of over-excitable 20-year-old white boys. I love Tame Impala, but sadly I don’t remember the music as I was just in survival mode the whole time, haha.

Some of the shows you’ve played already have been proper massive, do any stand out as particular highlights?

I think supporting Lewis Capaldi at Wembley has to be a highlight gig for me. I had just got back from the European tour with him and got awfully drunk with my sister, only to be woken up at the crack of dawn by my manager the next morning telling me I was doing Wembley the next day. I was still exhausted from the tour, and I was pretty delirious on stage but was loving it the whole time. Also, the feeling after I had played the set was pretty unbeatable”.

Her Falling Asleep At the Wheel E.P. is a terrific one. Small wonder it received such love and acclaim. I do not usually bring in other reviews when writing a review myself. As it was for a different release, I can feed in a review from Variety. This is what they had to say about Falling Asleep At the Wheel:

“As is often the case with such seemingly wide-ranging appeal, it’s all for a good reason: Humberstone has a lovely and versatile voice and a remarkably effortless way with a melody. While there are flashes of several other artists in her songs — Sia, Lorde, Haim, James Blake, Billie Eilish and especially Phoebe Bridgers — this debut EP (which includes all of the aforementioned singles) finds her arriving nearly fully formed.

Having said that, the opening track here, “Deep End,” is so Phoebe-esque it’s a borderline tribute song, but Humberstone quickly shakes that off and explores several other worlds over the course of this six-song EP. In fact, there almost seems to be two different artists on display here, one who leans toward more melancholy, at times quavering songs, and another who almost seems to be fighting off an innate, Olympic-level pop ability. Based on the upbeat songs here, the deceptively elaborate and sophisticated “Overkill” and “Vanilla,” she could be cranking out chart-topping hits in Hollywood if she chose that route.

Instead, she’s taking a more interesting path that combines the two: Despite the heavy subject matter of many of her songs — mental health, toxic relationships and emotional upheaval — there’s an almost offhand ease to others; even “Drop Dead” has an oddly upbeat chorus. And while the songs are guitar or piano-based, collaborator Rob Milton helps flesh them out, adding color with electronic textures and rhythms.

But it’s Humberstone’s show all the way — her solo performance on “Jimmy Kimmel” earlier this week shows what a gifted singer she is — and “Falling Asleep at the Wheel” marks the arrival of a major new talent”.

I think one of the key things about the sound and success of Falling Asleep At the Wheel is the bond and working relationship between Humberstone and writer-producer Rob Milton. Also, aside from her innate and undeniable talents, there are other artists and sounds that influenced the E.P. Drawing from an article in The New York Times, we learn more about artists Humberstone was being influenced by when making Falling Asleep At the Wheel:

“For songwriting, she’s partial to the detailed approach of the indie singer and songwriter Phoebe Bridgers; in quarantine, Humberstone said, the release of Bridgers’s latest album “Punisher” “literally saved me.” And Humberstone gravitates toward musicians like Bon Iver, Frank Ocean and James Blake, who slather their intuitive melodies under layers of abstraction.

Milton said that they listened to a lot of Elliott Smith and Simon & Garfunkel, drawn to the thickness of the vocal layering — “a magical freaky element.”

“We detuned the guitars to fit with the melodies,” he added. “All the tunings of the guitars are just complete nonsense. It’s some kind of Slipknot heavy metal tuning.”

Rather than signing to a label, Humberstone made a deal with Platoon, an artist services company that also placed early bets on Jorja Smith and Eilish. “I do think Holly is a lot like Billie,” said Denzyl Feigelson, Platoon’s founder, in a phone interview. “They have a sense about them as to their mood and their emotions and how they write their songs.”

During the months that Humberstone has been back at home, she’s been chipping away at promotional work — music videos, social media clips — sometimes with her family helping out behind the scenes”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Phoebe Fox

Although we are looking ahead to new work, one cannot overlook the impact Falling Asleep At the Wheel made. The response was incredible. In an interview with CLASH, it seemed that Humberstone’s words and powerful music made a big impression on many people:

“Despite drawing from different experiences, people, and emotions for each track, the EP is incredibly coherent, and Humberstone pins this down to the fact that “it’s so personal and it all fits together as snapshots of times in my life.” Each track feels like a warm hug - not one that helps you forget your problems, but one that eases your guilt and lets you settle into the wallowing, knowing that you’re not alone. Her repetition of “how am I supposed to be your ray of light, I get dark sometimes,” in the title track, is somewhat jarring, due to its candour.

Holly’s familiar tone and relatability translate seamlessly from speaking on zoom to the intimacy of her music. For someone so young the EP is raw, introspective and irrevocably addictive. Opening track ‘Deep End’ discusses mental illness and the feeling of helplessness when people you love go through something difficult. Lyricism such as “I’ll be your medicine if you let me, give you reason to get out of bed…and help you escape from your head,” are deeply sad yet cathartic.

After releasing, Holly noticed that “loads of people reached out to me saying this is exactly like me and my sister or friend and it’s so crazy that so many other people have the same feelings and things going on you know?” ‘Falling Asleep At The Wheel’ as a whole has a huge heart, one only matched by the artist herself”.

I think one of the things that makes Humberstone unique is because her sound is not rigid and easy to define. There is so many different layers and elements to her music. Returning to that interview from The New York Times, and both Humberstone and Rob Milton discussed the music and sound of one of Britain’s brightest young musicians:

“I’m still trying to figure out what kind of genre I am, to be honest,” she said, speaking over Zoom from her family’s home in the countryside outside Grantham, in England’s East Midlands. She’d been holed up there since the beginning of the pandemic, right after she finished opening on tour for the Scottish pop crooner Lewis Capaldi”.

Spiritually, she’s in the tradition of recent stars like Lorde and Billie Eilish, who have extremely sturdy pop savvy but whose emotional interests are complicated and sometimes gloomy, and whose music blurs aesthetics borrowed from rock, dance music and beyond. What unites Humberstone’s songs, though, is a heavy emotional ballast, making for an almost physical warmth. That’s true when she’s writing about relationships, like on the title track, which even though it shifts from piano march to dance thump, is actually a “dance song for people who don’t bother going out,” Milton joked”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Alexander Coggin for The New York Times

The final topic I want to explore before coming on to Haunted House is the lyrical and musical tones of Humberstone’s work and how they relate to one another. In that interview from The Line of Best Fit, she explains what songwriting means/is to her:

“Her music may tend towards the dark and stormy, but Humberstone is still a twenty year old. When she hasn’t been working on her EP’s promotional cycle, she’s been binge-watching New Girl – “I’ve just really fallen in love with the characters. I love watching stuff that’s minimal energy, you can just veg out and not have to think.” It’s a relief to hear that she’s decompressing – Humberstone very much comes from the diary-entry school of songwriting, with her songs functioning as “therapy sessions”: “My songwriting is just me trying to figure stuff out and work through the mess that’s in my brain”.

I think there is this pleasing blend between uplifting and the more personal. Humberstone is unafraid to bring honesty and plenty of herself into the music - although she is never too heavy when doing so. Going back the CLASH interview, we get an insight into Humberstone’s songs and why she can find it hard to explore her feelings:  

“The EP also features much more upbeat pop moments, yet the lyrics remain vulnerable throughout. In ‘Vanilla,’ Humberstone’s vocals attempt to breathe life into a “dull” and “lifeless” relationship, where she states, “we’re perfectly comfortable, in the worst way.” It paints a delicate picture of a situation too many of us find ourselves in, seeing through a relationship past its sell-by-date, and she admits that “the truth is, I have my best nights without you.”

Oppositely, ‘Overkill’ maps the anxieties that come with a new relationship, “don’t wanna be a buzzkill / if I’m coming on too strong.” It is perfectly self-indulgent, yet aware enough to know that these are not unique feelings. “It’s scary for me to write but I know that I’m writing about universal stuff and that my situation isn’t going to be unique, if I’m going through something, others will be too.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Alexander Coggin for The New York Times 

“Something that really makes me happy is that people can relate and find a bit of comfort in my songs,” Holly mentions. This sense of validation is a two-way street, for the listener to hear something they connect with, and also for Humberstone herself to know that people across the globe are relating to her music. In terms of her writing process, she cannot go without it. “I find it really difficult to navigate my feelings, and I don’t even know what I’m feeling most of the time until I write it down in a song”. Indeed, her songs are a series of palatable three-minute therapy sessions. “I’m often just a ball of pent-up stress and then after writing I feel so much better.”

Finding it tricky to open up or articulate feelings can be difficult at the best of times, and Holly Humberstone has found the perfect outlet to unravel her thoughts. “It’s my way of processing and its like therapy for me. I need to do it to figure out how I’m really feeling.”

However, rather than looking inward, she considers those around her and the purpose of the music itself. “I considered it for a bit but then I remembered the new music that has been put out during long down that I have absolutely been so grateful for. Phoebe Bridgers’ new album saved me, and Taylor Swift’s ‘folklore’ as well. People are at home and kind of need music now more than ever (that sounds so cringey but it’s kind of true). I think it is a great time to release music.”

The loneliness that can accompany lockdown is inescapable, and if her music can provide a sense of intimacy for someone, then that is the biggest compliment for her. “I’ve definitely found that listening to music during lockdown has been such a huge part of my day and has really helped me in a therapeutic way, so hopefully it will help someone somewhere - that would be really cool”.

Rather than do a conclusion paragraph/section at the end, I am going to finish with the review of Haunted House. Follow Holly Humberstone on social media and keep abreast of what she is up to. I am sure there will be live dates later in the year. Plus, there is going to be the Emotional Grim Reaper E.P. It is unusual going into the review knowing that there is a lot of detail online regarding its origins and inspiration. I will come to that but, in the review, I am going to give my impression and feelings regarding Haunted House. In this NME article, we discover some backstory to an awesome new song:

“Holly Humberstone has released a new single about the crumbling Lincolnshire home she grew up in, titled ‘Haunted House’.

Exploring themes of home, family and displacement, ‘Haunted House’ is the first new music from the singer-songwriter this year, and is taken from Humberstone’s upcoming EP.

In a statement, Humberstone explained how her childhood home shaped the people she and her family have become.

“With my sisters and I moving out and living separate lives, coming home feels very comforting and one of the only things keeping us all connected,” she said.

“The house is almost falling down around us now though, and we’ve realised that pretty soon we’ll be forced to leave. Loads of people have probably died here in the past but I’ve always felt really safe. It’s like a seventh family member. It’s part of me.”

‘Haunted House’ arrives alongside a music video filmed at Humberstone’s actual childhood house itself. By candlelight, the artist performs the song at a sheet-covered piano as the camera moves through the house. Her parents also make a guest appearance”.

Before coming to my review, I want to grab from Humberstone’s YouTube video for the song. There, she explained what Haunted House is all about and the origins of its tale:

“There have been a lot of changes in my life recently and although change is necessary, it has often felt like my childhood is slipping away from me. My family home is this weird old house in the countryside and it’s kind of falling down around us. It’s where I wrote the whole of my first EP and the sounds of the house inspired the wonky sonics. My family are a very tight knit group, I have three sisters and we’re all pretty much the same person. It’s been really sad in the past few years that we’ve all been living different lives in different parts of the country and haven’t had a lot of chance to see each other. During lockdown my sisters and I all moved back home and it was just like how it was when we were kids. Coming home feels very comforting and one of the only things keeping us all connected.

Now as lockdown slowly comes to a close, my family home is writing its last chapter of its own story. We’d been told last summer that we might be forced to leave because the house is crumbling down around us. Mushrooms have now started growing out of the walls, panes of glass fall out of the windows and the big tree that used to be our treehouse has snapped and fallen. It’s a very old house anyway, with a crazy cellar featuring meat hooks too !! I’d always feared that we might have to leave, it has shaped me and my music. All of my precious family childhood memories are in this house and it almost feels like a 7th family member to us, so letting go was always going to be really painful and weird.

I wrote Haunted House just after we’d been told that we needed to leave. At the time I had also lost someone close to me & the song felt like my way of saying goodbye and a tribute to all the memories I’d made at there over the years. We have a family friend who has supernatural powers and whenever she’s round, she says that she can feel the ghosts in the house and it got me thinking that if there really are ghosts here, then they must be nice, nurturing ones that have watched over my sisters and I as we’ve grown up.

We shot the video at my house and my mum and dad even make an appearance in it. There’s a few hints to other songs off the EP in the video too”.

Not that there is such a thing as a haunted house (I have suspicions of people who believe in such a thing), but it is clear that Humberstone’s Lincolnshire house carries a lot of memories and history. The video begins with lights flickering in the house. It is almost like the start of a gothic film where we are introduced to an unsettling place that will loom large through the film. Rather than the song being inflected and infused with fear and the macabre, there is a beauty and delicate grace that emanates from Humberstone. The opening lines are powerful and revealing: “They say this house is haunted/But all these ghosts I’ve grown with/As it slips away from me/I still hold on hopelessly/I lay my head to sleep and say goodnight”. In the video, we see Humberstone play a piano as there are dust sheets over furniture. It seems like the house is either abandoned or it is being renovated. In vocal terms, I think there are similarities between Humberstone and the U.S. artist, Billie Eilish. I am not sure whether Humberstone listens to Eilish a lot. I feel there are connections between the two. With light and sweet piano backing a tremulous and resonant vocal, I was impacted not only by the visuals in the video (where we get shots of chandeliers, Humberstone looking out of the window and the sense that there used to be life in this old house) but the lyrics. It is Humberstone’s strong suit, and I think she delivers one of her finest set of lyrics on Haunted House. The imagery she projects is amazing and hugely evocative: “Bringing up four daughters/Made a house a fortress/Dirty knees and honey bees/Nowhere else would sting as sweet/Can’t believe we’re turning off the light”.

Whilst there is no real shift in terms of pace and tone, I think the mood and sound is appropriate for a song that holds a lot of reverence, personal significance and haunt. “And one day I’ll drive past you/If I recognise you/I’ll try not to stay too long/See the soil I grew upon/In a couple years I’ll be alright” are lines that not only mean a lot to Humberstone; they will also mean a lot to other people – those who feel a connection to a childhood home and the memories held in the walls, soil and every nook. I would be interested to see where the house is that the video was filmed in (I have looked for information regarding that but could not find it; maybe I have missed where Humberstone revealed that), as it is this space that looks very homely but, at the same time, there is something unsettling and vacant. With direction by Raja Virdi and script and creative direction from Josh Sanger and Holly Humberstone, we do get a moment where there is a slight change in pace. There is an intensity in the song and the video. In the video, the camera rotates around Humberstone so that it appears like she is slowly turning; like the house is almost turning around her! It is a great device. The best lyrics are, in my view, reserved to the end: “So darling, pull the curtains/And in the morning/Let me lie here with you/Don’t say that I’m leaving/In the morning/Let me lie here with you”. The end of the video finds Humberstone standing straight and looking at the camera as it snows indoors. It is another wonderful image that bring to mind so many possibilities and questions as to the symbolism behind that. So many music videos pass one by. I feel Humberstone understands the important relationship between song and video and the impact one can make through the video medium. In terms of the song itself, Haunted House is one of Humberstone’s strongest yet. I am looking forward to seeing and hearing what arrives next. On the evidence of her previous work and the incredible Haunted House, in Holly Humberstone, we have a…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Phoebe Fox

VERY special songwriter indeed.

_______________

Follow Holly Humberstone

PHOTO CREDIT: Alexander Coggin for The New York Times 

Official:

https://www.hollyhumberstone.com/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/HolHumberstone

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/hollyhumberstonemusic

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/hollyhumberstone/

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@hollyhumberstone

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/0nnYdIpahs41QiZ9MWp5Wx?si=jVS_3cb_TZGBYzG0QwHWNA

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0xtJUctDSc7QncZAHYU26g

ALL UNCREDITED PHOTOS:

Holly Humberstone

TRACK REVIEW: Demi Lovato - Dancing with the Devil

TRACK REVIEW:

 

 

Demi Lovato

PHOTO CREDIT: Austin Hargrave 

Dancing with the Devil

9.5/10

The track, Dancing with the Devil, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAg69LaLlS0

GENRES:

Pop/Pop-Rock/R&B

ORIGIN:

New Mexico, U.S.A.

The album, Dancing with the Devil…The Art of Starting Over, is available via:

https://open.spotify.com/album/7LEb5SYZrXiB8NDj2oYvOd?si=4ifzKAtUQKaihCytK6wx0Q

RELEASE DATE:

2nd April, 2021

LABEL:

Island

PRODUCERS:

Dayyon Alexander/Mitch Allan/Marcus Andersson/Lauren Aquilina/Tommy Brown/Eren Cannata/Philip ‘Phil the Keys’ Cornish/Warren ‘Oak’ Felder/Courageous Xavier Herrera/Jussifer/Matthew Koma/Pop & Oak/Ryan ‘Rykeyz’ Williamson

TRACKLISTING:

Anyone

Dancing with the Devil

ICU (Madison's Lullabye)

Intro

The Art of Starting Over

Lonely People

The Way You Don't Look at Me

Melon Cake

Met Him Last Night (ft. Ariana Grande)

What Other People Say (with Sam Fischer)

Carefully

The Kind of Lover I Am

Easy (with Noah Cyrus)

15 Minutes

My Girlfriends Are My Boyfriend (ft. Saweetie)

California Sober

Mad World

Butterfly

Good Place

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WHAT I love about reviewing…

bigger names is that one can include so much detail and you get these brilliant interviews and photos. Nothing against newer acts, but there is something really interesting diving into a mainstream artists who has this history and makes for very compelling reading. Today, I am reviewing one of modern music’s biggest stars: the incomparable Demi Lovato. She is someone I have been following for a long time. I really liked her 2017 album, Tell Me You Like Me, but I think she has hit a new peak with her new album, Dancing with the Devil ... the Art of Starting Over. It is a magnificent album that I would urge people to listen to. There is that blend of raw honesty and personal revelation which, at times, can really knock you back. One also experiences plenty of positivity and hopefulness. It is a really rewarding album with some of Lovato’s best material on it. I will come to the title track (of sorts), Dancing with the Devil, soon. Before then, I want to look back and bring in some sides of Lovato that I think warrant discussion. In terms of interviews, I am borrowing from those conducted fairly recently. Lovato has done quite a bit of promotion for her new album and, in the course of doing so, we have discovered a lot regarding her early work and a rather bleak period for her. I want to source from The Sunday Times’ interview of last month. We learn about Lovato’s early albums and her rise to fame. There was this moment when a dam broke; there were signs of trouble that would bloom and exist for years:

“When Camp Rock catapulted Lovato into an A-list celebrity whirlwind, the teen released two hit solo albums in quick succession, landed more lead parts, dated a pop star and went on an international tour. In public she was the all-American Disney princess with the voice of an angel. Off stage she was binge-eating, vomiting, taking drugs, drinking heavily and cutting herself.

Fans were stunned when the 18-year-old checked herself into rehab after punching a female backing dancer in the face on their tour plane in Colombia. The facility treated Lovato for cocaine addiction, depression, bipolar disorder, self-harm and bulimia. Ten months after entering rehab, in 2011, she released her third solo album, Unbroken, followed by a 2012 MTV documentary, Stay Strong, about her recovery. A bestselling book, Staying Strong, observed the same conventional narrative arc of redemption and sobriety, sugared with inspirational mantras and meditation tips”.

It is always worrying when you have this very young artist who is put into the spotlight. Having that sort of pressure and expectation on your shoulders can be very daunting and damaging. For Demi Lovato, one wonders how much of her teen years were normal; where she was allowed some form of freedom. I was reading an interview from The New York Times where Lovato spoke very openly about her teen years and facing unhappiness:

“Looking back at her days of teen stardom through the lens of an adult, Lovato has compassion. “In hindsight, I don’t blame my 17-year-old self for being so miserable,” she said. “When I’m angry, it means that I’m actually hurting,” she added. “Young women in the industry who get labeled with ‘difficult to work with’ — it’s like, hey, maybe just for a second, consider that it’s not that I’m a bad person. It’s just that nobody’s listening to me and I’m hungry, and I’m tired and overworked and doing the best I can for an unmedicated 17-year-old.”

Exposing her imperfections to the world did little to alleviate internal pressures, though. Behind the scenes, Lovato pushed herself to be the idealized version of a successful pop star as her career progressed. Her first two albums from 2008 and 2009 were filled with spunky pop-punk in the mode of Ashlee Simpson and Avril Lavigne. Her third LP, “Unbroken,” which included the hit ballad “Skyscraper” and the irresistible “Give Your Heart a Break,” was a creative leap, adding more R&B influences and serious subjects.

She said she avoids revisiting her subsequent two albums, “Demi” (2013) and “Confident” (2015). “I don’t know if it’s because it reminds me of the people that were in my life during those times or if it just doesn’t feel that authentic to myself,” she said. “I had really believed in myself after putting ‘Skyscraper’ out, for the Grammys. I was like, I might have a shot now! And then I put out another album — nothing.”

Discouraged by the reaction, she recalibrated. “So I dove into, all right, what is the formula for a pop star that’s top of the charts?” She counted off the criteria on her right hand: “She shows her skin, she’s a lot fitter, and you know, she wears leotards onstage. So I played that role for a minute. And that didn’t ulfil me at all.”

Fired up, she continued: “It’s weird to think that I had more sense of identity as a 15, 16-year-old than I did as a 23-year-old”.

I read that interview and segments where Lovato discussed that quest for perfection and chasing the ideal of a Pop artist. It makes for worrying reading that calls into question how young artists in the industry are handled and moulded – especially, this is true and glaringly explicit for young women. It makes me wonder whether those experiences during her teen years led to addiction and depression that almost cost Lovato her life.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Austin Hargrave

I want to bring in some interviews that look back at a harrowing time for Lovato. It makes for quite upsetting and triggering reading so, if you have been in a situation similar to Lovato (regarding a drugs overdose and attempted suicide), then it might be worth skipping forward. Going back to that interview with The New York Times, we learn about an horrific event that was a turning point for the Pop superstar:

“Demi Lovato woke up legally blind in an intensive care unit after the July 2018 drug overdose that nearly killed her. It took about two months to recover enough sight to read a book, and she passed the time catching up on 10 years’ worth of sleep, playing board games or taking a single lap around the hospital floor for exercise. Blind spots made it nearly impossible to see head-on, so she peered at her phone through her peripheral vision and typed using voice notes.

“It was interesting how fast I adapted,” she said in a recent interview. “I didn’t leave myself time to really feel sad about it. I just was like, how do I fix it?”

Lovato, the 28-year-old singer, songwriter, actress and budding activist who has been in show business since she was 6 and a household name since her teens, is not just adaptable — she is one of the most resilient pop cultural figures of her time. She got her start on kids’ TV and made the tricky leap to adult stardom, releasing six albums (two platinum, four gold), serving as a judge on “The X Factor,” acting on “Glee” and “Will & Grace” and amassing 100 million Instagram followers — all while managing an eating disorder since she was a child, drug addiction that started in her teens, coming out as queer and the constant pressure of being an exceptionally famous person”.

That sense of strength and resilience is seen in spades in her new documentary, Dancing with the Devil. There have been a few documentaries from young women in music like Britney Spears and Lovato, where we learn more about darker times and a music machine which can be quite cruel and damaging. Rather than castigate the industry and fire a warning for future stars, Lovato explores more troubled times and her route to recovery. You can seek out the documentary on YouTube and get a better sense of a very strong and inspiring woman. If you are not familiar with Dancing with the Devil, then this Billboard interview provides some context:

“Now, the singer is opening up more than ever, sharing intimate details of her hospitalization and the months of strength since then in her YouTube Originals documentary series, Demi Lovato: Dancing With the Devil, premiering March 23. To tell a story as heart-wrenching and ultimately inspiring as hers, Lovato called on her friend and director Michael D. Ratner.

"I was humbled to be able to give her a platform to tell her story," Ratner tells Billboard of the opportunity to work with Lovato on the four-part series, which first debuted at SXSW on Tuesday (March 16). "My responsibility is to give her the space to tell as much of her story and experience as she wants to tell. Ultimately, I found her opening up more and more as the process went on, and the trust was earned. It was in some of those later sit-downs where some of the heavier traumas were unveiled. I think that sometimes I would find those things out before we were rolling, and sometimes I think she actually made the decision to share that stuff because she did feel so comfortable while she was speaking and in the environment we put her in”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

I am going to stick with the documentary, as it feeds into the album. The two, in a sense, are companion pieces. I am very moved and impressed that artists such as Demi Lovato can be so revealing and strong. I can only imagine how harrowing and upsetting it must be to recount such a traumatic time! One almost worries that floodgates could open and it could lead to depression and anxiety. I think, more than anything, it allows Lovato to tell her story and  act as a compassionate shoulder and guide to any other artist (or person) who is in a similar position. Coming back to the interview from The New York Times. They look at how Pop documentaries can be self-serving and  redacted. In the case of Dancing with the Devil, Lovato is brutally open and shows its scars:

“She recounts her relapse and overdose unblinkingly in the documentary “Dancing With the Devil,” which premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival this week and will be released on YouTube in four episodes starting March 23. A song with the same name, a brassy, haunting showcase for Lovato’s powerhouse voice, anchors a new album, “Dancing With the Devil … The Art of Starting Over,” due April 2.

Documentaries from pop stars about themselves have become a cottage industry, but most feel like sanitized marketing tools and grasp for friction, like the stress of fame or loneliness. Lovato’s film, which follows “Simply Complicated” in 2017, is all tension — 90-plus minutes of mostly interviews directed by Michael D. Ratner — and doesn’t gloss over the ugliest realities. She reveals excruciating details about a history of sexual assault, self-harm and family trauma, one troubling scenario colliding into another like dominoes. The film and album are part of a comeback attempt that puts a core part of the Demi Lovato proposition to the test: How honest can she really be?

PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images 

Pop stardom is a high-wire act on the continuum between fantasy and reality, spectacle and authenticity, escaping and relating. There are the otherworldly untouchables who appear to hover tantalizingly out of reach (Beyoncé, Lady Gaga), and the seemingly fully knowables who feel just an arm’s length away (Kelly Clarkson, Miley Cyrus). A lot depends on how much a musician reveals to her audience. And Lovato has always been a sharer.

“Dancing With the Devil” is filled with fresh admissions that betray previous obfuscations. Her overdose came after six years of sobriety, during which Lovato felt increasingly hemmed in by the measures her longtime managers took to help her stay on track. It caused three strokes, a heart attack and organ failure. She had pneumonia from asphyxiating on her vomit; she suffered brain damage from the strokes, and has lasting vision problems. (She can no longer drive and described the lingering effects as resembling sunspots.) The drug dealer who brought her heroin that night sexually assaulted her, then left her close to death”.

AMY WINEHOUSE WAS found dead of alcohol poisoning on July 23, 2011. That same date seven years later, Lovato began the night of partying that ended in the I.C.U. “Amy,” the 2015 documentary about the British musician, played at Lovato’s rehab facility. She couldn’t bring herself to watch it.

“I did definitely look up to her and I valued her vulnerability and transparency with her audience because it bred that connection that I felt to her,” she said. “And that’s ultimately what my fans feel with me”.

I am going to move on in a second. I feel something as important and interlinked with the Dancing with the Devil…The Art of Starting Over warrants respectful and proper focus. I am also going to bring in an interview where we learn about relapse that, as I highlighted before, could be triggering to some people. I wanted to source some of the more upsetting details from interviews as it shows that Lovato has come through such a storm - and we learn more about a remarkable artist.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Amanda Charchian for GLAMOUR

In a very detailed and explorative interview with PAPER recently, Lovato says (in the documentary) how she lives a healthily life. She is prioritising her health and stability over stardom:

“One such disclosure is the admission that she is no longer wholly sober — she drinks in moderation, and smokes some marijuana. It's a lifestyle choice that does not align with most treatment programs for addiction (to quote Sir Elton John, an addict in recovery and one of Dancing With the Devil's many colorful talking heads: "Moderation doesn't work.")

Lovato has lived this way for the past two years. The documentary takes great care to explain that this is her individual choice made under the supervision of doctors, and that it can't and won't work for everyone.

Control — both in excess and as a lack — is a persistent theme across Dancing With the Devil's four episodes. Lovato recounts pushing back against edicts that she get stone-cold sober at 19 and live on a permanent diet.

"In my career, it benefits me to be a perfectionist," she says. "In my personal life, it definitely doesn't. Having been in recovery from eating disorders, body image and perfectionism are not friends in my eyes, and so it's been difficult to balance. But for the most part it's just something that you have to walk through with as much grace as possible.

Is it safe to say that the documentary partly exists in order to ensure that Lovato can continue to make music? The maintenance of stardom at Lovato's level is tricky. Fans want a personal story to latch onto, and so the star gives and gives. But with transparency comes increased scrutiny on already bruised spots, making fame like a snake eating its own tail. But she doesn't see it that way.

"I think less about the future and music and more about living my truth," she says. "If every decision I made was based off of my future. I'd just be future tripping the entire time. I wouldn't be living in the present moment at all." And that's where she likes to be”.

I want to go back to 2018 and the interview with The Sunday Times. We discover how she relapsed and there was this dangerous moment. There is a revelation regarding her heroin use that opened my eyes and made me wonder whether Lovato has truly recovered and is out of the woods:

“When she took her first drink, in April 2018, did she tell herself she could relapse without spiralling out of control again? “I think at that point I just didn’t care.”

The overdose three months later was reported in breathless detail by the world’s media. The one horrifying fact no one knew, until now, is that the dealer who sold her the lethal cocktail of drugs did not leave after delivering them to her home. He stayed. And when she was incapacitated and barely conscious, he raped her.

I was still reeling from this revelation in the documentary when Lovato’s next bombshell floored me. “I wish I could say the last night I ever touched heroin was the night of my overdose,” she tells the camera. “But it wasn’t.” Just weeks later she called the same dealer and invited him over. “I wanted to rewrite his choice of violating me. I wanted it now to be my choice. I said, ‘No, I’m going to f*** you.’ That was my way of taking the power back.” A decade earlier, she adds, she had done the same thing with the first man who raped her. “And it didn’t fix anything. All it did was make me feel worse”.

To risk alienating public sympathy with such an explosive disclosure takes breathtaking commitment to candour. Sexual assault experts report that Lovato’s response is actually not uncommon, but it’s seldom disclosed by victims for fear of undermining their own credibility. To the general public, the psychological complexity of sexual assault can be highly confusing. To help people understand why victims’ behaviour doesn’t always conform to their expectations, can Lovato explain why she met up with her rapists again?

“I use the term ‘trauma re-enactment’. And there’s a sense of agency that I guess I felt when I was the one to call them back and kind of correct the situation, in my eyes. Because if I was the one in control, then I was fixing it. Which obviously isn’t the case. Like, what happened still happened. And this is not going to make it any better.”

The documentary’s final revelation is scarcely any less brave — so much so that I ask if she felt tempted not to disclose it? She shakes her head. “It was actually one of the main things I wanted to talk about.” For the past two years Lovato has been using cannabis and drinking alcohol. “And I need to talk about this, and share my truth, because I’ve seen how moderation management works for me”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Austin Hargrave

I guess we will have to see how things go for Lovato. Whilst she is healthier than she was a few years ago, one can never predict addiction and know whether it will resurface. I want to discuss, briefly, Lovato’s new look and transformation. This is not so that I can focus on something shallow and tabloid-esque. Instead, Lovato seems like she is happier and more secure in her skin as a woman in her twenties than she was in her teens (or even a few years back). The interview with The Sunday Times discusses Lovato now and how she felt about her body when she was younger:

“She used to speak to the media in the saccharine register of red-carpet platitudes, but when we meet over Zoom I barely recognise her. Her Hollywood mane has been cropped into a gamine pixie cut, her nose is pierced, and she’s wearing clear-framed glasses so big they look like laboratory goggles. Celebrities in recovery often become so accustomed to sharing their addiction stories with total strangers that they can sound strangely affectless, reeling off their darkest secrets with the detachment of a talking clock. Lovato, by contrast, sounds fully emotionally engaged.

Talking from her bed in LA, a downy cloud of taupe linen, she listens closely, often pausing to consider her words, but doesn’t come across as cagey, just compellingly thoughtful. The 28-year-old appears so at ease in her own skin, no one looking would ever guess how much she used to hate her own body.

She says she was two years old when she began to feel fat. “I remember being in pull-ups, still potty training, and running my hand over my stomach. That was the beginning of the rest of my life with body image issues. It never went away in my whole childhood. I always felt like I was larger than other kids”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Dana Trippe for PAPER

I shall get to my review soon but, as I am prone to do in interviews, I want to give a fuller impression of an artist, rather than deliver a few lines about a song. It might seem strange, but there are segments of interviews (usually near the start) where we get a sense of context about where Lovato is speaking from and how she appears. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the impression of Lovato we have is of someone who seems a lot more radiant and relaxed. That said, there are reminders of the past and the fact that she came very close to dying:

“When EW talks with Lovato in early March, she's curled up with a laptop at her Los Angeles home, barefaced and beaming on a Friday afternoon before one of her precious weekends off. She never asks to go off the record, but she does interject several times with concerns she's either rambling or has given a canned answer, a habit she says reminds her too much of how she used to be.

She laughs a lot. Sometimes her eyes well up with tears, and then she laughs again. She seems easy in her skin, radiant with self-awareness — and that alone is a stark reminder of how truly close she came to dying. Most young stars with such heavy hearts don't survive to tell their story, especially in music: Justin Townes Earle, Juice WRLD, and Mac Miller all died in the last few years from some combination of fentanyl, cocaine, and oxycodone in their bodies. The ones who live to see their battles through in full public view usually pay dearly for the privilege (see: Framing Britney Spears)”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Amanda Charchian for GLAMOUR

Before investigating the new album and its sound, I want to spend a moment on the subject of sexuality. In interviews, Lovato has talked about how she considers herself to be a queer artist. She has also revealed how she identifies as being pansexual. In relation to her identification as being queer, we learn more from the interview from The New York Times:

“She did, but not until two years later, before she went on a date with a woman and presumed photos would end up online. “I put a lot of negative expectations on that conversation that I wish I hadn’t,” Lovato said, resting her chin on her hand embellished with a lion head tattoo. “Growing up in the South, growing up as Christian, I was scared to know how she’d react.” (Her mother’s response? “I just want you to be happy.”)

Lovato hadn’t kept her queerness a secret, but she didn’t make many public pronouncements about it until her 2017 documentary, when she said she was on a dating app for both men and women. In March, she started seeing a male actor, and the relationship progressed quickly in quarantine, resulting in a July engagement. But in September — a month after her birthday — Lovato called it off.

“I feel like I dodged a bullet because I wouldn’t have been living my truth for the rest of my life had I confined myself into that box of heteronormativity and monogamy,” she said, her voice sparking with energy. “And it took getting that close to shake me up and be like, wow, you really got to live your life for who you really are”.

Coming back to that PAPER interview, Lovato discussed her sexuality and relationship status. It seems if, in the past, there was ambiguity and a sense of ambivalence, she is a lot more open and comfortable discussing her queerness and embracing it now:

“Going back over the past year, I thought my life was going to turn out a lot differently than it has,” Lovato says over Zoom from her home in Los Angeles, hair now styled into a black pixie. “At one point I was engaged to a man, and now I’m very much not. And so I just wanted to allow myself the freedom to match my outside to what I feel like on the inside, and that’s what I’ve done.”

After a public engagement (and break up) to a cis male actor last year, Lovato is eager to embrace her queerness. “The queer label is fine because to me it’s just this blanket statement of being different,” she says. “That’s what I can commit to. I feel like I’m too fluid to commit to a label”.

That sense of coming to terms with her sexuality is explored in the Entertainment Weekly interview. Not that there is stigma attached (though there might be), but being a huge artist is very different to being a ‘normal’ person. Maybe there was a sense of hesitation regarding discussing her sexuality - through a fear it could alter her public image and alienate some fans:

“Lovato hasn't always been forthcoming in talking about her sexuality, which in the past earned her some ire from other LGBTQ artists and the media, especially after shooting the video for 2014's "Really Don't Care" on a float during Los Angeles' Pride parade. Even when her bouncy bi-curious "Cool for the Summer" was released in 2015, "I never said anything," Lovato admits. "Gender norms and sexuality norms aside, I kind of felt a prisoner to my entire career and childhood growing up in the South as a Christian."

She vaguely affirmed that she wasn't exclusively into men, though publicly she was seen only with boyfriends. In her 2017 doc, Simply Complicated, she mentions searching for men and women on the dating app Raya, but the topic of her sexuality has often felt more like an uncomfortable standoff with the community rather than a powerful, proud declaration”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Ryan Pfluger for The New York Times

In an article on the TODAY website, they talk about an interview Lovato conducted with Joe Rogan. During it, she clarified the position regarding her sexuality and that she identifies as pansexual:

“Demi Lovato is opening up about her sexuality in a new interview on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast.

The 28-year-old "Anyone" singer described herself as pansexual, explaining that she is attracted to both men and women and "anything" in between. "I’m so fluid now, and a part of the reason why I am so fluid is because I was, like, super closeted off," she said.

"You mean sexually fluid?" asked Rogan. "You like girls? You like boys?"

"Yeah, anything, really" Lovato responded.

"What do they call that? Like pansexual or something like that?" Rogan asked.

"Yeah, pansexual," replied the singer, who called off her engagement to actor Max Ehrich last year.

Lovato, who stars in the new YouTube Originals docuseries "Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil," told Rogan that she first learned she was attracted to women as a child when she saw Selma Blair and Sarah Michelle Gellar kiss in the 1999 teen romantic drama "Cruel Intentions." Unfortunately, the sexual awakening the scene aroused in her caused her to feel ashamed.

“I felt a lot of shame because growing up in Texas as a Christian, that’s very frowned upon,” she recalled. “Any attraction that I ever had toward a female at a young age, I shut it down before I even let myself process what I was feeling”.

I am going to get down to reviewing soon. There are a few more things I want to tackle. Tying in with Lovato’s sexuality and her sense of self-discovery and acceptance, there is a darker side of the music industry where artists are sexualised and exploited. Lovato has accepted herself and has a sense of control that wasn’t always there. Returning to the interview from The New York Times and she discussed how she was shaped and moulded into someone she was not truly happy with:

“Lovato’s understanding of her identity, as well as the status of her physical and mental health, has been complicated by the matrix of pop stardom. But a new generation of artists, including Billie Eilish, is pushing back against long-held expectations. “I think it was when Billie started wearing the baggy clothes, that was the first time I was like, I don’t have to be the super-sexy sexualized pop star,” Lovato said. “And it also never felt that comfortable to me. Like it’s not the most natural thing to me to go onstage in a leotard.”

That perspective shift led to a cascade of questions: “If I’m not the sexualized pop star with a big voice, then what am I?” Lovato asked herself. “I feel like ever since that awakening, I embraced my independence. I embraced the balance of both masculine and feminine parts of me. And I do feel in control more so than I’ve ever felt in my life”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Amanda Charchian for GLAMOUR

I shall bring in the new album, Dancing With the Devil... The Art of Starting Over. There is a sense that the documentary and album are two sides of the same coin. Coming back to the Entertainment Weekly interview. They spoke with Justin Tranter (one of the writers and creatives behind the album):

“Her new album, out April 2, can also be played as a companion piece to the doc, and covers similar emotional territory, both metaphorically and sometimes literally. "I've been working on it since Valentine's Day of 2018, and I can't tell you how many times this album has changed course," she says. It swelled over recent months to include 19 tracks and eventually took on its own hybrid double title, Dancing With the Devil... The Art of Starting Over.

Lovato wrote a number of the songs over the course of a COVID-safe songwriting camp last October. Justin Tranter was among the writers and producers who gathered for the creative staycation, dividing into different teams and working spaces and blasting through the translation of Lovato's raw emotions into lyrics and melodies. Over group dinners, Tranter says, "she's just sharing stories and we'd be like, 'Oh, that's a song, that's a song, that's a song.'" In the mornings, before each team split off, they would huddle to decide who was working on what. "And Demi would keep checking on us, to make sure we aren't f---ing it up."

Among the songs with parallel beats in the film are "Melon Cake" — about how Lovato would get watermelon "cakes" instead of the real thing on her birthday — and "I.C.U.," a stripped-down ballad about waking up in the hospital temporarily blind and not being able to recognize her sister at her bedside. "California Sober," shorthand for people in recovery from other substances who still find relief in marijuana, particularly for treatment of anxiety, is a nod to her key word, green.

"I never want to box myself into anything anymore," she says. "That's what, I think, led to all this — me putting pressure on myself and feeling pressured by others to be something of a role model." Lovato knows she'll likely face criticism from some fans about her embrace of moderation over abstinence. "They don't have to love it. They don't have to like it," she says. "As long as they have a conversation about it and they learn something, then I feel like I've done my part”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

There is a definitely evolution and new sound through Dancing With the Devil... The Art of Starting Over. Bringing in, once more, the Entertainment Weekly interview, Lovato discusses some of the rawer songs that one will hear – she also is keen to highlight how there is catharsis and a sense of positivity that comes through:  

“Two songs mine her experience with addiction in such a raw and explicit way, they make Lovato a little nervous about fans' reactions. As we talk, she wrings her hands, worrying at her fear as though she can feel it between her fingers. In "Dancing With the Devil," she sings about using a glass pipe and tinfoil while getting high. "That could trigger somebody in their addiction," she says. "Sometimes being descriptive can be triggering, but that's the sad, sad truth of how dark it can get. That's important to give people, too."

"The Way You Don't Look at Me," a standout track with a swirling melodic hook, opens with Lovato singing, "I've lost 10 pounds in two weeks, 'cause I told me I shouldn't eat." In the second verse, she adds, "I'm so scared if I undress that you won't love me after," and describes losing the focus of someone's attention as a pain that "hurts harder than my time in heaven."

Of her willingness to go there in her art, she tells EW, "If I'm painting a picture as an artist, telling my truth is so important to me. I don't censor my substance use in 'Dancing With the Devil.' I don't hold back from that, so I don't want to hold back from any other place in my authenticity, you know?" While I desperately hope that it doesn't trigger anybody, I also know how important it is for people that are going through those things to have an outlet to be able to listen to. I want to make sure that people know that I'm not glamorizing anything. That's the sad reality of how lonely it can be when you're in that position."

Still, this album isn't just a teenager who wants to curl up in the dark and cry. She's meant to be played loudly in the car, preferably driving down the Pacific Coast Highway. "She is — I'm cautious to use the word happy, because no one's ever happy 24/7, but I'm content," says Lovato. "I do have a lot of joy in my life today that has really come from spending so much time with myself. Yeah." Lovato exhales, shakes her head and smiles again. "And — she's also really queer. Really, really queer”.

I have chosen to review Dancing with the Devil, as the video has recently come out and it is a wonderful production. In terms of its story and visuals, I would encourage people to check it out as it is filmic and hugely memorable. The song itself is one of the highlights from Dancing With the Devil... The Art of Starting Over. There is a warning at the start of the video that there are depictions of sexual abuse and addiction that could be triggering to some people – I would advise caution to those who might find that upsetting. With soulful, brooding organs and a beautiful and emotive vocal from Lovato, the first verse sets up the story and a sense of inevitability: a young woman taking a drink or two, perhaps not knowing that things will spiral and change her: “It's just a little red wine, I'll be fine/Not like I wanna do this every night/I've been good, don't I deserve it?/I think I earned it, feels like it's worth it/In my mind, mind”. Seeing the start of the video where Lovato is lying in a hospital bed and hooked up to machines lends the lyrics and the song a real sense of nakedness and trauma that stays with you. In the way Lovato is very honest and open through her documentary, she wanted the video for Dancing with the Devil to be similarly honest. In the song, Lovato’s voice is at its peak. There is so much richness, authenticity and power from her delivery. One listens back to the song and you are constantly moved by it. In the chorus, we get flashes of Lovato sitting up in the hospital bed and shots of her in a bar downing various drinks. It is an interesting device that, perhaps, shows a sense of where Lovato was in the past. By that, I mean there is a realness to the images. One can imagine Lovato sitting in her hospital bed having recovered from an overdose thinking about her excessive days and how it impacted her.

The pre-chorus finds Lovato (in the video) in the back of a taxi looking dazed and inebriated. She sings of “Twisted reality, hopeless insanity/I told you I was okay, but I was lying”. We know what is coming and the fact the chorus will offer this release and explosion. True enough, Lovato’s voice rises as she sings about a time where she was close to death: “I was dancing with the devil, out of control/Almost made it to Heaven/It was closer than you know/Playing with the enemy, gambling with my soul/It's so hard to say no/When you're dancing with the devil/Mm-mm-mm, yeah, yeah”. We get interspersed audio clips of news reports that document Lovato being taken to hospital; reports that she is in a critical condition. Even though Lovato co-wrote Dancing with the Devil with Bianca Atterberry, John Ho and Mitch Allan, this is very much her truth and experience. The co-writers have not embellished the truth or fabricated anything. The stark honesty and explicit details makes the song feel incredibly real and personal: “It's just a little white line, I'll be fine/But soon, that little white line is a little glass pipe/Tinfoil remedy, almost got the best of me/I keep praying I don't reach the end of my lifetime, mm”. This is not an artist imagining headiness and excess; a sort of tall tale to provoke a reaction. Instead, it is a young woman who has survived something horrible who is sharing it with the listener. Even though it was necessary for the video, I can imagine it could have proved upsetting and very difficult for Lovato to revisit a time where she was found by ambulance crews and taken to hospital.

IN THIS PHOTO: In the Dancing with the Devil documentary, Demi Lovato reveals personal images of her recovery from her 2018 overdose 

The video has this shocking element that, rather than putting the listener off, makes you respect Lovato more for being so brave and open. The bridge brings in subjects of redemption, religion and forgiveness: “Thought I knew my limit, yeah/I thought that I could quit it, yeah/I thought that I could walk away easily/But here I am, falling down on my knees/Praying for better days to come and wash this pain away/Could you please forgive me?/Lord, I'm sorry for dancing with the devil/Oh, yeah-yeah”. During that bridge, Lovato’s vocal reaches this crescendo peak where she is at her most pained and emotionally ravaged. Towards the end of the video, we see Lovato being washed by a nurse as she gets ready to leave. One shot closes in on a tattoo on Lovato’s neck that says ‘survivor’. That seems to be the the core of the song: someone who has survived a trauma and does not want to forget about it. That is a constant reminder of how close to the end she came; how she pulled through and has this second chance. Dancing with the Devil is one of the more emotional and harrowing songs. Rather than it being upsetting and dragging you down, you feel like you are following Lovato and you are by her side. You know that she survived and is better now, though one cannot help but be moved by the lyrics and how bad things were. The video is a remarkable illustration of her descent into drink and drugs. Scenes of her in a hospital bed and very near to death ranks alongside the most moving you will see in a music video this year! Again, it could not have been easy for her to revisit and relive such a bleak time. Dancing with the Devil is an extraordinary song from an exceptional album.

I am going to end by coming back to the interview with Entertainment Weekly. Whilst, for the album and documentary, Lovato has looked back and had to tackle her difficult past, she is looking ahead to a healthier and happier future. The Demi Lovato of today is very different to who she was years ago. It seems that wellbeing and stable mental-health are her priorities:

“While she waits with the rest of us for the world to open back up, and to the possibility of touring, she's also quite content to keep her energy focused on her own well-being. "When you start doing the work on yourself, you start noticing your intuition becoming louder and then more accurate. I'm just owning listening to my intuition, my needs, my wants in the moment, and moving forward. The more you try to be what others want you to be, the farther you get from your true self. It's only when you start allowing yourself the freedom to be yourself [that] all constraints are gone." She laughs, again, bright and boundless”.

I shall leave it there. Go and get the Dancing With the Devil... The Art of Starting Over album or listen to its on streaming services. It is a very strong, revealing and varied album that has these songs that tackle darker times. We also experience plenty of light and hope. It is not s surprise that so many critics have loved the album and encouraged others to check it out. I wonder where Demi Lovato will go from here and how her music will develop. She has survived some turbulent and harrowing years. Whilst one can never say for certain that things will be okay and she is through the very worst, the picture of Lovato now is much more heartening and encouraging. It is heart-breaking thinking about a time when she was close to death and in the eye of such a very traumatic and dark time. It is inspiring that she has come through that (one hopes) and has been so honest in her Dancing with the Devil documentary. In so many ways, we are…

VERY lucky to have her!

___________

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