FEATURE: Murphy’s Law? At a Time When Distinctly Problematic Artists Are Not Punished or Penalised, Is Róisín Murphy’s ‘Cancellation’ Proportionate?

FEATURE:

 

 

Murphy’s Law?

  

At a Time When Distinctly Problematic Artists Are Not Punished or Penalised, Is Róisín Murphy’s ‘Cancellation’ Proportionate?

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I will keep this quite brief (and on-brief)…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Alice Cooper/PHOTO CREDIT: Rob Fenn

because, at a time when there is so much discussion about trans rights and the transgender community, the conversation and waters are being muddied by some artists expressing their views. Carlos Santana and Alice Cooper are two very recent examples of artists who are either mocking trans people are feeling like it is a ‘fad’ (Cooper’s term). You can read what Santana said, and Cooper. Whilst Cooper has lost a cosmetics deal – baffling that he got one in the first place! -, he is allowed to tour and promote his music widely without any limits or curfews. Away from transgender conversations, artists like Matty Healy have repeatedly got into hot water regarding views and remarks seen as racist, misogynistic and sexist. A term, people rather timidly and unhelpful label ‘controversial’, these artists, the vast majority of whom are men, are not checked or challenged by labels or the industry. They may get dragged on social media – and rightly so in many incidents! -, yet they do not sincerely apologise or learn from things. The trans community has received a lot of unwarranted and un-asked-for hatred and ignorance from so many people. From famous figures to trolls online, many are sharing their views – which they were definitely not asked for! -, as to whether they thinks trans people should have rights; if trans women are women; if trans women/men are dangers to society; if kids should be mutilated (which no child is!). There is so much disinformation and misguided vitriol and acid being thrown at a community who only want understanding, equality and acceptance.

 IN THIS PHOTO: The 1975’s Matty Healy/PHOTO CREDIT: Adam Pardee/Special to The Chronicle

To make my position clear, if it was needed at all: I 100% and fully support and love the trans community. Activists like Charlie Craggs ands Katy Montgomery are people I look up to. Inspiring women who often have to field personal attacks and abuse that makes your heart break. There is a lot of talk around transgender rights and topics with people like Graham Linehan throwing grenades at the trans community whenever he can! It is a very difficult subject to get involved in. Whilst there should be freedom to discuss the transgender community, many artists are having their say without knowing realities, facts…and what it is to be a trans person. Many assuming children are forced into transitioning or being mutilated. That somehow these people should not be allowed the same rights and freedom as all of us. Puberty blockers is a side of the transgender ‘debate’ (if that is even the correct word?!) because of something said by Róisín Murphy (“Please don’t call me a terf [trans-exclusionary radical feminist], please don’t keep using that word against women [praying emojis] I beg you! but puberty blockers ARE FUCKED, absolutely desolate, big Pharma laughing all the way to the bank. Little mixed up kids are vulnerable and need to be protected, that’s just true”). Following that post on her private Facebook account, that comment was dragged into Twitter and wider. Murphy, as a result, received a lot of hatred that seems hugely unwarranted and disproportionate. Maybe the comments should have come with more support of the trans community - and a bit more research and knowledge going in. It opens up a couple of debates I will get to. One consequence of this storm is that her label., Ninja Tune, has halted promotion of her upcoming album, Hit Parade. That comes out in a week – and Murphy is unable to promote it, thus affecting sales and chart position. Whilst some defence of Murphy has been misguided and seemingly anti-trans rather than pro-women/freedom of speech, there has been a division as to, a) whether Murphy was right to post these comments and it comes from a place or concern rather than discrimination and, b) why her label has decided to cancel promotion of the album and donate profits to charities supporting the trans community.

Murphy has said how she regrets her actions and words; she did not want this to become a public thing. She is focused on her music and her post was her expressing concerns for the health of some children. If you are not sure what puberty blockers are and the side-effects they can have, here is some valuable information:

“Puberty can be confusing or difficult for a child who is transgender, genderqueer, nonbinary or questioning their gender.

Puberty blockers, also called hormone blockers, help delay unwanted physical changes that don’t match someone’s gender identity. Delaying these changes can be an important step in a young person’s transition. It can also give your child more time to explore their options before deciding whether or how to transition.

How Do Puberty Blockers Work?

Using puberty blockers is like hitting a pause button. By blocking the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen, puberty blockers delay changes that can affect gender expression, including:

Breast growth

Facial hair growth

Periods

Voice deepening

Widening hips

Puberty blockers don’t stop acne, body odor, or underarm and pubic hair development, because these changes are not controlled only by estrogen or testosterone.

Are Puberty Blockers Safe?

Most experts, including our team, believe that puberty blockers are safe:

The Endocrine Society and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health support the use of puberty blockers for kids who want to delay or prevent unwanted physical changes.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved puberty blockers for children who start puberty at a young age.

What Are the Side Effects of Puberty Blockers?

While puberty blockers are generally considered safe, they have some side effects. Not everyone experiences the following, but some people do.

“Because every child is different, there isn’t a single best age to begin puberty blockers” 

Possible long-term side effects of puberty blockers

Lower bone density. To protect against this, we work to make sure every patient gets enough exercise, calcium and vitamin D, which can help keep bones healthy and strong. We also closely monitor patients’ bone density.

Delayed growth plate closure, leading to slightly taller adult height.

Less development of genital tissue, which may limit options for gender affirming surgery (bottom surgery) later in life.

Other possible long-term side effects that are not yet known.

Possible short-term side effects of puberty blockers

Headache, fatigue, insomnia and muscle aches.

Changes in weight, mood or breast tissue.

Spotting or irregular periods (in menstruating patients whose periods are not completely suppressed by puberty blockers).

For children who want to delay or prevent unwanted physical changes, the mental health benefits of puberty blockers may outweigh these risks.

At What Age Can You Start Taking Puberty Blockers?

Because every child is different, there isn’t a single best age to begin puberty blockers.

In general, starting puberty blockers in early puberty leads to better outcomes and prevents the lifelong difficulties that can result from living with undesired sex characteristics. While they can stop puberty from progressing, however, blockers can’t reverse changes that have already happened.

Are Puberty Blockers Permanent?

No, puberty blockers are temporary:

Injectable blockers (such as Lupron) can last one, three or six months. Patients can continue getting injections until they decide what to do next.

Implants (such Supprelin), which are placed just under the skin in the arm, can last 12 to 24 months before they need to be replaced.

Both types are meant to give patients more time to consider their options:

If your child decides to continue transitioning, they will likely want to consider hormone therapy and possibly gender affirming surgery.

If your child decides that they want to develop characteristics of the sex they were assigned at birth, they can simply stop taking puberty blockers. Once the puberty blockers are out of their system, they’ll go through the puberty of the sex assigned at birth. Puberty blockers alone should not affect your child’s fertility, but hormone therapy can”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Oriel Frankie Ashcroft/Pexels

I am someone who wholeheartedly supports and respects every member of the trans community. I am researching, educating myself and listening to conversations as much as I can. I have never felt it wise to share opinions or negativity at all in case I am misinformed or off the mark. I do not want to wade into a discourse and debate that is raging and is very tricky to navigate. So many people are trolling and attacking the trans community. It means that something quite innocent, slightly misguided or innocuous can be seen as hateful and deemed to be anti-trans or vile. Whilst Murphy was not trying to settle an argument, put out a big statement or political view or stir controversy, as a public figure, her personal posts are always vulnerable to being shared wider. Whether you agree with what she said or felt that it has made it even more imperative that artists are responsible and informed when making statements like that – even though she was expressing a personal belief and not trying to debate fact or make offend -, it is clear that the response from Ninja Tune is too harsh. More a dirty bomb, pulling promotion of Hit Parade and making a very clear point can be seen in two ways. It is reassuring that a label will take decisive measures if they feel an artist has acted irresponsibly and caused a lot of offence. This word, ‘problematic’, come to mind. Whilst a lot of those sharing their views about children/the trans community are very wrong and offensive, Róisín Murphy’s viewpoint is not poisonous or attacking the trans community. Her heart seems to be in the right place - although you can see why at a time when trans rights and the community are in focus and getting a lot of abuse, that some might have felt Murphy was on the wrong side/in the middle of right and wrong. In any case, unlike some male artists who have not been punished for being definitively anti-trans, Murphy has wholeheartedly apologised and stated that this was the last remark about the trans community.

That seems to signal that, whilst her words are not false and something she regrets, she is not someone trying to make anyone upset or offended. It was a personal opinion on a very divisive and complicated subject that has been made public and, as a result, led to a very strong riposte from her label. There does need to be more conversation and education out there for artists. It would be great to see more artists, particularly men, actively supporting the trans community. The music community has many great trans artists in its midst. There are many more coming through fearful of judgment and trolling simply because they want to be who they are meant to be. This idea that many people online need to attack and spit at something they do not understand and does not impact them in any way is very strange. It is almost like a wave or cult. I think there need to be consistency when it comes to how labels deal with artists who have deservedly or not been attacked because of what they say about trans people. In a world where some very unpleasant male artists reign and are celebrated, one cannot help but feel there is something sexist and misogynistic about this. Alice Cooper has not received the same outcome as Murphy. Why do male artists get a pass or small slap on the wrist?! My views and love for the trans community is very clear. I don’t want to get into a debate about free speech and whether people who are anti-trans should do so because they have that ‘right’. I am vehemently against anyone anti-trans, though I think Róisín Murphy was more concerned with children’s’ wellbeing and maybe it was perceived as being transphobic. It is a very unfortunate situation where the end result is disproportionate when you look at what started this. Cancel culture is a term that is thrown around. It is another debate I am not getting into that much. Should ‘comedian’ Graham Linehan be ‘cancelled’ for being anti-trans – and seemingly having free speech – and others are not?!

When it comes to Róisín Murphy, her new album is going to be damaged because she cannot promote it. There is no news whether she will be dropped and how things will shape up going forward. Her social media accounts are still active; Murphy has not posted further after her apology. Many feel the apology was unwarranted given the nature of the comment. Others feel she was walking things back and it was too little too late. When it comes to music, the fact that Róisín Murphy has suffered quite a heavy blow when many male peers have not been accosted or spoken to, it does raise new issues. Can a label like Ninja Tune be seen as ethical and correct regarding the trans debate when they are showing misogyny and sexism?! People can quibble about it, but it does seem like a male artist on their label would not get the same treatment. If Róisín Murphy has not been ‘cancelled’ completely – she will record more albums and tours -, this is a dark-black mark against her name. Ninja Tune have shown their hand when it comes to artists who cause controversy regarding things like trans rights and children (and the ethics around puberty blockers). It is clear that there needs to be conversation and more defined guidelines when it comes to artists across all labels and how they are treated if a remark their make is seen as controversial or discriminating. Maybe Ninja Tune are being cautious and do not want negative attention to follow press for Hit Parade. Does this mean that Róisín Murphy has a future and stable at the label? It is a very tense and unclear situation. All we do know is that, rather than create conversation and greater awareness about the trans community and all sides of it – from transitioning treatment and surgery to hormone blockers and trans rights -, it has stirred up a somewhat sexist and misogynistic storm – something that has been present and correct in music for decades! The focus is now away from trans rights and the community and on to how women are treated in the industry compared to men. I do hope that artists who are definitely anti-trans do not come out and make statements – like Alice Cooper -, as it is hurting people in ways many cannot comprehend or appreciate. It causes so much online hatred to people who deserve love and respect. Whereas Ninja Tune could have spoken to Murphy and accepted the apology, the promotion ban has made things much worse. When it comes to the trans community and ensuring that they are not misrepresented and attacked, what is to be done?! This clash between Ninja Tune and one of their most loved artist has taken the conversation about trans rights…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Katie Rainbow 🏳️‍🌈/Pexels

IN the wrong direction.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Fran Lobo

FEATURE:

 

Spotlight

 

Fran Lobo

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NOT only is Fran Lobo…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jack Van Giap

one of the most impressive and must-hear artists coming through at the moment. Her debut album – 2021’s Brave was her debut E.P. –, Burning It Feels Like, is one of the finest of 2023. This year so far has been a magnificent one for debut albums. Prior to getting to a review of that album, there are a few interviews I want to bring in. Before that, here is some background about the East London artist:

“Fran Lobo is a singer, songwriter, producer, choral composer and sound artist from London. Her work is centred around the importance of having a voice and enabling others to doing the same through her creative and facilitation work. Her work has been shown at the V&A, Southbank Centre and Somerset House and has been critically acclaimed by publications such as DAZED, i-D and The Guardian. From DAZED: ‘FRAN LOBO is one of a kind. The London-based singer songwriter is currently carving out a niche of her own, creating music that all at once manages to be ethereal, empowering and perfect for a sing-along, and conjuring up comparisons to artists as diverse as PJ Harvey, Grimes and Rage Against the Machine’. In 2017, Matthew Herbert asked Lobo to support him at his show at the Barbican. Whilst rehearsing for the show, she jammed out this song in a rehearsal room in Peckham, layering and looping her voice, improvising synth lines and a vocal melody. It came together in 20 mins. It is a favourite for her to perform live because it feels raw, urgent and different each time. After recording it in her bedroom in South London, the track has been slowly built upon with Bruno Ellingham in Massive Attack's Bristol studio as well as at Devon Analogue Studio and Press Play Studios in Bermondsey with Stereolab's Andy Ramsay”.

I will get to some more in-depth and long-form interviews. Here, Fred Perry asked some quickfire questions. Fran Lobo’s musical inspirations and tastes are really interesting. It is hard to hear clear influences in her music, but it is clear that she is influenced by a wide array of sounds and artists. This comes through in her spectacular debut album, Burning It Feels Like:

“Name, where are you from?

Fran Lobo, East London.

Describe your style in three words?

Whatever I find.

What’s the best gig you’ve ever been to?

The Prodigy, Lowlands Festival 2008. It felt like the pit of hell, and it was completely enveloping. The energy from Keith Flint and the rest of the band together with the set and the lighting was out of this world.

If you could be on the line up with any two artists in history?

Kate Bush and David Bowie. Two absolute legends. It would be amazing to be on such a theatrical and mesmeric lineup. Fabulous songwriters and vocalists. We could all perform a dance montage.

Which subcultures have influenced you?

Garage (2-step rhythms and MC's), punk (scratch/DIY/no rules attitude), dubstep (hip shattering bass and groove) and nu-metal (soulful noise).

If you could spend an hour with anyone from history?

Freddie Mercury. To hear all of his crazy stories and to connect with his upbringing in India.

Of all the venues you’ve been to or played, which is your favourite?

Servant Jazz Quarters, Dalston. Such an intimate, soulful space with an incredibly passionate and creative team.

Your greatest unsung hero or heroine in music?

I adore the band Smerz from Copenhagen. They should be a lot more well known and celebrated than they are. Two women producing and performing together, music with no rules and with a really strong identity.

The first track you played on repeat?

'Never Ever' by All Saints.

A song that defines the teenage you?

'Teenage Dirtbag' by Wheatus”.

I want to bring in an interview from earlier in the year. Loud and Quiet spoke with Fran Lobo about her career so far, in addition to her (then) forthcoming album. Even though she is not brand-new on the scene, her debut album has definitely put her in many people’s sights. A fascinating artist we are going to hear a lot more from:

“In 2015, she released her first EP, Beautiful Blood, and has been putting music out ever since: at first a slew of self-releases, then two more EPs through tastemaking London label Slow Dance in 2020 and 2021, before being tapped by Heavenly. Her output through the years has been varied in genre, but defined by a unique approach to production, creating bold soundscapes that underpin often quite vulnerable lyrics. “Sometimes when I listen back I think, ‘Oh, poor little Franny’, ’cos every track is like struggling, struggling, struggling… I don’t think I’m doing it intentionally, I’m not like, ‘I’m going to make music  that’s dark,’ it’s just how it comes out. But I think what I try to do a lot with the production is bring it into a different world.”

She still works as an educator, but now does so in a musical context, working to facilitate music workshops and classes for young people as well as adults with cognitive issues such as aphasia or dementia. It’s more than just a side hustle.

“It feeds me a lot actually,” she says. “It’s nice, because that’s the essence of what music is. We’re working with groups that are making music to express themselves, it’s the purest way of making music – that’s been nice to come back to this week, to get away from the music release world.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Gem Harris

I’m reminded of a similar sentiment Lobo expressed earlier in our chat, talking about singing with Chua and Groves, and how working on stuff outside of their artist projects allows them to top up “the good juice. Trying to navigate the industry side of things can get really draining. The joy of making music – it’s not about promoting yourself, it’s about making noise, communicating with each other.”

Despite her acknowledgement of the challenging aspects of commercially releasing music, Fran Lobo is unashamedly ambitious. An album is currently in the works. “It’s always been a goal to see my record in the shops,” she tells me. “My dream when I was a young kid was: I want to be in a band, and I want to have a little van and we just go on tour. That’s my life, and even if I don’t have much money I’m living my dream.”  

Her dream goes well beyond straightforward album campaigns. In the past, Lobo has worked on installations: her piece Voicescolourmotion, a sound and light installation created with the artist Gawain Hewitt, was shown at the V&A and Snapes Maltings in 2019. The piece was a meditation on losing her voice a few years earlier, from pushing herself too hard.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gem Harris

“I was leading two choirs, doing lots of teaching and workshops, and doing gigs all at the same time. And going out all the time,” she recalls, telling me she’d like to make more such work. “In an ideal world when I put out a project, I wanna have a launch show where there are installations and visual art as part of it.”

Another aspiration is to make her own films; she directed the video for ‘All I Want’, as well as doing all her own styling, which she describes as a “crazy experience”. The result is an impressive short which is as much early-2000s MTV as it is gothic thriller – Lobo lists Dario Argento and the Coen Brothers’ Macbeth as influences alongside Madonna, Kate Bush and Björk. Like the track itself, the video takes a drastic turn at the last minute. After four minutes of sultry, eerie balladeering, Lobo cackles and the beat speeds up drastically, turning the song on its head completely for the remaining 40 seconds, as the camera spins and the lighting turns blood red.

This element of surprise and expecting the unexpected is a theme in Lobo’s work, which has never been easy to categorise or define by genre. “I like things where you’re throwing paint at something, it should never be like, ‘This is the song,’” she says with a glint of mischief in her eye. “I like challenging what you think the song should be – I’m not going to do what you think I’m going to do”.

I will end with NME’s take on Fran Lobo’s Burning It Feels Like soon. Prior, I want to drop in a great chat between METAL and the London wonder. I am going to be fascinated to see where she heads next. With an album out there in the world, there is a lot of demand and interest around Fran Lobo. Long may that continue:

“Emphasising community and natural production, Lobo manages to craft a personal treatise through her work, unafraid of difficult themes, her music gives way to emotion, embodying it in a way that is raw and powerful. While her early work brought media acclaim from outlets such as Dazed, The Fader, The Guardian, and BBC Radio 1, Burning It Feels Like is sure to turn heads as her debut album, arriving three years after her last EP. Teased through early singles Tricks and All I Want, accompanied by their respective woozy and aesthetic music videos, it is set to be a deeply personal and poignant release for Lobo.

Honing in on the concept of ‘love addiction,’ the feeling of being enveloped in a heated connection with another person and the highs and lows associated with being hooked on someone in such a way, Lobo picks apart the personal and lays herself bare. Entirely written and produced by Lobo, Burning It Feels Like is an exciting next step for the uncompromising artist.

Hi there Fran, thank you so much for your time. Super excited to listen to your debut album, I read that the inspiration for the title came from a therapy session. This obviously hints at the personal nature of your work, what strengths do you find in being vulnerable?

Hey, thank you! The inspiration for the album title came from the practice of recognising and locating feelings and sensations in the body and sitting with them to understand them – letting them be present and then noticing when they are triggered and when they pass. The title hints at feelings of anxiety, hurt, and addiction as well as a whole host of other feelings which can’t necessarily be named. I wanted the listener to interpret it in their own way.

I feel things very deeply, so showing my vulnerability and being able to express that in my music is my way of processing and expressing these emotions and learning more about myself along the way. I feel that music in essence is an act of vulnerability, pure release and expression, which is a strength as well as a gift.

You did your own production for the album, alongside Andy Ramsay of Stereolab as engineer. What was this process like?

I wrote and produced my album, bringing in trusted collaborators to help bring the vision to life, offer their interpretations and ideas as well as to keep me company during the journey as it gets a little lonely working by yourself and I love being around people in the studio.

I worked with Andy and Jimmy Robertson on my EP Brave, which was released on Slowdance Records in 2021. They both engineered and Jimmy mixed the record. I really enjoyed working with them, so I decided to get them on board for the album too as well as pulling in my earliest collaborator on this project, Pascal Bideau (Akusmi) and composer/producer, Sam Beste (The Vernon Spring) to contribute layers, ideas, co-engineer and co-produce. They are not all on every track, but I brought them in to offer specific things on various pieces. Jimmy Robertson mixed the entire record – he is a very special person and my ride-or-die in the studio!

The process of making this record was quite lengthy. The main task was reimagining and re-producing older songs to fit with the general vision of the newer material. In a sense, this debut record was also a deep process of finding my voice in the fullest way, which was at times a solitary journey working late in the studio on my own, eating hula hoops and trying things, getting stuck, taking long breaks between working and then trying to work things out almost like a puzzle either solo or bringing in other musicians to try ideas and then organising and arranging it all in the mixing process.

 The album is set to be released on Heavenly recordings, what drew you to this label?

The main thing that drew me to Heavenly was the trust and openness they had with me from the beginning. There was no ‘let us know what happens and keep us in the loop… we are interested.’ It was more ‘We love what you do and we want to work with you’ straight after the first meeting! I was taken aback by their belief and passion and the fact that they are really nice and warm people. They don’t feel like ‘music industry’ and they let me get on with my work in my own way.

Initially, you were more drawn to performance rather than writing lyrics, what eventually sparked your transition to writing?

Being drawn to writing was a natural progression from performance as I felt it was a fuller way of telling my story. Growing up, I performed in musicals and loved the theatre, but looking around, everyone looked the same and you had to have a certain look and even personality to fit into these crowds. I was just like, I’m different, I want to say something! And in order to do that I should write my own music.

As a teenager walking around with headphones on at all times, I fell in love with a boy in my theatre group and I wrote my first song, Jamie. I asked my music teacher to help me scribe parts for clarinet and violin and I performed the song on the piano as part of my first-ever gig at the school music concert in Year 10. After that, I was like this is pretty great, I want to keep doing this.

Having overcome a traumatic experience within the music industry, to now be releasing your debut on your own terms is a powerful journey. How did you manage to bridge these experiences?

Support from friends and turning to music to release my emotions has always been a powerful tool for me and having a strong musical community, cultivating relationships with fellow musicians and close friends such as Lucinda Chua and Laura Groves has helped me feel uplifted and loved. My label, Heavenly, has also been very supportive and nurturing to me, letting me do things in my own time.

You are in some ways a performer before you are a musician.  Does your work as an artist who works with installations feel disparate from your work as a singer and songwriter?

All the work that I do is intrinsically linked. The goal is always to express and show vulnerability and to learn about myself. I am very interested in the human voice and in sound design for example, and this comes across in all the work that I have done whether installation, films or music. During the process of making this album I have worked with movement directors and dancers, which is something I have always wanted to do and that I will take forward now across many things I will make.

What are you looking forward to in the coming months, and how do you plan on celebrating the release of your debut?

In the coming months, I’m really looking forward to finishing the final music video, having the album out, and enjoying the summer with my friends. I’m excited about getting back to the studio and doing more music with friends. To celebrate the release, I will be doing a show at Laylow with all my friends as well as celebrating in my own private way with those closest to me”.

There have been positive reviews around Fran Lobo’s Burning It Feels Like. NME were especially impressed and enamoured of an artist who has released a hugely strong debut. There is a lot of emotion in the songs. Lobo keeps everything in her control. Arresting listening from start to finish:

“The title of ‘Burning, It Feels Like’ – Fran Lobo’s debut album – came from a therapy session in which she explained how it feels to be infatuated with someone new. She and her therapist were exploring what she calls “love addiction”; constantly obsessing, idealising, getting lost in fantasy, and inevitably ending up crushed. Across this album, the London singer-songwriter paints that feeling as equal parts intoxicating and dark, using her multifaceted art-pop to sonically illustrate the chaos.

These songs are constantly shifting and often unsettling. Alongside glitchy, skitterish electronics, Lobo uses orchestral elements – strings, brass, choral vocals – to subtly create friction. Elements are often introduced in brief bursts. Listen to ‘Slowly’, a song composed lyrically of real text messages from a past relationship; the violins fade in and out, ambient backing vocals swirl – all serving to envelop and overwhelm the listener.

Lobo often uses the musical directions of the songs cleverly. On the title track, what starts as a piano ballad diverts into a swell of fairytale Hollywood harp flourishes and strings, like those that would accompany a lovestruck Disney princess — but the violins are unsettling and mournful. This fairytale isn’t quite right, it suggests. Then, the song unfolds into something Motown-esque. The words she sings, addressed to a lover, are heartfelt and full of yearning (“I only, only, only wanted you / You’re everywhere, you’re everywhere I go”); yet interspersed with this refrain, a backing choir sings as if they’re addressing Lobo: “Wake up, wake up, little darling.”

Elsewhere, ‘All I Want’ is glitchy and sultry most of the way through, yet at the end, it becomes clubby and confident – the contrast works well to raise the stakes. The song embraces the mess of a toxic situation, giving into the fun that lies in that danger. It’s proof that ‘Burning, It Feels Like’ is three-dimensional; while the title may have been born in a therapist’s office, listening to the album doesn’t feel like being in one.

These tracks are album highlights, as is ‘Armour’, the record’s catchiest song, an agile yet gritty exploration of self-worth which descends into a breakdown of breathless vocals and frenzied saxophones. The songs here aren’t just captivating in their arrangement, but elevated too by Lobo’s skill as a performer – her vocals are alive and expressive. She exudes catharsis but is always in control”.

If you have not discovered Fran Lobo’s music, I would suggest you check it out. She is an incredible artist who I feel will keep on releasing such interesting and instantly memorable music. With the backing of stations like BBC Radio 6 Music, here is someone who has already won the ear of influential broadcasters and listeners. Her distinct sound separates her from a lot of same-sounding newcomers. It is evident that Fran Lobo is someone that…

EVERYONE needs to hear.

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Follow Fran Lobo

INTERVIEW: Max Tundra

INTERVIEW:

PHOTO CREDIT: Jack Barnes

 

Max Tundra

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THE truly brilliant…

Max Tundra (Ben Jacobs) has recently caught my ear and eye with his unique and fantastic cover of Kate Bush’s This Woman’s Work (from here 1989 album, The Sensual World) – which is his first single in nearly fifteen years. It’s this beautiful very synth-heavy gem filled to the brim with incredible, rich falsetto! Max Tundra is a pioneer and one of the most influential artists of popular music right now. Throughout his career, he has collaborated with the likes of Arca, Daphne & Celeste and A.G. Cook. A born and natural musical predecessor to PC Music, Jacobs also sports a stocked and phenomenal remix roster which includes Pet Shop Boys, The Strokes and Franz Ferdinand! The release of This Woman’s Work follows the reissues of his first three studio albums (his 2000 debut, Some Best Friend You Turned Out to Be, 2002’s breakthrough Mastered by Guy at the Exchange, and 2008’s Parallax Error Beheads You) last year, as well as the must-hear Remixtape E.P. – which featured reinventions from the Max Tundra discography by the likes of Julia Holter, Katie Dey and Kero Kero Bonito. On Max Tundra’s lasting legacy, A. G. Cook commented: “Mastered by Guy at the Exchange’ is a true cult album - a playful monolith that sounds both nothing and everything like the 2000s. Stumbling across it as a teenager, it reinforced a hunch I had: that music is a place where anything could happen, and total chaos could be held together by the lightest of pop hooks. There’s an oddly British quality to Max Tundra’s work, a soft and polite maximalism - pioneering, eccentric and infinitely remixable”. It has been a pleasure speaking with the incredible Max Tundra about his reworking of a Kate Bush classic, why he has reissued his first three albums, and what comes next for him. Take a read below to the answers and thoughts of…

A musical master.

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Hi Ben. How has your week been treating you?

Very nicely thanks, Sam!

You have reissued your first three albums, Some Best Friend You Turned Out to Be (2000), Mastered by Guy at The Exchange (2002) and Parallax Error Beheads You (2008), plus new remix compilation entitled Remixtape featuring A. G. Cook, Julia Holter, Kero Kero Bonito and others. What was the reason behind that? How do you feel now they are out in the world?

It felt as though the time was right/ripe for these records to make their way back out into the world again, as they seemed to bamboozle quite a few people when they were originally released. It had become apparent that these albums has subsequently influenced quite a few people (or so I am told), so here they are again.

I wanted to talk about your cover of Kate Bush’s This Woman’s Work. I know artists like Maxwell have covered it and added a new dimension. Yours does too. What was it about this song that resonated? Is it a favourite Kate Bush song of yours?

I actually chose it because it’s not necessarily one of my favourites of hers - that is to say, it’s still utterly amazing, as are all KB songs, but there are certain of her songs I feel are unimpeachable - but I felt like I could bring something of myself to this one in particular. For one thing, I needed a new track to play at the end of my recent live shows, promoting the reissues - as I hadn’t released any new music in 15 years. So I thought a Max Tundra cover of This Woman’s Work would be a nice surprise at the end of a set of my hectic music.

This is your first single in fifteen years. Obviously, it is quite a big moment. Were you nervous recording the song knowing that, or was it quite freeing and inspiring?

I didn’t originally plan to put it out as a single, but it went down so well at the shows it seemed like a good idea to actually release it. At the time of production all I was thinking of was the live response, and I put it together fairly quickly, which is unusual for me, but maybe that’s something I should try more.

I like the video for the song. It is quite spacey, dayglo, dreamy and cool. What was the concept and direction behind it? What was it like working with James Hankins (director/editor/producer)?

I think this James Hankins quote sums up the whole thing perfectly: "About 10 years ago, I tweeted: 'In 100 years' time, will people look back and realise Max Tundra was actually the ultimate pop star?' I didn't know it then, but it seems like that was the starting point for this video".

“I love it! Always feels great to know I’ve had any impact whatsoever”

You recently spoke with The Quietus and talked about Bush being a hero. You also name-checked songs from The Dreaming. Is this an album of hers that you are especially drawn to and intrigued by?

Yep, that’s my favourite one - her most genre-free exploratory record.

Is there more material coming soon? What does the future hold?

Hopefully. Busy life!

You also mentioned in that Quietus interview that, although you get recognised infrequently, it does make a big impact. You have had a huge effect and influence on artists and fans alike. What is it like knowing your work has touched so many people in different ways?

I love it! Always feels great to know I’ve had any impact whatsoever.

To finish, I will put in here any song from your catalogue that you wish. Which should we go with?

Until We Die, from Parallax Error Beheads You – super proud of this one! Thanks for the chat.

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Follow Max Tundra

FEATURE: Revisiting... Say She She - Prism

FEATURE:

 

 

Revisiting…

  

Say She She - Prism

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WHETHER you constitute this to be…

an album or a long-E.P. (as it is eight tracks long; about half an hour in duration), there is no doubt that the dazzling and wonderful Prism missed some people last year. One of the best releases of 2022, Say She She’s debut album deserved better. I will bring in a couple of reviews that back that theory up. Before getting there – and an interview that Say She She gave last year -, this is from the group’s Bandcamp page:

“The highly anticipated debut LP from Say She She (named as a silent nod to Nile Rodgers, C’est chi-chi!: It's Chic!), the all female discodelic soul band, will transport you with their dreamy harmonies, catchy hooks and up tempo grooves!

The ladies of Say She She deliver a mesmerizing vocal performance, weaving their voices together in an elegant, haunting style that incorporates earworm melodies, lush harmonies, playful adlibs, and climactic hindi riffs accented with operatic cries that will reel you in and lift you into their otherworldly ether.

The band's sound is a hat tip to late 70’s girl groups with the three strong female lead voices of Piya Malik (El Michels Affair staple feature, and former backing singer for Chicano Batman), Sabrina Mileo Cunningham and Nya Gazelle Brown at the epicenter of a roaring roster of musicians including former members of the Dap-Kings, The Extraordinaires, the house band at Ronnie Scotts and members of underground cult-funk band Orgone.

Pulling sounds from every corner of their record collections, Say She She is a multi- dimensional, multicultural, multi-instrumental, collaborative melting pot. Think Donna Summer meets The Rotary Connection with a sprinkling of Asha Puthli backed by members of the Meters.

During the pandemic, the band found themselves making their debut LP- polishing off songs made on old tape machines in the basement studios of friends, and this September will see their much-awaited debut album, to be released via Karma Chief / Colemine Records. The largely self-produced debut album ‘Prism’ features contributions from Dap Kings Joey Crispiano & Victor Axelrod, Max Shrager (The Shacks), Bardo Martinez (Chicano Batman), Nikhil Yearwadekar (former Antibalas), Andy Bauer (Twin Shadow), and Matty McDermot (NYPMH), and is already one of the most anticipated records of the year”.

Before going to a particular interview I was thinking of, here is a great little chat and spotlight of the incredible Say She She. You may not have heard of this incredible trio before (though you really do need them in your regular rotation):

“THERE’S A SYNERGY WHEN THE MEMBERS OF — Say She She get together. Whether they’re performing on stage, rehearsing, or chatting about their work, the seismic chemistry among group leaders Nya Gazelle Brown, Piya Malik, and Sabrina Mileo Cunningham is palpable. Alone, each member is a reputable artist in the music scene and has a myriad of achievements. On Prism, their newly-released debut album, the group has created a tour de force.

“As three women with many different temperaments and moods, why shouldn't our catalog also lean into all those different genres?” Malik shares. “We don't want to be defined by one particular sound.”

Wide-ranging influences meld together, from the funk-infused bass line on “Apple Of My Eye” to the disco sensibilities of “Pink Roses.” Rich harmonies are at the core of the songs, as each member locks into the groove and soars. On the bridge of “Don’t Wait,” their voices syncopate as each singer delivers the line “I wonder what she’s thinking” with intensity.

The album’s title track features lush synth soundscapes and dreamy vocals. To further encapsulate the psychedelic feel, the accompanying music video mixes a kaleidoscope of imagery: grassy fields, swaying dance motions, and water cascading along mossy rocks. “Prism” was the first song they wrote together on the album, and is Malik’s personal favorite. 

“We wrote [“Prism”] in the summer, and it was just this freedom and everything was sweet,” she says. “It felt like the trio was finally together and formed. The song reflects that feeling.”

Malik and Cunningham met through the floorboards of their New York City apartment building, first hearing each other singing and eventually meeting face-to-face. It wasn’t long before they started having writing sessions together, later persuading Brown to join the project. Garnering cosigns from tastemakers at KCRW and BBC, the group soon became a band to watch. Their album release show is set for Nov. 3, followed by tour stops along the West Coast.

“It's so much fun when we step on the stage because everybody is in it to just have the best time, and that's exactly what happens,” Brown explains. “We are so thrilled to be sharing and exchanging that beautiful energy with the audience.”

Cunningham adds, “We sort of feed off of each other's energy. There's this unspoken language that we have with each other. That happened immediately, at least for me.” She goes on to share that connection is also felt during writing sessions. Despite having different backgrounds and life experiences, the group members collaborate to flesh out stories and ideas.

PHOTO CREDIT: Caroline Safran

It’s evident just how much the members of Say She She respect and admire one another when they praise Cunningham’s contributions to the band’s visual assets or when Malik describes how the group supported her idea to sing Hindi verses on the album. They’ve created a welcoming atmosphere that is often hard to find within bands. 

“It's like a family, being in a band, but you have to be careful with who you open yourself up to  sometimes in this city — all of us have been burned in different types of relationships,” Malik describes. “It was really important that we had trust and friendship at the center.”

Malik adds that the group holds the same values: the trio has a connection to activism and sees themselves at the intersection of activism and art. In the past, the group has also been open about working in a predominantly male music space. The early single “Norma” is about the rollback on abortion rights, and “Forget Me Not” was inspired by the feminist group Guerrilla Girls.

“We want to stand for something,” Brown declares. “We want to make people feel something and we want to use the platform that we have.”

The trio has built a space for expression and healing through Say She She. Brown, Malik, and Cunningham hope Prism raises people’s spirits, but for Malik, it already has.

“It was the biggest smile on my face when I realized that no matter how I wanted to express myself, they would always accept me”.

d fell in love with playing music together.

In this insightful interview, Ones to Watch wanted to know more about the wonderful group. Even though we have our trip of leads, Say She She are actually a larger collective – responsible for live shows that are among the most memorable you will ever witness:

“Ones To Watch: Who is Say She She?

Say She She: We are a femme-led eight-piece discodelic soul band that all met in NYC! We write and sing about our lived experience as women in our brand of feminist funk, but we mainly see ourselves as beauticians whose job it is to remind people of the beauty in the world and lift them: by dragging them onto the dancefloor at live shows or soothing them to sleep with the warmth of wax on the decks.

What is Prism all about?

Prism is a collection of our most honest and soulful songs—a lover’s rock delight for the decks—meant to uplift and brighten the spirits.

The title track “Prism” is a song about a mind-opening psychedelic experience of running through the colorful fields of upstate New York in the summertime. The lyrics are meant to encourage you to let go and flow effortlessly alongside nature. Our favorite part of the record? Most definitely the twinkle sprinkles of Victor Axelrod (Dap Kings / Menahan Street Band / The Frightnrs / AKA Tiklah) with his carefree light touch keys and shimmering synths on the title track.

The record was made during the height of COVID and we went into music as a powerful force to soothe and heal those around us and the record is our offering, a presentation of our feminine strength. “Pink Roses” is about riding the waves of grief but somehow people say it always makes them wanna dance. And “Fortune Teller” is a lullaby-like melody, underpinned with a killer bass line that makes you groove. “Apple of My Eye” is a love song to New York City where we all met and fell in love with playing music together.

On Prism retro vibes abound, but the album has a diverse feel. How’d you come up with the sound design?

This was a bit of a piecemeal effort given the lockdown in 2020! We paired the analog instrumental stems with digitally recorded vocals and synth overdubs so it definitely feels like a mix of old and new. The limitations we faced during that time—having to remote produce and remote mix—sort of defined our sound in a way. It was intentional but it’s also a product of the constraints that were in place during 2020 and 2021.

How analog is your approach? Do you try to evade digital production or embrace both?

We’ve definitely taken a hybrid approach to production. We love the warm sounds of the tape machine and recorded all the Prism instrumentals to tape at Joey Crispiano’s studio down in DUMBO in 2019.

We thought we were only going in to record demos but once we made the stems they were so undeniable. A bit later during the distanced days of covid, we were able to get into Atomic Studios in Redhood, Brooklyn— thanks to our dear friend Merle—and safely record vocal overdubs. The studio is incredible with a massive live room and three separate isolated vocal booths so it was the perfect place to lay down our vocals, which were all recorded digitally.

Can we expect more of this style in the future, or is the intention to evolve?

We can’t help but evolve as songwriters, as humans, as friends, and as bandmates. Our personal and professional lives have evolved since writing this album so I think that will and to some extent already has been reflected in what we will and have written since. We also think that things are not always linear and some songs and sounds you can come back to again and again. So while we are always growing and changing I hope that some things also remain integral to our vision as artists”.

Even though Say She She have not yet hit their peak – and they are going to be releasing music for years to come -, they hit the ground running on their debut. This is such a confident and mesmeric start from a trio/collective that should be on your radar. This is what NYS Music noted in their extensive and detailed review:

“Prism is an astonishing debut that I don’t think got as much focus, airplay and media reviews as it should have done. Maybe there is too much great music to hear in a year that some inevitably falls through the cracks. That said, there are plenty of Say She She fans that were and are spreading the good word about the magnificent Prism. I will end with a couple of reviews.

“Take a disco: dark, sweaty, neon pink and electric blue, speakers so loud you can taste it, glitter makeup dripping down your face, sequins scratching your skin, thick air, your platform pumps sticking to the dance floor. Now rip the black-out curtains off windows, knock down the walls — sunlight streams in, grass tickles your ankles, clothes hang loose, you can breathe deeply, clearly. That’s Say She She’s new album Prism. It’s sunlight at the rave, clear vocals over deep funk. Rhythm you want to spread out to, bass that feels like a cool breeze.

Say She She, a seven-piece band led by three female leads, is reminding Brooklyn how to dance Le Freak. The band’s name is a nod to Nile Rogers’ “C’est chic!” lyric, with a modern feminine twist. Et aussi chic is the kismet meeting of Piya Malik, Nya Gazelle Brown and Sabrina Mileo Cunningham, the singers at the heart of Say She She. From disparate sides of Brooklyn, the three ran into each other at a house party in Harlem, as one does, and realized their musical chemistry into a full project soon after.

Malik, a former backing singer for Chicano Batman, is partisan to Turkish funk and Hindi riffs. Brown’s concentration was in R&B, and she was trained in classical and jazz vocals from childhood. Cunningham is partial to 80s eclectic progressive groups like Rotary Connection and Tom Tom Club. These three distinct backgrounds merged to create the singular sound of Say She She; a sound, though only inaugurated this year with their first single “Forget Me Not,” that already feels assured in their first album, Prism, releasing Oct. 7.

If there’s a female gaze, such as in the way films like “The Virgin Suicides” and “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” depict love, there’s a female sound in how Say She She describes love and loving in Prism. Their voices are tender and earnest, delicate yet serious; in “Don’t Wait,” even a break-up song is full with solace and healing, wondering about and wanting the best for their ex’s next lover. And all this is set to a rhythmic beat on a funky bassline, making the hips shift, the feet move.

With nature imagery and dreamy vocals, every song on the album evokes the divine feminine.  But  “Fortune Teller” dives deepest, the layered vocals touching on a host of feminine tropes in the chorus:

“I’m not a fortune teller, I can’t read your mind / I’m not a healer, can’t stop you from going blind / I’m not a fortress, but I will try to protect you.”

Tropes aren’t real life. Sometimes these traditionally feminine roles are aspirations – for people of any genders. Ultimately, we can’t tell the future or heal each others’ wounds.  But by interspersing the chorus with beautiful imagery of “the space between the midnight sky,” and “stars that whisper in the night” it feels like all those capabilities might just be possible for anybody and everybody, if only here on the dance floor.

“Better Man,” the album’s closing song, also aims to realize that kind of cosmic love. It’s one of the slower songs on the album, employing strings, muted production and voices layered in complex harmonies. Say She She describes finding a “better man” with the natural imagery of waves rolling in and swimming upstream. Paired with the occasional electronic sparkle, it’s a song Mother Nature would want to dance to”.

I will end up with one of the heartiest recommendations and passionate reviews for Prism. The Guardian awarded it five stars when they sat down with it. This is what Alexis Petridis said in his very glowing and brilliant review. I think that Prism warranted more five star reviews to be honest:

“You can imagine Brooklyn-based trio Say She She’s “discodelic soul” fitting neatly into New York’s early-80s post-punk, post-disco world. That’s not to say that their sound is self-consciously retro – in fact, there’s something very 2022 about its warm, lo-fi, bedroom pop-adjacent production – more to suggest that, as with a lot of artists of the early 80s scene, there’s something appealingly idiosyncratic and boundary-busting about their sound. It stirs together everything from budget electronics to soft Philly soul and the echoing space of dub and tops it off with beautiful vocal harmonies: all three members – London-born Piya Malik and Americans Nya Parker Gazelle and Sabrina Cunningham – started out as classical singers.

A little less spiky than their singles Forget Me Not and Norma, which were inspired by feminist activists the Guerrilla Girls and the overturning of Roe v Wade, respectively, Prism offers an embarrassment of fabulous songs. Pink Roses deals with grief via spindly bargain-basement disco. The title track throws up off-centre, drum-machine-driven funk – if you want a recherché comparison, its rhythm vaguely recalls Voggue’s post-disco hit Dancin’ the Night Away – while the beatless, weightless closer, Better Man, is an exercise in small-hours sublimity.

It’s striking how commercial Say She She’s songwriting could be, at least in theory: it’s easy to picture a more straightforward R&B artist turning the lovely Don’t Wait into a mainstream hit. But the brief Prism is more than good enough as it is: off in its own world, slightly left-of-centre, a delightful place to visit for half an hour”.

Go and listen to the awe-inspiring and hugely immersive Prism. It is an album that you happily lose yourself in. If you want an album that will delve into the heart and soul and get the blood pumping, this is one for you. I think future releases will be a little spikier and similar to their earliest cuts – though new songs like Astral Plane are extraordinary. On their phenomenal debut, Say She She make a bid for recognition and greatness…which they definitely deserve and achieve. I hope more people listen to the album as it is one that should not…

PASS you by.

FEATURE: A New Start; a Lost Ballad: Kate Bush’s Never for Ever at Forty-Three

FEATURE:

 

 

A New Start; a Lost Ballad

  

Kate Bush’s Never for Ever at Forty-Three

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THE forty-third anniversary…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Angelo Deligio/Mondadori via Getty Images

of Kate Bush’s Never for Ever is quite an important one. The album itself is important for a number of reasons. Released on 8th September, 1980, Never For Ever was Bush’s first number one album – though it would not be the last. It was also the first ever album by a British female solo artist to top the album chart in the U.K., in addition to being the first album by any female solo artist to enter the chart at number one. That is a remarkable achievement in itself! There are a couple of elements I want to zone in on for the first – of maybe a few – anniversary features. It is a shame that Never for Ever has not really got the reviews it deserves. Lionheart (released at the end of 1978, that was her second studio album) got some mixed reception. Bush’s debut, The Kick Inside, got positive reviews. If not overlooked, Never for Ever has never got the five-star reviews I feel it is worthy of. Not put up there with the likes of Hounds of Love and Aerial. That is a shame, as this was a real leap in ambition for Bush. I see 1979’s Tour of Life as Bush doing something where she had more control. The Kick Inside and Lionheart saw Andrew Powell produce (Bush assisted on Lionheart). Both albums, I feel, were a little disappointing to her as she did not have production control. With Jon Kelly on Never for Ever, it was the first time Bush had a big say in the sound and direction of the album. As both were similar ages and had a closer bond, Bush felt more pleased with Never for Ever than her previous work. The confidence and acclaim she got for The Tour of Life definitely inspired her songwriting. I feel like Bush wrote this album with a mind to performing it live and making a concept out of it. That never came to pass.

Recorded between September 1979 and May 1980, Bush utilised AIR and Abbey Road Studios to full effect. You can hear more space and atmosphere on the album. Her first clear evolution in terms of content and dynamics, a happy studio environment – where Bush and the musicians would often hang out and record late because it was a relaxed space – and Bush wanting to put a stamp on her music resulted in this underrated classic. Tracks like Babooshka show the first signs of Bush’s fascination with and use of the Fairlight CMI. That discovery – it was Peter Gabriel who introduced Bush to the technology, as he was already using it in his music – came late, but you can feel Bush experimenting more with technology and sounds. This would explode and multiply through her next album, 1982’s The Dreaming. Not having constraints or having to answer to anyone, aged twenty-one, she began to produce this album that would break records and showcase some of her greatest songs. I am going to move on soon. Before that, and thanks to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia, this is what Bush said about her third studio album:

“Now, after all this waiting it is here. It's strange when I think back to the first album. I thought it would never feel as new or as special again. This one has proved me wrong. It's been the most exciting. Its name is Never For Ever, and I've called it this because I've tried to make it reflective of all that happens to you and me. Life, love, hate, we are all transient. All things pass, neither good [n]or evil lasts. So we must tell our hearts that it is "never for ever", and be happy that it's like that!

The album cover has been beautifully created by Nick Price (you may remember that he designed the front of the Tour programme). On the cover of Never For Ever Nick takes us on an intricate journey of our emotions: inside gets outside, as we flood people and things with our desires and problems. These black and white thoughts, these bats and doves, freeze-framed in flight, swoop into the album and out of your hi-fis. Then it's for you to bring them to life. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, September 1980)

Each song has a very different personality, and so much of the production was allowing the songs to speak with their own voices - not for them to be used purely as objects to decorate with "buttons and bows". Choosing sounds is so like trying to be psychic, seeing into the future, looking in the "crystal ball of arrangements", "scattering a little bit of stardust", to quote the immortal words of the Troggs. Every time a musical vision comes true, it's like having my feet tickled. When it works, it helps me to feel a bit braver. Of course, it doesn't always work, but experiments and ideas in a studio are never wasted; they will always find a place sometime.

I never really felt like a producer, I just felt closer to my loves - felt good, free, although a little raw, and sometimes paranoia would pop up. But when working with emotion, which is what music is, really, it can be so unpredictable - the human element, that fire. But all my friends, the Jons, and now you will make all the pieces of the Never For Ever jigsaw slot together, and It will be born and It will begin Breathing. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, September 1980)

It's difficult to talk about the album without you actually hearing it, I suppose it's more like the first album, The Kick Inside, though, than the second, Lionheart, in that the songs are telling stories. I like to see things with a positive direction, because it makes it so much easier to communicate with the audience of listener. When you see people actually listening to the songs and getting into them, it makes you realise how important it is that they should actually be saying something. (...)

There are a lot of different songs. There's no specific theme, but they're saying a lot about freedom, which is very important to me. (Deanne Pearson, The Me Inside. Smash Hits (UK), May 1980)

For me, this was the first LP I'd made that I could sit back and listen to and really appreciate. I'm especially close to Never For Ever. It was the first step I'd taken in really controlling the sounds and being pleased with what was coming back. I was far more involved with the overall production, and so I had a lot more freedom and control, which was very rewarding. Favourite tracks? I guess I'd have to say 'Breathing' and 'The Infant Kiss'. (Women of Rock, 1984)”.

I think this was a new start for Kate Bush. I love her first two albums, but still a teen for most of that time (she turned twenty on 30th July, 1978), this was a more assured artist having received acclaim for her live tour determined to make an album that was more in her own vision. In addition to successful and timeless singles such as Babooshka and Breathing, the deeper cuts are wonderful! A perfectly sequenced albums in terms of emotion, balance and quality, treats such as Blow Away (For Bill), The Wedding List and All We Ever Look For are not played and talked about enough. If Egypt and Violin are seen as weaker tracks on the album, I actually think they are growers. If you have not heard Never for Ever before or in a while, then do so now. I am going to end thinking about a song that never appeared on her third album, yet it was recorded. Bush usually puts a title track on her albums. Aside from Director’s Cut, the only occasion where she has not had a title track or a song with the title in it – I am counting Oh England My Lionheart in this – is Never for Ever. Intriguing, there was a title track that could have seen the light of day. Recorded during the sessions for Lionheart, it shows that Bush already was working on./thinking about her third album when she was recording of her second. Producer Andrew Powell recalls his memories of the stunning Never for Ever. I wonder whether this song will be remastered and be released or available on YouTube at some point:

“It was a beautiful ballad - Kate sang it at the piano - and was just for Kate with her piano, (no rhythm section) and a large string orchestra. We recorded Kate at Superbear Studios in the South of France, and the orchestra parts at the original AIR studios in Oxford Circus, London. I think it may have been the best arrangement I ever did for Kate - Kate loved it too - so I wish it could be allowed to see the light of day sometime. It was a great, and very intimate, song”.

A number one album here and in France, Never for Ever, was a massive success. Bush was voted Best Female Artist of 1980 in polls taken in Melody Maker, Sounds, The Sunday Telegraph, and Capital Radio. Even though only a few Kate Bush fans rank it as their favourite from her, I think it should be in everyone’s top five at least. It is a remarkably strong album. It would lay the path and forge a clearance for The Dreaming which, in turn, then led to 1985’s Hounds of Love. Rolling Stone included Never for Ever in their 80 Greatest Albums of 1980 list. The songwriting and production is stunning throughout. As Never for Ever turns forty-three on 8th September, I wanted to salute, praise and show my love to…

A remarkable album.

FEATURE: Second Spin: David Bowie - Reality

FEATURE:

 

 

Second Spin

  

David Bowie - Reality

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THERE are a few reasons…

 IN THIS PHOTO: David Bowie in 2003/PHOTO CREDIT: Robert Maxwell

why I wanted to feature David Bowie’s twenty-fourth album, Reality. This would turn out to be his antepenultimate studio album. Reality was released on 15th September, 2003. As it is almost twenty, it deserves to be highlighted. Also, it would be ten years until Bowie followed this album. Many thought he had retired and would not return. He came back with the remarkable The Next Day in 2013. Sadly, we would only get one further album from him: 2016’s Blackstar was released on his sixty-ninth birthday (two days before he died). Also, I think Reality is an underrated album. A year after Heathen was released, maybe the more mixed response to Reality was a reason why Bowie stepped away from the spotlight. Recorded at Looking Glass in New York City between January and May 2003, it was produced by David Bowie and Tony Visconti. I am going to end with one of the positive reviews for the album. Whilst many journalists did like the album, they compared Reality negatively when placed against his greatest work. I will end of that review. Before further exploration, Wikipedia have compiled sources and quote that highlight the legacy and retrospective acclaim for Reality:

“Reality has attracted generally positive assessments in subsequent years. In his 2005 book Strange Fascination, Buckley argues the album lacks both a "coherent musical identity" and "any thematic trajectory", furthermore observing a general feeling of "laxity" and underwritten songs, with the songs ranging from "good to merely pleasant", and "around a third" seeing Bowie "near top form". On the other hand, Perone considers it a "strong album" and one that does have consistent themes throughout. Author Paul Trynka writes that the record proves that, with the likes of tracks like "Bring Me the Disco King", Bowie "has the potential to conjure up pleasures as yet unknown". Marc Spitz, writing before the release of The Next Day, found it worthy as a swan song to Bowie's long career. Following that album's release, however, O'Leary argues that Reality reestablished itself as "a minor album whose songs were built to be blasted on stage". The covers have also continued to receive praise.

In The Complete David Bowie, Pegg states that one of the album's successes is that it emerges with a "reinvigorated sense of rock attack" following the "delicate, self-consciously artful[ness]" of its predecessor, equating both records to the relationships between Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust, or Outside (1995) and Earthling. Further comparing the two albums, he says Reality offers "less complexity and fewer sonic layers" than Heathen in exchange for "a greater abundance of catchy hooks and buoyant pop-rock atmospherics". He also argues that Reality loses none of its predecessor's "artistic sensibility" and "its lasting value lies not just in its infectious melodies and evocative lyrics, but in the exquisitely judged oddness of its sonic textures". In 2016, Bryan Wawzenek of Ultimate Classic Rock placed Reality at number 16 out of 26 in a list ranking Bowie's studio albums from worst to best, praising Bowie's comfortability on the record. Including Bowie's two albums with Tin Machine, Consequence of Sound ranked Reality number 24 out of 28 in a 2018 list, with Pat Levy calling it "a decent record in the pantheon of Bowie, nothing more, nothing less".

I want to bring in a feature from Classic Rock & Culture from 2013. They looked back a decade at one of Bowie’s most underrated and interesting albums. It came out at a crucial moment in his career. So soon after his previous album and before he would step away for nearly a decade, Reality definitely warrants fresh love and focus:

“It took David Bowie a mere 15 months to write and record his 23rd album, 2003's Reality. While no one could have guessed it at the time, it'd take him another 10 years to finish his 24th.

Released on Sept. 16, 2003, Reality found Bowie working once again with frequent collaborator Tony Visconti, who returned to co-produce 2002's Heathen for the first time since 1980's Scary Monsters. The platinum-selling Heathen brought Bowie some of his best reviews in years, but rather than trying to duplicate that album's heavily layered approach, the duo opted for a more direct, aggressive sound.

"There's a part of David Bowie that definitely does not want to repeat himself, so we were committed to avoiding the Heathen formula," Visconti explained to Sound on Sound. "He wanted to change to something that he and his live band could play onstage with great immediacy, without the need for synthesizer patches and backing tracks. He wanted to make this more of a band album."

While Bowie mildly disputed Visconti's version of events ("it really doesn't work like that"), he admitted to Sound on Sound that "I was looking for something that had a slightly more urgent kind of sound than Heathen."

To Bowie's way of thinking, the change in approach was a byproduct of his surroundings during the writing process. "I think the mainstay of the album is that I was writing it and recording here in downtown New York. It's very much inspired by where I live and how I live and the day-to-day life down here. There is a sense of urgency to this town."

Like a number of Bowie records, Reality incorporates a mixture of material, some of it freshly written ("Fall Dog Bombs the Moon," which was reportedly composed in half an hour) and some drawn from Bowie's back pages ("Bring Me the Disco King," which had been kicking around in various incarnations since the '70s). Ironically, given the decade of silence that was soon to follow, Bowie also told Sound on Sound that the quick downtime between Heathen and Reality reflected a change in his own creative tempo.

"These days, it's great to be able to record more frequently and clear the decks of the songs I'm writing," he mused. "For me, this is a far preferable way to go. ... I think I find an album a year very comfortable. It doesn't faze me at all, and it tends to follow the pattern and the rhythm at which I write."

Reality represented yet another evolution in sound for a performer known for his chameleonic shifts in style, but Bowie insisted all of his music was essentially of a piece. "I don't really think it's going to change very much," Bowie said when asked by the New York Times to describe his creative approach.

"As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I've got left?" he added. "When it's taken that nakedly, these are my subjects. And it's like, well, how many times can you do this? And I tell myself, actually, over and over again. The problem would be if I was too self-confident and actually came up with resolutions for these questions. But I think they're such huge unanswerable questions that it's just me posing them, again and again."

If his songwriting approach remained unchanged, Bowie was perfectly willing to admit that he saw major challenges ahead for the recording industry, then still in the early years of the ugly tailspin it entered at the dawn of the Mp3 era.

"Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity," he predicted to the Times. "So it's like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You'd better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that's really the only unique situation that's going to be left. It's terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn't matter if you think it's exciting or not. It's what's going to happen."

But as the business that earned him his livelihood entered a period of turmoil, Bowie told critic Anthony DeCurtis that he found himself mellowing out – and perhaps signaled his pending decade of semi-retirement.

"I've stabilized my life to an extent now over these past 10 years. I'm very at ease, and I like it," Bowie said. "I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy. I didn't think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that's happening to me. I'm rather surprised at who I am, because I'm actually like my dad!".

A lot of the reviews I can see for Reality are three-star. I have seen a few that are more positive, though most give it a middling assessment. I think that Reality is stronger than that. As it is twenty on 15th September, I am keen for people to explore an under-listened gem in the Bowie cannon. Pitchfork provided their thoughts when Reality was released in 2003:

“There is a reason the present begrudges the past," writes Harlan Ellison; I won't pretend to be wise enough to know what that reason is, but I believe that statement to be true, regardless. The evidence is plain in just about anyone beyond a certain age, the all-consuming, epic oldness where a person can say "when I was your age" without a trace of irony. It hits some people as early as twenty or so, when they suddenly find themselves on the downhill side of life, confronted with a bleak realization that things were a whole lot greener back when they were still climbing (or before they knew any better, at least). Some people, they just never stop climbing; it's rare, but it happens.

A great many of David Bowie's fans, with each successive year, slowly but surely creep into the former category even as Bowie himself manages to still act like a card-carrying member of the latter. "I'm never never gonna get old," he proclaims on the Toys 'R' Us-inspired "Never Get Old", and to his credit, he makes yet another convincing argument. With one exception (the hokey, one-foot-in-the-grave Hours), Bowie-- even in his advanced age (by fresh-faced rock standards), even after almost a trillion records-- has never dwelled unduly on his past. If anything, while people will always hold him up to his past accomplishments, his career has floundered more than once out of his desire for self-conscious avant-gardism and an almost schizophrenic need to reinvent his persona. What last year's Heathen implied, and what Reality seems to prove, is that those days are over; never looking back, and no longer focusing ahead, Bowie has finally joined us all in the present, mind-young as ever but old enough not to make a show of it.

And then, if you'll grant this indulgence, there's me, the one who's supposed to be writing about him: "Plain Ol' 'Dave'" baffles me. Bowie's work is traditionally seen in a terrifically damaging binary-- common law states that if his work isn't brilliant, it's terrible; that's obviously wrong, since there're plenty of gray areas to be found in Bowie's oeuvre, but it's easy as hell to fall into the trap. Not much can stack up to Hunky Dory or Scary Monsters, after all. But then he goes and releases, consecutively, the two most earnest, unpretentious albums he's ever dreamed up, and the Pocket Dichotomy that had been used so frequently to dismiss Outside, Earthling, and others, is now terminally, irrevocably broken. Heathen looked like it might've been a holding pattern on the way to greater heights, but only for rising from the ashes of Hours; Reality shows that instead, Bowie is not aiming for an unattainable Ziggy-caliber alien classic, but is simply going to rock like any other human, in a pleasantly mild, non-conformist manner.

This is as close as Bowie has ever come to simply "pretty good" in his storied career. A zealous few will say that he's just further ahead of the curve than anyone can see, but if that's so, then what lies ahead is MOR rock and roll, with producer Tony Visconti's unobtrusive, light-handed electronic flourishes as gloss; no way-- he's too talented to be overtly influenced or obviously faddish, but that doesn't mean he's breaking ground. That's not an insult. I feel the biggest strength of this album is how relaxed it is, how well this anti-pose suits Bowie. It's freed him to craft some of the finest original material he's done in quite a while; Heathen best expressed his singular vision through the compositions of others, but Reality's original material easily overshadows its covers.

In particular, the George Harrison-penned "Try Some, Buy Some", though a kind tribute to Bowie's recently deceased contemporary, might be the album's only real mistake. Sappy, vacant lyrics and plodding, waltz-timed orchestration give a feel similar to a more fleshed-out version of the Morrissey cover "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday", but without any the self-referential poignancy invested in the latter. The deep-space broadcast of "Pablo Picasso" is a substantial improvement, in terms of covers, with its echoing trills and white-funk syncopation and the intense surrealism of hearing the words "Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole/ Not like you," come from Bowie's mouth, but David promised that Reality would "rock", and he proceeds to do so even more effectively elsewhere.

Hard-edged dynamics are supplied to direct, aggressive rhythms on numerous tracks like the supremely nervous, desperate "Looking for Water" and less obviously on the epic jazz kick "Bring Me the Disco King", but only "New Killer Star" feels like more than an exercise with slightly dusty rock standbys. It opens the album with a bassline etched indelibly within our genetic make-up, instantly recognizable and irresistible, and once the hook is set, a deluge of static-hazed background singers, weird robo-choruses, and a shaky treble riff that easily marks the album's finest moment simply spew forth from the speakers, overwhelming all but the most cynical of Bowie's detractors. At least, that's what I predict.

Also worthy of mention is the stark contrast provided by "The Loneliest Guy". It sounds like the title to a forgotten Dudley Moore flick, and may sound somewhat like disingenuous fame lament coming from Bowie, but the song itself will dispel those thoughts. Nearly a cappella, with bare hints of strings and stray piano chords fading in from other rooms, Bowie instead offers that he's "the luckiest guy/ Not the loneliest guy/ In the world/ Not me," but does so with such mournful uncertainty that no easy reading of the song is possible; it seems surprisingly human, bittersweet, and altogether far more real than its name implies. It's startlingly out of place, sandwiched between "Never Get Old" and "Looking for Water", so much so that it almost implies sarcasm, but that's fitting, as this is as eclectic and puzzling album as Bowie's ever made. He's not always at the top of his game, but Bowie's musical ideas, not filtered through any sort of trend-grab, are unfailingly unique, and that alone should cement his continued role as vibrant, modern artist for years to come”.

To mark a great work from David Bowie that should be explored more, I will end things now and urge people to listen through Reality. It does have a few weaker songs, though tracks like New Killer Star and The Loneliest Guy rank alongside his best late-career material. It is well worth your time. It turns twenty next month, so it is a good moment to (re)acquaint yourself with…

A real diamond.

FEATURE: One for the Record Collection! Essential October Releases

FEATURE:

 

 

One for the Record Collection!

IN THIS PHOTO: Jamila Woods/PHOTO CREDIT: Elizabeth De La Piedra

 

Essential October Releases

_________

IT is that time again…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Hannah Diamond

when we look ahead to the great albums due next month – as it is a Bank Holiday, I am publishing this earlier than I would so that you get extra notice! These are albums that are worth putting some money aside for. September was a pretty packed and exciting one. October is not going to let us down in that sense. There are more than a few huge albums that are well worth pre-ordering. I will come to those now. Let us begin with a couple of albums that are due out on 6th October. Starting out with Hannah Diamond and her album, Perfect Picture. I am recommending this album, as Diamond is a fantastic London artist with a very bright future. She is someone who has this incredible sound and unique songwriting ability. Go and pre-order the album. Although there is not a lot of detail about the album and its themes, I want to bring in some information regarding Diamond. She has been on the music scene a while now. I think Perfect Picture will take her to a new level. I want to go back to 2016. The earliest days in terms of her music, FADER spoke to an artist who some assumed was a computer voice. Male producers sampling a woman’s voice. This authentic and very real talent was being doubted. From 2016 to now, Diamond has proved any doubters wrong. Fighting back against a sexist industry that was criticising PC Music (a record label and art collective based in London and run by producer A. G. Cook):

“Do you think it comes down to presentation? People often assume a guy playing a real instrument is somehow immediately more authentic.

Yes. I personally think sometimes it comes down to being a female in the music industry. There's still this stigma that women are just a voice on a track and there are 10 guys behind her making her the person she is. I wasn't aware of that at all until I got involved in music. There's a real undertone of misogyny in the way people think about women in music.

What did you make of the criticisms of PC Music when it first emerged that the women were being used as decoration?

It's female-fronted in the sense that when we put out [Diamond's debut single] “Pink and Blue,” it got a lot of views and a lot of plays, but it wasn't supposed to be like that. When it started it was really organic and we weren't really concerned with gender. It was me and A. G. Cook and a bunch of friends, and we just thought that if we're all going to make music, then we needed a place where it all could live. But that criticism was so counter-productive; by criticising guys being behind all these girls and pushing them to the front and saying we were just being used as a mascot or whatever, it almost takes any credit away from the roles the women have played in their image, their songwriting, and where they've got to now. A lot of the articles made those assumptions and really played down the parts that we'd played, so it was counter-feminist I guess.

PHOTO CREDIT: Maisie Cousins

The suspicion directed at PC Music is that it's all an inside joke that some people don't feel part of. Can you see that?

I can definitely say I'm not taking the piss out of pop music. I listen to pop music pretty much all day. It's not coming from a place of wanting to take the piss out of it at all. Also the music side of what I do sort of happened by accident. I've been musical my whole life—I used to play instruments at school—but I didn't think to myself, 'oh, you know what, I'm going to set out to be a pop star' or ‘a conceptual artist who criticises pop music.' When I was in my third year at university I was studying Fashion Communication, so I was doing a lot of image-making stuff, and I got friendly with A. G. Cook because we were working on the same magazine. So we started collaborating—he made a mix and I did a photoshoot to accompany it. It went from there. We made some tracks and then we were like, “What can we do with them?” So we uploaded them to Soundcloud. It wasn't like we'd planned anything out.

If you wanted to get your personality across but could only use one medium—either music or photography—which would encapsulate you better?

I think it would be music because you can understand what kind of a person I am. The best track for that is probably “Attachment.” That's the one that speaks to who I am the most. I think a lot of people are confused by the imagery because it's very hyper and shiny and glossed up and fake, but then the songs are more raw and emotional. 

How did the collaboration with Charli XCX on “Paradise” come about?

Quickly [laughs]. Charli basically got in touch and was like, “Oh by the way I'm putting out an EP, there's this song I worked on with SOPHIE, he told me you love it so I really want you to be on it and will you record it this week?” So obviously I said yes. I recorded it and sent it to her all within the space of two weeks. She'd already recorded a demo for it and she'd already written the song so she asked me to do it as a duet with her. SOPHIE's DJed it at quite a few different things, like Field Day and Pop Cube. It was a demo that they'd had for a little while that they both really liked. I loved it as well, so I was so excited when she asked me to be on it because out of all the things I knew they'd been working on I was obsessed with this one.

Charli's got a knack for taking more left-field stuff and trying to squeeze it into a mainstream place. Are you excited about the PC Music sound reaching a bigger audience?

Yeah, definitely. I'm also excited for A. G. [who Charli has also been in the studio with] and SOPHIE from a friend's perspective. It makes me feel really emotional—it's nice when you see your best friends doing really well and becoming successful. I think with Charli she maybe connects with us because she came from a similar place; I remember before she had a chart hit, I went to see her play at XOYO with Brooke Candy, so a lot of people who were into her music were quite underground. It's so nice that she's supportive of other people, I think that's really important.

What's your favourite line in the song?

[Sings] Sweet like a cherry drop, so please don't let it stop. It's so nice. We did some bits where we recorded some harmonies. You know how in my music, we also do a few fuck-y bits with sound or pitch, we've kept a little bit of that in, but in a more traditional pop way. So still a little bit wacky, but done through a harmony so it's a bit more pop-ready.

How do you think your love of pop music filters into your own music?

G. Cook knows the kind of music I love, which is like Mariah Carey and ‘90s and 2000s pop, and so some of the sounds he used were things he knew I really liked in the stuff I listened to. For example, in Mariah Carey's tracks there's like a chime-y twinkle, arpeggios down kind of thing. Little details like that get pulled into it from the pop music I like, and then also stuff from old school garage as well. I really like “Babycakes” by 3 Of A Kind so some of the synth sounds from that I'm really into”.

Moving onto another album from 6th October. The second and final album from this week you need to pre-order is Sufjan Stevens’ Javelin. You can go and pre-order it here. I would suggest people do, as it looks like it will be among the very best albums of the year! Such a prolific artist who has captivated people with his incredible music, his latest work is going to rank alongside his most accomplished and striking:

“Each track on Javelin starts intimately: the trickle of an acoustic guitar, the patter of a lidded piano, and the cascade of a coruscant arpeggio. And then, of course, there is that disarming voice, the throughline in one of the most eclectic catalogs of any songwriter this century - soft but strong, as if the very scenes of hurt and hope it is about to share have only galvanized it through the decades. Javelin pairs musical sweep with emotional breadth, an entire lifetime of feeling woven into 42-minutes. On Javelin, Sufjan, as you may know him best, returns: offering gorgeous if pained glimpses of himself, so that we may see ourselves more fully. This album is classic Sufjan. A must own”.

Let’s move along to a very busy 13th October. There are a few from this week I want to bring to your attention. The astonishing Irish-born CMAT prepares to release her hotly-anticipated second album, Crazymad, For Me. This is one that you really need to pre-order. Her songs are truthful, accessible and very funny. Brimming with charm and passion, this is an artist that is going to be releasing music for a very long time! It is going to be among this year’s most essential albums. CMAT is an extraordinary artist:

“Second album CrazyMad, For Me takes popstar CMAT through a reinvention of what came before: this is the grand statement of an ambitious mature sound, a textured sonic feel and details of a complex emotional and metaphorical landscape. “It’s an abstract break-up album… about what happens when you are still angry about something that happened 10 years ago.” It’s grand, full of hooks and picture-painting lyrics projected by her singular vocals. It’s the mainstream indie that CMAT loved as a teenager, filtered through 20th century country music, amplified by knowledge of 80s and 90s pop hits with a slide guitar and a camp twist. Complex, intimate and with influences far-flung across time and place, CrazyMad, For Me is an instant classic album for the broadest audience”.

Taking things in another direction, I would urge people to seek out is Goat’s Medicine. Pre-order this beauty, as the music of Goat is exotic, mysterious, entrancing, powerful, colourful, strange, beautiful…and everything in between! They are a collective with a distinct aura that every music fan needs to experience. Rough Trade explain what we can expect from their upcoming album:

“It is hard to know how many times the mythology and mystery of Goat’s backstory can be written about, but new release ‘Medicine’ does away with any need to dwell on the past, returning with a more introspective, slightly mellower psych-folk sound that remains recognisably them.

There is a consistently restrained, warm feel across the whole work, and the band suggest that the overall theme of the album is about “the impermanence of life in different ways: sickness, relationships, love, death and how our time is finite”.

At times the album’s sound has nods to classic Swedish 70s psych/prog/folk acts such as Arbete and Fritid, Charlie and Esdor and Träd, Gräs and Stenar. ‘Vakna’ takes on this influence, progressing across nearly six minutes of swaying, warping guitar solos, without ever breaking out into chaos.

The Medicine of the title may refer to a number of salves, or the value of relationships and love: “For our families, friends, society, this could be done through the use of psychedelics, through meditation, through learning from other people, staying curious and never settling for a ‘solid’ identity”.

Flute is foregrounded throughout, threading across several tracks from the opener ‘Impermanence And Death’. It duets elegantly with keening synth lines through the beautiful ‘You’ll Be Alright’, and leads the melody of the closing track ‘Tripping In The Graveyard’. ‘TSOD’, with its backdrop of sitar and acoustic guitar, has an indelible vocal melody that could be a lost George Harrison recording.

The title of the full album version of first single, ‘I Became The Unemployment Office’, comes from an expression for someone taking advantage of you. The joyous, echo-laden groove of penultimate track ‘Join The Resistance’ bursts into life and continues to build to a moment of release with a huge Sabbath-esque riff.

Whatever your dosage, and regardless of your remedy, it is now time to take your medicine”.

An album I really excited about comes from the sensational Holly Humberstone. One of our brightest talents, she releases Paint My Bedroom Black on 13th October. This is her debut album. One that she has poured her heart and soul into. Go and pre-order the album. It is a phenomenal work from an artist who is impossible to ignore. Such a strong and inspiring songwriter. If you have not heard Humberstone’s music before, I would suggest you get her debut album. It will tell you all you need to know about an amazing musician:

“Critically acclaimed and award winning singer songwriter Holly Humberstone releases her highly anticipated debut album Paint My Bedroom Black on Polydor/ Darkroom / Geffen. Always inspired by her environment and how that affects her sense of self andidentity, from her parent’s Haunted House to flatshares in London with The Walls Are Way To Thin, Paint My Bedroom Black represents Holly’s coming of age, growing from unknown singer at her parent’s piano to the most exciting alternative pop stars of her generation. The dark and other worldly space Holly has built and invited fans into, both sonically and visually, has been lucid and visceral, with the camera always on her shoulder, a lens into her chaotic thoughts and deep feelings”.

A couple more to get through for this week. Another stunning artist, Jamila Woods’ Water Made Us is required listening! An artist I have followed for a while now, like Humberstone, an amazing and memorable album cover is the first thing we see. The second sensation is discovering music that is soul-moving and unforgettable. Go and pre-order this wonderful album. It is one that, once heard, you will want to revisit again and again:

“On her expansive new album Water Made Us, Chicago musician and poet Jamila Woods shines anew as she asks the question, what does it mean to fully surrender into love? Across Water Made Us, Jamila embraces new genres, playful melodies, and hypnotizing wordplay, as she wades through the exhilarating tumult of love’s wreckage and refuge.

While 2017’s Heavn saw Jamila celebrating her community within a lineage of Black feminist movement organizing, and 2019’s Legacy! Legacy! reframed her life’s experiences through the storied personas of iconic Black and brown artists, Water Made Us is self-revelatory in an entirely new way, making this her most personal album yet. Made together with LA-based producer McClenney, and boasting features from longtime friends and Chicago natives such as Saba and Peter CottonTale, Water Made Us is a sprawling and intimate portrait of self-reflection, cleverly designed to echo the different stages of a relationship: the early days of easy compromising, flirtatiousness, and fun; the careful negotiation through moments of conflict or hurt; the grieving of something lost; and the tender realization at the end of it all that the person who is gone never really leaves, but stays with you as you find yourself ready to try again, refreshed and reassured.

The album’s title - taken from a line in album highlight “Good News” – is a subtle reference to the famous Toni Morrison quote “All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.” It’s this sentiment – of memory, place, and returning – that acts as a pillar for the album’s arc. Water Made Us reminds us that at its best love is a warm, still ocean. Deep, shimmering, and endless in its wonder. And at its worst love can be a riptide that takes us so far away from ourselves we can hardly find our way back, hardly even remember how to swim. And yet Jamila surrenders to this surf - every wave and undertow – because maybe even the most painful endings can in fact be an invitation that calls her back home, back to shore, back to herself”.

The last album from 13th October that you need to get involved with is Margo Price’s Strays II. Again, you might not know Price’s music, though I give you a gold guarantee. This is an artist that you will need to follow and hear. Go and pre-order Strays II. I have been a fan of Margot Price for a while now, so I know that she is going to deliver something phenomenal with her upcoming album. She is ensuring that October is a wonderful month for new music:

“Strays II expands on Margo Price’s 2023 opus Strays with nine brand new songs, all recorded at Strays producer Jonathan Wilson’s Topanga studio during the same life-changing sessions as the rest of the album– and partially written amidst the formative, six-day psilocybin trip that Margo Price and Jeremy Ivey took the summer prior. On Strays II Margo Price is re-joined by Strays collaborators Jonathan Wilson and Mike Campbell, along with new collaborators Buck Meek of Big Thief, and singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ny Oh.. Together they dive deeper into the sacrifices it takes to find freedom, the grit it takes to make it, and the consequences that come with all of it”.

Let’s move ahead to 20th October. Four albums from this week that you will want to discover and play. The first comes from Bombay Bicycle Club. The established and acclaimed British band release My Big Day then. Go and pre-order this gem. A band who always bring something incredible to the masses, this is going to be another smash. There is not a tonne of information available about it. That said, this is what Rough Trade say:

“Heading back to the band’s studio in London, Bombay Bicycle Club have lovingly crafted album six – My Big Day. It’s a powerful, expansive body of work, replete with an irrepressible dose of joy. My Big Day also found the band’s studio door wedged open for a collaborative experience, inviting the likes of Jay Som, Nilüfer Yanya, and Holly Humberstone and Damon Albarn who all feature. On first listen, Bombay Bicycle Club have opened up the curtains and let this revelatory set of vibrant, joyous compositions bask in the sunshine. It’s an album that means business, sculpted by one of Britain’s best guitar bands”.

The debut album from Lush’s co-found Emma Anderson, Pearlies is intriguingly titled. I am really looking forward to it. Released via Sonic Cathedral, everyone needs to pre-order this album. I am going to be very interested to hear what the amazing Anderson offers on her debut solo outing. It is going to be another album that will nestle among the best of this year:

“Following the news that all three Lush albums are going to be reissued, Emma Anderson, the band’s co-founder, releases her debut solo album, Pearlies, via Sonic Cathedral.

One of the most underrated British songwriters to emerge from the era that encompassed shoegaze and Britpop, she has teamed up with producer James Chapman (aka Maps) for this collection that combines effervescent electronic pop with psych and folk textures with lyrics covering themes such as confronting your fears, embracing independence and moving on in life. It arrives fully formed with a burnished beauty (aided by the mastering skills of Heba Kadry) that belies its somewhat protracted creation, which began with Emma feeling disillusioned after Lush’s 2016 reunion came to an abrupt end. Left with songs and bits of music originally intended for the band, she began working with cellist and string arranger Audrey Riley and Robin Guthrie, formerly of the Cocteau Twins, both of whom encouraged her to sing her own songs. Covid put a temporary halt on proceedings, but the decision had been made.

When Sonic Cathedral introduced her to James Chapman at the start of 2022, Pearlies quickly took shape and blossomed into a masterpiece, the perfect mix of Emma’s incredible, idiosyncratic songwriting and James’ electronic production nous. Plus, a little extra guitar magic on four tracks courtesy of Richard Oakes from Suede. The finished album has somehow written its own narrative. By her own admission, Emma tends to write words and “see what comes out”, but Pearlies seems to tell the story of her decision to go it alone, with opener ‘I Was Miles Away’ posing the question: “See if I make it on my own”. The rest of the album provides the answer as it takes in everything from the unexpectedly funky first single ‘Bend The Round’, to folky finger-picking and film theme references, via psych leaning electronic pop reminiscent of Goldfrapp or Melody’s Echo Chamber. It concludes with ‘Clusters’, a stunning, Stereolab-style groove which begins with the line “and now the party’s over, the music’s at the end”. Thankfully, that is not the case. This incredible album is just the start of Emma’s long-awaited solo journey”.

The fantastic Pip Blom is going to release her new album, Bobbie, on 20th October. This is one you’ll want to pre-order. Definitely an artist who ranks among the best on the scene right now, it doe seem that the latest album was a chance to re-centre and start again. It is going to be a slightly new direction from Pip Blom. I am really interested to hear what Bobbie offers. An album that I guarantee you will like:

“For her third album, Bobbie, Dutch singer-songwriter Pip Blom decided to rip it up and start again. After making her name as one of the brightest indie rock singers around through two albums – 2019 debut Boat and 2021 follow-up Welcome Break – and a lauded live show honed over gruelling years of touring, the new album sees her take a delightful left turn into thumping, carefree synth pop. This 12-track collection features collaborations with Personal Trainer and Alex Kapranos”.

Let’s finish off 20th October with The Darker the Shadow the Brighter the Light. The new album from The Streets, the Mike Skinner-driven project is going to get plenty of attention. Listening back to his classic 2002 debut, Original Pirate Material, how many people thought that The Streets would be making music over twenty years later?! I guess genius was there from the start, but few would have predicted such a long and rich career. You will want to pre-order an album that is very much business as usual from The Streets:

“The album is a classic Streets album - filled with Skinner’s trademark lyrical wizardry and beats honed over a decade of building his other career as a legitimate bass/rap DJ in clubs - all songs written by Skinner but featuring vocal contributions from longtime collaborators Kevin Mark Trail and Robert Harvey, as well as a track featuring Teef.

The songs on the album soundtrack the film and also play the role of narrator of the film at times - and whilst neither the album or film exist without each other - both can be enjoyed separately”.

Even though 27th October is quite a busy one for albums, there are three that I want to focus on. The first is Angie McMahon’s Light, Dark, Light Again. She is an artist quite new to my ears, though I have heard her music and am now excited for McMahon’s forthcoming album. It is one that many others will want to pre-order. If you need more detail before making your decision, then this is what you can expect from Light, Dark, Light Again:

“To make her new album, Light, Dark, Light Again, Angie McMahon had to walk through the fire. The Melbourne singer-songwriter’s second LP was written from the ashes of a tough but transformative few years of relationship changes, private breakdowns and core-shaking revelations about self. At times, McMahon felt like falling apart. But instead, she pushed through and found that hope, joy and relief lies on the other side of pain. Light, Dark, Light Again is a record about facing the fear and learning it can be a portal to something bigger and better. It finds that the only certainty in life is that everything ends, and everything begins again – that there is life and death and life again, that there is light and dark and light again”.

Two more albums before we wrap up. If you want a sense of what is coming out in October – and I have missed out – then you can see them here. Taylor Swift’s 1989 (Taylor’s Version) is among this year’s most anticipated albums. Go and pre-order a copy. You will want to hear this. Even if you are not a big Swift fan, it is going to be a remarkable album. Re-recording the 2014 album, fans around the world are really pumped about this. The new release of 1989 makes it Swift's fourth re-recorded album. It contains twenty-one, five of which are designated "From the Vault" - indicating unreleased songs that were written for 1989 but did not make the final track list in 2014.

The final album that you need to check out is DJ Shadow’s Action Adventure. The legendary U.S. D.J. not only gives us an album with an amazing cover; he has also put together one that could rank among his best work. For that reason, do make sure you secure your copy of an album that you will not want to pass you by:

“Action Adventure is DJ Shadow's seventh solo LP, an inward-looking project, made for Shadow alone without any collaborators. DJ Shadow explains, “This album is about my relationship to music. My life as a collector and curator. All my records and tapes.”“Ozone Scraper” is the lead single of the album campaign. It represents the feeling of transportation, of jet engines lifting the passenger somewhere impossible. It's one of DJ Shadow's favorites on the album, as it's an invitation to strap in and also sets the table for the kind of deep listening Shadow loves”.

I would normally put this feature out at the start of September but, as I am excited about the albums coming out then, I wanted to get a bit of a head start. I am sure there are some treasures above that you will ant to put some money aside for. From CMAT and Taylor Swift to Bombay Bicycle Club and DJ Shadow, it is an eclectic and quality-laden month! October is shaping up to be a very special one. Of course, more albums might be announced between now and then – so keep your eyes peeled! The albums above are ones that I feel…

YOU can’t go without.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Mnelia

FEATURE:

 

Spotlight

  

Mnelia

_________

I respect an artist…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Bella Howard

who puts a lot of effort into their social media channels and official website as much as the music. That is the case with Mnelia. The London-based artist has a great and retro homepage, but she is also someone who is shaking up British R&B. There are a few interviews I want to bring into this feature. Going back to 2021, I don’t know if I had heard Mnelia back then. I discovered her music earlier this year I think. I was instantly struck. It compelled me to discover more about an artist who clearly is going to go places. Already seducing and thrilling with the Closure Tapes E.P. released in May, she is primed for big things. I am going to come to some interviews from this year. First, NOTION spotlighted the remarkable Mnelia back in 2021. She was really started to take off after the 2020 release of her E.P., After 6:

“Breaking through the constant churn of new music is Mnelia. The rising artist’s nostalgic, 90s R&B is a welcome oasis in the current music landscape, much of which is inflected with the same sounds. But the North Londoner’s irresistible tunes are pinning her as the next queen of the UK R&B scene.

Sharing her latest single, “Senseless”, takes Mnelia’s R&B vibe and blends it with a pop appeal. It’s hard not to get hooked as she sings about losing her senses when she’s near her lover. “I’m not the type of girl to forget how to act/ But boy you got me losing all of my senses”, she sings coyly.  It’s a seductive, bubbly number that further cements Mnelia as one to watch this year.

“Senseless” is Mnelia’s first single after her debut EP, ‘After 6’, dropped last year. But it was “Say Yeah” that acted as the launchpad for Mnelia. With candyfloss vocals that could make Ariana Grande jealous, it’s a crime that we haven’t been able to get down to the Y2K tune in the club.

Notion caught up with Mnelia to chat about her new single and its accompanying music video, dream collabs, showing people what she’s capable of and much more.

Firstly, congrats on your new single “Senseless”! It’s such a bop. How long had it been in the works before release?

Thank you! It was originally made in November 2019, actually before “Say Yeah”. I wouldn’t really say it was “in the works” though as I made it a while ago and left it to simmer until I felt as though it was the right time to drop it. And thankfully it worked out well, as it’s the reception has been really positive which is always a

The music video is also such a vibe. Where did the idea for the concept come from, and what was it like filming it?

It was lovely filming it! Because I filmed it with TP (Terry Paul) who’s always my go-to guy. Honestly, it’s always a collaborative effort, featuring myself, Terry (Director), Meghan (Producer) & Komali (A&R).

How has the past year been for you creatively?

The past year has been insane! I haven’t really had a past year “creatively” more so I’ve had moments where I’m able to work a lot, and then less so, and vice versa. There’s definitely been a lot of adjusting, but it’s been good.

You had a breakthrough with your song “Say Yeah”, which came out last year. Looking back, did you expect the song to be so successful?

I never expected the track to do so well, but honestly, I feel like I say that all the time with each of my releases! Normally I don’t really have an expectation, I just get on with it. I prefer to make the music and allow the songs to do what they’re destined to do, and hopefully, it resonates with people.

Last year you also dropped the EP ‘After 6’. Can you talk us through the themes and inspirations for the record?

I wanted each song to encompass a different dynamic, especially with what I was going through (pregnancy) at the time. No one knew what was happening behind the scenes, so I wanted to make a 4 track EP and let people know that I’m capable of more than just “Say Yeah”.

If you could collab with any artist – dead or alive – who would it be and why?

Alive would be Lenny Kravitz. Dead would be Duke Ellington. I love Jazz, and specifically his style of Jazz! I wouldn’t collaborate with an artist people expect me to.. as that could happen naturally within the industry. I feel like I would go out of pocket and work with someone I wouldn’t normally get the opportunity to work with. That way I would have a song that’s an “experience” and not just an mp3 file or bounce from a session. – Even though I know my cousin wants me to say Aaliyah!

Where do you find the greatest forms of validation?

My sons smile! And my mum, she tries to act cool and proper chilled at times when I expect her to jump out of her seat. So really, when does get excited and my mum admits she doe like it / something I know it’s sick and is something impressive.

PHOTO CREDIT: Kiran Gidda

If you could rewind to one moment in your life, what would it be?

Hearing my son laugh for the first time! That was a crazy moment and I couldn’t believe it. It instantly became my favourite sound in the world. And also Merky Fest. Being in a place where music, sun and enjoying with my friends was the only concern was a good time.

What would your advice be for artists starting out?

DO IT! Even if it seems scary, just do it, or someone else will. You don’t want to look back on life with any regrets. It’s important to believe in yourself – a lot of your success will come from believing internally that you can get it done.

What can we expect next from Mnelia?

Have some more babies! Joking! More music, more sick music and “experiences”! I intend on being an “experience” to anyone that comes across me. Through my music, brand, live shows, personality and overall human stand point. I’m learning every day and hopefully, I can continue to inspire others to come”.

Mnelia has been on the scene a while now. The north west London artist has a child, and she is making some of the best music around. All of this deserves respect. She wants world domination. Going from strength to strength. I think that she will definitely take over the music world. Someone who knows what she wants and is going after it! Earlier this year, GRM Daily. If you do not follow this incredible artist, then you will want to get your ears around her music. I am a little late to the party, though I am making up for that lost time now:

“What would you say has been the biggest challenge so far in your career? 

“Getting over myself. I’m too conscious of everything I do, from the way I walk to the way I talk, or I was. But I had to really learn how to get over myself. And also, I think, in the middle of that, because I had a child, the identity crisis that I experienced was a bit mad, because before I had my son, I was like, I don’t know what I’m doing. And then I had my son, and I was like, wow, I really don’t know. 

“All I know is that music is a constant, and it’s something that I will wake up every single week I want to know where I’m going studio, so I’m making that song because to me the most rewarding thing I experienced throughout life apart from having a child now, is leaving the session and listening to the bounce and being like rah you made that? like yeah are we going to make something better? 

“So I would say definitely identity crisis and stepping over the obstacle of insecurity, which is something to hard deal with. I think it amplifies itself when you’re in people’s faces, 1000%, but I also just think whether you’re in your bedroom or whether you’re on a TV screen, your insecurities are your insecurities. So having to be like, whoa I’m scared. But it’s a step-by-step thing. I’m starting to realise you’ll never really ever be 100% like, yeah, I’m that person because there are days that are built to knock you. But like on the other side of that day, that I’m starting to get used to that.”

 One of the most interesting collabs on there is the KwengFace collab on “White Lies”, how did that come about?

“It was kind of random, but I don’t believe in random things. I genuinely feel like fate aligns itself. Like, I feel like we were always going to end up crossing paths one way or another. We have too many synchronicities for it to just not have been like that. So, my A&R at the time, she goes around London playing my music essentially, like she’s one of the biggest cheerleaders and she must have gone to a session with his manager, played the song once…and the next thing I knew I just got a bounce, I didn’t hear Kwengface is gonna jump on your song. I didn’t hear anything. There was no prelude. It was straight into it. Kwengface is on your song.

“I listened to it. I was like, is he singing? Like, the man’s singing. I was like, no matter what happens, I have to do something with this. Just because I genuinely feel like for someone who does drill to step so out of pocket on an R&B song, and actually sing with his full chest. I said, you know, big up yourself. Honestly, I have the utmost respect for Kweng. I love him so much. He’s legit my brother. And I feel like it was almost like we made the song like five years prior, had known each other for 10 years, like that was the most effortless collaboration I think I’ve ever had in my life.” 

“He made it so, so smooth. And I never have rocky collaborations. Anytime I ever, always so smooth. But that one, takes the cream, it was just amazing. It’s one for the boys…I make sure that a lot of my music is digestible for them.” 

Sticking on the topic of collabs and stuff, who would you say is your dream collaboration? 

“Lauryn Hill. My answer has changed so many times over the years, but I think I’ve come to realise that so Frank Ocean is the love of my life, like from top to bottom, that man with every single fibre of my being, every single time. He’s so sacred to me that I just wouldn’t even want to, he’s that one person I wouldn’t even meet, like I love you so much that I don’t want to meet and taint any perception. But for me, Lauryn Hill, is legit the epitome of artistry. From her demeanour to the way she articulates herself, her bank of knowledge, the way she conducts herself and makes music.” 

“In the UK, Angel, WSTRN I would love to collab with, Ava would love to collab with, Craig David I’d love to collab with, if I could collab with Sade.”

Who are some of your biggest inspirations in the music industry and music in general?

“Definitely Frank, definitely Brandy, definitely Jasmine Sullivan, definitely Craig David. My dad, though, he’s not in the music industry, but my dad was at the epicentre of my musical influence because he was the first person to introduce me to music, he was the first person to introduce me to singing, he was the first person that mentored me, like my dad would sing in church and I would just copy him. Like, I remember I never used to be able to sing lead. I would always harmonize because my dad would be attached to harmonizing. But like, he is the epitome of my musical influence. That’s one thing that I can never take away from that man. He got me here.” 

What was the process of putting the EP Closure Tapes together like? 

“I’d be lying if I said it was a smooth slope. I had about two projects before I finished. So, 2020, I dropped After 6. And that was kind of like, I’ve been away for a second, only because you guys didn’t know I was pregnant, but here you go. Then early 2021, I went into the studio, and I started constructing a project. But I started to realise that because I had taken so much time out to be pregnant, I hadn’t lived life enough and the project didn’t feel true. It just felt like a cop-out. And one thing I’m never going to do is just give you a result because you want it, or like necessarily be like, people are asking for this, I’m just going to put as much of myself as I can in it as possible.

“So I had a project and I completely scrapped it, threw her in the bin. And then the process of getting back into creating Closure Tapes came at a time where there was like a massive turnaround for me. I had new management, my son was about to turn 1, I’d just split from my partner and it was like, there was so much going on and it was like this is the level of life that I kind of needed to be experiencing in order to put it in the music and finally make music of substance”.

I am going to wrap up now. Closure Tapes has put Mnelia on a new plain. A different level. Her finest and most complete work to date, she grows in confidence and stature with every new release. I cannot wait to see where she goes from here. The E.P. is getting buzz from the likes of CLASH. There are some great and really deep interviews out there. Mnelia talks passionately about her music. Proud of what she has achieved and eager to connect with listeners and for that music to remembered, here is someone who really wants to put her stamp on the music industry – which she has been doing already:

“Starting with the name of the E.P. Closure Tapes, how did that come about?

Everything pertaining to this project was a sequence of gradual revelations, which is funny because the first track on the project is Revelation. It has been quite a full circle because I didn’t look for the name. All I knew about this project was that I wanted it to reflect everything I had gone through. And what I was going through was heartbreak, fresh motherhood, and dealing with the new signee at a major label and all of these things in a pandemic. And the one thing that everyone kept asking me was ‘What do you want?’ And I would have this question asked all the time, and at a point in time, I just said to myself that I want closure. I want to understand why things in my life are happening and how they are happening like this, and I want to have that understanding and just let them be. And then, I realized halfway through the process that it wasn’t closure that I was looking for, but it was closure that I was experiencing. I knew this was a chapter in my life that I would never be able ever to leave behind. It will be something I’m going to revisit in my mind consistently. So, I started to get into the imagery of what that looked like for me, and a massive part of my childhood was that I used to listen to cassettes a lot and would record myself on them. Even with technology now, I’ve carried that on because I use my voice notes as cassettes in the sense that I will voice note everything that I’m going through, which is what I did throughout the entire process of where I was in my life. So my voice memos became my cassette tapes, and then, putting those two things together, I called the project Closure Tapes.

Tell us how and where this production of this EP started for you?

There wasn’t a particular point where I said I was going to do a project. What happened was a sequence of events that led me to a breaking point. And at that breaking point, I was greeted by myself. And it was the part of me that I’d neglected; it was my emotions, my dietary habits at the time. It was every single part of my world that I had allowed to crash. So, I had to reach rock bottom for this project to exist. It started when I had a year, and I didn’t know how I would make it alive out of that year because I didn’t know what I was doing. I was using music to try and soften the blows of what was going on, and it became an escape mechanism in the sense that I wasn’t actually dealing with what was going on, and so even in making music, it wasn’t even something I was necessarily enjoying at the time. So, I had to process that and figure that out, and in doing so, I got new management, and in the process of getting new management, I found a team full of people that understood my vision. I could lean on them and worry about rehabilitating myself for a second. And it was really a thing because there were days when I couldn’t even go to the studio, and everything felt so difficult, and they helped me get through and push it. The first song I wrote was Closure, which ended up being the first single and half of the project title. And all of that came from the process of me finally not running away from myself. The one thing I wanted was to be vulnerable, and that’s what our project allowed me to do. So, it’s been a blessing to be able to make it known.

How has motherhood and being a new mother changed and impacted you as an artist?

A child’s innocence is always the most inspirational thing about them because they’re so naïve that they don’t know a thing. But yet still, they’re just they’re so keen and so eager to live the best life that they know. Ro makes me want to wake up every day and have the best time; it doesn’t matter what we’re doing. He’s just a little hub of love. He reminds me how much love is important to me. He constantly tests my capacity, from patience to happiness, when I feel like I can’t be any prouder. He makes me proud. When I feel like I can’t be tired, he makes me more tired. He is just there just for me to explore all the extremities. He consistently reminds me that I’m not in control and that I have to be accountable, try my hardest, and hold myself responsible for what I’m responsible for. But to be a child is to be free, to be experimental, to be brave, to love without limits. To know, without knowing anything, but to go and act like the world is yours, and I feel like some of these things have translated into how I make music and made this project.

You worked with several people on this E.P. including Bellah, Joyce Wrice, Miraa May and Kwengface. Can you talk us through collaboration process and how you brought them on baord?

Everyone on this project has poured into me one way or another, somebody that was a part of my growth process. I take the process of making music very, very, very, very delicately because music is one thing that my emotions are always so sensitive to. Miraa (May’s) son and Ro are best friends, so it’s effortless for me to be cool. I’m just going to have her be on the project. I didn’t even have to think about it. And Bellah is Ro’s godmother. Those two girls are the two who helped me with my breakup the most, apart from my best friend. But In terms of everyone that I collaborated with, from the girls, even down to Joyce Wrice, who someone that I adore. Some of the people that she frequently collaborates with were the ones that even kickstarted the process of me realizing that I was doing a project. We were in L.A. when we made Lalala, that was a big turnaround moment for me because it was the first time I’d gone to L.A. to work, and I made that song and was so proud of myself. From top to bottom, everybody just came together so well, and all the collaborations they’re just so rife, and they were all well-placed. Ro starts the project and his godmother ends the project. My mom is in the middle of the project.

Ari PenSmith was someone that I was so inspired by when I first started making music. When we made the song Déjà Vu I was crying on his shoulder and I had no clue I was going to be able to relate to the song in the way I did. Working with everybody it was just a spiderweb of beautiful connections and beautiful people that care so much about music that it wasn’t necessarily about what the album became and it was more about being able to have a space for my honesty, transparency, and vulnerability. I was actually able to be in sessions and cry and be with people I’ve cried with because everyone on this project knows me deeply, and they know me well”.

I am going to wrap up now. Go and check out the amazing Mnelia. She has released one of the best E.P.s of the year with Closure Tapes. I would really encourage everyone to support her and check out the music. A gem and star in the British R&B scene, I think that Mnelia is going to be a worldwide name before you know it. Someone who I feel gives her everything to music, this commitment and tireless work deserves reward and long-term success. If you have not found Mnelia and she is a new name to you, do make sure that you…

LISTEN to her now.

_____________

Follow Mnelia

FEATURE: A Time for Change and Activation… Spotlighting a Crucial Event, Overheated II

FEATURE:

 

 

A Time for Change and Activation…

  

Spotlighting a Crucial Event, Overheated II

_________

FRESH from…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Billie Eilish at Leeds Festival on Friday, 25th August/PHOTO CREDIT: Matthew Baker/Getty Images

storming Reading and Leeds Festival over the weekend, a hugely important event next week sees the U.S. genius make an appearance in London. It happens on 30th August. I am gutted that I won’t be able to go. Thanks to Mark White at White Label Media in N.YC. for directing me to this crucial gathering and discussion. Before offering some thoughts, here are some more details about the upcoming event – one that is going to provide a lot of thought-provoking discussion (you can follow Overheated II on Instagram):

“Billie Eilish and Evoca Foundation team up for Overheated II

The all-day event focused on climate change in partnership with FEED + SUPPORT, takes place on August 30th in London’s Flipper’s Roller Boogie Place.  Overheated will be hosted by BBC’s Abbie McCarthy and features special guests such as Alice Eady, Brother Spirit, Dominique Palmer, Liv Simpliciano, Maggie Baird (mother of both Eilish and brother Finneas), Samata Pattinson, and Tori Tsui.

The highly acclaimed documentary Overheated starring Billie Eilish, produced by Evoca Foundation Founder Naza Alakija will be front and center. It tells the story of climate change through the eyes of indigenous people on the frontlines of climate change who make up only 5% of the earth’s population yet protect 80% of its biodiversity.

Ms. Alakija says that since last year’s highly successful Overheated event, “we’ve already seen rising temperatures, more widespread, deadly fires alongside melting ice caps –time isn’t running as we used to say. it’s run out! We have do all we can to try to mitigate the colossal and catastrophic climate mess we are now in”

Running from 10am to 5pm, there will be a special guest appearance from Billie Eilish. In addition, the event will be live-streamed globally via Eilish’s Official YouTube Channel in partnership with Mercury Studios.

If you or your colleagues would like to cover or attend Overheated, please don’t hesitate to reach out”.

Following last year’s highly coveted, multi-day climate focused event in London, OVERHEATED will return on Wednesday, August 30th to Flipper’s Roller Boogie Palace in West London from 10am to 5pm, bringing climate activists, musicians, and other leading voices together for a day filled with discussion, community building and resources to help tackle the climate crisis.

The event will be hosted by BBC’s Abbie McCarthy and will feature panel discussions and special guests Alice Eady, Brother Spirit, Dominique Palmer, Liv Simpliciano, Maggie Baird, Samata Pattinson, Tori Tsui, with more guest to be announced very soon.

One of the OVERHEATED co-founders, Billie Eilish will also be making an appearance and speaking to attending guests. The event will be live-streamed globally via Eilish’s Official YouTube Channel in partnership with Mercury Studios.

Complimentary plant-based meals provided by Neat Burger will be available to all 500 attendees, and skating for all is available to enjoy when panels conclude.

Tickets for OVERHEATED go on-sale Wednesday, August 16th at 10am BST via http://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/

For more information go to www.supportandfeed.com

About Support + Feed

Founded by Maggie Baird, mother of Billie Eilish and Finneas, SUPPORT + FEED combats the climate crisis and food insecurity by working toward a global shift to an equitable plant-based food system. Driving culture change through multiple strategies, the program has reached global audience awareness of 95 million, and delivered over 300,000 meals & pantry items through a consistent presence in 11 major US cities, and through partnerships in the EU, UK, and Australia, with a growing footprint in London.
 Learn more at https://supportandfeed.org/

About Flipper’s

Founded in 1979 by Ian ‘Flipper’ Ross, Flipper’s Roller Boogie Palace was the stuff of Los Angeles legend. It was reborn in 2022, as a new venture from Liberty Ross and Kevin Wall, in partnership with Usher, not only as an electric place to skate on two continents —but as an entertainment venue, apparel line, pro shop, and beacon for all things roller skating culture. In April 2022, Flipper’s Roller Boogie Palace opened at The Rink at Rockefeller Center as a place to celebrate roller skating and the growing subculture dedicated to self-expression and creative movement. Flipper's returned to Rockefeller Center this past April for its second season, to bring roller skating back to the heart of New York City through September 2023. In November 2022, Flipper’s opened a 34,000 sq ft flagship venue in the heart of White City, London, bringing the brand’s “less scroll, more roll” philosophy to new regions around the globe.
For more information: https://www.flippers.world”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Naza Alakja

You can join the watchlist for Wednesday’s event here. It is something that I would urge everyone to do. It is essential viewing. Here is a quote from Naza Alakija.:

“Overheated harnesses the power of art, music, conversation and storytelling to bring the climate crisis to forefront of our shared consciousness, and inspires us to consider the role that each of us plays in the fight against climate change. As a platform that convenes perspectives, experiences, individuals and communities from across the world, Overheated connects us through creativity. Our overheating planet presents the greatest challenge of our time, but we believe that bringing together vision, imagination and resources is a critical step in forging a bright future for all”.

I have put as much information in here as possible. Go check out as much as you can relating to Overheated II. We are in a situation now where climate change makes the news weekly. Artists such as Billie Eilish, ANOHNI, and Ellie Goulding are compelled to bring attention to a vital cause. Although there are some news outlets stating blaming climate change for so much is lazy, it is clear that abnormal weather, wildfires, floods, natural disasters, droughts and so many catastrophic events we are witnessing around the world is because of global warming. From issue in colder climbs to raging wildfires in Canada, people cannot be ignorant and blind to climate change. I think it is vital that events like Overheated II are supported and shared. It is great that a lot of young people are getting involved! It is also important that more artists and people in the music industry share their voice about climate change. It affects us all. Vinyl pressing plants, international travel and almost everything in the music industry has an impact on the climate. Although there are eco-friendly cassettes and vinyl plants are trying to greener, we all need to discuss ways in which music production and travel can be less harmful. With artists having this huge platform, there needs to be more activation through their music and interviews. Billie Eilish is a worldwide artist whose backing and passion will definitely help change things. We need to ignore disinformation and climate change deniers. Be aware that our planet is struggling – but it is something we can help reverse if we act immediately. Get governments to be more aware of the damage being done. Make them conscious of the devastation that is being wrought. I wanted to spotlight Overheated II as, on 30th August, this incredible coming-together happens in London. I would urge everyone out there to get involved and share the event online. It is crucial that everyone does as much…

AS they can.

FEATURE: Diamonds and Pearls: New Life and Expansion of Prince and The New Power Generation’s Underrated 1991 Gem

FEATURE:

 

 

Diamonds and Pearls

  

New Life and Expansion of Prince and The New Power Generation’s Underrated 1991 Gem

_________

THE fourteenth studio album from Prince…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Prince performing in Minneapolis, MN in 1991/PHOTO CREDIT: Ken Regan

and the first with his new band The New Power Generation, this never got the credit it deserves. Diamonds and Pearls remains one of the late genius’s most underrated works. Following 1990’s Graffiti Bridge – where there are songs called New Power Generation and Part 1 and New Power Generation, Part 2 -, it started a great run that would then lead to 1992’s immortal Love Symbol. I feel like Diamonds and Pearls has been overlooked and seen as an album with only a couple of great songs. We all know singles like the title track, Gett Off, and Money Don't Matter 2 Night, and yet there are some incredible deep cuts. Prince’s legendary Vault keeps offering an inexplicably large amount of music. You wonder if the man ever took a day off in his life! I will come to my thoughts about an album, why Diamonds and Pearls deserves more attention, and what might come next from the late legend’s archive. A new reissue has been confirmed. It offers a treasure trove of unreleased material and concert footage. You can pre-order it here, but I wanted to drop in some extensive detail about a release every Prince fan should investigate:

“PAISLEY PARK ENTERPRISES, IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

SONY MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT AND WARNER RECORDS

ANNOUNCES EXPANDED REISSUE OF

PRINCE & THE NEW POWER GENERATION’S

MULTI-PLATINUM ALBUM DIAMONDS AND PEARLS

SUPER DELUXE FORMATS FEATURE 47 PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED AUDIO TRACKS AND OVER TWO HOURS OF LIVE FILMED CONCERT FOOTAGE IN HIGH DEFINITION

PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED TRACKS

“ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS”

“INSATIABLE (EARLY MIX – FULL VERSION)”

AVAILABLE NOW VIA ALL DIGITAL DOWNLOAD / STREAMING PLATFORMS

LISTEN HERE

NEW DOLBY ATMOS MIX OF DIAMONDS AND PEARLS TO BE RELEASED ON

AUDIOPHILE BLU-RAY.

STRICTLY LIMITED EDITION, NUMBERED 7” SINGLES BOXED SET,

AVAILABLE NOW EXCLUSIVELY FROM THE OFFICIAL PRINCE STORE

SUPER DELUXE EDITION / DELUXE EDITION / REMASTERED ALBUM

AVAILABLE ON OCTOBER 27

PRE-ORDER ALBUM HERE

“You have a lot of artists today that have the ability to release four or five albums in the span of 18 months. Prince was already there decades ago.”

Chuck D, 2023

August 24, 2023 (Minneapolis, MN) – Diamonds And Pearls is the thirteenth studio album by Prince, and was the first with his new backing band, The New Power Generation. Featuring six massive international singles, including the hits “Gett Off”, “Cream”, and the iconic title track, the album was a worldwide smash reaching multi-platinum status in the USA and the UK, where it remains his best-selling album.

This October 27, Paisley Park Enterprises, in partnership with Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Records, will reissue Diamonds And Pearls via all physical, digital, and streaming partners, with the classic album remastered for the very first time, and featuring 47 previously unreleased tracks, as well as a previously unreleased 2+ hours of video concert performances from Prince’s legendary vault. Pre-order HERE

The reissue suite will be comprised of the following formats:

Super Deluxe Edition (7CD+Blu-ray / 12LP+Blu-ray / audio-only download and streaming)

Deluxe Edition (2CD / 4LP 180g vinyl)

Remastered album (1CD / 2LP / 2LP 180g clear “Diamond” vinyl / download and streaming)

Following the successful release of the 1999 Super Deluxe Edition (2019), and Sign O’ The Times Super Deluxe Edition (2020), the Diamonds And Pearls Super Deluxe Edition represents the third deep dive into Prince’s vault. It includes a total of 75 audio tracks across 7x CDs and 12x 180g vinyl records.

The set offers a newly remastered version of the album, plus 15 of the incredible remixes and B-sides from the era, including the never commercially released “Gett Off (Damn Near 10 Min.)” mix. The Super Deluxe Edition also features 33 previously unheard studio gems from Prince’s Illustrious vault, ranging from alternate versions of album tracks, to numbers Prince gave away to other artists, and songs recorded while on the road in 1990.

 Prince & The NPG previewed the Diamonds And Pearls Tour at Prince’s Minneapolis club, Glam Slam, on January 11, 1992. The sweaty, sold-out, last-minute show captures the sheer joy and sense of endless possibility that came to define this era. This previously unreleased live concert performance has been mixed from the 24 track master and rounds out the audio content of the 7CD and 12LP sets.

This same previously unreleased concert is also presented in stunning 2K video on the Blu-ray disc that accompanies both Super Deluxe Edition formats, in Stereo, 5.1 Dolby True HD, and Dolby ATMOS audio formats. The Blu-ray also features Prince & The New Power Generation’s performance at The Special Olympics at the Metrodome in Minneapolis in July 1991 (also in Stereo, 5.1, and ATMOS), as well as a previously unseen soundcheck. The Blu-ray is completed by the long out of print Diamonds And Pearls Video Collection, originally released on VHS and LaserDisc in 1993.

The 120-page hardback book which accompanies the SDE set features unseen photos by Randee St. Nicholas, and essays by: author & broadcaster Andrea Swensson; Archivist and Senior Researcher for the Prince Estate Duane Tudahl; British music critic and Prince expert Jason Draper; De Angela L. Duff, an Industry Professor at NYU Tandon School of Engineering in Brooklyn; Social Media Personality KaNisa Williams; and an introduction from Public Enemy founder, Chuck D.

The Diamonds And Pearls Super Deluxe Edition holds a magnifying glass to the prolific output of this truly unique musician, songwriter, producer, and performer who started the 1990s writing and recording at such a rapid pace that his next album would be practically complete by the time the Diamonds And Pearls Tour debuted in Tokyo that April.

In addition, there will be a brand-new Dolby ATMOS mix of Diamonds And Pearls. This marks the very first time a Prince studio album has been mixed in ATMOS, and it will feature on an audiophile Blu-ray, featuring the album in Dolby ATMOS and HD Stereo (24bit / 44.1kHz) formats.

As a companion collector piece, fans have the opportunity to order a numbered 7” singles boxed set, strictly limited to 1,991 units. Containing remastered audio for six official singles released in 1991 & 1992, the set contains a brand new 7” single comprising two previously unreleased tracks, “Alice Through The Looking Glass” and “Horny Pony (Version 2)”. The set is available to order now, exclusively via the official Prince Store.

“Alice Through The Looking Glass” is now available on all digital download and streaming platforms. Featured on the Super Deluxe set, the track was recorded on May 28, 1991 at Larrabee Sound Studios, Studio A. Listen HERE

Also available now on all digital download and streaming platforms is “Insatiable (Early Mix – Full Version)”, which also appears on the Diamonds And Pearls Super Deluxe Edition. This previously unreleased 8'02" mix features lyrics that were ultimately edited out and reveals how “Insatiable” originally sounded on its initial mix, since it contains a variety of instruments that were eliminated in the final version. Listen HERE

#PrinceDiamondsAndPearl

Official website: prince.com

Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter: @prince

BACKGROUND

Unlike previous Prince albums, the majority of Diamonds And Pearls was recorded with The New Power Generation, a group he had assembled largely from the Twin Cities area. They shared cultural backgrounds and localised experiences, and helped Prince connect his past influences to the present creating a new uplifting blend of hip-hop, dance, gospel, and pop that would bring him to the top of the charts worldwide.

The New Power Generation was a band that Prince believed in so wholeheartedly that he gave them co-credit on the cover of Diamonds And Pearls, something he’d only done previously with one other band, The Revolution. The group consisted of Sonny Thompson (vocals & bass), Damon Dickson (vocals & percussion), Rosie Gaines (vocals & keyboards), Michael Bland (drums), Kirk Johnson (vocals & percussion), Tony M (vocals), Levi Seacer, Jr. (bass, guitar & vocals), and Tommy Barbarella (keyboards).

Diamonds And Pearls was unveiled to the world on October 1, 1991, and it instantly had a huge commercial and cultural impact, becoming the biggest selling non-soundtrack album of Prince’s career. Over the past three decades, the reasons for its enormous success have been discussed extensively. Not least of these was Prince’s decision to finally engage with major television exposure and an extensive tour of Europe, Japan and his first trip to Australia. The album also offered a diverse collection of sounds that could appeal to a wide variety of listeners. Diamonds And Pearls had something for everyone.

PRINCE & THE NEW POWER GENERATION

DIAMONDS AND PEARLS

SUPER DELUXE EDITION

(7CD+Blu-ray / 12LP+Blu-ray / Digital *)

CD1 / LP1&2: DIAMONDS AND PEARLS (REMASTERED)

Thunder

Daddy Pop

Diamonds And Pearls

Cream

Strollin’

Willing And Able

Gett Off

Walk Don’t Walk

Jughead

Money Don’t Matter 2 Night

Push

Insatiable

Live 4 Love

CD2 / LP3&4: SINGLE MIXES & EDITS (REMASTERED)

Gett Off (Damn Near 10 Min.)

Gett Off (Houstyle)

Violet The Organ Grinder

Gangster Glam

Horny Pony

Cream (N.P.G. Mix)

Things Have Gotta Change (Tony M Rap)

Do Your Dance (KC’s Remix)

Insatiable (Edit)

 Diamonds And Pearls (Edit)

Money Don’t Matter 2 Night (Edit)

Call The Law

Willing And Able (Edit)

Willing And Able (Video Version)

Thunder (DJ Fade)

CD3-5 / LP5-9: VAULT I, II, III

VAULT I

Schoolyard

My Tender Heart

Pain

Streetwalker

Lauriann

Darkside

Insatiable (Early Mix - Full Version)

Glam Slam ’91

 Live 4 Love (Early Version)

Cream (Take 2)

Skip To My You My Darling

Diamonds And Pearls (Long Version)

All tracks previously unreleased

VAULT II

Daddy Pop (12" Version)

Martika’s Kitchen

Spirit

Open Book

Work That Fat

 Horny Pony (Version 2)

Something Funky (This House Comes) (Band Version)

Hold Me

Blood On The Sheets

The Last Dance (Bang Pow Zoom And The Whole Nine)

Don’t Say U Love Me

All tracks previously unreleased

VAULT III

Get Blue

Tip O’ My Tongue

The Voice

 Trouble

Alice Through The Looking Glass

Standing At The Altar

Hey U

Letter 4 Miles

I Pledge Allegiance To Your Love

Thunder Ballet

All tracks previously unreleased

CD6&7 / LP10-12: LIVE AT GLAM SLAM, 1992

Thunder

Daddy Pop

Diamonds And Pearls

Willing And Able

  Jughead

The Sacrifice Of Victor

Nothing Compares 2 U

 Thieves In The Temple

Sexy M.F.

 Insatiable

Cream/Well Done/I Want U/In The Socket (Medley)

 1999/Baby I’m A Star/Push (Medley)

Gett Off

Gett Off (Houstyle)

All tracks previously unreleased

BLU-RAY

LIVE AT GLAM SLAM, 1992

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, JANUARY 11, 1992

Thunder

Daddy Pop

Diamonds And Pearls

Willing And Able

Jughead

The Sacrifice Of Victor

Nothing Compares 2 U

Sexy M.F.

Insatiable

Cream/Well Done/I Want U/In The Socket (Medley)

1999/Baby I’m A Star/Push (Medley)

Gett Off

Gett Off (Houstyle)

All tracks previously unreleased

SPECIAL OLYMPICS, METRODOME, MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, JULY 1991

SOUNDCHECK – JULY 19, 1991:

Let’s Go Crazy/Baby I’m A Star/Push (Medley)

All tracks previously unreleased

SHOW – JULY 20, 1991:

Diamonds And Pearls

Let’s Go Crazy/Baby I’m A Star/Push (Medley)

All tracks previously unreleased

DIAMONDS AND PEARLS VIDEO COLLECTION

Introduction

 Thunder (Live)

Gett Off

 Cream

 Diamonds And Pearls

 Dr. Feelgood (Live)

Call The Law

Willing And Able

Jughead (Live)

Insatiable

Strollin’

 Money Don’t Matter 2 Night

Live 4 Love (Live)

Blu-ray is presented in: Stereo, 5.1 Dolby True HD (Special Olympics show and Glam Slam only) and Dolby ATMOS (Special Olympics show and Glam Slam only).

* N.B. video content is exclusive to the physical Blu-ray and will not appear on digital download or streaming versions of the Super Deluxe Edition set.

PRINCE & THE NEW POWER GENERATION

DIAMONDS AND PEARLS

DELUXE EDITION

(2CD / 4LP)

CD1 / LP1&2: DIAMONDS AND PEARLS (REMASTERED)

Thunder

Daddy Pop

 Diamonds And Pearls

 Cream

Strollin’

Willing And Able

 Gett Off

Walk Don’t Walk

Jughead

Money Don’t Matter 2 Night

 Push

 Insatiable

Live 4 Love

CD2 / LP3&4: SINGLE MIXES & EDITS (REMASTERED)

 Gett Off (Damn Near 10 Min.)

Gett Off (Houstyle)

Violet The Organ Grinder

Gangster Glam

Horny Pony

Cream (N.P.G. Mix)

Things Have Gotta Change (Tony M Rap)

Do Your Dance (KC’s Remix)

 Insatiable (Edit)

Diamonds And Pearls (Edit)

 Money Don’t Matter 2 Night (Edit) 

Call The Law

Willing And Able (Edit)

Willing And Able (Video Version)

Thunder (DJ Fade)

PRINCE & THE NEW POWER GENERATION

DIAMONDS AND PEARLS

REMASTERED

(1CD / 2LP / 2LP clear “Diamond” 180g vinyl / Audiophile Blu-ray * / Digital Download / Streaming)

CD1 / LP1&2 / Audiophile Blu-ray *: DIAMONDS AND PEARLS (REMASTERED)

 Thunder

Daddy Pop

Diamonds And Pearls

Cream

Strollin’

Willing And Able

 Gett Off

Walk Don’t Walk

Jughead

Money Don’t Matter 2 Night

Push

 Insatiable

Live 4 Love

* Audiophile Blu-ray presented in Dolby ATMOS and HD Stereo (24bit / 44.1kHz) audio formats

PRINCE & THE NEW POWER GENERATION

DIAMONDS AND PEARLS

RELEASED OCTOBER 27th

AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER NOW HERE”.

Past Prince’s purple/golden run of the 1980s, not that many people give a lot of love to albums like Diamonds and Pearls and his ‘90s work. I really love the album. On the strength of the singles alone, it is hard to beat! Even taking out the title track, which a lot of people aren’t hot on, there are some awesome classics - which sit alongside some experimental pieces. Pitchfork were positive towards the album, yet so many other reviews are mixed. There is an air of disappointment and a common feeling: Diamonds and Pearls is not up there with the iconic Purple Rain (1984) and Sign ‘o’ the Times (1987). Still early into his career, Diamonds and Pearls showed that Prince still had plenty of golden tunes and innovation in him. With some album packages and merchandise available for Diamonds and Pearls, I hope that it puts a spotlight on a remarkable album. Seven years after his death, and we are still getting music from him. Ensuring that he would have this legacy and relevance after he died – there was never any doubt about that! -, he stored up all this material. Whether he planned to release it all one day or whether it was there in case of his death, there is no telling how much more is in there. We could see Prince music coming for decades more. It leads to that question many might ask after the reissue of Diamonds and Pearls arrives in the autumn: What is next in terms of reissues or unheard material? Purple Rain – perhaps his peak as an artist -  is forty next year. Will there be a new release with demos and unheard songs?! I think we will get some unreleased songs - although something relating to Purple Rain is probably going to come this or next year.

I am going to round up now. I think it is bittersweet that a deluxe and brilliant reissue of Diamonds and Pearls is coming out. It means we have Prince’s music very much in the world. It also highlights an album that has never got its due credit. Hopefully these new tracks will get people to revisit and reassess the 1991 classic. It is sad because it reminds us that this genius and pioneer is not here. What he could have given us. It is also sad that he cannot see how his music is impacting people. I am sure Prince would have released this Diamonds and Pearls material soon enough. Maybe played some of it live. One of my favourite of his studio albums, I know that this is something every Prince fan will want to own. Sometimes, when you get reissues rammed with unheard songs and extras, it can be hard wading through and a bit of a slog! The fact there are different versions available, so that you get everything, a bit extra, and various amounts of new stuff, means there are options (and the prices can vary quite a bit!). In the case of this reissue, it is all really fascinating stuff! I think we will get years more where Prince’s Vault reveals some pure magic and wonder. I predict Purple Rain might get an expanded edition soon. Beyond that, I think his late-period career is worth exploring (rather than exploiting). Some of the songs he was working on before his untimely death in 2016. The great Prince is gifting us with brilliance seven years after he left us. With this reissue of Prince and The New Power Generation’s first album together, this banquet is absolutely…

STUFFED full of diamonds and pearls.

FEATURE: Still Breathing…. A Whirlwind 1979-1980: Kate Bush’s Never for Ever at Forty-Three

FEATURE:

 

 

Still Breathing….

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Angelo Deligio/Mondadori (via Getty Images)

 

A Whirlwind 1979-1980: Kate Bush’s Never for Ever at Forty-Three

_________

AHEAD of the forty-third anniversary…

of Kate Bush’s third studio album, Never for Ever – lots of fours and threes! –, I wanted to examine the album from a few different perspectives. In terms of her career rise, the years 1979 through 1980 were really interesting. 1978 saw her complete two studio albums and promote widely. I think that the end of 1978 would have been crucial when it came to Bush deciding whether to assume more control in the studio. Only twenty, she had proven she was a success and had commercial viability. Two top ten albums (The Kick Inside and Lionheart), a number one single (Wuthering Heights), and that eagerness to add her voice more to the music, The Tour of Life was an opportunity play live her first two albums. It also meant some breathing space from the studio. The idea of rushing into a third album would not have been a pleasurable one. Instead, she undertook an intercontinental tour where she invested a lot of her money into. EMI would not have given her a huge budget. Assuming she would just want a basic set and no real extravagances, Bush’s creative vision was much larger and spectacular than the money she was afforded. Incurring a loss over the run of The Tour of Life, the experience was still a very useful one. She got such adulation and incredible response from the audiences. By the final date of the tour – 14th May in London – she had a few months before she was back in the studio.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush looking relaxed but ready in December 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Patrick Lichfield

That interim period fascinates me! Recovering from the tour itself and the energy exerted, clearly creative juices were flowing. Whilst 1979 was a bit disruptive in terms of space to write and think about a third album, Bush headed to Abbey Road and AIR in London in September 1979 with some of her most incredible and ambitious songs to date. I never know which of the ten tracks was written first and which was the one that started the whole process. A few things had been made clear by the time she started The Tour of Life. Bush did really want to prove she was a strong and independent artist. Starved of being able to express herself in the studio when it came to production, this tour was a moment where she could bring her ideas and creative visions to life. It meant that, given the success of The Tour of Life, she knew a new album had to have her producing. Andrew Powell – who produced her first two albums – was replaced by Jon Kelly. The two worked together to endure that Never for Ever was a very different beast. For my final piece about Never for Ever ahead of its forty-third anniversary on 8th September, I will go more into the songs.

There are a number of things I find amazing about the album. The fact it reached number one in the U.K. meant Kate Bush was the first British solo female artist to have achieve this. The positive critical reaction and chart success meant that Bush’s time on the road and experience she had acquired during her first two albums fed into her new music. She was no longer a teenager vying for control and regretful she was taking a back seat. By 1980, aged twenty-one, she had completed an album that took her to new heights. Twenty-two by the time it arrived, she must have looked back at the previous year and wondered where all the time went! From the travel and excitement of the tour in 1979, through to going into the studio and producing and recording this amazing album, there was not that much time to breathe! As it was, because albums need promoting,  Bush undertook a record signing tour of the U.K., including London, which resulted in lengthy queues down Oxford Street. She travelled around Europe promoting the album. Having been in Europe the year before, Bush would have been used to that sort of distance. Even so, think about modern artists today, and many do not need to travel so far and wide to promote their albums. With only a short period of time between The Tour of Life ending and Bush in the studio and then on the promotional trail, her feet barely touched the ground!

The closing track on Never for Ever, Breathing, seems ironic. I wonder whether Kate Bush was able to breathe at all! A consummate professional who was very proud of this album and knew that her music was the strongest it had been, she pretty much started recording and working on her fourth studio album, The Dreaming, in September 1980. I think August 1980 was when she was working on songs and making some moves. This overlap of albums. She did it in 1978 with The Kick Inside and Lionheart; back at it again in 1980! I am going to finish with an interview from 1980. She undertook so much promotional, yet she was always so focused and showed little sign of weariness. Even if the reviews were mostly positive in 1980, I think that Never for Ever is underrated and never as discussed and admired as her later work. This was a pivotal moment where a woman in her early-twenties was taking control of her career and breaking barriers. A record-setting artist who was not yet at her peak, it is awesome thinking about Kate Bush in 1980. Having two albums already under her belt and a big tour, she was not getting complacent. Even if 1979 and 1980 were hectic years, I get the feeling that she had to make a big decision after the release of Never for Ever. She didn’t have enough new material yet for another tour. Probably not wanting to commit her own money and that much of herself to something that took her away from the studio, I feel The Dreaming was a conscious effort to take her off the road. In the mid-1960s, The Beatles immersed themselves in the studio and experimented so they could make songs that they couldn’t play live. Other artists have done too. I sense The Dreaming was a deliberate move in that respect. It was also an album where Bush produced solo for the first time and could truly be free to fly.

In September 1980, with a new album getting acclaim and fans clambering to get it, she did not set time away to rest and weigh her option up. I wonder what would have happened if she took time out and stepped away from the spotlight. I doubt EMI were affording her the opportunity to do that. That mix of newfound confidence and preexisting exhaustion took her creative mind in a new direction. Bush just wanted to keep going - and, when The Dreaming was recorded, it was evident that the artist many knew in 1978 was a very different one. Never for Ever remains this incredible intriguing midpoint. A seesaw between the teenage Bush being a passenger in her own journey, she was now at the wheel and very much set on directing where her music would go and what it would sound like. An interview I have sourced before, I want to end with one of the many promotional chats she gave for Never for Ever. In May 1980, a few months before the album arrived, she was talking with Deanne Pearson of Smash Hits. Although it is a teen magazine, there are some interesting exchanges and observations. Thanks to this invaluable website for transcribing that interview. Despite Bush never really being an artist for a teen audience exclusively, the fact that she did the interview and there was quite a good rapport between her and Pearson showed that she was excited to discuss an album that she loved making:

“Smiling warmly, she sits down with an orange juice and lemonade. She rarely drinks alcohol, she tells me, and thinks most people who do just lack confidence. I put down my lager and order a coke.

The Abbey Road Studios are famous in connection with the Beatles, in particular their Abbey Road album. In the foyer a large picture of Paul McCartney welcomes visitors. Next to it, and just as prominent, is a picture of Kate Bush.

The studios are like a second home to Kate at the moment. She's been working virtually non-stop here for the last few months--apart from some session work with Peter Gabriel and Roy Harper (for his album The Unknown Soldier ).

Kate is working on her third album, which is now scheduled for end-of-June release. When asked about it, however, she is understandably hesitant.

"It's difficult to talk about the album without you actually hearing it," she explains, in a voice so quiet I worry the tape recorder won't pick it up. "I suppose it's more like the first album, The Kick Inside , though, than the second, Lionheart , in that the songs are telling stories.

"I like to see things with a positive direction, because it makes it so much easier to communicate with the audience or listener. When you see people actually listening to the songs and getting into them, it makes you realise how important it is that the songs should actually be saying something."

The lyrics on her two previous albums are mainly concerned with love, sex and relationships. Simple and common subject matter, I suggest, safe and uncontroversial. <Incest not controversial? Explicit descriptions of coitus not controversial? OK...>

Kate rightly points out, however, that her lyrics do go into the psychology of relationships, and analyse what lies under that superficial banner of "love", which--no matter how common a theme--is still very important to a lot of people.

Her new album, however, is exploring different avenues.

"There are a lot of different songs," she says. "There's no specific theme, but they're saying a lot about freedom, which is very important to me." Which is why Kate is also producing the album herself this time, helped by John Kelly, who produced The Kick Inside and Lionheart . <False. Andrew Powell produced The Kick Inside , and Kelly was assisted by Kate on the production of Lionheart .>

"It means I have more control over my album, which is going to make it more rounded, more complete--more me, I hope."

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush circa 1980

Her latest, fifth, single is very different from anything Kate has done before, and different from anything on the album, she says. Breathing is a dramatic statement about the very real dangers of a possible nuclear disaster in our world.

"It's about a baby still in the mother's womb, at a time of nuclear fallout, but it's more of a spiritual being," Kate explains, gesticulating with her hands, drawing a picture in the air to demonstrate.

"It has all its senses: sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing; and it knows what is going on outside the mother's womb. And yet it wants desperately to carry on living, as we all do, of course.

"Nuclear fallout is something we're all aware of, and worried about happening in our lives, and it's something we should all take time to think about. We're all innocent, none of us deserves to be blown up."

The hopelessness and pointlessness of nuclear fallout is conveyed also in the haunting, ominous melody which swirls forlornly around Kate's familiar crying vocals. The lyrics are short but to the point, while in the background an officious-sounding broadcast instructs its nation what to do.

It seems strange to hear Kate singing about politics, something I associate more with fighting, militant bands such as the Clash and the Stranglers.

Kate is so slight and demure, an extremely artistic person whose aims seem more concerned with entertaining people by taking them away from the outside world and its problems, even if only for an hour or two.

Hers seems a comfortable, almost fairytale success story. Discovered by EMI Records at the age of sixteen, she was sponsored for a couple of years, writing, during which time she continued learning to dance, perform and project herself.

"I think from the outside it does look as if it's been very easy for me--if you believe what the media say. But in fact it hasn't. Everyone thinks--knows, because it's true--that you need that lucky break, but what really counts is the determination that has to be there in the beginning.

"Basically it all comes down to personality. You have to be very strong to get where you want in this business. I mean, some people have been going ages, like Elkie Brooks. She's amazing (n.b.: the only time in an hour's conversation that Kate uses that word).

"Elkie's been knocked down so many times, and yet she always gets up and fights back. It's the same with me. Because I want to keep going, I can. I don't deny that I've been lucky, though."

The determination, just as important as the talent, has always been there, probably even before Kate learnt to play the piano at the age of eight.

"Instead of going out to play with other children I used to play the piano--it was my way of talking, of expressing myself."

Kate admits she was a fairly solitary child who didn't have many friends, and I wonder if she still is a bit of a loner. It seems rather an odd question when picturing the self-assured performer onstage--but what about offstage, away from it all? Is she much of a socialite?

"No, I don't goto parties much. The last one must have been, ooh, Christmas, I suppose. When I get home I tend to sleep--especially at the moment, because I've been working too hard; or I clean up--wash-up and hoover. I find that very therapeutic. When I've got a lot on my mind I like to get away to something totally non-taxing.

"I see friends whenever possible, too, and watch television, because that's something you can just switch off when you've had enough."

She laughs at having to relate such run-of-the-mill things to prove she's "normal".

"I'm not a star," she says adamantly. "My name is, but not me. I'm still just me."

Kate has been criticised for being too pretentious onstage--for not being herself. Patiently she explains what she thinks the critics have missed.

"When I am onstage, I'm performing, yes, and yes, I'm projecting. And to do these things well, I have to be big--" (she stretches her small, slender frame upright to demonstrate) "--and bold, and full of confidence. And I am, but--" (and she plumps down in her seat again), "--it's still little me inside."

Her performance, she says, is not contrived, it's how how she feels at the time.

PHOTO CREDIT: Kate Bush on stage during The Tour of Life in 1979

"I mean, you can't go onstage and simper, and be timid and shy," she continues. "You've got to be big and strong, and give your audience everything you've got; reveal your emotions: be romantic, transport them into another world, so they're in tune with you.

"That requires an awful lot of hard work, and an almost calculated force, I suppose, in that you know what you're doing. But it does come naturally.

"Bands that do nothing, that just go out and perform their basic function, play their latest album, or sing it, or whatever, and then just walk off, are boring. You have to keep your audience's attention all the way, to be a success."

Which is why Kate Bush is a success. Her onstage performance is an extension of her songs. Through her movements she expresses the mood of her songs. They can be fast and lively, or angry, perhaps slow and sad, or maybe romantic”.

A new chapter in her career. Never for Ever was Kate Bush stepping away from a particular sound and aesthetic and stepping into new territory. Whilst it must have been exceedingly tiring and a whirlwind going from a busy 1979 and ending 1980 with nary a moment to breathe before her fourth album as taking shape, this was someone who was getting more acclaim and focus. That number one success and the Tour of Life adulation meant EMI were a lot more flexible when it came to their star producing and taking time with her music – though, even though it came out just two years after Never for Ever, they were a little peeved it took ‘so long’ and was not that commercial sounding. Still underrated and with so few of its songs played on radio – Babooshka, Army Dreamers and Breathing seem to be the easy go-to -, I hope that the approaching forty-third anniversary inspires deep diving. I will do another feature about Never for Ever before 8th September. What the amazing Kate Bush achieved in 1979 and then added to in 1980 with Never for Ever is deeply impressive! It required a…

HUGE amount of strength and discipline.

FEATURE: Amy Amy Amy: Remembering the Frank and Hugely Missed Ms. Winehouse

FEATURE:

 

 

Amy Amy Amy

IN THIS PHOTO: Amy Winehouse in 2003/PHOTO CREDIT: Eva Vermandel

 

Remembering the Frank and Hugely Missed Ms. Winehouse

_________

BECAUSE 14th September…

will mark Amy Winehouse’s fortieth birthday, I wanted to write a feature that celebrates her life and work. I am going to end with a playlist of her best cuts. Before I get there, I will pull together interviews around the releases of her two studio albums, Frank and Back to Black. That said, I think most of the Frank-era interviews are audio. That debut album was released in 2003 – we celebrate its twentieth anniversary in October. I am going to include a couple of reviews for her albums too. I might do another feature closer to 14th September. For now, a salute to the great Amy Winehouse. I remember when Frank came out. I had heard a bit about Amy Winehouse in 2003. There was a lot of buzz around her. It is clear that nobody like her was around in music! That was an instant revelation. An honest and very real artist who was very much herself and had this instantly intriguing and relatable personality, there were no pretences or ego when it came to her and the music or chat. I think one reason why critics did not jump on Frank was because they heard too many influences in the mix. Maybe a little indebted to some of her music heroes – such as Erykah Badu and Nina Simone -, it was nonetheless an assured and confident debut. With that blend of tenderness, sleaze, beauty, honesty, playfulness and that sublime voice, so many layers of Winehouse’s personality and musical DNA were on the display through the album!

I am going to come to one of the more positive reviews for Frank. Before that, in terms of the album’s success and legacy, Wikipedia provide us with some information and crucial detail. Frank was a chart success around the world. It is clear it has influenced many artists since it release. Everyone from Izzy Bizu, Lana Del Rey, and Billie Eilish have shades and elements of Amy Winehouse and her debut album (in addition to Back to Black):

“Winehouse was nominated for British Female Solo Artist and British Urban Act at the 2004 BRIT Awards, while Frank was shortlisted for the Mercury Music Prize that same year. The album earned Winehouse an Ivor Novello Award. In retrospective reviews for both Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, critic Douglas Wolk was ambivalent towards Winehouse's themes and felt that they are relevant to her public image at the time, writing in the former review, "in the light of her subsequent career, Frank comes off as the first chapter in the Romantic myth of the poet who feels too deeply and ends up killing herself for her audience's entertainment". By contrast, PopMatters writer Mike Joseph felt that the album shows that Winehouse's success is "based on pure talent rather than good producers or gimmicks". The Washington Post's Bill Friskics-Warren noted most of its content as "sultry ballads and shambling neo-soul jams", while writing that it "more than confirms what the fuss over Winehouse – then just 19 and with a lot fewer tattoos – was originally all about... her attitude and command were already there. And then some". The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. In 2019, the album was ranked 57th on The Guardian's 100 Best Albums of the 21st Century list”.

Before coming to a review for Frank, what about the history of the album and its impact? I think retrospective assessment sees it as this amazing introduction from an artist whose life was cut short. We sadly lost Amy Winehouse in July 2011 at the age of twenty-seven. Marking Frank’s fifteenth anniversary in 2018, Nick Levine for i-D wrote a fascinating feature exploring the depths and unknown facts about Amy Winehouse’s 2003 debut:

“Surely a better way to remember her brilliance is by revisiting her debut album Frank, which turns 15 years old this week. The album was well received at the time, but though she would win a prestigious Ivor Novello songwriting award for lead single Stronger Than Me, Winehouse wasn't entirely happy with it. "Some things on this album make me go to a little place that's fucking bitter," she told The Observer in February 2004, just three months after it dropped. "I've never heard the album from start to finish. I don't have it in my house. Well, the marketing was fucked, the promotion was terrible. Everything was a shambles."

Though Frank isn't as flawless as Winehouse's follow-up album, 2006's era-defining Back to Black, it's definitely better than her 2004 comments suggest. Sure, its significance is enhanced because it's one of just two studio albums she got to make (2011's Lioness: Hidden Treasures was a posthumous hodgepodge of previously unreleased material). But at the same time, Frank isn’t just a footnote. Featuring songs written when Winehouse was still a teenager, it offers thrilling glimpses of a unique and precocious musical talent. It's also an introduction to an icon who inspired everyone from Adele to Halsey, and Lady Gaga to Lana Del Rey.

Charles Moriarty, who photographed Winehouse for the album's cover, said recently that she conceived Frank as a "straight jazz-hip-hop cross". You can hear this musical fusion in highlights like Stronger Than Me, Fuck Me Pumps and October Song, where Winehouse's languid, jazzy melodies meet bold, bolshy beats. It's a combo that reflects not just Winehouse's taste in music — the album's title nods to Frank Sinatra, and she sulked about missing a Slick Rick gig on Back to Black — but her personality, too: Winehouse was as romantic as a jazz balladeer, but kept it real. When Simon Amstell suggested on Never Mind the Buzzcocks that she might want to "do something with Katie Melua", Winehouse replied: "I'd rather have cat AIDS, thank you."

Winehouse's cutting tongue is stunningly effective on Frank's saltiest track, Fuck Me Pumps, a savage character study that now feels like a trip back in time to the Footballer's Wives era of the early noughties. "Don’t be mad at me, 'cause you're pushing 30, and your old tricks no longer work," Winehouse sings on the final verse. It's unsisterly, but not quite cruel, because Winehouse has already revealed a begrudging admiration for the wannabe WAG at the song’s centre: "Without girls like you there’d be no fun, we’d go to the club and not see anyone."

Besides, she can be just as brutal about herself. On I Heard Love Is Blind, she admits to cheating on her partner because she could. "Baby, you weren't there," she shrugs. "And I was thinking of you when I came." Fifteen years later, the straight-up and shame-free way Winehouse writes about sexual desire still feels exciting, whether she's lusting over a co-worker on Amy Amy Amy, or hooking up with an ex on In My Bed. "She is a massive inspiration to me," Halsey told Teen Vogue in 2015. "She was strong but she was open about her sexuality and her life — I love her intentions, and I want to further her message but in my own way."

Not everything on Frank still sounds quite so forward-thinking. Stronger Than Me is a brilliantly-written song about wanting your partner to toughen up, but some of its lines don't fly in 2018, now we're not so into reinforcing gender stereotypes. "Always have to comfort you every day," she sings. "But that's what I need you to do, are you gay?" Similarly, her use of the phrase “lady boy” in the chorus is dated at best.

Musically, Winehouse was always a compelling contradiction: a young woman with an old-sounding voice who made music steeped in the past, but rooted in the present. When Frank was finally released in the US in 2007, after Back to Black had made her a global star, a Pitchfork review eerily predicted that "it comes off as the first chapter in the Romantic myth of the poet who feels too deeply and ends up killing herself for her audience's entertainment". The reviewer also accused her of imitating her favourite jazz vocalists "much too closely". Certainly, Frank's mid-album jazz covers, Moody's Mood for Love and (There Is) No Greater Love, feel like an unnecessary bridge to the past. We can hear in Winehouse's voice that she adores jazz music and feels it deeply; she doesn't need to spell it out for us.

But Frank's faults never threaten to spoil it as a body of work. This album merges old and new less seamlessly than Back to Black, and Winehouse probably didn't need as many co-writers as her label gave her, but her preternatural talent shines through. Just listen to Take the Box , a devastating ballad about returning to an ex's flat to pack up your possessions. "The Moschino bra you bought me last Christmas," she sings longingly, before backing vocalists urge her to "put it in the box, put it in the box”. Thanks to her incredibly vivid songwriting, we can picture exactly what she’s doing — we’re in the moment with her. And thanks to her incredible voice, we can feel every ounce of her sadness. On Frank, Amy Winehouse is already an artist like no other”.

I will move on to Back to Black soon. Before that, AllMusic provided their take on a hugely important debut album. If Back to Black was this true revelation and exploration of Amy Winehouse’s musical ability and promise – in terms of genres and the production sound –, then Frank was this fascinating and intimate portrait of a young artist who would, in her short life, inspire so many people:

“If a series of unfortunate comparisons (like the ones to follow) cause listeners to equate British vocalist Amy Winehouse with Macy Gray, it's only natural. Both come on like a hybrid of Billie Holiday and Lauryn Hill who's had a tipple and then attempted one more late-night set at a supper club than they should have. Despite her boozy persona and loose-limbed delivery, though, Winehouse is an excellent vocalist possessing both power and subtlety, the latter an increasingly rare commodity among contemporary female vocalists (whether jazz or R&B). What lifts her above Macy Gray is the fact that her music and her career haven't been marketed within an inch of their life. Instead of Gray's stale studio accompaniments, Winehouse has talented musicians playing loose charts behind her with room for a few solos. Instead of a series of vocal mellifluities programmed to digital perfection, Winehouse's record has the feeling of being allowed to grow on its own -- without being meddled with and fussed over (and losing its soul in the process). Simply hearing Winehouse vamp for a few minutes over some Brazilian guitar lines on "You Sent Me Flying" is a rare and immense pleasure. Also, like Nellie McKay (but unlike nearly all of her contemporaries), Winehouse songs like "Fuck Me Pumps," "Take the Box," and "I Heard Love Is Blind" cast a cool, critical gaze over the music scene, over the dating scene, and even over the singer herself. With "In My Bed," she even proves she can do a commercial R&B production, and a club version of "Moody's Mood for Love" not only solidifies her jazz credentials but proves she can survive in the age of Massive Attack”.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Amy Winehouse in 2003/PHOTO CREDIT: Phil Knott

I will end with a bit about Amy Winehouse’s amazing and enduring legacy. There are articles such as this, this, this, and this, that gives insight into he importance and brilliance of Amy Winehouse’s talent - and the legacy that she has left. Prior to getting there, the Irish Times published an interview in 2006. Jim Carroll spoke with Winehouse about Back to Black, in addition to her relationship with alcohol:

“No trouble

The reality? No one even looked up when Winehouse walked quietly into the bar. Sitting in an armchair, she's tiny, all beehive hair and lippy pout. There's a loud, filthy laugh every now and then, but that's the extent of things. No diva, no tantrums, no trouble.

Winehouse has kept the drama for her record. Back to Black is a belter, an album more bewitched, bothered and bewildered than pop ever gets to be these days. Split right down the middle with heartbreakers and soul shakers, it has Winehouse swapping the jazz lounge she frequented for her Frank debut for a basement where '50s and '60s girl groups hang out comparing their men and their hair-dos.

The new company suits Amy. Once you hear her magnificent defiance on the brassy and bold Rehab ("they tried to make me go to rehab," she sneers. "I said no, no, no"), you'll be hooked. As confessional, troubled, humorous and honest as songs get about a woman falling in and out of love with men, drink, weed and the gym, Back to Black is rousing and brave on every level. It's the sassiest, sharpest Motown album imaginable.

Winehouse talks fondly of the girl groups who inspired her, who provided a soundtrack for her musings, when she began writing songs for the new record. "The Shangri-Las, very dramatic and atmospheric. The Ronettes, very stylish. The Shirelles, they had coolness and attitude, they had vulnerability."

Vulnerability

Winehouse became fascinated with how those singers projected and protected their vulnerability. After all, some of them had desperate, depressing back-stories but were cooing like angels. "I loved those heartbreak songs they used to do, especially the way the girls sounded so heavenly. Yet they were also singing about the kind of heartbreak you would find at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey. They knew all about sorrow."

When it came to Back to Black, Winehouse was more than ready to be heartbroken. While Frank had been a big old hit (250,000 sales, glowing critical reviews, an Ivor Novello award and a Mercury Music Prize nomination), Winehouse's personal demons were having a field day at her expense. Her relationship at the time was falling apart, leaving her to find solace in weed and booze. Something had to go. Scratch that; lots of things had to go.

"I don't smoke weed anymore so I'm not so defensive as I was back then," she says. "I'm not as insecure as I was either. I go to the gym, I run loads and I'm much healthier than I was.

"When I did my first album, I was smoking too much weed. I mean, I was really proud of that album at the time and I still think the songs are up to scratch. But you have to remember I had never made an album before. When you have a producer with you who is far more experienced, you do tend to become a bit 'yeah, that's cool' in the studio and go with the flow. And when you're smoking weed, you just don't care about anything except who has the next joint."

Relationship change

Another change has been in the relationship with her record label. After Frank was released in 2004, she slammed what she saw as their inefficiencies. "The marketing was fucked, the promotion was terrible, everything was a shambles," she railed in one memorable interview at the time.

Now? "It was my first album and I didn't know what I was doing so I was learning as I went along. I don't think the label had a clue what to do with it either, so it was a learning curve for them as well - and they had to deal with me mouthing off all over the place! This time, I know what is going on so I'm better prepared. And the label know how to deal with me as well."

The next heave-ho was her management. When Winehouse first emerged, all queries were directed to pop svengali Simon Fuller.

"It was never right," is how the singer now considers this dalliance with the man behind The Spice Girls and Pop Idol. "My manager on paper was not the person doing the day-to-day stuff. He was a lovely fellow but he didn't care about music. He was definitely one of those people who left their work in the office. I needed someone else, I needed someone who really cared."

More karma

You also no longer find Winehouse being so lippy to her fellow pop stars. This means less entertaining quotes for the masses (Katie Melua was once summed up as someone "singing shit songs that her manager writes for her"). But Winehouse thinks about this change in more karmic terms. "I have stopped slagging people off as much as I did. Not because I think it will sell more records or it looks bad for me, but because I don't wish anything bad against anyone. Everyone has a job to do."

Winehouse takes another sip from a glass of red wine. Of course, one vice remains. "I do drink a lot, and I'm a bad drunk, a very violent drunk," she says. "It's only since I started going out with my boyfriend Alex that I have realised what a horrible drunk I am.

"My ex-boyfriend would be saying things like 'stop doing that, you're an idiot' and rowing with me when I was drunk, which just made me worse. With Alex, he will bring it up the following day when I've sobered up. It really embarrasses me to hear I've punched him in the face six times. Again."

Winehouse winces. "Of course, it does make me want to cut down on the booze. I really do try not to drink, but I'm a very self-destructive person."

There's a soft smile on her face now. "I keep saying to my boyfriend that he can take it. I'm a little girl, he's a big guy."

Still, no matter how much of a "bad drunk" she is, we won't likely see Winehouse joining the boozy and stoned celebs shoring up a rehab clinic in the near future.

"Do you really think I could be pushed into doing anything I didn't want to do like that?" There was one attempt at rehab and that didn't get very far. "It was my old management's idea. I literally walked in and walked out. I knew it wasn't for me.

"Some people go to rehab and treat it like Butlins. Some people go because they think it will really sort them out and it does. But me, I'm from the school which believes that you can only sort yourself out, you can't rely on other people to sort out your problems”.

Produced by Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi, there is a whole thread and world dedicated to exploring the legacy of Back to Black. I might dedicate another feature to that. I want to source a review from Entertainment Weekly. Number one in the U.K. and number two in the U.S., Back to Black is one of the most important and successful albums of the 2000s. At the 2008 Grammy Awards, it won Best Pop Vocal Album and was also nominated for Album of the Year. Winehouse herself won four additional awards, tying her with five other artists as the second-most-awarded female in a single ceremony. Back to Black was also nominated at the 2007 BRIT Awards for MasterCard British Album. It was also shortlisted for the 2007 Mercury Prize. Back to Black sold 3.58 million copies in the U.K., becoming the country’s  second-best-selling album of the 21st century so far. Back to Black has sold over 16 million copies worldwide:

“What’s with all the offbeat, retro-minded British divas hitting our shores? Do the pop-reggae Lily Allen, the folky Corinne Bailey Rae, the classic-soul Joss Stone, and the nouveau-R&B Amy Winehouse represent a new vanguard? Or is it simply that, with domestic innovators like Erykah Badu off the radar, nature abhors a vacuum? Is it a bandwagon effect from Gnarls Barkley’s ”Crazy,” last year’s offbeat and retro-minded (albeit American-made) pop-soul smash?

Clearly there’s a trend here. Winehouse, a 23-year-old North London bad girl who resembles a tarted-up Sarah Silverman, is already a tabloid phenomenon at home, where Back To Black, her second CD, hit No. 1 on the pop charts in January. And by most any measure, she is the best of the bunch. 

First there’s her vocal style, which bears traces of Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington in its jazzy phrasing and tonality. It was impressive on Frank, her 2003 debut, even if her melismata needed a shorter leash. But on the tougher, tighter Back To Black, her vocals are reined in and laser-focused.

Much of it is produced by Mark Ronson, a DJ and vintage-R&B fan who has also worked with Lily Allen. His ear for period detail is remarkable, and without leaning on old samples, he makes the disc sound like an oldies mixtape with hip-hop-minded beats. The Motownish single ”Rehab” chugs along on Wurlitzer organ, baritone sax, and hand claps. ”You Know I’m No Good” stokes a dreamy groove with old-school Memphis horns. ”Tears Dry On Their Own” borrows from the Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell classic ”Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” And the title track conjures the Shangri-Las, despite a reference to the male anatomy that surely would’ve made the ’60s girl-group heroines blush.

It’s precisely Winehouse’s lyrics — smartass, aching, flirty, and often straight-up nasty — that raise this expertly crafted set into the realm of true, of-the-minute originality. There are moments when that originality flags with boilerplate lover’s bellyaching (”Love is a fate resigned/Memories mar my mind”). But Winehouse always surprises — dropping a sly reference to Sammy Davis Jr. on the doo-wop-flavored ”Me & Mr. Jones” or complaining to a girlfriend about the latter’s marijuana-grubbing boyfriend on ”Addicted” (a highlight of the U.K. release, inexplicably pulled from the American CD). All told, it’s a near-perfect set that declares not just the arrival of a fully formed talent, but possibly the first major salvo of a new British Invasion. A-“.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Dean Chalkley for NME

I am going to end with a feature from NME from 2021. Looking back at Winehouse’s legacy a decade after her tragic passing, it is clear that there was nobody like her – and we will never see anyone like her again. Ahead of her fortieth birthday next month, I wanted to shine a spotlight on the incredible impact and influence of Winehouse:

“Think of the icons who have changed the shape of popular music forever, and few tower as high as Amy Winehouse and her unmistakable beehive. Breaking through in the early ‘00s like a gale-force wind that gleefully rucked up pop’s carefully-ironed tablecloth, the sharp-witted, soul-and-jazz-loving Londoner stood out in a landscape of shimmering US pop stars and perfectly choreographed girl bands. Fusing vintage sounds with her biting storytelling, Winehouse was refreshing, exciting and – above everything else – a raw and honest voice.

Amy Winehouse died a decade ago this Friday (July 23), aged 27, leaving behind a huge musical legacy. Following her passing, countless artists paid tribute to an enormous talent. “Amy changed pop music forever,” Lady Gaga tweeted in 2011. “I remember knowing there was hope, and feeling not alone because of her. She lived jazz, she lived the blues.” In another post, Adele thanked Winehouse for “[paving] the way for artists like me”, adding that she “made people excited about British music again whilst being fearlessly hilarious and blase about the whole thing. I don’t think she ever realized just how brilliant she was and how important she is, but that just makes her even more charming.” The late George Michael accurately called her “the most soulful vocalist this country has ever seen.”

Now, 10 years on from her death, fans, collaborators and fellow musicians pay tribute. “I still remember the first time I heard her on the radio, I was totally hooked,” recalls Shannon, a long-time Amy Winehouse fan who became hooked on her 2003 debut album ‘Frank’ in her early teens, and went to see some of the star’s earliest headline shows. Years later, she was at V Festival with her mates when surprise guest Winehouse casually sauntered on stage to perform ‘You’re Wondering Now’ and ‘Ghost Town’ with The Specials.

Every time she watched Winehouse live was “just magic,” Shannon says, adding: “She totally allowed herself to be completely raw and vulnerable – and that voice too! She was my first proper music idol. She was just so cool, and the music blew my mind.”

That 2009 appearance with The Specials wasn’t Amy’s only unexpected link-up – she also performed with The Rolling Stones (at the Isle of Wight Festival in 2009) and Prince (in London in 2007), among others. Scissor Sisters’ lead singer and solo artist Jake Shears also recalls heading out on little-documented tour of “end-of-year college banquets” with the star early in their careers, soundtracking the dinners of a couple of hundred students each night. “I like thinking back to that time because you just just never know where everything’s going to end up – it was early days for us,” Shears tells NME. “It was such a cool time.”

A chance encounter with The Zutons’ lead singer on a night out in Winehouse’s regular stomping ground in Camden, meanwhile, led to her wildly popular cover of their staple song ‘Valerie’,  which remains one of her most popular songs 14 years after its release. “Years ago I was in Camden and I was in The Hawley Arms, drinking and all that,” recalls the band’s vocalist Dave McCabe. “And then Amy Winehouse turns up”.

Though the pair had crossed paths at the Mercury Prize in 2004, they barely knew each other, and later that night, “this lad” at the pub started bad-mouthing The Zutons. “He basically started telling me how crap I was, and how great [Winehouse] was, and at the time I was like, ‘Fair enough’”. McCabe laughs. “By about the 10th time, he was just being a bit annoying. I ended up just turning around to him, and told him to fuck off. Then [Amy] turned around to me went, ‘No – you fuck off!’’

Eventually, McCabe stormed off down the road with Winehouse in hot pursuit. “She goes: ‘Come back! I really like ‘Valerie’. I’m not really arsed about you, but you must be alright ‘causes you wrote that song.’ So we worked it out, and I went back. I think if we hadn’t had that argument… That moment was very personal. I’d like to think it’s what pushed her [to record the song herself]. Maybe something good came of all of that stupid argument?” he laughs.

“I met her since then, and I thanked her [for covering ‘Valerie’ in 2007],” he adds. “I was chuffed that she covered [it]. I remember it hit me when I was in a pub playing pool, and the [The Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games] came on –  there were people dancing and stuff like that, and then that song came on. In the opening ceremony! It struck me then just how fucking big that that version of the song was. I didn’t wanna burst out crying in the middle of the pub or nothing, so I had to go away to the toilet; I was like, ‘Fucking hell that was emotional’, but in a nice way. It doesn’t feel like it’s our song any more; it feels like it’s its own world.”

Winehouse took the twanging riffs of the original, drawing out its more soulful components alongside producer Mark Ronson, unearthing a totally different character and melody. “I don’t think anyone else could have just picked it up and sung it like that,” McCabe says. “Even when I think of the song now, I think of how she sings it – that’s just what it has become. I don’t think anyone else in the world could have done that. I think it shows the strength and talent and everything she had. It could be an easy song to cover, an easy ticket – but she took it to this whole new level.”

Along with Winehouse’s ‘Frank’ collaborator Salaam Remi, Ronson produced half of Amy Winehouse’s landmark second album, 2006’s ‘Back to Black’. Together, they made for a formidable pairing – from the parping ‘Rehab’ to the smoke-stained regret of ‘Love is a Losing Game’, they forged a pop sound that dabbled in retro influences, and would influence the entire musical landscape after the album’s release.

Though Winehouse counted ‘60s girl groups, Motown and classic soul as influences – and enlisted Sharon Jones’ band The Dap-Kings to back her – the record veers away from being derivative, instead centring around Winehouse’s unmistakable vocal and vibrant lyrical voice. “He left no time to regret,” she sings in the opening lines of the title-track, her voice cracking with anger. “Kept his dick wet / With his same old safe bet.” It was cutting, fiercely witty, and unmistakably Winehouse – and across ‘Back to Black’, the searing one-liners kept coming.

“I can sometimes hear ‘Back To Black’ in some restaurant in the background and it does nothing, and then I’ll hear it on another occasion in, like, the lobby of a hotel, and it has a really heavy effect on me,” Mark Ronson told NME in 2019. “She kinda put me on the map, so all of my success and everything I’ve had since is somehow linked back to this thing.”

Though ‘Back To Black’ was Winehouse’s masterpiece, her slightly lighter debut album ‘Frank’ still established Winehouse as a fearsomely talented songwriter. ‘I Heard Love Is Blind’ finds Winehouse’s narrator bluntly defending infidelity with increasingly creative twists of logic: “​​Baby, you weren’t there,” she insists, “and I was thinking of you when I came”. And the matter-of-fact ‘Fuck Me Pumps’ is both biting and hilarious, meticulously mocking a woman and her garish shoes.

“Her legacy is beyond comprehension,” singer-songwriter Laura Mvula tells NME. “I think people will still be unfolding it for decades to come.” The Birmingham artist, who recently melded her love of soul, jazz and blues music with bright, disco-tinged pop on latest album ‘Pink Noise’, cites Winehouse as a huge influence – “particularly her vocal style”.

Alongside articles and pieces keeping Amy Winehouse’s music and importance very much alive and at the forefront, there is the Amy Winehouse Foundation. A vital and inspiring charity aimed to provide resilience work for young people, music therapy and recovery housing for young women (among other things), it is a wonderful nod to a much-missed artist. Someone whose music has surely helped countless people. On 14th September, fans around the world will mark what would have been Amy Winehouse’s fortieth birthday. I often wonder what she would be doing if she was still with us. I think that there would have been a few new albums. Maybe a residency in the U.S. and worldwide tours. Perhaps a step into films. It is heartbreaking dreaming what could have been. Instead, we should celebrate what she gave us. Even though we lost her at twenty-seven, Frank and Back to Black are albums that will be talked about and remembered for decades to come! There is no doubting the fact that the wonderful and hugely loved Amy Winehouse was…

A musical supernova.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: New York State of Mind: A Selection of Tracks from The Empire State

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Josh Hild/Pexels

 

New York State of Mind: A Selection of Tracks from The Empire State

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THIS is not tied to anything…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Thomas Svensson

or reacting to an anniversary of any sort. Instead, as I have been inspired recently a lot by music from New York, both modern and classic, I wanted to put together a New York playlist. This is not necessarily artists exclusively born there. They could have been based there and this is their main location. Of course, it is impossible to include all of the magnificent musicians who have called New York home. Covering everywhere from Manhattan, The Bronx, Brooklyn and New York City and beyond, I want to celebrate a wonderful state. From some hot new bands that you need to keep an eye on, to those legends that we all know and love, this is a wide-ranging and eclectic mixtape that should give you a flavour of the sounds, sights and sensations of the state of New York. And, considering the rich music that comes from there, that is a mighty…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Mohamed Almari/Pexels

STATE of mind.

FEATURE: The Power of Cinema: Greta Gerwig, Frances Ha, and An Eye-Opening Personal Realisation

FEATURE:

 

 

The Power of Cinema

  

Greta Gerwig, Frances Ha, and An Eye-Opening Personal Realisation

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AS the film turned ten…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Greta Gerwig

in May (May 2013 was the U.S. theatrical release date), I guess this feature is both timely and a little late. I wanted to move slightly away from music and talk about Frances Ha. Actually, it is not entirely true: music is a big part of the film; I will finish by dropping in the amazing soundtrack. There are a few reasons why I want to discuss the film. I will get to that. Co-written by and starring Greta Gerwig as the eponymous character (Frances Halladay), it is a gorgeous black-and-white film director by her partner, Noah Baumbach. The pair recently collaborated on the box office-smashing Barbie – where Gerwig directed but did not act in the film -, and it seems amazing and slightly unreal that the charming and fairly low-budget 2013 film would see its star direct one of the most successful films in recent memory – Gerwig herself was the first solo female director to see a film break $1 bn at the box office. In August 2013, Greta Gerwig was interviewed by Sight & Sound, in the same edition as her future Barbie star, Ryan Gosling. As I have a website and can discuss this thing, rather than just reviewing the film, I wanted to both reveal how cinema can influence and affect people and unlock something deep inside.

Some people new to Greta Gerwig may not even realise that she is an actor. She has been acting for years. Frances Ha is arguably her defining performance. There are some great features written about Frances Ha. In 2013, The New Yorker wrote about Frances Ha and the Pursuit of Happiness; this page gives more details about the film and cast; this feature explores how various films and roles have captured Greta Gerwig’s physicality and mesmerising gift for movement. Also, in 2021, Olivia Rutigliano looked back at Frances Ha nearly a decade later; revising her original thoughts about the film. This feature explores the lessons we can learn from Frances Ha. In In their 2013 review of Frances Ha, The New York Times asked an intriguing question: If twenty-seven is “Old”, then “How Old Is Grown Up?”. There is so much to explore when it comes to Frances Ha. In the same way Barbie has had essays and opinion pieces written about its messages around femininity, the impact of the film, and the brilliance of Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig’s script, there was similar buzz and intrigue around the lower-budget but no less impactful and wonderful Frances Ha in 2012-to-2013.

Before I come to my thoughts and impressions, The Guardian interviewed Greta Gerwig. At this point an established actor, but someone who was being discussed as a future star and this amazing writer, it is quite humbling looking back a decade at this woman who has gone on change cinema. Oscar-nominated for her director debut, Lady Bird (2017), and its follow-up, Little Women (2019), she set records and created a huge impact with Barbie (2023). On a slight diversion: some of the promotional interviews for Barbie were so deep and engrossing (The New York Times Magazine’s might be among the best). I understand that her next project is Snow White. She has co-written the screenplay (Erin Cressida Wilson) for the film which will star Gal Gadot (who was originally the actress who was going to play Barbie – that role went to Margot Robbie):

“The movie Frances Ha, shot in black and white and on a smaller budget than most film-school productions, is directed by Noah Baumbach and stars Greta Gerwig, his girlfriend and the cause of this season's mass hipster swooning. She is, at 29, more whimsical than her friend Lena Dunham, less self-consciously edgy than her progenitor Chloë Sevigny, and aware of the invidiousness of these kinds of comparisons. The film, meanwhile, is thoroughly excellent.

"I've been having terrible anxiety dreams about it," Gerwig says over pasta on a hot day in Manhattan's West Village. "This must be what it's like to have children." Except no one is going to criticise your children in the newspaper. "Right. Or compare your children to other children, publicly." Gerwig makes a fanciful face. "'He's sort of like this other child, but more hopeless.'"

There are lines from Frances Ha you will want to repeat, their archness just the right side of too cute. "This apartment is very… aware of itself," Mickey Sumner's character Sophie says to Gerwig's Frances, criticising her best friend's new living arrangements, but also the unravelling of their friendship as their 20s draw to a close. The dialogue nails certain states of being: the exact gestation of a private joke; the casual intimacy of friendship at that age ("Stop picking at your face," Sophie says to Frances). There is the sense of bereavement when that friendship wanes, or at the very least changes. As Frances says after Sophie takes up with Patch, a guy in – ugh! – finance, "It's just that if something funny happens on the way to the deli, you'll only tell one person about it and that'll be Patch and I'll never hear about it."

 IN THIS PHOTO: Sophie (Mickey Sumner) and Frances (Greta Gerwig) are best friends in Frances Ha/PHOTO CREDIT: IFC Films via The Independent

If you are only dimly aware of Gerwig, who co-wrote Frances Ha with Baumbach, it's probably from her role in Greenberg, the Ben Stiller movie, also directed by Baumbach, that everyone, including him, imagined would do better. It is thought to have underperformed for being too gloomy, and Frances Ha is intentionally lighter. It also has a much bigger role for Gerwig, as a dancer failing to make a living and struggling through the last phase of post-post-adolescence that now extends into a young adult's late 20s. "I'm so embarrassed," she says after doing something particularly gauche. "I'm not a real person, yet."

In different hands, this might have been unbearable, but Gerwig injects Frances with just the right amount of wry detachment, her performance perfectly pitched between shtick and an urgent sincerity. Initially, she hesitated about being in the film, citing reasons of ego. "Noah said, 'That's ridiculous – you're playing Frances.' But it feels kind of disgusting, like baking a cake and eating it yourself. Like, I wrote it, and now I'm doing it! It felt very Orson Welles."

The blessing and curse of my life is that I think I thrive when I have a singular purpose and a calling. But actually I'm happiest when I'm doing lots of things'

So it was a great relief when the film was rapturously received. Gerwig's main concern – that it would be dismissed as frivolous, that "people would think it didn't matter" – didn't come to pass. After the first screening, with great reviews already on Twitter, Baumbach turned to Gerwig and said, "Thanks for giving me a hit."

Not, of course, that it will necessarily make money. The indie film business is too precarious for that. Frances Ha was funded by, as Gerwig puts it, some "lovely Brazilian guys" who wanted minimal interference, even to the extent of forfeiting the indie film's most assured method of recouping investment – selling it to show on TV after the cinema release. (A black-and-white film won't sell in this manner.) But, she says, they understood Baumbach's intention: "Making something as small as he could without sacrificing anything that actually makes a movie worth watching."

Producer Scott Rudin, who works with Baumbach on all his films, was hovering in the background, but "from a distance", Gerwig says. "He looked at casting tapes and read drafts of the script, but it wasn't one of his projects where he was like, 'I'm getting Warner Bros and Sam Mendes and Kate Winslet' or whoever. Then there would be pressure because he's on set every day. But this was much more – he was 'helping'. He showed up once at 3am, on the Lower East Side. Noah looked up and was like, 'Is that Scott Rudin?!' He was on the street corner, opposite us. And we were like, 'How did he even know where we were?'"

IN THIS PHOTO: Greta Gerwig with Noah Baumbach/PHOTO CREDIT: Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Given the modesty of its origins, there are no particular expectations for Frances Ha. In 2011, Baumbach worked on something that looked like such a surefire hit, it was bound to fail: an adaptation of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections for HBO, in which Gerwig was slated to star, along with Ewan McGregor and Chris Cooper. But after a pilot was shot in 2012, HBO failed to commission it and the project was abandoned. "Sometimes," Gerwig says, "the thing that's anticipated more often than not is the thing [that doesn't work]. Things that have been stamped with approval prior to existing have no life. It's so hard to determine what's going to work. You just don't know. David O Russell's last movie before Silver Linings Playbook lost its insurance and was never finished."

Frances Ha has the integrity of a film made precisely the way the film-makers wrote it. The cast were permitted no ad-libbing on set, right down to any extra "like"s and "you know"s. (Gerwig says Sumner, the daughter of Sting and Trudie Styler, had an easier time sticking to the script because she is English and felt less of a gravitational pull towards these idiomatic tics.)

It's the small, quiet moments that make the film: when Frances runs to an ATM and has a moment of hesitation before accepting the $2.50 surcharge; when, while taking a walk in a wood, she remarks with hopeless optimism, "At least you can't spend money in nature." When she says, "I love you, Sophie, even if you do love your phone that has email more than me." At one point, Frances spends money she doesn't have and goes to Paris on a whim. In another film, she would be rewarded for her risky and whimsical flight. Here, she has a rubbish time, wandering around in a state of lonely anticlimax that is both hilarious and true. In desperation, she tries to go to the cinema. "Noah and I always say that the saddest line in the movie is when she's in Paris and she asks the woman in the movie theatre, 'When did Puss In Boots start?' She's not even going to see it from the beginning."

Frances does, ultimately, triumph, and it's a literary script, so the symbolic underpinnings are good. "So much of modern dance is about learning how to fall, and I thought that was kind of a good metaphor for Frances." For Gerwig, too, perhaps; although, in her case, it is less a case of learning to fall than to stop feverishly anticipating all the ways it might happen”.

If you are a fan of Greta Gerwig or new to here work and have not seen Frances Ha, I would highly recommend it. There are some reviews saying it tacks a bit of depth or bite. Maybe it could have fleshed out the characters more. I was enormously impressed and moved by the film. You can rent or buy it on YouTube, or you can stream it through Amazon Video. The reviews for Frances Ha were mostly extremely positive. Most highly praised Greta Gerwig’s lead performance. Wonderfully connecting and pairing with Mickey Sumner, the film is one that left a very big impression on me. Coming back to Sight & Sound, they had their say about one of 2013’s best films:

“Frances Ha, like Frances herself, is genial, charming and only occasionally prone to outbursts that might discomfit the viewer. While its New York locations, hipster milieu and sex comedy suggest vintage Woody Allen-ish ambitions, its lack of grounding in the present moment (aside from ubiquitous iPhones) leaves it feeling inconsequential.

Its lightness – both levity in the writing and a deft performance style – is a virtue given its focus on a dancer and choreographer, but also an irritant as Frances floats through New York. “I’m poor,” Frances notes when she is let go from the company she dances for. “That’s an insult to actual poor people,” her roommate Benji replies; the film then drops the subject of economic precarity. Frances’s search for housing and work is soft-focused by the film’s innate geniality: this is no Wendy and Lucy (2008).

“Lena, I mean Leda,” stutters a character at a dinner party, about an absent acquaintance: Lena Dunham is Banquo’s ghost at this feast. Co-writers Greta Gerwig (who stars as Frances) and Noah Baumbach (who also directs) are as ready with the frank girl talk but less brazen. They are more concerned with the central, and unresolvable, issue of Girls (also crucial to Judd Apatow’s work): the shift from a rich homosocial lifestyle, associated with artistic freedom and hedonism, to unsatisfactory, exclusory heterosexual pair bonding, associated with loss and compromise.Nor does it have to be, but irritation with the film arises from inevitable comparisons, many of which are present as self-aware references. Allen, Whit Stillman, Hal Hartley, Nicole Holofcener: there’s a genealogy of smart-yet-melancholy American indie cinema in which Frances Ha is positioning itself, and whose incisiveness it doesn’t share.

Frances’s relationship with her best friend Sophie, including her return to work at Vassar College where they met, is the heart of the film, narratively taking the place of the expected straight romance/break-up. When Sophie moves out of their shared apartment, Frances enters a nomadic period that evokes another contemporary New York-set work concerned with sex, lies, new technology and uncomfortable roommates: Steve McQueen’s Shame (2011).

Stylistically, the films are worlds apart, not least because Frances Ha is shot in black-and-white. This aesthetic works fitfully: the interiors feel like digital colour images that have been grayscaled, but the exteriors are crisp. In fact it’s an exterior dance sequence that is both evocative of Shame and – perhaps because of the intertext – the most sublime moment in the film. Many reviewers noted the transfixing long take in McQueen’s film of its protagonist Brandon’s night-time jog. Frances, instead, runs, skips, leaps and fouettés irresistibly through Chinatown in daylight as a similar tracking shot keeps pace with her.

She’s running towards her new apartment, rooming with sculptor Lev and wannabe screenwriter Benji (in an in-joke, Benji is writing spec scripts for Saturday Night Live, one of Baumbach’s prior credits), who call the women they sleep with “sluts” – versions of Brandon in a minor key. That Frances is so full of joie de vivre is in pointed contrast to McQueen’s downbeat film. That her run is soundtracked by David Bowie’s Modern Love (which reappears over the end credits) suggests that the film is acknowledging its relation to contemporary statements on modern love such as Shame and Girls, while harking back to a less confrontational era.

Comfortably confident storytelling is a hallmark of Baumbach’s films, and there’s nothing disruptive or inventive here in filmmaking terms, bar the lack of colour – and the incorporation of dance. Frances’s development as a character away from her dyad with Sophie is linked with dance practice, and the film’s light-hearted resolution is an idealised climax where all Frances’s friends attend a dance programme in which she has choreographed a piece about how meetings between paired individuals become an ensemble. Sweetly obvious as it is, the dance is filmed impeccably in wide shot, with a real sense of the movement from rehearsal to realised work.

The serious commitment to filming dance may show the influence of its new popularity in American mainstream culture but could also be linked to another indie darling, Miranda July, whose most recent film The Future similarly focused on an apprentice dancer worrying about commitment. July’s more experimental, innovative and less together film was frustrating in its own ways, but the future that Gerwig and Baumbach propose for Frances seems all too easily achieved and normative, both psychologically and cinematically, compared to the sublime stalemate of July’s characters”.

As I had not watched the film before, when I did sit down to see it last week, I was mesmerised. The black-and-white look gave it this sort of vintage edge. Maybe an Art House feel. It hit me, because I identified with France Ha (Halliday). This person who seemed to have ambitions deep down but, on the surface, was still stuck in childhood. Wanting to live with her best friend, Sophie. Frances is upset when Sophie moves from New York to Tribeca. Even more so when she moved to Tokyo with her boyfriend. It is this feeling that things have to stay the same. Protecting yourself in this childhood bubble. Maybe something familiar and safe. Frances Ha, as a dance instructor and would-be dancer, is struggling to get a foothold. Opportunities seemingly come and go. I think she would be happiest living in New York and having a dance career realised; share an apartment with Sophie and feel safe and warm in the city. Life moves on around her and, by the end, there is a little redemption and hope. At the very end, Frances, upon moving in, writes her name down onto a slip of paper in order to mark her new mailbox. Her full last name does not fit, so she folds the paper to read: ‘Frances Ha’. The filming style and direction uses a lot of quick shots and not a linear structure. It is snapshots into this eventful and never-predictable life. You want to jump into the film and sit alongside the characters – at least I did. At the end, you wonder whether Frances found a dream job and was happy. It did seem to suggest she was falling on her feet. One reason why it struck me, I guess, was a little bit of envy…

New York is a city I have always wanted to live in. I guess it is far-fetched as it would cost a lot - though, seeing these characters exist in a 2012 and 2013 version of the city, it made me miss a place I have never been to. It is a life that I want but fear I will never get. A city I could fit into, I realise that Greta Gerwig would have been in her late-twenties. Frances Ha, although seemingly directionless and lost, had time to figure it out. I am forty and in a similar situation to Frances Ha. Someone who is trying to make something and realise a dream - yet not in such a nice apartment or a city where I want to explore much. I was sad because I wanted to be somewhere that didn’t exist: the New York I saw in 2012. I wanted to be alongside Frances Ha and that world! Snapping out of the filmic mindset, and Frances Ha made me yearn for New York. At forty, can you start again and actually move to a city and achieve your dreams?! Alongside music journalism and doing more with that – a growing list of major stars to profile and interview! -, film has always grabbed me. Not least writing. As a massive Greta Gerwig admirer, actually one of the real dreams is to work for/with her. She might be out of my league and realm when it comes to getting a film made by her production company or working with her. Working with her in some capacity would be a dream – alas, one that thousands of others have and will never realise!

It is strange that a single film can stagger and stun you on several levels. On the one hand, I was completely transfixed by the story and the performance – especially by Greta Gerwig’s incredibly naturalistic and emotional turn. She is funny and child-like, yet there is a vulnerability and depth that means she can go from weird and funny to heartbroken and sombre. A city full of Frances Ha-like people, it made me realise that I am the same. Only living in London. That huge desire to make up for lost time and be in my late-twenties and go to New York was a bombshell. Frances Ha is a magnificent film that actually might be one of my very favourites! It is beautiful and makes me hope that Greta Gerwig returns to Indie films and the like of Frances Ha and Mistress America (2015). You are so convinced by Gerwig’s performance, you sort of hope everything works out. Then you realise that, just over ten years ago, this talented filmmaker was  yet to become the idol and record-breaker she is today! Gerwig would go onto direct, and seemingly now is in a position where she can helm huge-budget films. She wouldn’t know it back then. In a way, that made me realise that maybe age shouldn’t be such a big factor.

I am the same age as Greta Gerwig and, although she has undeniably obtained more success, there is time to go. There is time to save and move to New York. You can never say dreams like working with a major director, finding a community in a big city and comfort there is beyond comprehension – even in a very strange and slightly bleak world today. I have to concede that I am not in my twenties, so there will be certain accommodations. Like a friend group that is closer to my age; not enjoying the sort of career trajectory Greta Gerwig has enjoyed. If Frances Ha was sobering in some ways, it was also eye-opening! Seeing its star go on to big things. Awakening me to the fact that maybe staying in a comfort zone is not the best thing. Frances Ha was happy in the end, but she had to deal with change and life moving on. I wanted to speak about the film, just over ten years since it was released in the U.S. More than that, it shows that a film – whether a blockbuster or a smaller Indie flick – can have a profound and meaningful effect on anyone. I was not expecting to be so moved and affected by Frances Ha. It has made me determined to plan ahead and keep going. Maybe accept that some things are out of my reach. Though you can never rule things out. Frances Ha provoked a lot of thought and life decisions. Various scenes and snaps of dialogue run through my mind. Expression and shots that will stay with me. Perhaps the most memorable sequence in Frances Ha is where the eponymous character is running through the streets of New York. The camera almost has to find her running. It searches and catches up with her! A dizzying and exhausting experience (as you can hear at the end of this Greta Gerwig interview on The Adam Buxton Podcast in 2018 (when she was promoting Lady Bird; skip to 54:12). The song she was dancing to is David Bowie’s Modern Love. Intoxicating and delightful, that scene of France Ha running provoked so many reactions and thoughts. I have written about Greta Gerwig quite a bit lately – what with Barbie’s success and importance -, so I probably won’t until her next film/directorial effort. Given the force with which the decade-old Frances Ha had on me – and how film can change your life and have that power -, I felt compelled to return to her feet…

ONE more time.

FEATURE: In the Write Order: The Validity and Subjectiveness of Album/Song Rankings and Reviews

FEATURE:

 

 

In the Write Order

PHOTO CREDIT: Janson A/Pexels

 

The Validity and Subjectiveness of Album/Song Rankings and Reviews

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THE irony of this feature….

 PHOTO CREDIT: Min An/Pexels

is that it may be subjective me saying album reviews and album/song rankings are subjective. This came to mind because I am reading Classic Pop’s in-depth look at the career of Madonna. As she commences her delayed Celebration Tour in October, this is an album-by-album guide with features and photos. It is a wonderful and passionate dedication to the Queen of Pop! One thing that struck me when reading it, especially when it came to Classic Pop’s top forty Madonna tracks, was how much lists vary. Take a Madonna top forty. No two will be exactly alike. Even the top fives – where you’d assume nearly all the tracks would be the same across the board – are different. Of course, this is just one person’s (or a team’s) view on which of her/any other artist’s songs are the best. I was in agreement with some of Classic Pop’s views, though there were omissions and tracks that were in the wrong place – some major songs either not in the running or too low down; ones that were too high that should have been lower/not on the list -, yet they had their view and it is good to contrast that with other people’s takes. I wonder whether there ever can be a true/singular top forty (or top ten etc.) of an artist’s work. From Kate Bush to The Beatles, everyone has had their say when it comes to the best songs. I disagree with many, yet I can find something to commend and agree with in most cases! It is timely and important to celebrate songs of an artist. Maybe tied to an anniversary or tour, I sort of wonder how much people follow song and album rankings. They always seem to stir up debate.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna in 1986/PHOTO CREDIT: Herb Ritts

It is great that there is debate and contrasting views when it comes to artists and their back catalogue. I have done so many best songs/albums for different artists. At each point, I look online to see what to other people think regarding that artist – and whether their rankings match mine. I do like to put my mark and stamp out there and see what people think. Because every rankings list is going to split people, I keep thinking why we do it. In addition to having our opinion, what does it say about an artist and music in general? Is it literally impossible to agree in terms of the best songs and albums?! Take The Beatles, for example. With such a vast catalogue, obviously it is impossible two lists – deciding their best forty or fifty songs – would have the exact songs in the exact same places. The debate is interesting as a whole. As in, when it comes to albums…which are great, which are middling, and which are not so great. It is this thing with rankings and numerical values. I am doing it myself. In fact, with Kate Bush features, I am ranking songs from various albums. That is my view - but, when I put this out into the world, people will have their own top-five/ten etc. All subjective but valid. My point is whether the lists and rankings are useful and accurate beyond the subjective mindset. Do rankings and best-worst albums/songs tell us something about the nature of music and how various people process it? Why do some people agree that certain albums and songs are wonderful whilst others will debate them?! Maybe there is no easy or right answer. I just wanted to raise the point as, almost with every ranking feature of any artist, there are a few entries and opinions that seem ludicrous and irredeemable – that is me being quite impassioned about the worth and validity of particular tracks and songs!

 PHOTO CREDIT: Ivan Samkov/Pexels

I am thinking about music reviews too. I am not debating whether we need album and E.P. reviews. These are really important. Many artists and people in the industry might feel they are subjective and pointless. With streaming and digital music out there, it does mean that people can write their own review and feedback. Is there as much worth when it comes to journalistic insight? I feel that many out there do read reviews. It is also nice for the artist. One of the debatable parts of a review is the star/scoring system. The text is really important. That said, giving it a star/score (out of 5 or 10) seems to stand out. How do you actually quantify an album like this?! Are some four-star albums stronger than others?! Do you do what Pitchfork does and award anything up to a 10 – for instance, a 7.6 or 9.1?! I wonder how helpful this is in determining the quality of an album? Many might ask what other method there is for stating quality. Obviously, this issue exists with films too. Sites like Rotten Tomatoes aggregate reviews out of 100%. They take star ratings and add them together and average it. It is slightly different when it comes to the music aggregation site, Metacritic.

PHOTO CREDIT: Armin Rimoldi/Pexels

They score out of 100. Taking all types of reviews – whether it is star ratings or /5 or /10 -, this is what is used to give an average. I review albums and score out of 10, but I feel that many might just see the rating and not read the review. How do you decide what an album is worth? Few are reluctant to give an album 5/5, as that denotes work of the highest order. There are even articles that state what goes into a five-star rating or what needs to be considered. Of course, different sites will have different measures and criteria for their star rating. It goes back to that issue of album and song rankings and how useful they are. How reliable it is. Of course, listeners can come to their own conclusions - though the role of the critic is still very much sought-after and valid. I wonder whether a rating/star system – with its flaws and subjectiveness – is as worthy and accurate as the body of the review. Thoughts I have been having this week I thought I would share and ask what people think. How useful do they find album rankings when it comes to artists like Madonna? Are top 40s realisable and do they give you any sort of real guidance? Same situation with album star/score ratings: How useful are they when it comes to reviews and whether you check out an album? Is it the star rating or the text that draws your eye? Is it both?! Do you find that the review tone often differs to the star rating? It would be good to know…

 PHOTO CREDIT: cottonbro studio/Pexels

WHAT people think.

FEATURE: What An Experience: Janelle Monáe’s The Electric Lady at Ten

FEATURE:

 

 

What An Experience

 

Janelle Monáe’s The Electric Lady at Ten

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ON 6th September….

 PHOTO CREDIT: Victoria Will/Invision/Associated Press

Janelle Monáe’s second studio album, The Electric Lady, turns ten. Her most recent album, The Age of Pleasure, came out earlier this year. There is debate as to which Monáe album is the very best. I would say that The Electric Lady is her finest work. The nineteen-track album serves as the fourth and fifth installments of her seven-part Metropolis concept series. Reaching number five in the U.S., I am excited about the upcoming tenth anniversary. I wonder whether there are any anniversary plans in terms of reissues. Before I get to a couple of reviews for this mesmeric and magisterial brilliance of The Electric Lady, this Wikipedia article gives us some background to the album’s themes and creation:

“The Electric Lady is the follow-up to Janelle Monáe's debut album The ArchAndroid (2010) and debut EP Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase) (2007), and consists of the fourth and fifth installments of her seven-part Metropolis concept series. Partly inspired by the 1927 film of the same name, the series involves the fictional tale of Cindi Mayweather, a messianic android sent back in time to free the citizens of Metropolis from The Great Divide, a secret society that uses time travel to suppress freedom and love.

Monáe debuted tracks from The Electric Lady at the 2012 Toronto Jazz Festival. The Electric Lady was made available for pre-order through the iTunes Store on July 2, 2013, with "Dance Apocalyptic" as a pre-order bonus. The album features nineteen tracks, although only "Dance Apocalyptic" and previously released single "Q.U.E.E.N." were revealed. 

Thematically, The Electric Lady continues the dystopic cyborg concepts of its predecessors, while presenting itself in more plainspoken, personal territory in addition to experimenting with genres beyond conventional funk and soul music genres such as jazz, pop punk and gospel, as well as woozy and sensual vocal ballads. As stated on July 30, 2013, by Monáe on Twitter, The Electric Lady are the fourth and fifth suites of her Metropolis concept series. Monáe also stated in an interview with Billboard that The Electric Lady is a prequel to her critically acclaimed 2010 album The ArchAndroid.

The album features guest appearances by Miguel, Erykah Badu, Solange, Prince and Esperanza Spalding with production from previous collaborator, funk duo Deep Cotton, as well as soul music composer Roman GianArthur”.

I am going to come to some hugely positive reviews of the tremendous The Electric Lady. One of the best albums of 2013, it is arguably the pinnacle of Janelle Monáe’s extraordinary career. I know that there will be new articles and inspection of The Electric Lady before 6th September. For the fist review, I want to source AllMusic’s view for a truly memorable and unique record:

“Prince, Erykah Badu, Esperanza Spalding, Solange, and Miguel contribute to the fourth and fifth Metropolis suites, but it's not as if Janelle Monáe and their Wondaland associates were short on creative energy. Equally as detailed and as entertaining as The ArchAndroid, The Electric Lady is likewise a product of overactive imaginations and detailed concept engineering, and it also plays out like a sci-fi opera-slash-variety program with style and era-hopping galore. Suite four is the album's busier and more ostentatious half, more star-studded and less focused, highlighted by the bopping "Dance Apocalyptic" and the strutting Badu duet "Q.U.E.E.N." Suite five is considerably stronger with a handful of firmly R&B-rooted gems. The inspiration for its overture is noted in the liners as "Stevie Wonder listening to Os Mutantes on vinyl (circa 1973)," but shades of Stevie's '70s work are heard later in more obvious ways. "Ghetto Woman" is impeccably layered soul-funk, fluid and robust at once, with chunky percussion and synthesizer lines bounding about as Monáe delivers a performance as proud and as powerful as Stevie's "Black Man." It contains an autobiographical 30-second verse that is probably swift and dense enough to make early supporter Big Boi beam with pride. The enraptured liquid glide of "Dorothy Dandridge Eyes," featuring Spalding, recalls "I Can't Help It," co-written by Stevie for Michael Jackson's Off the Wall. Earlier, on "It's Code," Monáe channels the yearning Jackson 5-era MJ. "Can't Live Without Your Love," presumably a paean to human love interest Anthony Greendown has Monáe -- or Cindi Mayweather, aka Electric Lady Number One -- yearning like never before. The album is sure to astound Monáe's sci-fi/theater-geek following. Its second half cannot be denied by those who simply value creative R&B that owes to the past and sounds fresh. Anyone can appreciate the phenomenal interludes, which are close to 3 Feet High and Rising level. Power-up to the Droid Rebel Alliance and the Get-Free Crew indeed”.

I am going to finish off with a glowing review from Pitchfork. I am wondering whether anyone has written a feature about The Electric Lady that explores its creation and legacy. I hope that this is rectified before its tenth anniversary, as it is an album worthy of fonder and closer investigation:

“Janelle Monáe opens her second album the same way she did her 2010 debut: with a sumptuously recorded studio orchestra tossing off flourishes with abandon. When the smoke clears, the first full song features a guest vocal from...Prince. Monáe is not the kind of entertainer who takes prisoners; she operates at the locus of generosity where "generous" shades subtly into "aggressive." The song is called "Givin Em What They Love", but the feeling is a little more "take you home and make you like it."

The facts of Monáe's emergence have occasionally made it difficult to embrace her music: She arrived so thoroughly anointed by so many key figures in the entertainment industry that it has sometimes felt pointless to try and touch her. At the heart of her ornate, impressive music, a hint of chilliness kept us at arm's-length; she was a conqueror, undoubtedly, but maybe she glossed over the whole "winning the hearts of the people" thing.

With The E**lectric Lady, she finds a way to give us more of herself. Together with her tight-knit Wondaland collaborators-- Kellindo Parker, a magnificent guitarist who singlehandedly gooses several songs into transcendence; her college friends Nate “Rocket” Wonder and Chuck Lightning, and Roman GianArthur-- Monáe supervises and synthesizes a parade of golden touchstones (Sly, Stevie, Marvin) into a show-stopping display of force and talent. And at the heart of it, she embeds some of the most personal pain she's allowed to leak into her music.

Many of her lyrics here telegraph a desire to break away, to "find a way to freak out," as she puts it on "Dance Apocalyptic", which is the closest the album comes to an immediate calling card like "Tightrope". The album is overall looser and more physical than its predecessor, more concerned with dancing, sex, love, and abandon. "I wanna scream and dream and throw a love parade," she sings, in a creamy mid-register, on the moonlit Miguel duet "Primetime". The song rides a cerebral whine into an "I Only Have Eyes For You" glide, with a "Purple Rain" solo cascading over the top like an MGM waterfall”.

On 6th September, we will celebrate a decade of Janelle Monáe’s The Electric Lady. Coming a few years after her phenomenal – and even higher reviewed and considered – debut, The ArchAndroid, The Electric Lady showed both her consistency and ability to evolve and shift between albums whilst retaining quality and focus. It would be five years after The Electric Lady that we got the magnificent Dirty Computer. I am looking forward to, on 6th September, offering my salute and love to…

A wonderful album.

FEATURE: The Reviews Are In… Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn at Nine

FEATURE:

 

 

The Reviews Are In…

PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/REX 

 

Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn at Nine

_________

I will do another couple of features…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/REX

about Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn, as the live album turn seven in November. There is a lot to discuss regarding this incredible album. As, nine years ago today (26th August) Kate Bush stepped onto the stage at the Eventim Apollo, Hammersmith to start the first of her twenty-two nights, it is worth looking at how people reacted to it. Obviously, the reception was positive. Rather than generally glowing and fawning over a live spectacle, it is interesting how various sources reacted to Before the Dawn. What worked for the critics. Stuff that maybe didn’t. Bush herself said that she didn’t read reviews; people did come up to her and say that they were all very positive. This might sound like me not doing a lot of work here – just copying and pasting reviews -, but it is a case of selecting relevant and standout paragraphs from the right sources. In trying to understand why Before the Dawn is so historic and important, one needs to read reviews and get a real feel of what went down there. It is a residency that amazed everyone was there, though the different impressions from critics is one I want to focus on. I have chosen three different reviews of Before the Dawn – two of the three are for the opening night of the twenty-two -, so that you can see what was being highlighted. The first, and one I have spotlighted a few times, was from Pete Paphides. He was there on the third night – 29th (she had 28th off) August, 2014 -, and noted his takeaways (please read the entire review, as it is one of the most detailed and beautiful I have seen about the experience of seeing Before the Dawn):

“In the foyer of the Hammersmith Odeon before the third of Kate Bush’s first shows in 35 years, it’s hard to make generalisations. But I’ll allow myself this one about the guy next to me who, despite never having met me, keeps passing his binoculars to me so I can see what he’s seeing. And the male twentysomething fan who will brave the tube home dressed in a white cotton tunic, black tights, face painted in white and silver, his hair wreathed by leaves and twigs. And the woman who has gone to the trouble of having a dress made just like the one festooned with clouds on the sleeve of Never For Ever. And the woman who rushes from her seat during the encore of Cloudbusting to hand a bouquet of lilies to Bush (who, in turn, receives it between bows). “Too much” is why we came. There’s nothing more antithetical to Kate Bush’s music than sensory temperance. For three hours, it’s like finding out there was a Dolby switch pressed on your consciousness. The moment that Bush, draped in black and barefoot, marches in a soft, shuffling procession, flanked by her five backing singers, you turn it off. You might need it for the journey to work on Monday, but it’s of no use to you now.

“A slowly moving sky descends to fill the space on the right. The palette-wielding McIntosh dabs at the canvas with a brush, attracting the curiosity of the wooden model. “Piss off! I’m trying to work here,” he exclaims, while his mum — dressed in an Indian-style black and gold outfit — moves around him in slow motion”.

She smiles beatifically throughout Lily — the invocation to guardian angels which originally appeared on The Red Shoes and, in 2011, The Director’s Cut — apart from when attacking the top notes, which she does with the phlegm-rattling zeal of a seasoned soul singer. The love in the room is unlike anything I’ve seen at a live show. Given free rein, it would surely result in an instant surge to the stage, but it’s tempered by a deference which extends to uniform acceptance of Bush’s stated no-cameras request. As a consequence, the first three songs are bookended by a total of six standing ovations. Hounds Of Love is exactly what it should be given the passage of three decades: drummer Omar Hakim and perma-grining percussion talisman Mino Cinelu hold back the rhythmic landslide, creating space for a vocal pitched closer to resignation than combativeness. Eighteen months ago, when Bush’s son Bertie McIntosh (then 15) finally persuaded her to return to live performance, the first two people she pencilled in for the project were the lighting designer Mark Henderson and Hakim. Within the opening section, it isn’t hard to see why Bush wanted to assemble her band around Hakim. Running Up That Hill is every bit as unyielding and startling as it was the very first time you heard it: doubly so for the incoming storm whipped up from the back of the stage. On King Of The Mountain, he reprises the freestyling pyrotechnics of his turn on Daft Punk’s Giorgio By Moroder. Everything about King Of The Mountain, in fact, is astonishing. Bush navigates her way around the song’s rising sense of portent with a mixture of fear and fascination that puts you in mind of professional storm chasers. When they’re not singing, her backing vocalists dance as if goading some unholy denouement into action, before finally Cinelu steps into a misty spotlight. On the end of a rope which he demonically twirls ever faster is some sort of primitive wooden cyclone simulator.

Up on stage, it’s left to Bush’s son — playing the part of the painter, a role assumed on the album recording by Rolf Harris) — to be that observer. But before all of that, it’s just Bush at the piano for the first time, encircled on the left hand of the stage by her band, with the right side left empty for the ensuing action. Controlled by its puppeteer, a black-clad Ben Thompson, a wooden artist’s model — perhaps the size of a ten year-old child — walks inquisitively around the stage during Prologue until finally it alights upon the singer. As Bush sings “What a lovely afternoon” and the drums come in, it appears startled. All the time, the backdrop shows birds in slow-motion, while the backing singers (increasingly, given what they have to do, “backing singers” doesn’t begin to cover what they have to do, but “chorus” is unhelpfully ambiguous) move gingerly around each other in painters’ garb. A slowly moving sky descends to fill the space on the right. The palette-wielding McIntosh dabs at the canvas with a brush, attracting the curiosity of the wooden model. “Piss off! I’m trying to work here,” he exclaims, while his mum — dressed in an Indian-style black and gold outfit — moves around him in slow motion.

“No less a highlight than it is on the record, “Somewhere In Betweenn” sees its creator transported by the power of her own song and, in doing so, transports you to the fleeting magic-hour reverie it celebrates”.

If it’s surprising to see McIntosh rise to the challenges set before him so fearlessly — “A kind of ‘Pan’ figure” — it’s worth keeping in mind that he’s already the same age that his mum was when she started recording her first album. In a voice at least two octaves deeper than the one he used for Snowflake on 50 Words For Snow, Bush’s son bemoans his rain-splattered work on The Painter’s Link (“It’s raining/What has become of my painting?/All the colours are running”). But here, as on the record, there are no mistakes, just serendipity. The colours run and dusk magically materialises; the redemptive downpour brings all the musicians to the front for almost Balearic, flamenco-flecked stampede of Sunset. As a succession of joyous falsetto “Prrrrrraaah!!”s attest, the moments that see Bush at her most unguarded are the ones where she gets to commune with the twenty-odd players around her.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/REX

Few musicians are more adept at conveying a sense that something good is going to happen than Kate Bush. We know what Nocturn sounds like on record, so a certain sense of expectation is unavoidable. On either side of the stage, we see arrows fired from bows into the firmament, where they turn into birds. For reasons I couldn’t honestly fathom, we see the painter’s model sacrificing a seagull to no discernible end. Over a rising funk that defies physical resistance, Bush makes a break for transcendence and effectively brings us with her: “We stand in the Atlantic/We become panoramic,” she sings, with arms aloft. Like the rest of the band, guitarist David Rhodes has donned bird mask. As Bush is presented with vast black wings, she and Rhodes circle elegantly around each other, before finally, briefly, she takes flight.

Just two songs by way of an encore — which, after what has preceded them, seems generous: Among Angels from 2011’s Fifty Words For Snow is performed solo at the piano, before the entire band return for Cloudbusting. Once again, we’re reminded that, almost uniquely among her peers, Kate Bush goes to extraordinary lengths in search of subjects that hold up that magic of living up to the light for just long enough to think that we can reach it. But, like the beaming 56 year-old mother singing, “The sun’s coming out”, that too dissipates into memory. And, after another 19 performances, what will happen? In another 35 years, Kate Bush will be 91. Even if she’s still here, we might not be. Perhaps that’s why tonight, she gave us everything she had. And somehow, either in spite or because of that, we still didn’t want to let her go”.

To be fair, as many (bar Paphides) were reviewing the first night, they wert in the position of witnessing the excitement and unparalleled energy in that space - for a live event many thought would not happen. Maybe the performances became tighter as the run went on. Bush less nervous and more used to the grandeur and scale. Pete Paphides saw Bush when she was a bit more comfortable delivering Before the Dawn to passionate and ecstatic fans. That opening night is her debut performance for a massive audience. Because of that, I find it fascinating that, alongside celebrities from various walks of life, journalists were all trying to give their take on something almost impossible to put into words! That said, DIY were among the surprisingly few who reviewed the residency. Many more reviewed the live album – so I wonder why there aren’t a heap of reviews for the 2014 residency:

“The whole night feels unreal and unravels in a dreamlike fashion – even attempting to put it into words here it seems to dissolve on the screen. That’s not just because of the feverish speculation that came before the show or the fact that Bush hasn’t performed in concert since 1979, but also because whatever your hopes or anticipations for this show – one of the most eagerly awaited pop performances in history – Bush turns them on their head and pours them away in an avalanche of artistic contrariness and outlandish theatre which sees the stage filled with a wooden mannequin, fish skeletons, sheets billowing like waves, a preacher, a giant machine that hovers above the audience pounding like a helicopter as well as lighthouses and living rooms, axes and chainsaws.

Yet through all the theatrics and artistry one thing remains constant, and it’s the thing that shines through the most: the rush of humanity that ties all the ideas together; the one thing that takes Bush to that other place. It’s the innate heart that pulses through all this theatre and all these ideas: the simple truths of love, hope and family life that hold all her ideas together.

‘I feel your warmth,’ she says appreciatively as the crowd passionately cheer and clap her every move and gesture. And it’s her shy but generous smile at the response from the crowd which shows exactly what this means to her.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the shooting of the video for And Dream of Sheep, a song that is part of her suite, The Ninth Wave/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton

It’s now time for the drama of ​‘The Ninth Wave’, the second half of ​‘Hounds of Love’. Here we see a story of resignation and resurrection played out in the most theatrical of ways. We see Bush in a lifejacket floating in water, looking up at the camera as if waiting to be rescued (she’s reported to have spent three days in a flotation tank at Pinewood Studios to create the special effects). At one point fish skeletons dance across the waves, at another a helicopter searches the crowd, before a living room (yes, a living room) floats across the stage in which a son and his father – played by Bertie and Bush’s husband Danny McIntosh – talk at length about sausages.

It’s hard to comprehend exactly what’s happening but the band skilfully navigate the pastoral prog and Celtic rock. Even when the music isn’t captivating, the sheer sense of spectacle means you can’t avert your eyes for a second. As the ​‘The Morning Fog’ brings the performance to a close with another standing ovation.

“Then she’s gone. You’re left with the image of a singer who has managed to retain her mystery and surprise. An enigma, the mythic artist who is intensely human”.

After a twenty minute interval – during which time the bars buzz with delirium – the third act sees her play out ​‘Sky of Honey’, the entire second half of ​‘Aerial’. It’s so intricately detailed that you get the feeling Bush had always planned to perform these two scenes live.

‘Honey’ is a grandiose daydream moving through a summer’s day. Again the scope of her vision is immense – even when the songs don’t enthral the enormous paper planes and human birds do, as we see a wooden mannequin finding himself lost and alone. Bertie plays a major part throughout dressed as a 19th-century artist – and at one point telling the mannequin to ​“piss off”. It ends, as only it could, with Bush gaining wings and flying.

She returns to earth to perform a solo version of ​‘Among Angels’ on the piano, before the band return to help close the show with a joyful ​‘Cloudbusting’. ​“I just know that something good is going to happen”, she sings as a now even more euphoric crowd jump to their feet.

Then she’s gone. You’re left with the image of a singer who has managed to retain her mystery and surprise. An enigma, the mythic artist who is intensely human. It’s overblown and preposterous and brilliant. All its startling achievements, magical highs and am dram faults – its relentless ambition and human imperfections – make it the only document you could possibly have asked for from such a unique artist. Before the Dawn is everything you would expect but couldn’t imagine”.

  PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/REX

It is interesting that most of the reviews of the residency (or the first night) were from male journalists. It would have been nice to have highlighted takes from female journalists. The age range is slightly different in the reviews I am focusing on. Paphides, now in his fifties, would have heard Kate Bush’s music before Danny Wright. Their expectations differ. Their experiences with Bush’s music different. The Skinny’s David Kerr gave the show a five-star review. Again, with a slightly induvial route and relationship with the music of Kate Bush, here are three different reviews – but all very impressed and positive – that takes us inside an exhilarating, epic and dreamlike night:

“What Kate Bush has presented across her 22-night London residency is a rock opera from the old world – an immersive bombardment that could compete with any staged realisation of Tommy or The Wall. The scarcity of pictures from the production – some 18 months in planning – combined with a tabloid preoccupation with a certain lack of ‘hits’ leaves punters free to idly speculate over its specific content in the Apollo’s substantial queue.

With the mystique surrounding these concerts, one might expect our eccentric heroine to arrive on stage by wolfback. The reality is perhaps more of a surprise; the shy retirer mythologised by the press shimmies onstage barefoot in a conga chain with her seven-piece band, gleefully pirouetting like Stevie Nicks. Arriving a full 35 years after Bush’s last full-blown live outing ended on the very same stage, there’s a sense that the voice and muse have been left protected by her refusal to engage with the rock’n’roll treadmill.

Back then, the critics called 1979’s Tour of Life ‘a theatrical feast of mime and magic.’ 2014’s Before the Dawn puts similar crafts to work – extravagant set pieces set in the sea and sky are coloured by gothic costumes that wouldn’t look out of place at a pagan ritual, with wooden marionette puppetry and sleight of hand stage manoeuvres which would have the crowd believe she’s about to take flight.

 "I feel I gotta get up on the roof,” she bellows during Aerial’s mantra-like chorus”.

Business up front, the first set serves as a primer – introducing a musical troupe reassuringly deft at handling the sacred source material and a quintet of actors and backing singers who multitask throughout the night. Running Up that Hill (A Deal With God) makes an early entrance, duelling drummers kick the shit out of tom-toms to recreate its rolling thunder. King of the Mountain steadies the pace before the room is plunged into a lighting storm that heralds the beginning of a different kind of concert altogether, drawing on the folk traditions of her youth while pointing to moments of her catalogue that still sound like the future.

Two albums 20 years apart lend their narratives to the pair of distinct acts that follow. 1985’s Hounds of Love provides the base for The Ninth Wave – a seaborne tragedy about a mother lost at sea, while Sky of Honey has 2005 album Aerial to define its dawn setting, with Bush’s son Bertie playing the eponymous frustrated Artist at the heart of the story.

Many of the original skits and effects from both are brought vividly to life; the glaring lights of a search helicopter roam overhead and a demented preacher rants to the tune of Waking the Witch. "I feel I gotta get up on the roof,” she bellows during Aerial’s mantra-like chorus. One final, full band encore of Cloudbusting takes us there, underlining a surreal, astonishing live comeback from a determined visionary. Now, how do we bring her back to The Usher Hall?”.

I wanted to show you some reviews of the opening night of Kate Bush’s (and the K Fellowship) 2014 residency in Hammersmith. I think it did not get the media coverage – in review terms – that it deserved. What is interesting about the reviews above is the different angles and observations. It sort of takes me there (even though, of course, I was not!). Nine years ago today, people were making their way to the Eventim Apollo to see Kate Bush perform. Nobody was sure quite what would happen and what they were in store for. I have heard from people who were there. It seems the word that links all the responses is ‘life-changing’. A magical and truly wonderful experience that…

THEY will never forget.

FEATURE: Love and Hate: Hole’s Celebrity Skin at Twenty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Love and Hate

  

Hole’s Celebrity Skin at Twenty-Five

_________

A top twenty success…

when it came out in 1998, Hole’s Celebrity Skin celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary on 8th September. Whilst many feel the album is less or not as good as the band’s 1994 sophomore release, Live Through This, there is no doubt Celebrity Skin is a classic! Containing some of the band’s best-known songs – including Malibu and Celebrity Skin -, I wanted to look ahead to twenty-five years of an amazing album. The band (Courtney Love – lead vocals, rhythm guitar, Eric Erlandson – lead guitar, Melissa Auf der Maur – bass, backing vocals, and Patty Schemel – drums) - are incredible throughout. I think I actually prefer Celebrity Skin to Live Through This. I am going to come to a review for the 1998 gem. Before that, there are a few features I will highlight. They give us some context of and insight into Celebrity Skin. I guess, as the band were in turmoil and there was definite friction and fracture. Although Love was clean from heroin and had starred in a string of films, she was struggling to write - claiming she was stuck in a rut. Most bands would struggle to produce a cohesive and successful album. This ode to California – its darkness and light – was a hit. A GRAMMY-nominated album that appears on many of the greatest of all-time list, it peaked at number nine on the US Billboard 200, number four on the Australian Albums Chart, and number eleven on the UK Albums Chart. There is no denying its majesty and importance! Many artists have been inspired by the album and Courtney Love’s incredible lyrics. Although the band are amazing throughout Celebrity Skin, I feel Love is the standout. There is a mixture of emotions in her voice. Such a stunning and moving listen, I feel it is only right to give Celebrity Skin the salute it deserves. I am not sure whether there is a twenty-fifth anniversary release planned – let’s hope something comes about!

I am going to start out with parts of an incredible feature from Stereogum. They marked twenty years of the album in 2018. The hatred, anger, darkness and tragedy that runs through many songs – including the epic title track – does not make Celebrity Skin feel too oppressive or suffocating. It is a very raw and real album that has resonated with fans through the years:

“California has long been the land of reinvention in the American imagination, the place that people go to lose and find and then lose themselves again. Even the word “California” is synonymous with “freedom” in our popular culture — in some cases boundless, in others extremely limited. There is no place that better exemplifies California’s mythology, its promises and failures, than Los Angeles. It was built to be the future, a landscape so sprawling that it had to contain every possible outcome within its changing borders. Opportunity as far as the eye can see. LA is a dreamscape and a wasteland and whatever splits the difference. In her book of essays Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, The Flesh, & LA, the socialite-turned-essayist and true LA woman Eve Babitz explains: “You can’t write a story about LA that doesn’t turn around in the middle or get lost.”

Hole’s third album Celebrity Skin (which turns 20 tomorrow) sounds like LA. It’s polished, decadent rock with something rotten at its core, a celebration and condemnation of what Courtney Love names “beautiful garbage” on the title track. It is an album with a dramatic, he-said-she-said backstory made in the aftermath of terrible tragedy. Writing about Celebrity Skin presents the perfect opportunity to get lost. There are many threads to follow, there are controversies on controversies on controversies to track, and then there is the actual music, which is some of the very best the ‘90s had to offer. Celebrity Skin marked a lot of endings: alternative rock as truly alternative, the end of the decade, and the beginning of the end of Hole.

“We’re just the type of band where everything is falling apart all of the time,” guitarist and founding member Eric Erlandson once said. “Making that record was insane. There were obstacles at each step of the way, nothing was smooth and easy.” The album artwork is a perfect distillation of that energy: a photo of the band on a beach at night and everyone’s gaze is averted aside from Love’s. She’s staring straight at the camera and behind her is a tall, skinny palm tree on fire. “Oh, make me over,” is the album’s opening line, a statement of purpose.

To make Celebrity Skin, Hole tapped into what bassist Melissa Auf der Maur once described in an interview with MTV as the “California muse.” Ideas weren’t coalescing, the band wasn’t getting along, and Love decided the album needed some kind of unifying theme, something anyone could relate to. She wasn’t going to mine her fraught personal life for ideas. “Let’s tie this together with a concept, even if it’s fake,” Love said during the interview. “For directional purposes.” So Hole started to work in the grand tradition of writing about Los Angeles, thinking about “California as a metaphor for the American dream.” That clichéd, almost cynical approach to songwriting landed their biggest commercial hits and made Celebrity Skin an era-defining album.

Hole started writing in three different cities before returning to their hometown of LA. They tried New York, New Orleans, and Memphis, music capitals that lacked the right atmosphere. At that point in time, inspiration that wasn’t terribly depressing was hard to come by. Love’s husband, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, killed himself four days before Hole’s seminal sophomore album, Live Through This, debuted in 1994. Soon after, the band’s bassist Kristen Pfaff died of a heroin overdose. Love became tabloid fodder and drummer Patty Schemel was battling a worsening drug habit. In spite of all that, the band took Live Through This on a long and tumultuous tour, replacing Pfaff with Auf der Maur. Shows were uneven, with Love breaking down or going on lengthy, rambling monologues about her dead husband, behaviors that were attributed to her heavy drug use. In ’95, Hole joined the Lollapalooza lineup, during which Love allegedly punched Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna. That same year, a wasted Love threw her compact at Madonna during the VMAs. It was, to put it mildly, a rough couple of years.

None of that madness cheapens Live Through This. It is the kind of album that, if you hear it at the right moment in time, will change your life. It would be impossible for Hole to make another just like it. Love’s acerbic public persona inverted on those songs. She became at once ferocious (“Violet”) and fragile (“Doll Parts”), a woman singing about her aggrieved childhood and the joys and burdens of being a wife and a mom and a rock star and a ticking bomb because of it. There is no album that I would rather listen to on any given day of the week; it is a masterpiece, a definitively feminist work of art that also happened to be a critical success, buoyed in part by the fateful timing of its release and that prophetic title that seemed to hint at the turmoil the band would undergo in the months surrounding its release”.

The next feature that I want to reference is from CRACK. I think that so many of the reviews have been unfair and underwhelming. Never quite getting the acclaim across the board that it warrants, I do hope that its approaching twenty-fifth anniversary compels reassessment and new investigation:

“People hungry for a widow’s album had to be content with a swift reference to Cobain’s suicide note (“it’s better to rise than fade away”) on angsty alt-rock ballad Reasons to Be Beautiful and its morose sibling Petals. But rather than focus inward, the album critiques the dark allure of celebrity and the way LA both attracts and destroys like a venus fly trap. The album’s poppiest moments may evoke palm trees and boulevards, but there’s also a nauseous sweetness in the images of rotting beauty (“I squashed the blossom/ And the blossom’s dead”).

Critics who balked at its excessive polish missed the point: why, the album questions, aspire to old notions of “authenticity” in rock when LA and celebrity culture dominate? Hole always wanted to be a mainstream band, and those involved felt that this third album would be as commercially successful as Live Through This and Nirvana’s Nevermind.

In fact, Celebrity Skin did represent the height of Hole’s success, selling over a million copies and earning three Grammy nominations. The secret of its success is, perhaps, simple: it was the American Dream writ large in addictive riffs and seedy glamour. As Love explained to a BBC radio host in 1998: “In America at least, if you’re born a serf, you can die a king.” If you work hard enough, you can die an infamous rockstar. But in hindsight it captured a particular moment: this was the last hubristic summer before the rise of Napster in 1999, a development that would wreak havoc on the music industry. The excesses of Celebrity Skin, captured masterfully in the broken allure of the title track’s video, was a final shimmer of light on the Pacific ocean as the sun went down on an era”.

Arriving in the world in 1998, the world was changing. Celebrity culture and the tabloidisation of it was near its peak. Some of the great albums from the year – from the likes of Madonna and Massive Attack – were hugely exciting and progressive. Pop queens were entering new phases. Brilliant work from Beck and Beastie Boys sat with PJ Harvey and AIR. It was a thrilling and wonderful time for music. I am not sure many albums assessed the times and harsh realities of the world – or, for Hole, California - like Celebrity Skin. It seemed a very real and relevant album in 1998. In many ways, many of its messages and mandates still are pertinent and powerful. Albumism wrote about Celebrity Skin for a feature in 2018:

“The album itself is dedicated to Cobain, which is also felt on “Malibu” and “Boys on the Radio.” “They crash and burn / they fold away so slow,” she sings, paralleling the “Crash and burn / all the stars explode tonight” lyrics that open “Malibu.” But it’s hardly romantic. If anything, it’s the angry and ugly part of grief, the bargaining before the acceptance. She’s tired of being a punching bag for Kurt’s fans who blame her for his suicide. “Do what you want / 'Cause I'll do anything / And I'll take the blame” she sings wearily in “Boys on the Radio.” It’s the end of a relationship, when you are exhausted from arguing, when you have seen the unflattering parts of someone you love but that love is still there, somehow. Even if it poisons you. Even if it hurts.

(Love has alternately said “Malibu” was written about Cobain’s stay in rehab and her boyfriend Jeff Mann, who lived in the city.)

And the drama! Oh, the drama of this album’s birth. The band struggled to write. Courtney described herself as “in a rut” and Michael Beinhorn famously screwed with drummer Patty Schemel, forcing her to play eight hours a day for two weeks, only to dim the sound and play Love the worst tracks in order to convince her to replace Schemel with session drummer Deen Castronovo (and, on tour, former Shift drummer Samantha Maloney.) Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan was brought in to co-write several songs and played bass on “Hit So Hard” and “Petals.”

But from that darkness came commercial success, Grammy nominations and spots on several “Greatest Albums” lists, including NME magazine and the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. And yes, 20 years later, some of it sounds a little clichéd, a little like high school poetry, and Eric Erlandson’s guitars have an unmistakably ‘90s sound that exists only within that time period and cannot be replicated.

I think about Courtney Love a lot. I consider her one of my Goddesses, alongside Siouxsie Sioux and Tori Amos and Mother Goddess Patti Smith. She has a reputation as a feral, wild woman, alternately lovelorn and savage, Hollywood glamour and boulevard trash, and she uses all of it on Celebrity Skin

She is an original, unvarnished and unafraid, and she encourages her listeners to be too, be they in 1998 or 2018, because society has not improved much with respect to how it treats women. There will always be wolves hungry to feast on the innocent. There will always be a way to tell a girl she is hideous in order to sell her beauty back to her. Courtney knows, maybe better than anyone.

“You want a part of me?” she growls. “Well I’m not sellin’ cheap.”

And neither should we”.

Perhaps the recipient of more praise retrospectively than it got in 1998, there was still plenty of love for Celebrity Skin upon its release. In their 1998 review, Rolling Stone had this say. I especially love the blend of love and hate; the fierce and tender; the explosive but intimate:

“HEY, THERE’S ONLY us left now,” Courtney Love notices on the title rocker that opéns Hole’s new album, the band’s first since 1994’s Live Through This. Her co-stars are a bassist, Melissa Auf Der Maur; a drummer, Patty Schemel; and one pent-up guitarist, Eric Erlandson, who keeps going for the throat. Love sounds sick of people who don’t miss vinyl, who don’t understand how to use records as ways to make sense of their lives.

Celebrity Skin — an album about fame, beauty, life and their opposites — is Hole’s passionate response. It’s sprung, flung and fun, high-impact, rock-fueled pop with the body and flexibility of really good hair. Hole are immediately in your face with the cheese-metal riffs and cuddly dissolves of “Celebrity Skin,” a track full of cloudless energy that seems to explode the malaise that has surrounded Love since husband Kurt Cobain’s death. “If the world is so wrong,” Love insists next on “Awful,” “Yeah, you can break them all/With one song.”

The album teems with sonic knockouts that make you see all sorts of stars. It’s accessible, fiery and intimate — often at the same time. Here is a basic guitar record that’s anything but basic. On high points like “Awful” and the gorgeous “Malibu,” Hole act as though making big radio-ready hits smart now equals pure punk rock.

Love herself is a combination of Los Angeles messiness and London obliqueness, a mix of the ungovernable expressiveness of Stevie Nicks and the refracted psychedelicism of a British loner like Julian Cope. Producer Michael Beinhorn — who steered Soundgarden through the wiry heavens of guitar rock on Superunknown — helps pull together these two unlikely sides of Love’s artistic personality. The result is more shiftingly special than the heavy-handed grunge of Live Through This. Celebrity Skin is all minimalist explosion, idiomatic flair and dead-on rhythms. On “Malibu,” a ballad about separation and escape, Erlandson’s guitar changes from silveriness to something rougher in a heartbeat. This is rock & roll that’s supple enough to handle Love’s amphitheaters of emotion.

It’s wavy, like the Pacific Ocean. That’s one of Love’s other obsessions on Celebrity Skin: the promises and the agonies of Southern California. Sold-out sluts, fading actresses, deluded teenagers, “summer babes” and hunks — all this “beautiful garbage” crowds the roadside of the album. So Billy Corgan, Hole’s other major collaborator, who co-wrote five superb songs on Skin, makes real sense here. By advocating structure in ’92 with the Smashing Pumpkins, Corgan stood firm for the L.A. tradition of closely considered studio rock as an avenue to freedom. The songs he worked on here include “Hit So Hard,” an unhurried groove about full-on crushes that never lays back; “Dying,” a slightly electronicized ballad where Love reveals her need to be “under your skin”; and “Petals,” whose subtle minor-key remembrances and grand demands build to a spectacular climax. Clearly, Corgan has shown Hole how to relax and go for it.

Other songs are as impressive. On “Reasons to Be Beautiful,” Hole recapture the Los Angeles of X, the first punk band to burlesque the downside of L.A. “Miles and miles of perfect skin,” Love sings, “I swear I do, I fit right in.” But as much as she loves a boho band like X, Love lives for grand gesture. After howling through “Northern Star,” she cheers up with “Boys on the Radio,” one of the most moving pop songs the Nineties have heard. The text involves Love’s male competitors, and how she loves and hates them. As Erlandson switches from strum-y verses to exquisitely fucked-up chords ever so slightly behind the beat, Love’s unreal vocal attitude — sensuous but distant, as though she’s tugging at the pop nation, her life and your heart, from Venus — takes the song someplace else altogether. She considers “endless summer nights” that she knows are illusions but that she craves anyway. With its odd angle on heartbreak, the song is an end-of-the-century “More Than a Feeling.” And as Celebrity Skin keeps arguing, that’s something the world can sure use.

You don’t need to know or love Courtney Love — to care about her highly chronicled trek from ripped cropped tops to Versace gowns — to enjoy this album. Even Love herself, though, can’t deny her own myth: In the album’s very first verse, she casts herself as “a walking study/In demonology.” Love has not seized the occasion of the third Hole album to force her thoughts into a meticulous memoir, a well-put apology or even a clear explanation. On Celebrity Skin, she isn’t especially after journalistic precision, and she isn’t devising some glam plan to seem brilliant. She just knows exactly the kind of rock star she wants to be, and is it”.

Twenty-five on 9th September, the mighty Celebrity Skin turns twenty-five. I hope that fans around the world will celebrate it. Courtney Love (Cobain) herself is going to write a few words I am sure! If you have not heard it recently, then make sure that you take time out to dive in. I remember hearing it in 1998 and being amazed back then. I find myself blown away now. The wonderful Celebrity Skin will make…

AN indelible impression.

FEATURE: Queens United: How Women Are Defining the Music and Live Highlights of 2023

FEATURE:

 

 

Queens United

PHOTO CREDIT: cottonbro studio/Pexels

 

How Women Are Defining the Music and Live Highlights of 2023

_________

TO continue what I have been saying….

 IN THIS PHOTO: Lana Del Rey/PHOTO CREDIT: Chuck Grant

for a very long time now: the current music scene is dominated and defined by women. I have explored this before many times. What I mean is that the best albums and songs have been created by women. I think they are leading the way and doing something extraordinary. I will end with a playlist of songs from the best albums made by women this year so far. I think that the festival bills for this year are disappointingly unbalanced. All should be aiming for a fifty-fifty gender balance, and yet very few have. In terms of headliner, as Glastonbury showed, there are plenty of worthy women ready to headline that have been booked further down the bill – Lana Del Rey springs to mind. I wanted to discuss women in music 2023 a little bit more. In terms of the most spectacular gigs and festival performances, I think that female artists have also delivered more in that respect to their male counterparts. The aforementioned Lana Del Rey’s Glastonbury set, despite being cut short, was among the very best. Her other gigs this year have been immense. Alongside new groups such as The Last Dinner Party marking themselves out as future legend, right across the musical broad, we are seeing incredible female artists strike out with the most incredible music. There are a couple of reviews I want to bring in that highlight some epic performances from amazing women. The first is from The Guardian. They were reviewing Green Nan Festival. Artists such as Self Esteem (Rebecca Lucy Taylor) and Julia Byrne provided highlights:

“The national park in which it takes place has changed name to Bannau Brycheiniog, but 21 years in, most else about Green Man remains reassuringly the same. Subtle evolution, not revolution, has been the steady success of this 25,000 capacity all-ages celebration of musical eclecticism and reverence in nature: it’s practically as much a part of the Powys landscape as the soaring mountains that wrap the site in their misty embrace.

IN THIS PHOTO: Self Esteem (Rebecca Lucy Taylor)/PHOTO CREDIT: Suzie Howell for The New York Times

Green Man tickets sold out almost immediately this year before any artists were even announced – no mean feat in tight economic times. There’s no denying that prices have crept upwards sharply (£6.50 a pint of Growler). Yet Green Man’s core values hold strong. Sponsorship is eschewed. Sustainability, inclusivity (the lineup is gender balanced; two of the three main-stage headliners are female) and laid-back good vibes reign. Emerging artists, zeitgeisty heavy hitters and heritage heroes alike are platformed to often much bigger crowds than they would typically reach, and usually seize their moment.

However, on Friday night, not ponchos, nor 6 Music Dad caps nor the homemade versions of headliners Devo’s trademark energy dome hats can defy the lashing rain. Akron, Ohio’s boiler-suited Spudboys are on a goodbye tour and prove ideal for Green Man with their litany of jittery, improbable post-punk hits including Whip It and a wickedly shredded cover of the Rolling Stones’ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction. In what may lend credence to Devo’s pet theory about of the devolution of mankind, humans dance madly in the muck. Earlier on the same stage, in a Friday of farewells, psychedelic jazz explorers the Comet is Coming played one of their last ever shows, sending the crowd into similarly soggy raptures.

American alt-folk singer-songwriter Julie Byrne’s magnificent new album The Greater Wings is a triumph of grace and hope against the odds. The sun makes its immaculately timed entrance on Saturday as she begins to sing her exquisite synth-dappled hymns of love and loss. Later, Arizonan Americana heartbreaker Courtney Marie Andrews holds a hushed crowd in the palm of her hand, in spite of her and her band being forced to busk it on borrowed instruments after losing their gear in a frantic dash to Wales. “I’ve been wearing the same clothes for 72 hours!” Andrews admits. The slow drama of sunset is matched by Irish folk radicals Lankum’s droning Celt-goth waves of dread and bliss. 

“I’m going to go away for a year to do new things, ta ra!” announces power-suited Rebecca Lucy Taylor AKA Self Esteem, as she brings down the curtain on her breakout era as Britain’s most righteous new pop superstar. How apt that it should end here, where touring for her acclaimed second album Prioritise Pleasure began with a bang in 2021 in the Far Out tent. Taylor’s connection with the festival goes back much further still, to her previous band Slow Club. To see her elevated to main stage Saturday night headliner, leading ecstatic dances and howling, cathartic singalongs, is an all-time Green Man high.

Just as Self Esteem’s career took root here so too might that of others to appear on smaller stages across the weekend. Homegrown up-and-comers from the musical hotbed of Monmouthshire the Bug Club are a fizzing reminder of how much fun rock’n’roll can be when you keep it funny and simple, dummy. The intriguingly named Uh clash dreamy electronic textures with acid house squelch and blasts of punky dissonance. Indie buzz band most likely to “do a Wet Leg”, the Last Dinner Party, pull probably the biggest crowd the rising stage has ever seen (evidence suggests they have already risen)”.

It is not only the summer that has seen female cultural dominance. I feel the entire year has – and will continue to be – been defined by them. It is almost impossible to compile a playlist with all the best music made by women so far this year. I will do as much as I can. The point is, whether it is live performances, festivals sets, albums, singles or any musical highs, most of the best and most memorable have been from women. Epic tours from Taylor Swift and Beyoncé have confirmed them as legends. A definite legend, Madonna, begins her Celebration Tour in October. I also think that, as festivals balance their books and book more women, we will see some icons of the future come through. Before wrapping up, and highlighting a trio of tremendous women whose album, the record, and live performances have been heralded, The Guardian  reviewed boygenius when they played Gunnerbury Park, London recently:

“If there is a better after-party to England losing the World Cup on Sunday morning than seeing Boygenius play to 25,000 fans, it’s hard to picture it. The US songwriting supergroup of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus trade in both intimate commiserations and a celebration of female interdependence that runs counter to the concept of singular male brilliance that gave them their cheeky band name. They chose Irish songwriter Soak, US alt-pop star Ethel Cain and pop trio Muna to support them today: all queer artists, a bill reflected in a very polite crowd primarily comprised of girls, goths and gays (and England shirts). This spiritual sister to Lilith Fair feels like an apt conclusion to a summer defined by women succeeding on an epic scale, from the England squad to blockbuster, headline-dominating tours by Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and SZA, to Greta Gerwig’s Barbie painting the box office pink.

IN THIS PHOTO: Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus of boygenius/COMPOSITE: Gus Stewart/Getty Images

Gunnersbury Park is, Baker estimates, the trio’s biggest show ever, and there’s almost something incongruous about it: these three songwriters often sing in close-woven harmonies, and keep a similarly tight lyrical focus, from an imminent ex’s unbearable “keys on the counter, your dirty dish in the sink” in Dacus’s Please Stay, to Emily I’m Sorry, a Bridgers-led track about a crisis in the back seat of a car that seems to shudder with the precariousness of the situation. They have just one EP and an album, this year’s The Record, and many of their Americana-tinged songs proceed with a crushed, under-covers smallness, or a nostalgic dreaminess reminiscent of Sheryl Crow’s 90s hits. Yet the response among the crowd is one of abject hysteria – there are tattoos of Bridgers’ lyrics, and a woman wearing wings to cosplay as the lyric “always an angel, never a god” – reflecting a generational hunger to hear these small, never-ending embarrassments blown up sky-sized. One of the biggest yell-alongs comes in Emily I’m Sorry, as Bridgers sings, “I’m 27 and I don’t know who I am.”

Boygenius are well aware of this, and take a knowing approach to their own iconography, perhaps having observed from Mitski’s gigs being overrun by screaming gen Z-ers that if you can’t beat ’em, you may as well join ’em. The merch features various well-done riffs on the classic heavy metal aesthetic. They walk on to The Boys Are Back in Town, adopt the verve of a wrestling announcer to introduce one another and, in their matching suits and ties, function a bit like a boyband. Bridgers, the most influential songwriter of the past five years, is obviously Robbie Williams and could presumably sell out the park alone, yet their formation is well balanced, highlighting each member’s strengths – the unblinking clarity of Dacus’s voice, the weather-worn innocence of Baker’s – without making their self-written songs sound like individual showcases, nor subsuming them to a blanded-out whole.

Balancing their heart-piercing lyrics are the self-consciously meme-able ones: Dacus’s “you say you’re a winter bitch but summer’s in your blood” from True Blue gets another scream-along, and Bridgers starts Boyfriends by asking the very LGBTQ-centric crowd: “Who here has a boyfriend?” After they boo, she says: “Who is a boyfriend? Who is an aspiring boyfriend?” to rising cheers, then the climax: “Who here is gay?” gets another scream. The hysteria becomes so much that the band keep having to stop the show to get security to attend to fainting fans: it’s not hot, nor exactly druggy, so you can only assume they’ve been overcome by pure swooning. The other price of this sort of extremely online fandom is the plague of phones, and before Letter to an Old Poet, Bridgers asks fans to put theirs away as it’s about “the hardest part of my adult life and I’d prefer to look you in the face”.

Sometimes the mid-tempo-ness of it all gets a bit overwhelming, though even when they play another wistful epic, it’s worth remembering how seldom women musicians have had the scope to be so expansive and in front of such vast crowds. But the highlights are undoubtedly the thrashers that make good on the gnarly merch imagery: $20 leaps from hymnal harmonies to a brawny crunch that thunders like river rapids; Satanist surges; Not Strong Enough turns a song about an inferiority complex into an all-time great chorus (one that would fit perfectly on the Cardigans’ underrated country-tinged Long Gone Before Daylight).

And the ending maxes out their self-sustained rock lore: Muna come on for Salt in the Wound, which climaxes with fireworks and Dacus snogging every member of her band as well as Muna. The six musicians tumble over each other, a giddy, gleeful pride that deserve to celebrate the special community they’ve created”.

From the BRIT Awards recognising some amazing women to the fact that this year’s Mercury Prize sees Jessie Ware and (female-fronted) Jockstrap in the shortlist means that the industry is acknowledging their brilliance and importance. Rather than this being another feature where I poke the industry and say they are not doing enough to highlight women and create parity, it is a celebration of the awesome music – both live and recorded – that they have brought us. Teeming with stunning sounds from a brilliant and diverse range of artists, 2023 has been another where music’s queens have made the biggest impressions. This will continue through the next year. That is not to say men in music are lagging behind a lot. One cannot discount their amazing contributions. I feel, and as there is a long way to go before we see true equality across the board, that the standard of music coming from female artist is not being rewarded with opportunity and necessary fanfare. They do not want special treatment or to be isolated. Instead, there has been this wealth of wonderful music from women that people need to hear. Let’s hope, as we look towards 2024, that there is a radical shift. Progress and parity has been slow to come by. It has not happened yet and, in a year when festivals at least could have done a lot more to include women and make them headliners, they failed to do so. Cloaking themselves ion implausible and rather flimsy excuses, it has been angering to hear the same old lines trotted out by organisers. One only needs to look at what has been produced by women the past couple of years to know that there is an embarrassment of riches. It is largely down to amazing women in music today that 2023 has been…

SUCH a wonderful year.

FEATURE: Northern Sky: Why the Opening of a New BRIT School Will Shift Focus Away from London and the South

FEATURE:

 

 

Northern Sky

IN THIS PHOTO: Leona Lewis is one of the many high-profile artists who attended and graduated from the BRIT School/PHOTO CREDIT: Catie Laffoon

 

Why the Opening of a New BRIT School Will Shift Focus Away from London and the South

_________

I still think that a lot of opportunities….

 IN THIS PHOTO: Adele/PHOTO CREDIT: Samir Hussein/Getty Images

are lacking for music artists based in the Midlands and the North of England. Considering the institutions and venues we have in the South and areas like London, there is a relative privation further North. One of our most illustrious and famed music institute is the BRIT School. Based in Croydon, some of its most successful alumni includes Adele and Amy Winehouse. One reason why they could study there – apart from their talent and potential – is their approximation to Croydon. It is harder for those based further north to get there and realistically be able to afford to stay nearby. I think we are still seeing a disparity regarding the attention London-based artists get compared to those in other parts of the U.K. I am going to come to a welcomed piece of news that will see a BRIT School based in Bradford, Yorkshire. Before I come to that, here is some information about the aim and ethos of the BRIT School:

“We believe in creativity and that young people of all backgrounds should be able to develop their creative talent and craft and make a powerful contribution to society."

Creativity is crucial to the future of our economy and society. For nearly thirty years, The BRIT School has successfully nurtured creative skills in students from every type of background alongside a robust and full academic curriculum. And it does so for free.

If you chose to come here, you will be given the tools to carve out your career, the space to think and the environment to be you. This is a playground with professional boundaries where the raw talent of 14 – 19 year old meets the nurturing expertise of world-class teachers.

The BRIT School revolutionises the lives of its students; just under 100% of all students who have graduated find work in a huge range of creative industries, or enrol for higher education. We are proud to be a Croydon school and equally proud to have national and international friends who support the school with professional and unique opportunities. As the Good School Guide states, “You’ll find BRIT graduates’ words, music, performance, directorial and backstage talents just about everywhere you look, from fashion shows to musicals, national theatre to community arts, in the UK and internationally.” This is a hardworking, fun, passionate school packed with dedicated individuals who love the creative and performing arts and recognise the importance of a thorough and robust education in all subjects. We believe in developing well rounded, articulate, kind and dynamic young people.

Stuart Worden

Principal”.

In spite of it being an all-inclusive institution, there is still that relative lack of opportunity for budding artists and creatives outside of the South. The fact that there is a new BRIT School up in Bradford means easy accessibility for those further north. There are a range of courses on offer, from Music & Music Technology to Film & Media Production. This article from The Guardian explains more about a much-needed expansion:

“It has launched stars from Adele to Amy Winehouse, Jessie J to Tom Holland. Indeed, alumni from the Brit school for performance and creative arts in Croydon, south London, are said to have collectively sold more than 250m albums and won 15 Brit awards.

Now more budding singers, actors and performance artists will get the opportunity to develop and hone their talents, with plans approved to open a northern version of the school.

The Department for Education has given the green light for a Brit School North in Bradford, West Yorkshire, inspired by the Croydon model which opened in 1991 and is free to attend.

The BPI – the representative voice for record labels across the UK – plans to open the specialist creative college in around 2026-27 to allow students aged 16-19 to study performance, production and digital subjects.

The culture secretary, Lucy Frazer, said she is looking for “the next Adele or Amy Winehouse”.

“We’ve seen the success of the Brit school in Croydon, producing national superstars. I think it is really exciting that we’ve got another opportunity, up north, to do exactly the same,” she told the Mail on Sunday.

The school will offer 500 places and will be free to attend with a curriculum focusing on subjects including dance, music, theatre and production arts.

The Bradford-born singer Zayn Malik, a former member of One Direction, was among those who expressed support for the school.

The education secretary, Gillian Keegan, said: “The north is full of creative talent,” adding that the school would mean “more young people will be able to reach their potential”.

The BPI’s chief executive, Jo Twist, said the approval of the plan was “a positive signal that government recognises the critical importance of creative and specialist creative arts education”.

She added: “The UK is a world leader in music and across the creative industries and if we want this to continue, we must invest in talent and the highly transferable skills needed for a competitive economy.”

The BPI chair, YolanDa Brown, said the school would improve access to creative education and reduce the need for young people to move to London and the south-east.

For the bid there was collaboration between the BPI, the record companies Sony Music Entertainment UK, Universal Music UK and Warner Music UK, the Brit school, East London Arts & Music (ELAM) and the Day One Trust that runs ELAM and the London Screen Academy (LSA).

The three record company partners have committed to contribute an initial amount of additional funding towards the school, which is expected to be used to fund the purchase of equipment.

The mayor of West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin, said: “This is a fantastic win for the north and supports our ambition to ensure opportunities for all, no matter where you’re from or where you live.

“The buildup to Bradford UK city of culture 2025 has already started to inspire the next generation of artists.

“And now, with West Yorkshire becoming the home of Brit School North, more young people can follow in the footsteps of our world-class homegrown artists, from the likes of Mel B and Corinne Bailey Rae to the Kaiser Chiefs.”

The leader of Bradford council, Susan Hinchcliffe, said the school was “brilliant news for the Bradford district”.

“There is a huge creative and cultural buzz around Bradford right now. We are preparing to be the UK’s city of culture in 2025 and will soon celebrate the opening of Bradford Live, a new 4,000-capacity live music venue in the old Odeon cinema,” she said”.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Black Midi are BRIT School graduates/PHOTO CREDIT: Neale Haynes for The Times

This is some much-needed good news. I think some of the most interesting and important music at the moment is coming from outside of London. By having a BRIT School in Bradford, it does provide easier commute and locality for aspiring artists near there. In a wider sense, it will help spotlight music in the North. It is clear that there is still a lot of media focus on the capital compared to other parts of the country – thought this is starting to change. It is a boon for the music industry around Bradford too, and it will draw eyes to an area that has always been fertile regarding innovative talent. Alongside all the other events and honours around Bradford, this is sort of a cherry on top of the cake. Some of our greatest artists of the past generation or two have come from thew BRIT School. By widening their bases and welcoming a whole crop of potential artists, it is a really positive sign for the industry. I do feel that there is a divide between North and South regarding spotlighting artists and them being represented at festivals and at award ceremonies. The more we shift away from other locations and centre on London, the broader and richer the industry becomes. Some may say we have parity in that sense already - though I think we have a way to go. There will be many talented artists who have been thinking of enrolling in the BRIT School, but they feel like there are few spaces and chances for them because they live far away. Greater accessibility and spaces will not only benefit them. It is a huge plus for the industry. Shaping artists now that could be as big as the likes of Adele, Leona Lewis, and RAYE. This welcomed news will lead to such an exciting future. By focusing on Bradford and music in the North, it is something that has been…

A long time coming.