FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Coach Party

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight: Revisited

 

Coach Party

__________

THERE will be more…

interviews with the brilliant Isle of Wight band ahead of the release of their new album, Caramel, on 26th September. I last featured them in 2020. Five years later, Coach Party achieved so much! Their debut album, KILLJOY, arrived in 2023. I knew in 2020 that they would be a big deal! Having played some huge venues and with massive success ahead, it is a good time to revisit the band. I want to head back to 2023 and a DORK interview with a band looking forward to their debut album coming out following years of graft and hard work:

“Since 2019, Isle of Wight four-piece Coach Party have been knuckling down. Across three EPs in three years – starting with 2020’s ‘Party Food’ – they’ve been establishing their raucous reality ruckus, and 2023 is finally the year of their hotly anticipated debut album. It’s a moment the band have been building up in their heads since day one. “The allure of putting a debut album out – we’ve spoken about that so much, but not wanting to rush it, not wanting to do it for the sake of it,” explains guitarist Joe Perry.

‘Killjoy’ is a project that either marks the end or the beginning of chapter one – they haven’t decided yet. Either way, it’s a big bloody deal. “I feel like it holds more of an era of us,” vocalist and bassist Jess Eastwood adds. “That part of us from the start of the journey to now feels like, even though we had done EPs, I feel like it’s all of us up until now, and I feel that it’s more sacred than anything to me.”

The toil and trouble they’ve been mastering over the last four years is compounded into its runtime. It has their trademark snark – courtesy of Jess – ripping riffs, singalong choruses, and most of all, it’s got the future in its sights. Something they’re now realising has crept up on them.

“Recently, I’m realising how much has changed,” Jess says. “And that goes from how quickly you want to make it your life to do this, and then how quickly it is your life; and like, actually, this is not your full-time job. This is a lifestyle.”

This idea is a world away from when the four of them – completed by guitarist Steph Norris and drummer Guy Page – first banded together in 2016. The Chess Club signees barely had a handful of gigs under their belt when the tastemaker label came calling in 2019.

Between the cycle of touring and recording, Coach Party have been earning their stripes. Their most recent expeditions have given them the scope of what band life can bring you, and all of these experiences play into ‘Killjoy’. Explaining that before it was christened, “We were looking at calling it ‘Interactions With People’,” says Jess. “Because that is the concept of the album.”

Coach Party have certainly grown into their newfound lifestyle. They’re a bonafide rock band ready to pay service to those listening and to firmly establish their place. Their 2021 single ‘FLAG (Feel Like A Girl)’ is one monument to this. It’s Jess’s moment of demonstrating her vocal distaste for a certain type of person. “If you’ve got young girls or guys that have heard ‘FLAG’ and [say] it’s completely changed their life or helped [them] through something, I want to make sure that they know that that is the meaning, and I don’t want to let them down by being this person that’s not true to who they were when they wrote that track or whatever,” she says. A similar sentiment drives recent single ‘Micro Aggression’; it’s not always easy going.

A connection is where Coach Party’s lofty ambitions come to a head. They’ve seen first-hand what longevity and a studious fanbase can offer on their support runs, and for a solid group of mates from the Isle of Wight, they’ve not done half bad – and the rest is most certainly yet to come. Jess enthuses she is, “Hoping there’s some sort of tangible connection that people get through it.” They’ve not had the chance to give ‘Killjoy’ a proper airing yet. Their autumn headline tour is where it can all come to fruition, particularly Jess’ hungrily envisioned “chaos” for ‘All I Wanna Do Is Hate’. But for now, it’s time to bask in the glow of ‘Killjoy’.

“If we had the opportunity to tell ourselves what we’ve done year on year a year ago, how crazy we’d find it but also just so unexpected,” Joe marvels. “We didn’t ever expect these sorts of things to happen. That’s just the mindset we have. There’s obviously ambition, but maybe it’s pessimism of ‘that’d be nice, but who knows?’”

But with all this soaring success – what with the stadium shows and the like – what’s next? “Maybe we’ll be accused of being an industry plant!” The pair burst out laughing”.

I will end with some details about the forthcoming Caramel. New singles Girls! and Do Yourself a Favour are an exciting glimpse into the new album. I am very excited to hear what arrives from a band I have been a dedicated fan of for half a decade! They are going to go from strength so strength. Jess Eastwood, Joe Perry, Steph Norris, and Guy Page have this amazing chemistry. This really comes to the fore during their live sets. They have a string of dates coming that sees them starting out in the U.K. before heading off across Europe. I will bring things more up to date in terms of interviews. Buzz caught Coach Party live last year in a typically memorable and intense show:

“After supporting Queens Of The Stone Age in Cardiff Castle last summer, returning to nearby Clwb Ifor Bach for their final UK tour date may not feel like the progress indie-grunge band Coach Party had hoped for – as acknowledged by drummer Guy Page. Conversely, he emphasises that this, their headline tour, is special, and that he appreciates the fans being there solely for them.

Known for their raw energy and distinctive sound, the Isle Of Wight’s finest don’t disappoint, with a performance as electrifying as it’s intimate. Wholesome moments and witty comments (mainly about how many stairs the venue had) are weaved seamlessly through a well-curated setlist that mixes Coach Party’s most beloved tracks and newer material. Songs like Be That Girl and FLAG (Feel Like A Girl) are met with enthusiastic cheers and heartfelt singalongs, highlighting the honest connection this band has with their audience.

Of Coach Party’s two guitarists, Joe Perry’s gritty riffs lend stylish, moody cool whilst Steph Norris’ solid skills and immense energy brings the hype and excitement. Norris is working on getting the immensely talented vocalist Jess Eastwood to dance with the band onstage – and it’s working! Any doubt that the vocalist can’t dance is quashed by Norris’ claim, “I’ve seen you twerk in the dressing room, so don’t give me that!” Page’s tight drumming completes the quartet beautifully, and the band’s talent for songwriting and performance comes together to give space for moments of catharsis that only live music can provide.

A special mention for last-minute support, Merthyr Tydfil’s very own Brass Bambees – they bring everything to the stage and despite the heat, give flat-out energy. Without a doubt, audiences should be keen to see more of this incredible force of a band. As for Coach Party, they’ve already posted on socials how much they enjoyed their UK tour, signing off with “brb, writing an album”… so watch this space”.

A brief look at this article from last year when Coach Party appeared at SXSW. I think that all of this praise and background is really important. We get this larger impression of the band and how they have grown and progressed since KILLJOY and a very busy past couple of years. I think their careers will get even busier as we look to next year and beyond:

“The Live Experience: Authenticity and Connection

Coach Party’s live performances are a visceral reminder of the power of live music; its universal ability to convene, to communicate, and to celebrate the collective experience across all ages. The band’s ethos, grounded in authenticity and connection, was palpable in their interactions onstage and their “telling it as it is” recap of their Austin experience.

“Being the furthest from home we’ve ever been, yet meeting people who are familiar, or even LIKE us has been a hell of a concept to process, and we’ve been so humbled by that social side of the festival. We played a total of nine times in Austin, but every gig felt like a totally new experience. It was really exciting,” reflected Page, on their week in Austin.

Influences and Evolution

Coach Party’s sound, a melange of indie rock, brit-pop, stoner-rock and grunge, reflects their eclectic musical tastes. The new album underscores their ability to navigate these genres with ease, creating a sound that is distinctively their own. The band credits their unique sound to a collaborative process that allows individual influences to filter through their collective vision, resulting in music that is rich, layered, and wholly Coach Party.

Beyond SXSW: Looking Ahead

With SXSW behind them, Coach Party sets their sights on a European tour, including stops in Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Ireland before hitting the UK in June and July. Their summer itinerary is packed with festival dates, cities they have yet to play, and as Page lamented, “getting our coffee orders completely wrong in every new town; the variation in coffee lingo from place to place never ceases to completely destabilize our mornings”.

Before moving to where the band are now and how far they come, I want to briefly go back to 2023. It is amazing to read this Headliner interview. Many labelling the band as this upcoming or promising name. Coach Party still seen as coming through. They have come a long way in such a short time. Amazing progress from a quartet whose natural sound has connected with so many people around the world. A band that definitely need to be on your radar:

“While Coach Party have sarcastically labelled themselves the ‘Other Isle of Wight band’ following the breathtaking Grammy-winning success of Wet Leg, the band are steadily building a solid claim to also putting music from the south coast island on the map. Having formed in 2016, they were signed within three years to label Chess Club, and they’ve followed the well-trodden path of relentlessly touring and performing to get their music out there. Their three EPs also had them noticed by the likes of NME and The Guardian, so the stage is set very nicely for their just-released debut album Killjoy.

Eastwood and Page form one half of Coach Party, joined by guitarists Steph Norris and Joe Perry. On growing up on the island, Eastwood says, “It was really nice, it’s very chilled and it’s known for being really safe. There’s not a lot to do here beyond going to the park or the beach. But when I was growing up, there wasn’t much of a music scene or any music venues, so I’d go over to The Joiners in Southampton a lot and watch bands there.”

“It’s a great place to start a band or a business,” Page adds. “Because there’s less pressure and expectations here. And also, once we’d played the handful of bars and venues here, it then had us questioning why not just do a full tour? Because once we’d paid the money to go over to Portsmouth, we may as well also go to London, Brighton etc.”

“It’s so important to the four of us that our music is something you can connect to, believe in and sympathise with,” Page says. “We don’t want to insult our listeners by saying ‘it’s all fine really, you’ll get through it!’ Because we don’t know what they’re going through. They might be going through an even worse time than what we’re singing about. We’re basically saying to people who are having a shit time, ‘We love you!’”

It’s a safe bet that Killjoy will shake off the shackles of the ‘up and coming’ label that has been plastered onto Coach Party, and see them deservedly being regarded as one of the UK’s best and most established acts in the indie-rock genre and beyond. Make sure to go to one of their 2023 tour dates, as the Coach Party live experience is scintillating. Meanwhile, Killjoy is out now and conversely could give you a much-needed shot of joy”.

Let’s finish off by moving things to the present. On 26th September, via Chess Records, Caramel will come into the world. The second album from Coach Party, this is one of the most anticipated albums of the year in my view. I cannot wait to see what the band serve up. Make sure that you are following them. The Line of Best Fit were among those who reported the news of Coach Party’s new album:

“We wrote a song to try and encapsulate the escapism and togetherness you'd feel at your favourite band's show, and then we were taken on a visual masterclass as our friends Dan Broadley & Josh Halling fleshed out their interpretation of that song in film," the band explains.

"The concept of swapping out a Coach Party show for a (Club Caramel) retreat, where people can go to discover the parts of their personality they didn't even realise existed and coax them to flourish, is an interesting and beautiful way to interpret the song which we never would have thought of. But, at the same time, it totally aligns with our original meaning and intention for 'Girls!'; we've learnt a lot about ourselves at gigs over the years, and we're sure the same is true for anyone who's been to see their favourite band live."

“No matter who you are, no matter who you think you are, you’re our girls,” smiles Guy. “When you walk out the door you can go back to whatever you want, but being at a gig is an escape for every one of us, we’re all doing this thing because we love to be here. You’re at this gig so you’re one of us. Our girls are everyone in this room,” they add.

Tracklist:

  1. Do It For Love

  2. Girls!

  3. Georgina

  4. Control

  5. I Really Like You

  6. Disco Dream

  7. Fake It

  8. Medicate Yourself

  9. Do Yourself A Favour

  10. Still Hurts”.

It is going to be wonderful seeing Coach Party going forward. A band who are stunning live and are brilliantly engaging, dynamic, memorable and exceptional in the studio, go and follow them on social media and get Caramel when it comes out. One of the best albums of 2025. I predict that. I wanted to return to a phenomenal group that I have been a fan of…

FOR over five years.

____________

Follow Coach Party

FEATURE: Groovelines: Imogen Heap – Hide and Seek

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

Imogen Heap – Hide and Seek

__________

AS the magnificent…

IN THIS PHOTO: Imogen Heap photographed in 2019/PHOTO CREDIT: Alexandra Arnold

Imogen Heap has been back in the music limelight because her phenomenal album, Speak for Yourself, has been reissued twenty years after release, I wanted to focus on its standout track. On the album, there is a remastered version of Hide and Seek. It is Imogen Heap’s best-known song. One that has taken on a life of its own. Because of that, this Groovelines explores a true great. Even so, there may be people who have not heard the track of Heap. Released on 19th May, 2005, Hide and Seek was not a commercial hit in the U.K. Not a big success for the London-born Imogen Heap, this is a song that might have been a bit too unusual for the charts. However, the fact that Hide and Seek has appeared in multiple T.V. shows and is being talked about twenty years later proves how enduring and original it is. Hide and Seek was the first single from Heap’s second album, Speak for Yourself. Written and produced by Heap, the song is an acapella ballad that heavily uses the harmonizer. A track that describes painfully losing someone due to a breakup. Before coming to some reviews and features, I want to bring in some Wikipedia information. The collected some critical reaction for the incredible Hide and Seek. It still sounds like nothing else:

“Hide and Seek" received critical acclaim upon its release. Writing for The New York Times, Laura Sinagra wrote that "Hide and Seek" was "the ghostly pièce de résistance" of Speak for Yourself, adding that the song "suggest[s] a kind of lovesick cyborg alienation, an almost disembodied, distinctly modern malaise". Sophie Heawood of The Guardian referred to the song as "extraordinary", describing its use of vocal layering as "startling" albeit with a "Marmite-style love-or-hate effect on listeners". For Pitchfork, David Raposa identified "Hide and Seek" as the "black sheep" of Speak for Yourself, writing, "It's gorgeous, it's impressive, it's grandiose, and it's barely there at all — just Heap's voice darting and divebombing, making itself scarce, disappearing into itself." The Skinny's Dave Reid suggested that "Hide and Seek" "threatens to put the rest of the album in the shade". Jeff Vrabel of PopMatters wrote that the song was "uniformly gorgeous" with "no beat required", adding, "Its sonic trickery makes the song lap itself; there's so much synthetic beauty in there that it comes off sounding organic anyway”.

In 2020, fifteen years after Hide and Seek was released, Inside Hook explored its enduring popularity. A song that has been used in The O.C. and Normal People, it has translated through the years. Something about it that has affected audiences of different generations. One that appeals to an American and British audience. And it has gone beyond that! More than twenty years after its came out, Imogen Heap’s Hide and Seek remains beautifully unsettling. Maybe not the right words. However, there is something both beautiful and unusual about the song:

“The first was the beginning of the Revolutionary War, the second was the one that felled the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in the preface to WWI, and the third arrived in the Season Two finale of The O.C., when Marissa shot Ryan’s brother Trey to the tune of Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek.” 

Since that night 15 years ago — the episode premiered on May 19, 2005 — Heap’s self-harmonized, vocoder-infused masterwork has been given the meme treatment by Saturday Night Live, the Billboard Hot 100 treatment by Jason Derulo and even the Broadway treatment in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. But it’s the song’s placement in Normal People, a new 12-part TV adaptation of the Sally Rooney novel, that has ripped open old wounds, sparked debates about musical baggage and posed the question: Can “Hide and Seek” escape its iconic origins to become something more? 

To connect the dots across time, we got in touch with Maggie Phillips, music supervisor on Normal People, as well as Norman Buckley, who worked as a director and editor on The O.C., a job that included editing the Season Two finale, “The Dearly Beloved.”

“When I was editing The O.C., I was given Imogen Heap’s album Speak for Yourself by music supervisor Alex Patsavas at the beginning of Season Two — it may have even been before the album’s release,” Buckley told InsideHook via email. “I loved the entire album and thought her voice was unique. I suggested to The O.C. creator Josh Schwartz that he listen to the album, as I wanted to use a song called ‘Goodnight and Go’ in Episode Five of the second season (which we did). ‘Hide and Seek’ was on the same album.” 

It’s the song’s association with the beloved teen soap that has ostensibly irked both fans of The O.C. and of Normal People’s source material. Less than a week after the latter show premiered, The Cut did what The Cut does, asking, “What Is *That* Song Doing in Normal People?” Another blog said “Hide and Seek” “belongs” to The O.C. As for Maggie Phillips, when asked if there were factions on the creative team fighting for or against the song’s use in the new Hulu and BBC series, she skips the pretense.

Of course, “Hide and Seek” does seem to have more than a bit of magic itself, which goes all the way back to the song’s composition, a musical origin story to rival other timeless classics like “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” but one that seems to have gotten lost amid the memes.

“It was about three in the morning … I had an idea of this hide-and-seek thing, I liked the childhood reference and I wanted to write a song about that. So when I was kind of stream-of-consciousness singing along to myself playing the piano-keyboard-thing, this whole song, all four and a half minutes of it, just arrived from start to finish in that four and a half minutes. All the lyrics weren’t there because lyrics are like pulling teeth with me. And right at the end you can actually hear the local train going by the window, because my studio’s right next to a busy train line,” she told WXPN in 2006. 

“I went home and I played it to my boyfriend — he’s kind of tattoos and bleach blond hair and six-foot-four — and he started crying when he heard it. So I was like, hm, there may be something in this song.” 

It wouldn’t be surprising to learn that Schwartz, Derulo, Hoggett or Abrahamson also shed tears when they first heard the song. But as Heap notes, the memorable lyrics —  from the opening “Where are we?” to “crop circles in the carpet” to the gunshot-triggering chorus — weren’t all there when she made her boyfriend weep. So the power, the timelessness of the song, then, lies beyond the “mmm whatcha say.” It lies in the music.

When asked how the process of choosing songs for Normal People differed from other projects, Phillips said, “In this instance, I spent most of my time trying to remember what my first love and first heartbreak felt like. The feelings are so strong, nothing is diluted from experience or time. I didn’t want the music to feel detached. I wanted the songs to feel imitate and sincere … as real and as intense as the emotions they were experiencing”.

I am going to wrap up in a second. Before that, this feature from earlier in the year marked twenty years of Hide and Seek. I am surprised that more has not been written about it. However, this is a song that will continue to be talked about for many years. If it perhaps no longer resonates with the same demographic it did ten or fifteen years ago, there is no denying how influential and important Hide and Seek is. Beyond the media and its screen appearances:

“It’s been two decades since Imogen Heap gifted the world “Hide and Seek,” a song that beautifully defied musical norms and etched itself permanently into pop culture. Released in 2005, this unique acapella track broke barriers, selling over half a million copies, and resonating deeply within mainstream media, from topping charts to becoming a memorable soundtrack moment on the beloved TV show, The OC. Our lecturer, Alex Wood, breaks down her vocal production, noting how Heap’s voice serves as both melody and instrumentation, with layered harmonies creating the song’s entire sonic landscape.

The creation story behind “Hide and Seek” is as intriguing as the song itself. When Heap’s studio computer unexpectedly “blew up,” she didn’t despair. Instead, she turned to a Digitech Vocalist Workstation EX, hardware typically used for pitch correction and real-time harmonisation, and began experimenting. Using this technology alongside a MIDI keyboard and recording onto a Minidisk 4-track recorder, Heap crafted her groundbreaking masterpiece. What made “Hide and Seek” stand apart was Heap’s innovative use of the device’s vocoder setting. Unlike traditional vocoders that blend vocals with synth signals, the Digitech altered Heap’s harmonics in real-time, creating an ethereal and synthesised vocal quality. With the device limited to four-part harmonies, Heap creatively played additional notes, allowing the harmoniser to randomly select pitches. This resulted in beautifully unpredictable harmonies, surprising inversions, and the hauntingly high notes of the second chorus.

Though Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman” pioneered acapella synth-vocals back in 1982, “Hide and Seek” uniquely captured the internet generation’s imagination. It has notably lived on through countless “hmmm, whatcha say?” memes, demonstrating the song’s persistent influence and its remarkable ability to transcend generations.

In 2018, Heap further highlighted the song’s incredible journey with her Mycelia project, “Life of a Song,” visually tracing the $1 million in royalties “Hide and Seek” has generated. This innovative transparency illuminated the complex financial dynamics of the music industry, underscoring Heap’s ongoing commitment to artist empowerment”.

Beyond its appearances in the media, there have been covers, remixes and samples of Hide and Seek. I want to return briefly to Wikipedia, as this information about those who have tackled Hide and Seek and used the track is really interesting. I hope that this the features and words I have collated goes deeper into Hide and Seek. Gives you more of an impression about why it is so special:

“On the fifth season of Australian reality competition series Australian Idol, finalist Ben McKenzie performed the song on the season's fourth episode. British alternative rock band Fightstar covered the song as a B-side to their single, "The English Way", in 2008. American metal band And Then There Were None covered the song in 2009. In 2010, Canadian guitarist Antoine Dufour recorded a solo guitar version of the song. British a cappella ensemble The King's Singers included a cover of the song on their 2010 album Swimming Over London. In 2010 and 2011, respectively, Dutch DJ Afrojack and Swedish DJ Otto Knows released remixes of the song. In 2012, British pop rock band The Dunwells released a cover of the song on their EP Leaving the Rose. In 2017, English musician Jacob Collier recorded his solo harmonizer rendition of the song. A trance remix of the song by Dutch DJ Ferry Corsten was released in 2013. American DJ Slushii released a future bass remix of the song in 2018”.

As Speak for Yourself recently turned twenty and there has been a reissue, a lot of people have been talking about Hide and Seek. It was ubiquitous at a certain point and received a lot of attention. Whether it was T.V. or film exposure or cover versions, maybe the focus has died a little. However, there has been new spotlight on this classic recently. This is a fantastic and hugely impactful track that we are going to be dissecting and discussing…

TWO decades from now.

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty: Ten: Waking the Witch

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

Ten: Waking the Witch

__________

THIS song is a bit…

of a turning point in The Ninth Wave. Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love turns forty on 16th September. I am running a series of features that looks inside all of the songs and aspects around the album. The third song on The Ninth Wave, the conceptual second side of the album, is perhaps the scariest and most urgent. It is Walking the Witch. Following Under Ice, we sense the heroine trapped under ice and beneath the water. Waking the Witch is the song where voices urge her to wake up and keep going. The next song, Watching You Without Me, is more haunted. Family and friends waiting for the arrival of the heroine/Bush but she is not there. I am going to explore Waking the Witch in more detail. For that, I will bring in Leah Kardos’s 33 1/3 book, Hounds of Love. Kardos unpicks the song and goes inside the composition. Before I get there, this article from the Kate Bush Encyclopedia is interview archive where Bush discussed one of the most thrilling and memorable songs on Hounds of Love:

“These sort of visitors come to wake them up, to bring them out of this dream so that they don’t drown. My mother’s in there, my father, my brothers Paddy and John, Brian Tench – the guy that mixed the album with us – is in there, Del is in there, Robbie Coltrane does one of the voices. It was just trying to get lots of different characters and all the ways that people wake you up, like you know, you sorta fall asleep at your desk at school and the teacher says “Wake up child, pay attention!”. (…) I couldn’t get a helicopter anywhere and in the end I asked permission to use the helicopter from The Wall from The Floyd, it was the best helicopter I’d heard for years for years [laughs].
I think it’s very interesting the whole concept of witch-hunting and the fear of women’s power. In a way it’s very sexist behavior, and I feel that female intuition and instincts are very strong, and are still put down, really. And in this song, this women is being persecuted by the witch-hunter and the whole jury, although she’s committed no crime, and they’re trying to push her under the water to see if she’ll sink or float.

Richard Skinner, ‘Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992”.

PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Kate Bush performed this track, and the entirety of The Ninth Wave, during the 2014 residency in Hammersmith. As part of the majestic Before the Dawn, I can imagine Waking the Witch was one of the standout moments. I would love to have been at one of the twenty-two dates! There is a lot of detail from Leah Kardos about Waking the Witch. I can’t include all of it. However, I want to select some highlights. Voices urging the heroine to wake up: “Voices speak from various locations in the stereo space, urging the woman to wake up, some of them sound like family (‘Wake up, sleepy head!”), another like a scolding schoolmistress (‘Wake up, child – pay attention!’)”. Bush is masterful when it comes to layering vocals perfectly. The answer machine messages that play during The Dreaming’s All the Love. She can weave these different accents and people together to create something head-spinning. Waking the Witch is such a busy track. Leah Kardos writes how we hear various voices – including Robbie Coltrane, whale song, and John Carder Bush’s voice, “from the back of the right speaker peeks out to stage-whisper ‘Over here!’”. The explosion happens after some brief build-up. “Most shocking is Bush’s frantic voice, cutting in and out as she pleads , ‘Listen to me, help me, help me baby’”. It is, as Kardos suggests, the panic-stricken sounds of someone drowning. I often wonder whether Bush/the heroine made it out of the song. Whether this is the moment she succumbs. That garbled cry was achieved by “quickly moving the record switch on the tape machine”. That was the source of a heated argument between Kate Bush and her engineer and then-boyfriend, Del Palmer. In a later interview, Palmer admitted he had to eat humble pie and was wrong!

The heroine goes from this drowning and scared person to someone accused of witchcraft She is put on trial and condemned. “Witch ‘swimming’ or ‘ducking’ was the practice of tying up and dunking an accused woman into the body of water to see if they sank or floated”. It is a terrifying and tense moment that brings so much story and twist to the song. “With its monstrous voice effect (Eventime Harmonizer set to minus-two octaves), Bush’s Witchfinder subjects the accused to such tests (‘You won’t burn, you won’t bleed, confess to me girl’)”. These tests including subjecting the accused to burning and pricking. The feeling that witches were impervious to pain and would have a bloodless mark. It was based around belief, though it was sexism and misogyny. A fascinating thing to bring into the middle of a 1985 album! Bush herself must have felt like a witch being judged and on trial. Subject to so much blatant misogyny through her career! I do not know that background voices “sing lines adapted from the halyard sea shanty Blood Red Shoes. The tune was popularized by folk revivalist A.L. (Bert) Lloyd”. Bush does some riffing on Lloyd’s lines. “Pinks and posies, red, red roses go down”. Bush was no stranger to a sea shanty. Leah Kardos remarks how the B-side of Hounds of Love’s title single was a cover of The Handsome Cabin Boy.  It was originally by Lloyd and Ewan MacColl. “The music breaks away from the C# minor for a counter phrase that swirls with the sound of church bells and woozy spiralling guitar figures around E minor. Bush murmurs snatches of Catholic Vulgate scripture that she may be forgetting or getting wrong: ‘Spiritus sanctus in nomine no-no-no-no’ (the name of the Holy Spirit, no) and later ‘Deus et dei domino no-no-no-no’ (God and God’s lord, no)”. The Witchfinder questions the innocence of the woman and delivers the verdict. Kardos writes about the line, “Help this blackbird, there’s a stone around my leg”. With the sound of a helicopter coming in and yelling at the woman to get out of the water – the same helicopter sample used on Pink Floyd’s The Wall -, there is mystery around the blackbird and what that references.

Leah Kardos theorises it could be a reference to Elizabeth George Speare’s 1958 novel, The Witch of Blackbird Pond. The lead is seen as a witch and viewed with suspicion after diving into the water to retrieve a child’s toy and she has this ability to swim. That was seen as unusual. Bush remarked how female instinct and intuition was put down and people fear a woman’s power. She channelled all of this in Waking the Witch. I know I have published a lot of this information before. Quoted from Leah Kardos. However, as not much is written about the track and it is almost forty years since Hounds of Love was released, it warrants another inclusion. I want to include some information from this feature from earlier in the year that provides some fascinating perspectives and insight into Waking the Witch:

“The accuser is distorting her words and ignoring her cries so she imagines herself turning into a blackbird (the blackbird being Bush’s favourite singer, as she once told a bemused interviewer):

I question your innocence
She's a witch (help this blackbird, there's a stone around my leg)
Ha, damn you, woman
(Help this blackbird, there's a stone around my leg)
What say you, good people (guilty, guilty, guilty)
Well, are you responsible for your actions? (This blackbird)
Not guilty (help this blackbird)
Wake up the witch

The song ends with the sound of a rescue helicopter and a cry to ‘get out of the water.’ A witch trial is not an obvious place for the drowning protagonist’s thoughts to have taken them, perhaps the woman half-remembers a story of witch ducking and has imagined herself in the victim’s place as the water seems to bear down on her with the fury of persecution. Identifying with an accused witch also brings a particularly female sensibility to this musical story.

I think of the women of Afghanistan singing in defiance of the Taliban’s femicidal death cult, punished for doing what blackbirds can do freely. This feels like a song for anyone who is drowning, but I also think it’s worth noting that the violent imagery here brings with it the will to stay awake. Unlike the gentle suicide suggested by ‘And Dream of Sheep,’ a sinister song masquerading as a lullaby, this song pricks our drowning woman awake and lights a fire of determination underneath her. It’s at the climax of her persecution that rescue suddenly arrives. This also subverts the title of the song: ‘Waking the Witch’ was the name for the practice of sleep deprivation used as torture for securing a confession. Here, staying awake will save the woman’s life.

If you’re interested in the real history of witch trials and stories of defiance, make sure to read Marion Gibson’s Witchcraft, A History in 13 trials which I reviewed here. I wrote about whether or not we still find witches scary back in my Macbeth entry in ‘Horror Moments: Shakespeare Edition’ which you can read here”.

A very important song on The Ninth Wave, Waking the Witch is a moment of history, sexism, struggle, defiance and terror. Did the heroine survive and respond to the voices? Are these dying words she hears? In terms of the production and the vocal layers, this is Kate Bush at her very best as producer! Busy and dripping in darkness and violence, there is also sweetness and this chance of hope. Watching You Without Me is a much calmer affair. Where we maybe sense the heroine is a ghost. Or that is how she appears to her family. A remarkable switch in terms of mood and the story. That is a song I will investigate next time. Now, for this feature, I was keen to dive inside the terrifying Waking the Witch. It is the eighth track from Kate Bush’s landmark…

FIFTH studio album.

FEATURE: Respect: Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul at Sixty

FEATURE:

 

 

Respect

 

Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul at Sixty

__________

AN album that I hope…

IN THIS PHOTO: Otis Redding in 1966/PHOTO CREDIT: Cyrus Andrews/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

gets some new interest and discussion around its anniversary. On 15th September, 1965, Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul was released. It was the third studio album from the legend. Perhaps Otis Redding’s finest album. Even though the album is mainly cover versions, Redding puts his own stamp on the songs. Infusing them with such power, soulfulness and nuance. You come back to these tracks time and time again and get new things! New emotions and feelings. Such a stunning collection of performances from someone that we lost far too soon. Otis Redding did write three of the album’s tracks – including Ole Man Trouble and Respect. Though many feel the latter was claimed by Aretha Franklin, in terms of the definitive version, it was Otis Redding who wrote it. A main reason why Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul is so immediate is the fact most of the songs were recorded so quickly. It is staggering to think that the album was recorded in the space of twenty-four hours. Between 9th and 10th July, 1965, this timeless and perfect album was laid down (bar one song). Like capturing a concert. If it was overthought or there was this long recording process, then I don’t feel the songs would affect and resonate. Capturing the purity and rawness of the songs, Redding was backed by the Stax house band, Booker T. & the M.G.'s A huge  crossover success, Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul sold more than 250,000 copies. I am going to feature some articles about this masterpiece. One that, sixty years later, has lost none of its impact! I have been listening to many of these songs since I was a child and I cannot fathom where that voice came from! There are other brilliant and mind-blowing singers – Aretha Franklin and Sam Cooke (who wrote three of the songs that appear on Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul) – who elicit emotions. However, there are none that leave the impression that Otis Redding does!

I want to start things off with Pitchfork’s review of 2008. It provides some context in terms of how Otis Redding was not this especially well-known artist before he recorded Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul. It is also unfortunate how the album cover features the face of a white woman and not Redding. There are these undertones that are unsettling and angering. As much as anything, this masterpiece album did not feature the face of its creator on the cover! Making him anonymous or reducing him to his voice:

“On July 8, 1965, Otis Redding was a young soul singer of modest renown, less than three months removed from releasing his first Top 10 r&b hit single. By July 10, he had become something else entirely: It took only 24 hours to lay down 10 of the 11 songs that would make up Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul, arguably the 1960s' greatest studio-recorded soul LP. (The only track not recorded at that time was the #2 hit, "I've Been Loving You Too Long".) Friends and associates had noticed Redding's growing confidence as a singer, and once Otis Blue hit shelves it was clear he was poised enough to pick up the mantle of the recently slain legend Sam Cooke, up to that point the greatest soul singer in America. He was also prepared to take on the Temptations and the Rolling Stones and B.B.King on their own turf; the only way to top him would be to give one of his original compositions to Aretha Franklin ("Respect"). In the simplest terms: It's a hell of a record, the crowning achievement of a man who could sound pained and celebratory and tender and gritty and proud all at once, with a voice that everyone from John Fogerty to Swamp Dogg to Cee-lo owes a debt to.

Rhino's 2xCD Collector's Edition of Otis Blue makes a good case for this 24-hour labor of love as a wide-reaching document that just gets better with context. A set this packed-- including rarities, alternate mixes, live versions of the album tracks, and the original LP in both mono and stereo-- could easily feel sprawling and overstuffed, but it does a great job illuminating every tweaked nuance and permutation that Redding and his top-notch band could come up with during the course of a song's lifetime. Considering the personnel involved in the original LP-- Booker T. & the M.G.'s guitarist Steve Cropper, bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn, and drummer Al Jackson Jr.; keyboardist Isaac Hayes; a horn section (saxophonists Floyd Newman and Andrew Love, trumpet players Wayne Jackson and Gene Miller) filled with members of the Mar-Keys and the Memphis Horns-- it's a blessing to hear them both unified in mono and isolated in stereo. (Any concerns of redundancy can be allayed thusly: the mono version's for your speakers; stereo's for your headphones.

You need them both.) And the singer holding it together is at the top of his game. There's the possibility that the death of Cooke not only inspired Redding to record three of his idol's most well-known songs, but spurred him to step up and fill an aching void in popular music, and it's not blasphemous to suggest that Otis measures up. His version of "Wonderful World" matches the original's tone of winsome modesty and gives it a rougher edge, and his juke-joint version of "Shake" is a hard-swinging, full-throated 2:40 of precision ferocity with a force that would flat-out explode during his live sets. But "Change Gonna Come", his take on Cooke's civil rights anthem "A Change Is Gonna Come", is the real gem of the three: the moment he sings "I was born by the river," you can tell he knows what he's been entrusted with, and he handles it superbly with a mix of raspy frustration and wounded gentleness that's part trained virtuosity and part raw emotion.

Like most other albums of the time, there's no shortage of covers, most of which fall under the milieu of Southern rhythm & blues: a sweltering take on B.B. King's "Rock Me Baby", with some of the best-timed "heh" asides this side of James Brown; a stomping version of Solomon Burke's "Down in the Valley" that ratchets up both the gospel beatitude and the secular lust; the staggering reworking of William Bell's "You Don't Miss Your Water" that has one of the most devastating pleading-man lead vocals in the entire Stax catalog. But there's also two other covers that really show what Redding could do in a different sort of pop context. Of all the versions of "My Girl" that sprang up in the wake of the Tempations' career-making December 1964 release, Otis' is especially inspired, twisting its familiar melodies against it and interjecting a few unexpected pauses and shifted inflections; the way he delivers its once-familiar chorus just a little off-balance can deke you right out of your socks. (Much of Redding's popularity in the UK hinged on this track, which was released in England by Atlantic to capitalize on the fact that it was one of the few places the Temptations' version hadn't caught on.)

 And his transformative take on "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", growling and sneering and wailing against a 90-mph backbeat sounds like even more of an impressive accomplishment whenyou take into account the fact that he hadn't even heard the Rolling Stones' original version at the time he recorded the song. He simply went off the lyrics and embellished them where he saw fit-- underscoring the "fashion" in "satisfaction" or throwing in new verses that turned Mick and Keith's restlessness into sheer uncontrollability ("I keep on runnin' round in my sleep/ I keep on messin' up any beat").

The covers are supplemented on this collection by four originals, two of which-- the mournfully harried "Ole Man Trouble" and the Jerry Butler-co-written "I've Been Loving You Too Long" with its priceless ending crescendo of desperation-- are evidence enough that he wasn't just a flashy interpreter. Another is "I'm Depending on You", the B-side to "I've Been Loving You Too Long", and it's a simple, perfectly fine vehicle for him to turn unremarkable lyrics into remarkable vocalizations. The other one, of course, is "Respect"-- the song that Redding liked to joke was "stolen" from him by Aretha Franklin. It's true, in a sense-- Franklin claimed ownership of the song the moment she recorded it-- but it would be doing Redding a great disservice to consider his original an afterthought. Even without the brassy attitude and feminist overtones in Franklin's iconic rendition, Redding's performance is singular enough to avoid being canceled out. His band's performance isn't as much of a first-round-knockout as the one by the team Jerry Wexler and Arif Mardin assembled for the Queen of Soul (no slight-- what performance is?), but had it never been covered, Redding's version would be more vividly remembered as one of his greatest moments as a singer and a songwriter: it's no small feat to take the situation of a man asking for respect from a woman and deliver it while sounding more like a romantic diplomat than a chauvinist asshole!”.

Otis Redding’s greatest gift as a singer is how he could convey gritty, romantic, tender and pained. Such expressive wonder! Anyone who has not heard of Otis Redding, I would suggest listening to this album. They look at the complexities of the album. In terms of how some songs seem stuck in time. Some do not fit and others do. Other transcend their time. Dig! make that argument in their retrospective of 2023. A closer look at Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul:

“Choosing to open his new album with this slow wail, rather than the hit singles Respect or My Girl, was an audacious move. Indisputably one of the best soul singers of all time, Redding sometimes referred to himself as a blues singer, which explains the album’s two-part title: Otis Blue, because he felt bluesy; Otis Redding Sings Soul, so fans knew what they were getting.

The mournful I’ve Been Loving You Too Long, co-written in a hotel room in Buffalo, New York, with the mighty Chicago soul man Jerry Butler when they crossed paths on the road, was one of Redding’s greatest performances: listen to those amazing bent notes. Butler made his own version in 1968; The Rolling Stones played it live; Chris Farlowe, Sandy Posey and Dionne Warwick were among those who recorded it. But Redding posted the definitive cut on Otis Blue, and it still stands as one of the best Otis Redding songs of all time.

Speaking of the Stones… It wasn’t unusual for soul stars to adapt current hits, but to cover a song so strongly associated with one contemporary act was a little unlikely. Perhaps cutting (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction was payback for the number of songs the Britrock legends had copped from Redding and his labelmates. It had been Steve Cropper’s idea, and the backing track was ready when Redding came in to voice it. Unusually for a guitar player, Cropper had suggested shifting the tune’s fuzzbox riff to horns. Curiously, Keith Richards had initially envisaged that riff for horns. Even more curiously, Redding played Satisfaction at a show with the Stones in the wings. Offstage, Richards commented on the performance, and Redding told him it was a tune he’d just written. Perhaps he was winding the guitarist up. In a further connection, Otis Blue also featured a blues tune the Stones played live, BB King’s Rock Me Baby, which Redding emotes with lustful urgency.

My Girl, the delicate if passionate reworking of Smokey Robinson and Ronald White’s hit for The Temptations, formed part of Stax’s ongoing battle with its rivals up north in Detroit: Motown. So you think you’re soulful up there, huh? Well, out-soul this. Redding also tackles Down In The Valley, an ersatz, almost cheesy folk tune in Solomon Burke’s version, but played straight by Redding, like he really was marching down that valley: he was a country boy while Burke was a Philly city slicker.

The heart of Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul is three Sam Cooke songs. This soul pioneer had been shot dead in December 1964, and Redding considered cutting a tribute album to him. Here he serves up the dance tune Shake, the slightest track on the record, but still full of Memphis goodness. Perhaps Redding’s experience as someone who left school at 15 to help feed his family by grafting as a fuel-pump attendant and well-digger made his version of Wonderful World convincing. And Cooke’s conscious anthem A Change Is Gonna Come, astonishingly poignant coming from a Georgia singer, brings Redding’s acute awareness of Black America’s situation into sharp focus. You can feel the struggle.

Otis Blue closes with a touching cut of Stax labelmate William Bell’s You Don’t Miss Your Water, a learned-the-hard-way ballad that finishes with the singer’s dilemma unresolved, leaving listeners thirsty for more. Redding was at a peak, but we will never know just how much higher he could have climbed; he never lived to see one of his records at No.1, though the posthumous (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay, did make it. Losing someone you love is an appalling loss, but at least Redding left behind the best of him in Otis Blue. For all time”.

I am going to end with Albumism. Writing in 2020 around the fifty-fifth anniversary of Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul, there are going to be sections that are repeated from earlier. However, it is important to see these features and learn this information. It adds layers and clarity to this remarkable album. One that I think grows in stature each year. I do not think the songs are of their time or cannot connect today. Even if we do not have singers like Otis Redding today, you can hear and feel the influence on the artists who were moved by albums like Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul:

“Isaac Hayes (who would eventually take Redding’s place as the tent-pole artist for the label) said (again, in Gordon’s excellent book) that Stax was “raw, very honest music that represented the common man—the common black man.” It was the countrified, down-home cousin to Motown’s slick, urbane, more pop-oriented machine, and Redding’s voice, along with the house bands, helped forge this identity as a funkier, down-to-earth entity. Both Redding’s and Stax’s identities and fortunes became intertwined—they were symbiotically linked.

The album’s timing was everything too. Just six months previously, Sam Cooke had been killed in Los Angeles, leaving a gap in the hearts and minds of soul music fans. Otis was wise enough to record three Cooke songs for Otis Blue in his own inimitable (and vastly different) style. By doing so he presented himself both as an acolyte of the late, great singer but also as the torchbearer who could carry soul music forward.

As well as the covers of songs by other artists, the album also contains original material penned by him—including the most famous song penned by him, one of the most recognized and loved songs of the 20th Century. His original version of “Respect” moves at a much brisker pace courtesy of Al Jackson’s surging, G-Force drums—it would be somewhat ridiculous to suggest that Redding’s version is better than Aretha Franklin’s epoch-defining version, but it stands as testament to Redding’s increasingly brilliant pen.

The choice of songs and artists to cover is a very interesting point—he manages to tip his hat to both the architects of soul music but also to those other strands of Black music that contributed to its development. It is almost as if he is providing a summation of the ingredients of soul music. By taking these ingredients and adding his own unique voice to them he further melds them together and reinforces what constitutes soul music.

Solomon Burke’s “Down In The Valley” is a case in point. By choosing another of those rock & roll originators, Redding places himself firmly in the tradition of black music. But whereas it takes Burke a minute or two to showcase the more soulful, gritty edge to his voice, Redding lets it go from note one. His voice is already at the point of emotional breakdown and it doesn’t let up. It is, as Booker T Jones said, as if he wrings emotion from every single syllable. He treats each of them as precious and none are wasted on anything less than his best.

Anyone who can take a B.B. King song and make it their own has to be special and nowhere is it truer than with Redding’s cover of “Rock Me Baby.” The combination of Cropper’s sharp yet restrained guitar and Redding’s scandalously indecent sexual roar is perfection—Redding is both the voice of dominant masculinity and a soulful plea to a partner. Once again, by choosing a blues man’s tune, he casts himself as the past, present and future all in one moment.

Of the Sam Cooke covers, one in particular stands out as one of my favorite covers of all time. “A Change Is Gonna Come” is an awe-inspiring song at the best of times, capable of sending shivers down the spine, but here Redding ekes every single shred of pain, joy and hope from the lyric. When he sings the opening lines (having been ushered in majestically by the horns) “I was born by the river / In this little old tent / Oh and just like the river, I’ve been running ever since,” it is almost too much to bear. The ripped emotion in his voice makes it both utterly believable and soul crushingly sad—it is one of my favorite moments in recorded music and guarantees that the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention”.

On 15th September, it will be sixty years since Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul was released. I wanted to spend some time with the album, as it is one that I really love! However, it is more important than that. This is what BBC said in 2007 in their review: “It's tempting to look for some faults here just for the sake of balance. But try as one might, they fail to present themselves, as the rawness of the playing, the sprightly rhythms of the upbeat tracks, and the grainy grief of Redding's voice reach in to your very core. A gutsy, visceral affair that leaves you thinking that, with the power of music, anything is possible; Otis Blue was, and remains, his definitive statement”. It is hard to argue with that. Since his sad passing in 1967, the music world has witnessed…

NOBODY like him.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Hayley Williams

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

IN THIS PHOTO: Hayley Williams in a promotional photo for Love Me Different, which is part of a new seventeen-song/singles projects/PHOTO CREDIT: Zachary Gray

  

Hayley Williams

__________

THIS is a supreme artist…

PHOTO CREDIT: Lindsey Byrnes

who I am a big fan of and someone who is an incredible role model. I have said that about a few artists recently, and I stand by it. When it comes to Hayley Williams, as a solo artist and lead of Paramore, she has been responsible for releasing some of the best music of her generation. Apart from the fact she is a music queen and I did not need an excuse to feature her, she recently released seventeen solo singles. Her first independent release, I am going to end with a review of it from NME. However, before that, I want to spend some time with some interviews. Nothing brand-new, though they are fairly recent. I want to start off with this interesting interview from l'Odet. There are some sections of the interview that caught my eye and I wanted to share. Aside from asking about Paramore, there was also a question around the website Midnight Woman, which is a fantastic anonymous submissions platform:

“Cariann Bradley: It’s this weekend! I can’t believe it, either. The owner, Sandra, is retiring. She’s in her seventies and this store is her baby. I hope she’s going to travel!

Hayley: Wow. That is crazy to think about, just in terms of where you and I are at now and what life might look like. At seventy it’s like, if there are things you haven’t done yet that you want to do, I guess you just...do them. Wow. Being in her position would be like me leaving the band behind. I can’t even imagine that.

Cariann: So you think you’ll stay in Paramore for a long time?

Hayley: Yeah. I mean, I don’t think it will look like it did. I don’t think it could look like it has looked, you know? There were just so many yeses to everything — especially when we were kids. When we were kids it was like, we’d never even seen or heard of some of the opportunities before. Half of it was curiosity and half of it was just wide-eyed ‘let’s see what this experience feels like.’ Obviously we wanted the band to succeed. But I don’t even know if we really grasped the concept of succeeding. It was more like we just went through the motions every day, and if the shows are really magical, then that’s why you do it, you know? Now — especially after this album cycle, too — I would never do things the way we did before "After Laughter". With "After Laughter", we kind of said no to everything.

Cariann: You seem like a totally different band.

Hayley: Oh, thank you. We wanted it to! Zac coming back was a big part of the aesthetic shift, but I think in terms of our business minds — you know, that’s the other thing — growing up in a band and it actually working out, it becomes less of a band and more of a brand. I was telling Zac this the other day. We were working on a collab with somebody and he was like, “Are we sure we should be doing this? Because we don’t have an album coming out.” The truth is there are two parts to the band. One part is what you wear on a t-shirt, which is basically the name. And the other part is the band, which is us! And the band is what it’s about. I told Zac that if all three of us feel good about it, we do it. In moving forward, if the three of us are happy, then we will just do whatever we want to do. If that means collaborating with each other, bringing other friends in to collaborate — there are seven band members when we tour. We’re all friends and we all make music in different parts, together. So I feel like, yes, I want to be in Paramore. I never want to have to put out a press release that says we’re over or that I quit or that we’re taking a hiatus, which is essentially a marketing ploy these days. I would rather it just be. It just is a part of each of our DNA. If we choose to move into it as a brand and put a name on these songs and make a new t-shirt, then awesome. But I’ve been in a band with them since I was 12; I don’t think the band is going anywhere. As long as we’re friends, the band just is. It’s just in us.

PHOTO CREDIT: Lindsey Byrnes

Cariann: I feel like [as women] we’re so used to people discrediting us. A lot of men, which is interesting, that I’ve talked to about this brand they sincerely ask if I will be doing fact-checking on the anonymous submissions I get. They say it out of curiosity; I know they don’t mean it in a harmful way, but that just goes against everything Midnight Woman stands for. That’s the entire reason this platform exists. The thought of fact-checking someone’s anonymous submission had never even crossed my mind, especially being a woman myself. We aren’t acting as any sort of authority on anyone’s story, you know? It’s why I’m careful not to rewrite anything that anyone trusts me with. Even with Sharon’s interview that I did last spring — I just transcribed it. And that will be it. I don’t feel comfortable contorting her words in any sort of story arc or hook lead. That’s always what I’ve loved so much about magazines is when you just get the cut and dry, question and answer. It keeps your voice in it. Not the writer’s.

Hayley: Sure — I think I would be nervous to do it, too. I think there are certain moments where it can be authentic and respectful, but I totally get that. It’s why I don’t really sing other people’s songs. The “Stay The Night” song I did was half-written by, I’m almost certain, Nate from Fun. [Laughs] He put it under a fake name, but that’s who I recorded it with. He still won’t confirm it, but I know he wrote it. Thankfully, the writer left a lot of blank verses and I got to do that. I really don’t like the experience of singing other people’s words or the idea of giving my words to another person...maybe if I really loved them a lot. I like to sing my stories. I think if you thought you could write something with respect to that person or artist, then I think you’ll know. Just like “Stay The Night,” I was like wow, I’m going through something just like this. I get to put my piece in it too. That felt right in the end.

This tea is really good, by the way. [Laughs]

Cariann: That was actually one of the questions I was going to ask you today — kind of in that realm, anyway. What would you say to someone who is nervous to share their story? What would you say to the apprehensive Midnight Woman contributor?

Hayley: I mean…the only way that we move from one point in life to another is by action. I think action can be physical movement or can be recurring thoughts, patterns, dreams. My weapon of choice is always words. It’s what has simultaneously shielded me and also whacked down weeds for me as I’ve tried to get through life. If you can share your story just enough to find that spark of action where you’re telling someone what you’ve gone through, or you’re looking at your words in front of you — when you can look at them and know that they’re going to meet someone on the other side — if you want to get anywhere past it, the only thing to do is move. Words might look small and black and white on a page but, to me, that’s one of the biggest things you can do. Some of the most powerful movements in my life have just been sentences, sometimes not even to melody. Even though I’m in a band and all this stuff with Paramore, sometimes it’s not the stuff I write in songs, it’s what I’m telling a friend late at night or writing in a journal that no one will ever see. Even though sometimes I’m like, “I’m going to die one day and someone might find this shit; it better be good.” [Laughs]”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Peyton Fulford

Even though the interview was a couple of years ago, I want to come to The New Yorker and their words. It was an interview that was partly in promotion of the most recent Paramore album, This Is Why (2023). I am bringing in these interviews, as we get to see different sides of the amazing Hayley Williams. She is this artist that I am compelled to write about following the release of these amazing singles. I am not sure if I can do her justice but, when thinking about the most influential and incredible women in music, Williams’ name is near the top of the list:

“You were just fourteen when you signed a production deal with Atlantic Records, which means you’re coming up on nearly twenty years in the music business—in fact, this new record is the culmination of that deal. Are there things you wish that you could tell your younger self about how to navigate the strange and treacherous waters of the record industry?

Yeah. And about so much more than just the business! That deal was the very first three-sixty deal in . . . history. We didn’t know anything! My family didn’t know anything. The guys’ families didn’t know anything. My mom and I didn’t really have much. She would babysit, and then I would be, like, “Well, I’ll go sing a country demo.” I was taking writing gigs and demoing gigs just to make extra money. The very first song [Paramore] wrote was called “Conspiracy.” I wrote it about finally feeling like my dreams had come true, because all I wanted as a kid was to meet music people. Then, the next thing I know, everyone wanted to draw me out of the band setting. I chalk that up to what was working in pop music at the time: the Avrils, the fact that Kelly Clarkson was making a pop-rock album. We didn’t only meet with Atlantic Records. I mean, God, I met Clive Davis, L.A. Reid. It was such a whirlwind. “Conspiracy” was about my parents telling me that these great opportunities are coming to me, and I might have to make sacrifices. And I was thinking, I just don’t care if we never play a show as long as I can play music with my friends.

Being fourteen and feeling like an adult decision was looming was really scary. I wish I could just go back and just tell Little Me that a lot of my gut instincts were right. Even though I was really young and didn’t have a lot of experience, I knew what I was O.K. with. I constantly felt at odds with my own leanings or proclivities toward certain things, because I wasn’t an adult. That being said, if we hadn’t done all of that, who knows where we would be? They wanted to sign me, but I still got to bring my friends along for the ride, and we ended up making it what we wanted in the first place. It just took a lot of trial and error. I think I would just want to hug that person, because she was so confused. She was, like, fuckin’ little girl in a big city. I was just trying to figure out the world while also getting my homework done by Monday.

There’s a particular tension on the record that I think of as Home vs. Not Home, for lack of a better way to put it. I’m curious how you think about the idea of home, both in a literal sense—buying and furnishing and living in a house—and then the broader, more spiritual idea of finding your place in the world.

I think that’s my favorite thing I’ve ever been asked in an interview, because it’s my favorite thing to talk about. Anyone who grew up in a chaotic home environment and has trauma around that would understand why. Brian [O’Connor], who I run a hair-dye company with, he’s my best friend—we talk about this constantly. All that he and I have wanted, our idea of success consistently throughout our life, has just been having a home. A home that is the same place every time. Whenever I’ve had to move, I really go through a lot internally, because it’s tough. I did a lot of moving as a kid, and I don’t like that kind of change. Even just going back and forth from your mom’s and dad’s when they’re divorced . . . it feels easy when you’re in it, but as an adult I’m realizing, Oh, there was never one place where all my things were. And so that’s the way I think about it. It’s all the things that bring me peace and comfort. And I can decorate, too. I love story; I love textures; I don’t need things to be really nice. When I got a divorce, I moved into this shitty little house that was infested with bats. I had to do quite a lot of work to it to make it feel really mine, and cozy—but, oh, my God, if I could have stayed there for the rest of my life, I would have been fine. Loved my neighbors, my tiny little yard, and my dog Alf just barking at everyone who walked by. I don’t need a lot—I just need consistency. I love shopping for vintage shit, because it has a story. I love scuff marks; I don’t need things to be pristine. That’s why I love that you have a pencil sharpener on the trim of your door. That looks like my idea of home. You’re, like, The smell of freshly shaven pencils brings me something that a super expensive vase—which might be beautiful, and you might really appreciate—can’t. It doesn’t give you the same sense of peace, of being known like that. I feel very known when I’m at home. I’ve got to get used to the discomfort of pushing myself to be more social, because I’m realizing that I’ve isolated myself for a really long time. Now I’ve got to live—I’ve got to see my peers again, I have to be willing to be uncomfortable, at least for a little bit of time. Because I love home that much”.

Paramore has had an unusual trajectory, in some ways. You saw a resurgence of interest in your work when the band was technically on a hiatus; Paramore suddenly got swept up in what’s been called a pop-punk renaissance. What do you think led people back to your music? “Nostalgia” seems like too simple of an answer.

I don’t want it to be that, but I was just reading an article about why people in my age group, in our thirties, want the comfort, or the dopamine hit, of good memories. I agree with you—I don’t want it to be that simple. I want there to be other threads to pull. But, you know, for better or for worse, there’s just a lot of really unique angst in the music of that time period. We had the Internet and we had social media coming up. There were a lot of different ways to express and connect, but there were still a lot of frustrations. This was obviously not too long after 9/11, and pop bands were making political records again. Then again, more recently, people finally had time for the conversation around racial injustice, after George Floyd’s murder—I think it was just a perfect storm, right? We were all stuck, and the nostalgia probably felt great, too. People were uncomfortable and anxious and angry. I don’t know. But it is interesting to kind of feel like this is the first time in our career that people have said, “Oh, they’re this kind of band—they’re an emo band.” Back when it was all happening, nobody knew where to put us. I think it kind of feels better not knowing where to be placed than to be called emo because, as much as I can get really nerdy about that whole subculture, I don’t really want Paramore’s artistic legacy to be pinned to that word. I don’t think it’s accurate. Even the people who were around when it was coined didn’t like it”.

I am going to end up with a review from NME. They sat down to assess Hayley Williams’ latest project. With no tracklisting and this sort of independent and free approach that harks back to the earliest days of the Internet or something bygone, I wonder if other artists will follow her lead:

“Hayley Williams’ hair company Good Dye Young launched a new product last week, a vivid marigold shade created “in the heat of the moment” that “channels the fleeting energy of warm summer nights, golden hour and missed second chances”. The limited-edition dye was named EGO – which is also the title fans have been giving the Paramore vocalist’s new surprise collection of 17 solo singles.

The rollout began when ‘Mirtazapine’, a scuzzy love-letter to antidepressants, was shared last month via a homemade CD single given to Nashville radio station WNXP. Last Monday (July 28), Good Dye Young customers were given early access to the entire project via a noughties-inspired website, and encouraged to share the link with friends before all the songs were unleashed on streaming services at the end of the week.

Adding to this community-first approach, there’s no official tracklist for this project. Williams has encouraged fans to chart their own journey through the hurt, fury and uneasy peace, depending on what they need from these powerfully vulnerable songs.

This release reunites Williams with Daniel James, the co-producer of her first solo album ‘Petals For Armor’. That 2020 record was an experimental electronic album with hushed poetry about feminine rage, depression and longing. This collection is just as sprawling but far more noisy. The snarling ‘Ice In My OJ’ makes a barbed dig at life on a major label as she calls out “a lot of dumb motherfuckers that I made rich”. Over the twinkling emo of ‘True Believer’, Williams wrestles with her own faith and the hypocrisy of Christian America. “They say that Jesus is the way but then they gave him a white face / So they don’t have to pray to someone they deem lesser than them” is one hell of a lyrical mic-drop.

The hurt doesn’t stop there either. Williams is at the end of her tether on the haunted ‘Negative Self Talk’ and the visceral ‘Kill Me’, while the sneering ‘Hard’ is a deliciously direct guitar anthem about always expecting the worst after a lifetime of let-downs. The wonky, poppy ‘Glum’ is about as devastating as breakup songs get.

Despite all the heartache though, Williams is never hopeless. Both the frustrated, angsty ‘Brotherly Hate’ and the dreamy ballad ‘Blood Bros’ keep the door open for eventual make-ups while the chirpy ‘Love Me Different’ cradles a spark of self-love and the tiniest hope for the future. It’s the closest this project gets to sounding like Paramore.

Self-released and distributed via Secretly Distribution, this project is Williams’ first independent output. Paramore signed the music industry’s first ever 360-deal 20 years ago, and have since become one of the biggest, most influential and beloved rock groups around. But they’ve had to fight for every win”.

Following the expiration of that record deal with Atlantic Records in December 2023, Hayley Williams is taking great pleasure playing with her newfound freedom. ‘Discovery Channel’ features a surprisingly moving interpolation of Bloodhound Gang classic ‘The Bad Touch’; ‘Brotherly Hate’ has Lenny Kravitz-inspired guitar licks from Paramore touring member Brian Robert Jones. Each song sees Williams fearlessly stepping between familiar and fresh influences. It seems less about playing with expectations and more about what feels the most visceral. The smirking name of her own label? Post Atlantic.

As with almost every era of Hayley Williams’ career, this new release has come with questions about the future of Paramore. The determined lyrics on the tender ‘I Won’t Quit On You’ should be all the reassurance worried fans need, but if that’s not enough, there’s plenty in this brilliant, swaggering new chapter to be excited about. These songs might be about missed second chances, but Williams is certainly making the most of hers”.

I will leave it here. An opportunity to feature a couple of interviews with Hayley Williams and some praise around her new project. More than that, I hope it opens Williams’ music to people who may not know about her. Or they might know Paramore but not her solo work. An artist that I have huge admiration for, her newest work shows she is one of the world’s…

MOST compelling songwriters.

___________

Follow Hayley Williams

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Songs from the Best Audiophile Albums

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Alina Vilchenko/Pexels

 

Songs from the Best Audiophile Albums

__________

I am not going…

PHOTO CREDIT: Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels

to say too many words, as I want to get to this mixtape. One that collects songs from the perfect albums for audiophiles. Maybe there is something wrong about uniting the digital versions when the beauty of these albums is hearing them on stereos or record players. However, you can get a sense of the mix and perfect sound. Hopefully compel you to seek out a few of these albums and add them to your collection. Albums where the sound and aesthetic is absolutely key, I know that stereo makers will use many of these albums to test their equipment. Glorious and sublime, enjoy songs from L.P.s that are an audiophile’s dream. You will know most of these albums, though there might be some you do not. This Digital Mixtape might lead to…

PHOTO CREDIT: Diana ✨/Pexels

SOME new discoveries.

FEATURE: Ballad of a Thin Man: Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited at Sixty

FEATURE:

 

 

Ballad of a Thin Man

 

Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited at Sixty

__________

IT is hard to believe that…

IN THIS PHOTO: Bob Dylan in 1965/PHOTO CREDIT: Fiona Adams/Redferns 

this album turns sixty on 30th August. Bob Dylan’s sixth studio album was released on 30th August, 1965. Not only is it one of the best albums of the 1960s and Bob Dylan’s career. It is one of the greatest albums ever released. Ahead of the anniversary of Highway 61 Revisited, I am looking inside an album that pulled further away form his Folk routes – consider the epic closing track, Desolation Row – and included more Blues-Rock influences. A type of poetry perhaps less political. Fantastical in places but sharp and biting in others. More ambitious and bigger than his albums that came before, Highway 61 Revisited’s lead track, Like a Rolling Stone, is a song that could be considered the best ever. Definitely up there! So, because of all of this, there is a lot to say about the album. I will bring together a few features and reviews, so that we can get a clearer picture of why it is so important in terms of Dylan’s career and the music landscape of 1965. As I write this (3rd August) it is only a day until the sixtieth anniversary of the recording of Desolation Row. The swansong and this incredible piece of music, it followed two days after four other albums tracks were recorded – including the title cut. I want to get to some articles. Because Rolling Stone paywalls everything – and they do not offer people one free view a day, which is bad business -, I could only get a fraction of their 2015 celebration of Highway 61 Revisited on its fiftieth anniversary:

“Highway 61 is the middle album in the trilogy of Bringing It All Back Home and Blonde on Blonde—from that moment when Dylan flipped for the Beatles, went electric and banged out these three rock & roll albums in the space of 14 manic months, three albums everybody (including Dylan) has been trying to live up to (or just plain imitate) ever since. All three have different flavors — if Bringing It All Back Home takes off from the Beatles, Highway 61 is the Stones and Blonde on Blonde is Smokey Robinson — but unlike the other two, Highway 61 never lets up. This album has no “On the Road Again” or “Obviously Five Believers” — a moment of pleasant filler where you can catch your breath. Each of the nine songs tells its own immaculately frightful story.

And more than Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 is a band album, rather than a solo album. The songs are juiced with perfect moments of musical interaction — Charlie McCoy’s guitar on “Desolation Row,” Paul Griffin’s piano on “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” Bobby Gregg’s drums on “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry,” Michael Bloomfield’s twang in “Tombstone Blues,” everybody and everything on “Ballad of a Thin Man.” Even the infamously out-of-tune guitar on “Queen Jane Approximately” adds to the spirit”.

It is interesting to start with that, though I need to access articles where I can see the whole thing and get more context and content. That takes me to The Bob Dylan Commentaries. They give us some background and lead-up to 1965’s Highway 61 Revisited. Why the album has the name it does, and how it was recorded pretty quickly. At least by today’s standards:

“Highway 61 was recorded over a two-month period, not including a failed attempt to record with John Mayall’s Blues Breakers (which featured a young Eric Clapton on guitar). The first sessions were done on June 15th and 16th, 1965, which yielded only one song, Like a Rolling Stone. The album was finished at the second set of recording sessions done that August. Between the two sets of sessions, Dylan switched producers, from Tom Wilson to Bob Johnston. Guitarist Mike Bloomfield claimed Dylan was not satisfied with Wilson’s work with a band, although others, including Dylan, claim to have no knowledge of why the change was made.

Great art is often a product of interesting historical periods, and 1965 was definitely a time of turmoil in America. The Vietnam War was quickly escalating, and the country’s unease with the strategy and the morality of the war was growing. The civil rights movement was in full swing, and violence in the streets was a regular event, with large riots occurring in Selma, Alabama, and in Los Angeles. Malcolm X, a black civil rights leader who promised to take the civil rights fight into white America, was shot and killed. In general, a new morality was taking hold of the younger generation. They questioned the authority and wisdom of the nation’s leaders and thinkers. There was a feeling of freedom, and also anger at an older generation that not only failed to see the possibilities of this new way of thinking, but actively tried to repress it. The revolutionary ideas, the angry tone in the lyrics, and the harshness of the music of Highway 61 undoubtedly were fed by the turmoil of the times.

Dylan was also experiencing a good bit of turmoil in his own life. Personally, he had just recently parted with long-time friend and lover Joan Baez. He had met Sara Lownds, who would eventually become his first wife. Professionally, Dylan was experiencing a strong, and what must have been completely baffling to him, backlash from critics and friends concerning his move to rock ‘n’ roll. Irwin Silber, editor of the influential Sing Out! Magazine wrote an article with the title “Open Letter to Bob Dylan” in which he bitterly criticized Dylan for abandoning protest songs and folk music. Although Like a Rolling Stone was making its way up the singles charts quickly, his electric performance at the Newport Folk Festival received mixed reviews from his fans, and the same was true of his subsequent US tour.

The title of the album refers to a highway that runs from Thunder Bay, Ontario through Dylan’s birthplace, Duluth, Minnesota (which is close to his childhood home of Hibbing) all way through the middle of the country, ending in New Orleans. This highway is well-known for being a route that hundreds of southern blues and jazz musicians traveled in search of northern factory jobs during the early parts of the 20th century. Many of the most influential blues musicians traveled this route, including Muddy Waters, and Howlin’ Wolf. Along the way, they spread the southern blues into other parts of the country.

Certainly, Dylan was using the album’s title as an allusion to the influence the blues had on his music. Why he tacked on “Revisited” is less clear. Perhaps he is referring to his return to the blues-based rock music that had influenced him as a teenager when he listened to blues stations on AM radio and played Little Richard and Elvis Presley covers in his early bands.

The cover photo was taken by Daniel Kramer, also the photographer for the Bringing It All Back Home cover. The photo shows Dylan with a semi-scowl on his face, wearing some kind of weird blue shirt with an orange butterfly-like pattern, and a t-shirt underneath with an advertisement for Triumph motorcycles. Sidekick Bob Neuwirth stands behind him, his camera dangling from his hand. I imagine this photo was selected to emphasize the rebellious lyrics and music of the album.

Dylan’s liner notes consist of several rambling paragraphs of unintelligible drivel. The notes were written in a style similar to that used in his book, Tarantula, which was written in 1965/66 but not released until 1971. As the liner notes, it is mostly unreadable.

Dylan and producer Tom Wilson recruited a formidable group of musicians to play on the record. Dylan asked Mike Bloomfield, the guitarist for the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, to play guitar. Bloomfield had never recorded in a studio before and said he didn’t even own a case for his guitar when he showed up at the studio. It turned out to be a wise choice, as Bloomfield’s fierce sound with a heavy blues-influenced style gave the album much of its musical identity. Al Kooper was invited by Wilson to play guitar on the record but ended up playing the famous organ part on Like a Rolling Stone. Other key players included Paul Griffin on piano and Bobby Gregg on drums.

Highway 61 is really a monumental achievement, arguably the high-water mark for the art form. It influenced an entire generation of artists, and continues to influence rock musicians today”.

I am going to end soon with a review of perhaps Bob Dylan’s most important album. In terms of the sound of it and how it took his career to a new level. Beginning a classic trilogy of Dylan albums – 1965’s Bringing It All Back Home preceded Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde arrived in 1966 -, it is no wonder that we continue to praise the songwriting and the impact of Highway 61 Revisited six decades after it release. Five years ago, Albumism providing a detailed and really interesting retrospective. One that makes me look at Highway 61 Revisited in a new light. An album that I absolutely love and feel is the pinnacle of Dylan’s lyrical genius:

“Given Highway 61’s hallowed status over a half a century later, it gets lost what a legitimate artistic risk it was for Dylan at the time. Dylan made the conscious choice to take actions to potentially piss off his core audience by going full electric. And he didn’t even wait for Highway 61 Revisited to be released to drop this bomb; in the midst of recording the album, he gave his infamous performance at the Newport Folk Festival. He took to the stage, Fender Stratocaster in hand, dressed like a rock star, only to meet a cascade of boos.

Now, it’s never been clear whether the audience booed him during this performance because they thought he was a “sell-out” or because of the overall quality of the sound (either too loud or too soft, depending who you ask). But the legend endures the crowd rejected Dylan’s rock star aspirations. But Dylan was undeterred, soon returning to the studio to record the rest of the in-progress album. Still, it added an urgency to the sessions. If you’re going to give your fans the proverbial middle finger, the gamble had better pay off.

And, well, here we are, over a half century later, and Highway 61 remains one of Dylan’s most beloved releases. And it’s remembered for both its musical and lyrical innovation.

Besides being nearly fully electric, none of the songs on Highway 61 Revisited featured just Dylan and his guitar. Eight of the album’s nine tracks feature full electric band, some of whom were session musicians that he worked with before, while others were new faces like Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield, who would go on to join the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.

Together, Dylan and the session musicians created a vibrant sound that built on honoring Dylan’s blues influences. The 1,400 mile stretch of road known as Highway 61 begins in Minnesota, following the Mississippi River throughout its length. It winds past Duluth, the place of Dylan’s birth, and runs south through St. Louis, Memphis, before ending in New Orleans, all cities intrinsic to Dylan’s personal and musical identity.

In terms of lyrical subject matter and approach, Highway 61 Revisited strikes a pair of distinctive notes. On one hand, it’s a bitter and at times outright mean album. Dylan is an artist, so he’s sensitive about his shit, and held his critics in complete contempt. Through swaths of the album, he questions their intelligence, sincerity, and overall value to society.

“Ballad of a Thin Man” may sound mourning and sorrowful, but it’s the angriest on Highway 61. The song radiates bile as Dylan chronicles the misbegotten adventures of Mr. Jones, a dullard who fancies himself as an educated and sophisticated individual of great influence, oblivious to the fact he’s in way over his head. On some level, the song seems to be about Dylan’s increasingly difficult relationship with the music press. Or the song could reflect Dylan’s disdain towards outsiders who attempted to glom onto ’60s counterculture without an understanding of the circumstances that spawned it. Numerous journalists with the surname of Jones have claimed to be the source of inspiration for the “Mr. Jones” character. Aside from a glib answer he gave Nora Ephron and Susan Adminson in an interview back in 1965, Dylan has remained mum about Mr. Jones’ true identity (if there even is one).

One of my favorite stories about “Ballad of a Thin Man” (and Highway 61 Revisited in general) is that it became a source of inspiration for the Black Panther Party. According to Black Panthers co-founder Bobby Seale in his book Seize the Time, both he and Huey Newton were obsessed with the song, believing that Dylan was speaking to the plight of Blacks in the United States through the lyrics, as he speaks of “tourists” being attracted to the “freak shows” of the ghettos across the country.

Highway 61 Revisited is still considered Dylan’s most towering achievement, and a complete and unabashed success. It set the tone for rock album moving forward in the 1960s, influencing countless musicians, writers, and poets. Of course, Dylan continued to evolve over the 50-plus years since its arrival, so much so that his legacy as both a folk hero and rocker can co-exist.

The success of Highway 61 goes to the core of whether it’s better to stick with providing your loyal fans with what they want, or to take the high risk/high reward plunge. Highway 61 doesn’t definitively answer that question. Instead, the lesson seems to be that quality music trumps everything else. But it’s still a bit astonishing that a sense of restlessness is what helped secure Dylan’s immortality”.

Let’s wrap up things with a review from Audioxide. Actually, it is two-third of the review. However, there are two interesting interpretations and opinions proffered. Both reviewers including Ballad of a Thin Man, Tombstone Blues and Like a Rolling Stone in their top three from Highway 61 Revisited:

“Fred

Bob Dylan has a gift for making you feel like you’re sharing in a dark, beautiful secret in the same breath that he’s telling you to go take a hike. He has no shortage of seminal works, but Highway 61 Revisited is probably the finest meeting of his anger and his clarity. The record is almost everything it’s cracked up to be, and that amounts to something pretty special — especially where side one is concerned.

The no bullshit drum intro to “Like a Rolling Stone” is classic Dylan, smashing the door in with a straight-to-business thud, and the record continues in kind. The opener’s a masterpiece. Not much I can add there. The guitar motif on “Tombstone Blues” is perfect. Thank god he went electric. The instrumentals are given some space to breathe between there and “Ballad of a Thin Man”, which is absolutely ghastly. I love it. Side one of Highway 61 Revisited is as good as it gets, frankly. Epiphanic and livid in equal measure, it’s like being bludgeoned with The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by the man himself. Marvellous.

Side two doesn’t quite sustain that level, at times bordering even on pedestrian, but in the context of the album that works rather well. After the onslaught of the first 20 minutes, it’s nice to have some time to nurse one’s wounds. You get to “Desolation Row” which strips things back and plays the record off and it all winds up being a bit of a Journey. Bob Johnston’s production enables the sense of intimacy the music deserves; the sound is raucous, but always sat just behind Dylan. He speaks and the band shakes. It really is quite an exquisite balance.

You can hear the record's age, but the record isn’t old. Like Dylan himself, there’s something mythical about it, its plane high above any one time or place. He sings and we listen, the instrumentation hanging on his every word along with the rest of us. It’s one of those things that reassures you with how expressive and beautiful people are capable of being. (Or at least that Bob’s capable of being, and we of understanding.) One for the ages, and an endless pleasure.

Favourite tracks //

  1. Ballad of a Thin Man

  2. ­­Like a Rolling Stone

  3. ­­Tombstone Blues

9 /10

Andrew

Highway 61 Revisited manages to do a lot with seemingly little. At first glance, Bob Dylan uses simple chord structures, down to earth vocals and story-driven lyrics which puts him alongside an overwhelming sea of other artists. But what sets this album apart from a majority of other albums is the sheer character and hidden intricacy of the whole tracklist.

Front-loaded with a stonking opening combination, “Like a Rolling Stone” hollers and quivers out during its chorus, and instantly grabs the listeners attention with its memorable hook and some wonderful instrumentation across the board. “Tombstone Blues” is quite the opposite, cantering along for six minutes. Folksy without being twee, and poignant without being preachy, this is a track with substance that you can still have a lot of fun with. Songs like “Ballad of a Thin Man” and the title track of the album have similarly little for me to complain about, with more to enjoy each time I return. The former drapes a moody, smoky atmosphere across the mid-section of the album, while the latter spins and whirrs along the titular highway.

The few tracks that are less memorable are more than made up for by the rest, and where I initially felt as though all the best material was up front on side one, further listens have warmed me to the second side. I feel as though this is an album I want to start each Sunday with, with its laid-back tone lasting throughout its near hour play time. It’s been a pleasure to listen to Dylan’s characterful vocals and memorable hooks, and Highway 61 Revisited will certainly be going into my favourites list.

Favourite tracks //

  1. Like a Rolling Stone

  2. ­­Tombstone Blues

  3. ­­Ballad of a Thin Man

9 /10”.

On 30th August, Bob Dylan’s extraordinary masterpiece, Highway 61 Revisited, turns sixty. Its legacy is enormous. How pioneering the album was. I want to crib a bit from Wikipedia and what they have collated regarding the legacy of a 1965 work of genius: “Highway 61 Revisited has remained among the most highly acclaimed of Dylan's works. Biographer Anthony Scaduto praises its rich imagery, and describes it as "one of the most brilliant pop records ever made. As rock, it cuts through to the core of the music—a hard driving beat without frills, without self-consciousness." Michael Gray calls Highway 61 "revolutionary and stunning, not just for its energy and panache but in its vision: fusing radical, electrical music ... with lyrics that were light years ahead of anyone else's; Dylan here unites the force of blues-based rock'n'roll with the power of poetry. The whole rock culture, the whole post-Beatle pop-rock world, and so in an important sense the 1960s started here”. Few people in 1965 who heard Highway 61 Revisited would know where Dylan would head and how long he would continue! As it is, he went on to release thirty-four studio albums (and he is not done yet let’s hope!) and inspire musicians the world over…

SIXTY years later.

FEATURE: If Your Name’s (Not Yet) on the Guestlist… The Brilliant The Trouble Club, and Some Wonderful Women I’d Love to See

FEATURE:

 

 

If Your Name’s (Not Yet) on the Guestlist…

IN THIS PHOTO: The EURO-winning Lionesses captain and Arsenal player, Leah Williamson/PHOTO CREDIT: Jack Chipper for Wonderland

 

The Brilliant The Trouble Club, and Some Wonderful Women I’d Love to See

__________

THIS is a fairly self-indulgent feature…

IN THIS PHOTO: The Trouble Club’s owner and CEO, Ellie Newton

as it is me, as a member of The Trouble Club, dreaming of guests I’d have on my wish-list. I will get to the usual housekeeping before moving on. I know I wrote about The Trouble Club last month. I imagine the next time I will cover them is close to December. Maybe a look back on a brilliant and memorable year. The club, owned by CEO (and queen) Ellie Newton, has a growing army of (mainly) women who turn up in force for events. Hosting events at a range of different-sized venues – from the larger Union Chapel to the small and cosy The Hearth -, the range of events and speakers hosted is incredible! From politicians and authors to entertainment figures and musicians, this is a club people need to seek out if they are not a member. Past events of recent weeks includes the brilliant Cally Beaton: Namaste Motherf*ckers, and A History of the World in Six Plagues with Edna Bonhomme. Future speakers include Tulisa Contostavlos, Marina Hyde, and Emily Maitlis. Such a pedigree of wonderful women! You can and should follow The Trouble Club on Twitter and Instagram. I know members are asked, when they join The Trouble Club, who they would like to see speak. I think I chose Margot Robbie. Maybe she is out of the budgetary reach and would need to be hosted at a massive venue given the potential demand! However, one of the ‘dream guests’ I am about to feature connects to Margot Robbie – and she is also a massive name. Even though a lot of Trouble Club members (unfortunately) suggest speakers who are dead – always a drawback! -, mine are very much alive!

I did previously suggest a few names I am not sure about. Gillian Anderson is great, though the recent controversy around the novel, The Salt Path (she starred in the film adaptation), might complicate things. Gisèle Pelicot and Greta Thunberg are women I would love to see speak. Also D.J. and broadcaster Lauren Laverne and actor Florence Pugh. However, I am sure that Ellie Newton and the brilliant people she works with at The Trouble Club – including Zea, Ella and Jen – have guests locked in and there are not many spaces free. This is just me imagining and thinking about who I would love to see – and why that is. The first name came to me made sports headlines over a week ago. She is the captain of the Lionesses’ UEFA Women's EURO-winning team. Actually, they not only retained the honour but are the first England football team ever to win a major tournament on foreign soil. Making me wonder why we give so much importance, attention and money to the men’s game when, no offence (or some…), they are comparatively underachieving, boring and overhyped! And I think the Lionesses are even finer role models. Leah Williamson would be a hugely popular Trouble guest. Someone inspiring so many girls and young women to get into football, she is an amazing player and advocate of the women’s game! I am going to bring in a recent interview with her. Such a positive idol for women and girls, she and her teammates made history and stole the nation’s hearts just over a week ago. Wonderland spoke with Leah Williamson back in May. I wanted to source some of that interview, just showing what an amazing and interesting person she is. D.J. and broadcaster Annie Macmanus (who would be another great Trouble Club guest) – also known as Annie Mac - spoke with a “Lifelong Gooner. Author. Activist. Jazz piano enthusiast. Certified girl crush”. The headline of the article continues: “At 28, The Lionesses’ Leah Williamson has captured the nation’s heart both on and off the pitch”:

“At Arsenal, the club she joined at nine through the Centre of Excellence, she’s become the heartbeat of their defence—and, at the time of writing, is preparing to face Barcelona in the Champions League Final. For England, the Lionesses’ Euros 2025 squad hasn’t been announced yet but we unofficially assume she’s not only in it, but will captain the team once again.

Off the pitch, her reach is just as commanding. An OBE for services to football. Five co-written children’s books. The first female England player to speak at the UN, where she addressed the Sustainable Development Goals Summit and called for gender equality in sport. A steady stream of charitable work.Leah Williamson hasn’t just captained the Pride of England—she’s become it. Did we mention she’s 28?And, to add to the list, she single-handedly got DJ, Author, Broadcaster and host of podcasts Changes and BBC podcast Sidetracked, Annie Mac, back into football. Leah’s influence, so far, has defied scientific explanation. But if there’s anyone to try and explain its effect, it’s Annie…

Annie Macmanus: I listened back to our Changes episode from summer 2023 and loved that conversation. You were recovering from your ACL injury and about to head to Australia with your mum and brother to watch the World Cup—your first time watching an international tournament instead of playing in one. You were reflective but also positive and focused on making the most of that time beyond football. Looking back, howwas that period for you?

Leah Williamson: Firstly, it genuinely saved my football career—in terms of reigniting something. When you’re young, you always think the big day will come, because you’ve got time. But the timing of my injury forced me to refocus and be more deliberate about everything, especially football. It put me in a much better place. Off the pitch, though—the things I didand the time I spent with people—I would never have had thatotherwise.

AM: How hard was the physical side of coming back? And afternine months out, is there fear that you won’t have your place on the team?

LW: One hundred percent. It’s not even a question—it’s a fact.Will I be able to play again? Am I still as valuable to the team?All of that. During my ACL injury, I had this phrase in my head:‘Enjoy the moments.’ So when I was close to returning—a sell-out at the Emirates against Man United—I threw myself a party with all my family and friends. I thought, why shouldn’t I celebrate this? It’s a big moment. And then I got injured again and didn’t make my return. Still had the party. It was difficult because everything kept breaking along the way. I tore my hamstring, irritated my other knee, tore a muscle in my hip that’s almost impossible to tear. Little things kept happening. So I’d say it wasn’t until September—and this all started in February—that I finally felt like there was nothing wrong with me anymore.

AM: And what about confidence? Beyond the physical side, how hard was it to regain the belief that you could still do it?

LW: That’s been the main struggle, and it’s still ongoing—there are still firsts to tick off. I love the phrase, ‘Faith and fear both have little evidence.’ It’s your choice which one to follow, but sometimes you lean too far one way. I’m trying to live in the present and trust my ability now, but without anything to go on, it’s hard. My brain works like, ‘Give me the info and I’ll act on it,’ and I had no data, no evidence, no memory—that’s what I struggled with.

AM: I know you said it’s ongoing, but is there a sense that the more you play there’s a sense of your body, your brain coming together and aligning with each other? Is it just practice? Is it just boots on the field?

LW: For a long time, it was that. It was, ‘I feel uncomfortable, but unless I do this next step, I’m not going to know.’ Just chasing that hope that with more game time and more minutes, it’ll figure itself out. But then you hit moments where you expect something of yourself and don’t quite deliver. Or the opposite—you go in thinking, ‘We’ll see what happens,’ and have a great game, and suddenly it’s, ‘I’m back!’ Then you hit a bit of a downer again. I think it is about playing and time, but also, like I said, you have to be more intentful. Instead of thinking, ‘I know what to do,’ you have to actually tell yourself, and then hope you can deliver when the time comes”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Munroe Bergdorf/PHOTO CREDIT: Jordan Rossi for HUNGER

An activist and role model (and fashion model) for the trans community, Munroe Bergdorf is someone who I would love to hear speak for The Trouble Club. The English model and activist has walked several catwalks for brands including Gypsy Sport at both London and NYC Fashion Weeks. Munroe Bergdorf was also the first transgender model in the U.K. for L'Oréal, though she was dropped within weeks after a racial row. You can buy her amazing new book, Talk to Me, and also watch the documentary, Love & Rage: Munroe Bergdorf. I am going to drop in a recent interview with. I also suggest people check out her brilliant interview with former Trouble Club guest, Emma-Louise Boynton. Bergdorf recently spoke with Big Issue as to why we need to have the transgender conversation on a human level. She has been the recipient of abuse, violence and hatred for years. The transgender conversation is especially pressing given the heinous ruling by the Supreme Court that a woman is defined by sex and not gender. A ruling that not only thrilled transphobes like JK Rowling, but also will create less access and integration for transgender women. It will also lead to much more abuse, ostracisation and stigmatism:

“I mean, that was just the beginning, really,” she tells Big Issue. “Things have definitely got worse.”

Until 2015, Brussels-based advocacy group ILGA-Europe consistently ranked Britain as the most LGBTQ+ friendly country in Europe. Since then, we’ve plunged to 22nd place, named alongside Hungary and Georgia as countries with the biggest falls in rankings.

Public support is slipping too – only 64% of Britons described themselves as “not prejudiced” against transgender people in 2022, down from 82% just a year earlier.

As one of Britain’s most recognisable trans women, Munroe Bergdorf has had a front seat to this downward spiral.

“If you look back at when we were gaining visibility in 2015, public approval was good,” she reflects.

“People didn’t feel threatened by trans people, and they genuinely felt that trans people deserved equality and respect, and self-ID wasn’t a contentious issue because there was no reason for it to be.”

What changed? Bergdorf pauses.

“I think that homophobia never really went away,” she says. “The will to demonise queerness never really went away, and suddenly we have a very visible community that is visible enough to exploit, but small enough to not have to pander to for votes. I think all that hatred really got directed towards us at a time of convenience.”

At the same time, “anti-woke” has hardened into ideology. The political Overton window has shifted right.

“We do not believe in DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] and that madness in any way at all,” Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said last month. His party leads Labour in an increasing number of voting intention polls.

Section 28 all over again

But the past was no utopia either. When Bergdorf was growing up in 1990s Essex, she was “consistently bullied” for her effeminate mannerisms and mixed-race heritage.

“I was raised during Section 28 so I legally couldn’t talk to my teachers about my sexuality,” she recalls. “I felt embarrassed that I was being bullied, I hadn’t come out yet as queer. I had no one to talk to.”

Introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1988, Section 28 barred schools and local authorities from “promoting homosexuality”, effectively cutting off support for queer youth. The law wasn’t repealed in England and Wales until 2003.

It’s so recent, I say. Surely, we should celebrate that progress?

“Well, I don’t know,” Bergdorf replies, “because Keir Starmer introducing the inability to speak about gender identity in schools is basically Section 28 all over again. So we definitely haven’t come that far.”

She’s referring to a 2024 Conservative proposal to ban educators from teaching the “contested view that gender identity is a spectrum”. Then-opposition leader Keir Starmer agreed he was “not in favour of ideology being taught in schools on gender”.

Legal protections are shifting too. In April, the UK’s Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of “woman” is based on biological sex, allowing authorities to exclude trans people from single-sex spaces – even those with a legal gender recognition certificate. Gender-critical campaigners called it a “win for common sense”. Trans activists condemned it.

“The judgment does not remove the legal protections trans people currently enjoy under the Equality Act,” a panel of United Nations experts said. “But it may be used to justify exclusionary policies that further stigmatise and marginalise an already vulnerable population.”

The guidance is a devastating blow for trans rights, Bergdorf says. “The EHRC guidance [the Equality and Human Rights Commission interpretation of the Supreme Court ruling] could function as segregation.

“Trans rights are very much a litmus test in what we will accept. And if we accept the segregation of trans people, we accept that they can be harassed, demonised and dehumanised, then we really condemn ourselves to that narrative.”

In this view, trans rights are a bellwether for other civil liberties. If discrimination against this tiny community is allowed to continue, Bergdorf argues, other rights, “say, gay marriage, or the right to not be discriminated against if you have an abortion, or the freedom of religious expression” could be next.

It’s a bleak picture; a parochial society governed by fear and hostility. We’re already seeing such a society take shape across the Atlantic. Despite everything, Munroe Bergdorf refuses to give up hope.

“A large swathe of the population can be forgiven,” she says: they are “misguided, not malicious”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Claudia Winkleman/PHOTO CREDIT: Channel 4/Nic Serpell-Rand

Three more guests that I would love to see at The Trouble Club some time down the line. If you have read down this far – and apologies to Ellie Newton if she is contacted by any of these people asking to be a guest (I am not sure if that would seem like pressuring her!) -, then I hope that you check out these amazing women. One reason I love The Trouble Club is that I get to hear stories and experiences from these varied, multitalented and engrossing women I would not normally have direct access to. If they are promoting a book or discussing their career, you go away emotional, affected, laughing or inspired – or sometimes all four! We have seen figures from T.V. and radio speak before. One that would be terrific is Claudia Winkleman. Host of The Traitors, co-host of Strictly Come Dancing (with Tess Daly), and this amazing broadcaster and intoxicating human being (and author of 2020’s Quite), this would be a popular and well-attended event. This interview from GRAZIA from the start of the year shows Winkleman in modest mood. Claiming that she is merely a “tiny orange woman” – she is, in fact, a national treasure! -, she is self-deprecating, funny and always compelling to listen to! She recently stood in for Graham Norton on his chat show for an episode, and I feel she is a natural talk show host. Someone who I could (and would love to) see acting in a show or film:

“She’s bowled over by The Traitors’ success. ‘We didn’t foresee this. We went to Scotland with the amazing people who make it and a pair of red fingerless gloves and gave it our best shot. I think people like it because the psychology is extraordinary – just watching people work out whether they’re being lied to. The dynamics feel addictive. I’m completely obsessed.’

Which doesn’t mean she’s figured out how to win, despite her privileged view. ‘I don’t think there’s a formula. I wish there were. Although, actually, I’m really pleased there isn’t, because then people would know how to win. I do think the power of persuasion is everything. I also think you have to have a lot of empathy.’

So you don’t have to be a bit of a sociopath? ‘I don’t like the narrative that Faithfuls are good and Traitors are bad,’ she insists. ‘I wouldn’t make anyone a Traitor who didn’t ask to be one. That would be unfair. The Traitors are just as lovely, and that’s what for me makes it so compelling. I really want the Faithfuls to find one, and I also really want the Traitors to get away with it.’ Is she still in touch with any of the former contestants? ‘All of them. Aubrey sent me a video only today of some windows that he helped dress. I can’t let them go. I feel very protective over them.’

She’s tight lipped about the celebrity version of The Traitors, slated to start filming this summer. ‘I feel so bad because we’ve bonded over the Hula Hoop,’ she wails. ‘I would really like to tell you everything, but I really mustn’t.’

People like The Traitors because the psychology is extraordinary. The dynamics are addictive.

Of all the things that might have come to pass from The Traitors, becoming a fashion influencer wasn’t on her bingo card. ‘I don’t understand what happened. I’m a 52-year-old woman who happens to like a fingerless glove. I’m a tiny orange lady, and my fringe is too long.’ If self-deprecation suits her, so too does her Traitors wardrobe, a chic melange of cosy coats and knits offset with tartan. ‘I’ve always loved big sweaters and winter clothes. I’m allergic to summer clothes. I never want to see a shoestring-strap top or an open-toe sandal. I don’t do barbecues. I never leave the house between April and September. Give me big tights, a heavy sweater and a Wellington.’

It sounds as though she and her stylist, Sinead McKeefry, have fun constructing her on-screen persona. ‘For Strictly, one year I was Anita Dobson. This year I was Demis Roussos, which is why I wore a lot of kaftans. For the first [series of ] Traitors, it was Princess Anne meets Ronnie Corbett meets someone who is going to a golf sale. For series two, we went a bit Sarah Brightman. It was a large mood board.’

Off-camera, she has a uniform. ‘I wear the same black Topshop jeans – they’re falling apart, but I refuse to give them up – with sweaters that I’ve had for 30 years, DMs and either an ancient long black coat or one of my son’s puffers.’ But not a lace-up DM. ‘No – a bulky Chelsea boot. Who’s got time for laces?’

Not Winkleman, who last year stepped back from her Radio 2 show to spend more time with her children – Jake, 21, Matilda, 18, and 13-year-old Arthur – whom she shares with her husband of 24 years, producer Kris Thykier. The hardest part of being a parent? ‘Them leaving,’ she says. Her eldest two are at university. ‘It’s horrendous. I don’t understand why they don’t have that in the baby books, along with all the advice about breastfeeding and how to steam a butternut squash. Why can’t there be a chapter saying, “You’re going to have these little puffins that you’ll love more than life – and then one day, they’re off.”’

Strictly recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, a fact she still finds hard to fathom. ‘I started presenting It Takes Two when my [eldest] son was one. I can’t believe I’ve been part of this amazing show for almost his entire life. How lucky am I to do Strictly, Traitors and The Piano?’ Suggest it’s talent as much as luck and she quickly refutes it. ‘That’s not faux self-deprecation. It’s the truth. I cannot believe how lucky I am and when it ends – and it’s got to be around the corner – I know that I’ve already had too long a run, so I’ll say, “Thank you so much and bye-bye.”’

Both she and her Strictly co-host Tess Daly are in their fifties, a fact that not so long ago would have precluded them from anchoring a primetime TV show. ‘I think it’s much better,’ she says of older women’s visibility on screen. ‘My bosses are all women, number one. And number two, I feel like there’s a home on telly for people who are older. But I would love to hear from people who disagree with me, because we need to hear those voices as well’”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Greta Gerwig/PHOTO CREDIT: Zoey Grossman for TIME

Two more guests I have on my dream Trouble Club guestlist, this name is perhaps ambitious. The one I said connected with Margot Robbie. A record-setting director and someone who has been Oscar-nominated as a director – never having won that honour, it is a ceremony that struggles in its sexism towards female directors -, Greta Gerwig would be one of the most popular speakers. She lives in New York but, even if she came to the U.K., could she be lured?! I do think she could speak at a venue like the Barbican Centre or Southbank Centre. I want to go back to an interview with Gerwig from last year. Barbie was released in 2023 and made over a billion dollars at the box office. Gerwig became the first female director to achieve that feat. A lot of eyes were on what she would do next. I believe she is directing a new Narnia film, so a continuation of huge-budget films rather than a return to the more independent-spirited films before (I mean, Little Women, Lady Bird and Frances Ha (my favourite film ever) had smaller budgets and cannot be considered big studio films or mainstream hits). One of TIME’s Women of the Year 2024, they spoke with Gerwig last February about the success of Barbie and what her next big swing will be:

“The success of Barbie means that Gerwig, 40, now has the rare latitude to write her own ticket in an increasingly risk-averse industry—a freedom that could have been immobilizing. But Narnia, Gerwig says, had been gestating for a long time; she’d written a draft before ever setting foot on the set of Barbie. “Knowing that I’d laid the groundwork for Narnia and wanted to return to it—that’s probably something I set up for myself psychologically,” she says. “Because I know the right thing, for me anyway, is to keep making movies. Whatever happens, good or bad, you’ve got to keep going.” Hollywood is still reeling from pandemic shutdowns, strikes, and layoffs, facing omnipresent pressure from Wall Street to turn ever higher profits; in a moment like this one, she feels fortunate to get to do what she loves. “It’s never not astonishing to me that somebody gives you money to make a movie,” she says.

Gerwig’s story is as much about commerce as it is about art: her films are humane, emotional, and playful; she is the only director in history to have their first three solo feature films nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. Yet her movies also clean up at the box office: her semi-autobiographical solo directorial debut, Lady Bird, grossed $79 million against a $10 million budget; her next, an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved Little Women, was budgeted at $40 million and took in $231 million—both extraordinary returns on investment.

These commercial triumphs reflect how her work resonates in the culture, particularly among women and girls, whose emotional lives and ambitions Gerwig explores in her films. But to make her success about gender would be to diminish how her work also transcends its boundaries. “I always think about the intuitive way you love a song or a movie,” she says. “You love something, and you just love it. You don’t think to yourself, ‘I have to love this because it’s by a woman, for a woman.’ That’s part of it. But it’s not why you love it.” She pauses. “You love it because it’s great.”

I ask her whether the need to prove her command over this space is something women feel more deeply, for the exact reasons articulated in Ferrera’s now famous monologue: there’s an uneasy relationship between women and their ambition in a patriarchal society. “I don’t know if it’s gendered,” she says. “But I know I want to be able to make a body of work that feels like it’s undeniable in terms of the work itself. I don’t want there to be an asterisk next to my name. Do I have more of that than male filmmakers? I don’t know! I know plenty of deeply insecure male filmmakers who are plagued in their own ways.” (I resist the impulse to ask for their names.)

The question of sexism also haunted this year’s Oscar race. While Gerwig was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, she was shut out of the Best Director category, while Barbie’s lead and producer, Margot Robbie, was also excluded from Best Actress, despite being acclaimed for her nuanced, layered performance. Fans wondered: Might the movie, or its star, not look like the Academy’s picture of serious filmmaking?

“Of course I wanted it for Margot,” Gerwig says. “But I’m just happy we all get to be there together.” There’s also, she points out, ample accolades for the film at the Oscars. “A friend’s mom said to me, ‘I can’t believe you didn’t get nominated,’” she says, laughing. “I said, ‘But I did. I got an Oscar nomination.’ She was like, ‘Oh, that’s wonderful for you!’ I was like, ‘I know!’”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Michaela Coel/PHOTO CREDIT: Spencer Hewitt

To be fair, there are myriad other women I would also love to be a Trouble Club guest. Kate Nash, Samira Ahmed, CMAT, Naomi Campbell, Jenny Saville, Gloria Steinem (a previous Trouble guest) and so many more accomplished and phenomenal queens. However, the final of my five ‘dream guests’ inclusions is Michaela Coel. A hugely important actor writer and television director, 2020’s I May Destroy You is one of the most important, affecting and brilliant pieces of television that has been produced in the past couple of decades! Before getting to a 2023 interview with Coel, earlier this year, Interview Magazine paired Michaela Coel with Little Simz. Coel asking Simz about her new album, Lotus:

“COEL: We’ve got the same PR, but they didn’t know that we knew each other. [Laughs]

SIMZ: Really?

COEL: They said, “Would you like to interview Little Simz about her album? I think you met her at the GQ Awards last year in New York.” I said, “Excuse me madam, I’ve known this bitch 10 years. Yes, I’ll do it.” You seem stronger and more resolved, and firmly standing in who you are.

SIMZ: I’m really grateful to hear you say that, because when you’re in it sometimes, you don’t know. I feel it as well. Even though you’re always growing and whatnot, I just feel way more comfortable in my skin, you know?

COEL: Yeah. How does what you learned, and the unfortunate experiences that you’ve had regarding abuse within this industry—financial, emotional—how does it shape how you choose your collaborators going forward?

SIMZ: Damn, big question. I think if anything, it’s made me more open to working with different types of people. When you close yourself off and you’re in a cocoon, that’s when the fucked shit happens. It made me more excited to be able to share my gift. There’s so many talented people on the earth.

COEL: Yeah.

SIMZ: Not that I forgot that, but I maybe didn’t want to see it. If anything, it’s given me a newfound excitement, because what I found is by trying new things, it unlocked something in me that I didn’t know existed. It’s given me a newfound freedom to be a bit more experimental in my work. I felt like a child again. Again, going into situations, not one man up”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Little Simz/PHOTO CREDIT: Jackson Bowley

Soon to star in a BBC drama, First Day on Earth, I think we are going to see a lot more from Michaela Coel. Someone who would be an epic and hugely powerful Trouble Club guest. However, this again is just me promoting the club and its work rather than trying to manifest anything! I will end with a 2023 interview with Michaela Coel from Harper’s Bazaar. As we see written near the top of the interview, Michaela Coel’s “openness, authenticity and a spirit of experimentation have been key to unlocking her creativity”:

“Visibility, therefore, is important to her. Coel is a pioneer in many ways, having worked up to a position where she can be seen and heard; she was the first Black person for five years to attend the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and the first Black woman – and only the fourth woman in its 42-year history – to give the Mac-Taggart lecture (previous speakers include Rupert Murdoch and Jeremy Paxman).

"It’s 'seeing to believe'," she says firmly. "When I was growing up, I never saw a picture of a Black woman sitting in a director’s chair. I didn’t know that was something that we could do, so it almost wasn’t something that I wished for. I just kind of stumbled here."

PHOTO CREDIT: Josh Sinner

Coel’s creative journey has been defined by a strong sense of self rather than premeditation. Given her stratospheric success, it’s reassuring to hear that at each moment in her career, she never imagined an audience bigger than the one that was before her. "I’ve been writing for 16 years," she explains. "At no point did I ever think ahead, when I was writing poetry in my car or turning up at theatres doing open-mic nights for 50 quid – and that was only if you won. The most important thing is your relationship with your creativity. That can be difficult to nurture in a world that is very into things like social comparison, but I see it as crucial to encourage people to focus on what’s in front of them."

This spring, Coel is helping to launch the BMW Filmmaking Challenge in partnership with the British Film Institute. She will mentor five shortlisted filmmakers, who will each receive a £10,000 production budget and access to cutting-edge technology to make their project. The winner will have a red-carpet premiere at the London Film Festival in October, and the shortlisted entries will be screened.

Coel sees this an opportunity to reach as many communities as possible, and to give writers creative space to take risks. "I want to impart that it’s OK to get it wrong, it’s OK to mess it up," she says. "And we should be allowed that space”.

I know that Trouble Club members all have their ideas of who they would love to see speak. However, the guests that are confirmed and have passed are all simply incredible! It is credit to Ellie Newton and her passion for The Trouble Club that means it continues to grow and recruit members. Always a pleasure and experience being in the room with so many brilliant women (and a few men). I will revisit The Trouble Club for the final time this year in a few months but, for now, I am thinking and looking ahead to who might appear for The Trouble Club as we head…

TOWARDS 2026.

FEATURE: The Gaps Between the Tracks: Why the Incredible Series, Mix Tape, Resonated Strongly with Me

FEATURE:

 

 

The Gaps Between the Tracks

 

Why the Incredible Series, Mix Tape, Resonated Strongly with Me

__________

THERE is a lot to unpack…

IN THIS PHOTO: Florence Hunt and Rory Walton-Smith as teenage Alison and Dan in the miniseries, Mix Tape/PHOTO CREDIT: Cáit Fahy

when it comes to Mix Tape. A new series that is available on the BBC iPlayer. It is an adaptation of the book by Jane Sanderson. I will drop in a positive review for the four-part series. I sort of stumbled upon it. I had heard of the series and there was talk of it. As its title instantly connects with music and something oldskool and maybe something the digital generation cannot understand or appreciation, I dived in. I was born in 1983, so mixtapes and cassettes were a natural part of my childhood and teenage years. I will come to that. There are so many things to recommend about the series. The writing and direction is wonderful. The narrative spans from the late-1970s and early-1980s in Sheffield to the early-2010s in Australia (and Sheffield). The story follows the characters of Daniel and Alison as they reconnect through social media after initially connecting over music during their youth in Sheffield. I think maybe the modern-day scenes are more up-to-date and set around now, though I may be wrong. In any case, we flash between the young Daniel and Alison as they are in school and embarking on this teenage romance. Bonding through their love of music, they exchange cassettes, vinyl and talk about their favourite music. Discussion about which is the best The Velvet Underground song. An early moment where Alison is stopped in her tracks listening to Nick Drake’s Northern Sky. It is very emotional and evocative. The power of music and experiencing it in physical form. Even though the adult Daniel shares albums via Spotify with Alison as they reconnect and he travels to Sydney to see her after all these years, most of the music is played through headphones, stereos or in a rather traditional and physical way. The actual feel of physical music is why the series and music  pops and sticks long in the heart. Here is every song that is included throughout the series. I will end with a digital mixtape of all but one of the Mix Tape tracks (as it was not available on Spotify).

IN THIS PHOTO: Teresa Palmer as Alison/PHOTO CREDIT: Joel Pratley

The entire cast is terrific! The adult Daniel is played by Jim Sturgess. The adult Alison by Teresa Palmer. Even though she has an Australian accent now – rather than her childhood Sheffield accent; her hair is now blonde and not brunette -, the two pick up where they left off. After having conversations around why she left Sheffield and what happened. The two are incredible and have this amazing chemistry. The end, though it has some rom-com cliches, is moving and tear-jerking. You will these two to get together again following the dissolution and strain of their troubled marriages. The teenage Daniel is portrayed by Rory Walton-Smith. An actor I had not heard of, I feel he has the look and talent to portray musicians like Alex Turner (Artic Monkeys are played in the series). If there is a Beatles biopic of the young Paul McCartney, Walton-Smith would seem like a natural fit! Kudos also to Sara Soulié as Katja. Daniel’s wife, the Finnish-Danish actor is superb as someone living with the jealousy and suspicion of her husband getting too close to an old love - and balancing that with her ambitions and happiness. The standout to me is Florence Hunt, who is going to ne a massive success! Not to compare her to her namesake Florence Pugh, but I do see Hunt taking on simar roles and having that success. Some of her scenes are particularly harrowing (including a rape scene), yet she handles the role and conveys the multiple emotions and nuance superbly. You can tell her and Rory Walton-Smith instantly clicked as their bond and romance seems convincing and right. They gel really well. Florence Hunt has appeared on Bridgeton and will appear in the forthcoming Queen of the Sea. Only eighteen, she is a remarkable talent who I can see in blockbuster films, Indie classics and maybe, and I am not sure how her singing voice is, recording music. Someone who inhabits the warmth, compassion and strains of Alison without any flaws. Teresa Palmer is also perfect in that sense as the adult Alison despite the fact that (obviously) the two actors playing Alison never share any screentime.

If some reviewers felt Mix Tape had some plot holes or there was too many rom-com cliches and overused beats, one cannot fault the performances, the phenomenal soundtrack and the fact that the perfect flashbacks are blended seamlessly with the ‘foreground’. Switching between decades-past Sheffield and the contemporary landscape, it is never jarring. Stories and characters giving equal weight and attention. This is what The Guardian wrote in their review from June. Even though I am nearly a couple of months late to the Mix Tape party, I only completed watching it on Saturday (2nd August) and I was compelled to write something – moved as I was by the very end:

“The question “will they or won’t they?” permeates many romantic stories, and it is almost always answered with “they do eventually”. In the four-part Irish-Australian drama Mix Tape, that evergreen question is still there, more or less, but it has been deepened and expanded in interesting ways. It’s not really about whether Alison and Dan will get together because we know they already did – one of the show’s two distinctly different timelines follows them as lovestruck teenagers in the 1980s.

But the other timeline, set in the present day, reveals Alison and Dan went their separate ways and haven’t seen each other for many years. There’s the possibility they might get back together, despite each being married with children to other people. But for me, it was more interesting to contemplate whether either of them could finally find healing and closure for their deeply unresolved feelings. The past is a lonely place, as they say, and it has left big sandbags weighing down their minds.

Which all sounds rather heavy. But this series – directed by Lucy Gaffy and written by Jo Spain, adapting Jane Sanderson’s novel of the same name – is staged with lightness of touch and is a real pleasure to watch. At its core are four beautifully judged performances: from Teresa Palmer and Jim Sturgess as adult Alison and Dan in the present day, and Florence Hunt and Rory Walton-Smith as their younger selves. The latter convey giddy, intoxicating young love while the former are more plaintive and yearning.

IN THIS PHOTO: Jim Sturgess plays the older Daniel in Mix Tape/PHOTO CREDIT: Leanne Sullivan

As adults, Dan is a Sheffield-based music journalist while Alison is a bestselling novelist living in Australia. When a radio interviewer inquires about her upbringing in Sheffield, she gently infers she’d rather talk about something else. The script is full of small but salient moments like these, fleshing out the characters’ lives and emotions without dumbing things down or applying highlighter pen.

We’re introduced to the leads at a house party in Sheffield in 1989, when young Dan spots Alison from across the room. They get to know each other partly by swapping mix tapes, which of course enables plenty of needle drops (think Joy Division, the Cure, New Order). I initially feared a cheesy “soundtrack of love” element, but Gaffy strikes a good balance: sweet but never cloying. The characters’ intense connection is tempered by the knowledge they’ll ultimately split, the circumstances gradually revealed.

When Dan sends Alison a friend request years later, we can tell by the look on her face that it’s welcomed. Visually conveying this kind of emotional information isn’t easy, though it helps to have complex and enigmatic eyes like Teresa Palmer, who is very good at saying a lot with a little. She often plays roles that require her to balance relatability with concealed depths, such as the recent miniseries The Last Anniversary, Disney+’s cult-themed drama The Clearing and Cate Shortland’s kidnap movie Berlin Syndrome. Sturgess is excellent too as Dan, a man who seems to be constantly running things over in his mind, haunted by gaps in his life that might never be filled.

The terms “flashback” and “flashforward” feel too sharp and simple for Mix Tape. The jumps back and forward in time are more like joins, feeling fluid and instinctual; props to editors Katrina Barker and Christine Cheung. The trick – also demonstrated recently in Justin Kurzel’s psychologically complex series The Narrow Road to the Deep North – is to make each timeline feel both independent and interconnected: satisfying on their own terms, but also inseparable.

I was moved by both story strands in Mix Tape, which really do feel like two sides of the same coin. At four episodes of roughly one hour apiece, the runtime felt just right: more than enough to truly get to know these people. I left wishing the best for them”.

Although the story of Alison and Daniel coming together and then being pulled apart by family tragedy and unfortunate circumstances and then coming back together later in life is not something I can relate to, some of it did resonate. I remember bonding with someone very special when I was a child and it would be a case of us and friends very much sharing music and discussing artists. Our lives have gone different ways, and I often think about meeting up and connect with her. It would not be the same as it is was, though Mix Tape did take me back to my childhood of the 1980s and 1990s. I recently wrote a feature bemoaning the lack of needle drop moments in film. Maybe it is the cost of licensing songs and getting clearance that means songs are often briefly used or in the background. Mix Tape could not have worked on the small screen if artists whose songs were used charged a huge amount for their use (I guess T.V. shows do not really make money, so it would be unreasonable to ask for a lot of money!). Even though there are not some Quentin Tarantino-type needle drops through Mix Tapes, the songs are used to great effect. Stirring emotions, scoring incredible scenes and, in the case of Nick Drake and The Velvet Underground, integral to the bond and connection between Alison and Daniel. Songs that drive the story forward. The heavy use of diegetic music is very effecting and powerful. I was brought back to my childhood and how music, especially physical music, was so vital. Swapping albums and sharing headphones. Despite growing up further south than Sheffield, a lot of what was including ion Mix Tape I could identify with. I would encourage everyone to catch the series and binge it in one go!

It got me thinking beyond that. I know there was a 2021 film called Mixtape, so this idea of using mixtapes and music integrally in films and having the soundtrack being front and centre is not new. I don’t think it is retro or unrelatable. There is also a 2011 short called Mixtape. So the title and landscape is well covered. However, the stories and songs are different in each. I have always wanted to put together a film like Mix Tape. Obviously, the title would be different, though it would look at two people who knew one another that are in different places. Two sides of the world. Both sides of the cassette. Some genuinely great needle drop moments, including one where the lead in headphones is captured in a one shot walking through the streets or Camden or New York – I could not decide between the two –, and there is this ‘street symphony’. Songs played in cars and shops that builds in the streets blend and creates this rise. They go into the main character’s headphones, and the action in that opening sequence match the lyrics. I sort of see the film poster of someone on a train as a light is reflecting and projects an album cover (maybe Abbey Road or London Calling) opposite to give the illusion they are actually in the album cover! Maybe more practical and affordable as a T.V. series. However, today, when I was in Camden and thinking about Mix Tape, I encountered that moment walking down the street and different stalls and shops blasting music out (including Bob Marley). For me, in terms of setting, maybe the '90s is appropriate. A decade that has been covered a lot in terms of the music of that time used on screen, the soundtrack and the story would be different and original.

I was listening to Oasis a lot whilst in Camden and great memories came flooding back of my hearing Champagne Supernova and Live Forever for the first time – from their debut album, 1994’s Definitely Maybe and the 1995 follow-up, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, respectively. Roll with It, the second single from (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, turns thirty on 14th August. That song went up (and lost to) Blur’s Country House in the Bitpop battle of 1995. As much as anything, I don’t think there are a huge amount of T.V. shows and films where music is integral. Maybe it is the cost of clearing songs, though Mix Tape has a packed soundtrack where huge artists like The Cure and The Stone Roses feature. I guess bands like Oasis or Blur might charge more. However, these songs capture the times more than anything else. I think people can access forgotten memories through music in a very powerful and emotional way. It makes me want to put together my own series like Mix Tape. Inspired by the fantastic cast – especially the exceptional future icon Florence Hunt (who I would love to work with but will be getting a lot of massive offers very soon!) -, I have not been as affected by a recent series as much as that in recent years. Please do go and check it out if you have not watched it already. Even though Mix Tape is a literary adaptation and not an original idea for T.V., it does justice to Jane Sanderson’s words. I do feel that we will see more ideas like this coming to the screen. Compelled and hugely motivated writers and directors will soon be…

FOLLOWING Mix Tape’s lead.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Girls Don’t Sync

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Girls Don’t Sync

__________

I am long overdue…

spotlighting the remarkable and empowering Girls Don’t Sync. In terms of who they are and why they are so incredible, they “are an all-female group of DJs, producers and curators who are bringing much needed inclusivity and energy to underrepresented dancefloors worldwide. Matty Chiabi, Sophia Violet, Hannah Lynch and G33 came together to form Girls Don’t Sync in summer 2021, and exploded onto the scene soon after with one of the most-watched Mixmag Lab’s of the year. Their fresh take on UKG, house and bass has made them a must-see act at the likes of Glastonbury, Boomtown, Parklife, Lost & Found and many more this year, winning fans around the world for their boundless energy and the unforgettable atmosphere they create with each performance. In an era of feminine resurgence, Girls Don’t Sync are inspiring a new generation of dance music fans and becoming leaders of their scene”. Their latest track, Come Get Dis, is so incredible. I have been listening to it a lot. If you want to go and see them, here is where you can find them. They play the Reading & Leeds Festival on 21st August. Girls Don’t Sync is a Liverpool-formed collective that expanded into London. The phenomneal Matty Chiabi, G33, Sophia Violet, and Hannah Lynch should be on your radar. I am going to start out with a DJ Mag interview with Girls Don’t Sync from last year:

“Girls Don’t Sync have evolved at warp-speed over the past two years, compelled by a grounding ambition to embody the change they want to see in the world of dance music. The roots of the collective were established in promoting and self-funding their own events across Liverpool, elevating DJs and artists who were otherwise underrepresented; now, Matty Chiabi, Gaia Ahuja, Sophia Violet and Hannah Lynch are world-builders. Theirs is a community where your troubles get lost in the mix, where mentorship, confidence, good times and even better tunes are top of the bill.

“Infectious” is the word that orbits their performances, which have been demanded not only by UK strongholds such as Glastonbury, Boomtown and The Warehouse Project, but on an international scale across Europe. These four best friends pour drinks for their audience, make a point of connecting with people beyond the decks, chatting and sharing a dance, and in the case of their DJ Mag HQ performance last year, literally fall to their knees with the thrill of hearing the tricks in each other’s mixes. Girls Don’t Sync give the impression that they aren’t looking for fans, but friends; they don’t put on shows, but parties.

We catch the collective in the afterglow of their headline performance at KOKO, the iconic venue in Camden that has welcomed era-defining artists from Amy Winehouse to Prince. Not only did it sell out, being the fastest-selling event Girls Don’t Sync (GDS) have thrown so far, but it was also one of the most in-demand performances at the venue throughout 2023. To celebrate, they shared some extra treats, including surprise sets from a host of friends like p-rallel and Saint Ludo, and unveiling their original material for the first time (set to be released later in 2024). It was a night that saw their ambitions align with reality”.

The four DJs play B2B sets, each one unleashing a distinct flavour that is unique to their musical DNA. “We never practise together,” notes Hannah. “We all have surprises for each other because we have no idea what each other is gonna play — but that’s where the power has always been with us as a group because we don’t rehearse it. It’s all about living in the moment and bouncing off each other’s energy.”

While Matty gravitates towards UK funky, hard drum tracks and Afrobeats, Gaia pays homage to her London roots and South Asian heritage with a collision of grime and Arabic instrumentals. You’ll catch Sophia tapping into hard house and a lineage of rave classics viewed through a European lens, and Hannah is something of a musical excavator, surprising the others with the deep-cut edits and remixes which have led to their biggest moments.

“We’ve all got our own superpower,” says Gaia. “Obviously we share music, we talk about music, but there’s a moment before a set where I’ll say to Matty, ‘I’ve got a song I want to show you’, and I’m not only showing it to her, but thousands of people in that very moment. Even off the back of our DJ Mag stream, those reactions we have to each other are completely real because I don’t know what anyone is going to play. It’s all an element of surprise and inspiring reaction, and that’s what makes us so special.”

Each of the GDS DJs give their time to mentorship and nurturing talent. After being gifted a DJing course for her birthday, Gaia reached out to Hannah — the only female DJ in Liverpool she knew of — asking if she could shadow her, and together they began hosting workshops at their local community centre. Now, GDS has their sights set on expanding the educational element of the collective into a scholarship or a developing free workshop on a larger scale with no barrier for entry”.

Girls Don’t Sync have always been more than a D.J. collective. They are a movement. Going beyond the music, they are brining people together with their inclusive music. They talked about Fourmation Records and championing communities through their records when interviewed by Beatportal last year:

“Surprising the Dancefloor

At its heart, "Come Thru" is designed for the dancefloor—a track that keeps ravers on their toes and invites everyone to share in its energy. Matty highlights the intentionality behind its structure: “The breakdown followed by the 90s pianos creates this euphoric moment. It slows down, pulls people in, and then surprises them by bringing everything back with even more intensity. Those moments of togetherness on the dancefloor are what we live for.”

The track’s infectious vibe comes from its universal appeal. “It’s a song about connection and joy,” adds Matty. “No matter your musical background, we want everyone to feel that invitation to ‘Come Thru,’ to let go and enjoy the moment together.”

A Label, a Tour, and a Mission

The release of "Come Thru" marks a pivotal moment for Girls Don’t Sync. Not only does it debut their original sound, but it also launches their label, Fourmation Records, and kicks off their highly anticipated UK tour. For Sophia, the timing couldn’t be more special. “Launching the label and hitting the road at the same time felt like the perfect way to connect with fans. We’re excited to bring ‘Come Thru’ to life on stage and to share what we’ve been working on with new and familiar faces.”

Touring also gives GDS a chance to spotlight the wider DJ and producer community. “Curating our lineups has been a highlight,” shares Hannah. “We’ve been able to book DJs who inspire us and give a platform to emerging talent who are integral to the scene. It’s a full-circle moment to see those we admire sharing a stage with us.”

Championing Community Through Music

For GDS, community isn’t just a buzzword—it’s the foundation of everything they do. “Our music is about bringing people together,” Gaia explains. “Whether it’s through shared passions, experiences, or values, we want our sets to feel like safe spaces where everyone can let go and have fun.”

The group also recognizes their role in challenging barriers and supporting marginalized voices within the music industry. “We’ve faced challenges, and we know many others in our community have too,” Gaia continues. “But those shared struggles are what unite us and inspire us to keep pushing for representation and inclusivity.”

This sense of togetherness extends beyond their fanbase to their peers in the DJ and producer world. “We’ve built such strong relationships with like-minded artists over the years,” says Gaia. “There’s a real collective sense of respect and celebration within the scene, and that energy fuels what we do”.

I am going to wrap up with a recent interview that Girls Don’t Sync did with Wonderland. Well, as it was around the time of the release of their single, Our House, the four-piece penned an essay about nightlife. There are sections that I want to bring in here:

“Girls Don’t Sync are reshaping expectations and lighting fires of euphoria. The Liverpool-formed four-piece are part girl-group, part collective, all impeccable vibes, getting dance floors moving across the globe, with sets at Glastonbury, Parklife and a residency at Ibiza’s Amnesia all forthcoming this summer.

At a pinnacle in their career so far — releasing a new celebratory, well-crafted single “Our House” via their own label FOURMATION — the girls are reflective of their journey. Nightlife in the UK and across the world has taken a massive hit in the years post the pandemic, with young people’s relationship to partying quickly evolving. As a vital voice for inclusion, diversity, education and moral-led hedonism, everything that Girls Don’t Sync do feels grounded in improving the scene around them, supporting their community and raising awareness.

To shine a light on their own experiences, offer observation on the ever-changing world around them, and give advice on a plethora of personal issues, Girls Don’t Sync share with Wonderland a heartfelt and deeply resonant essay — read exclusively below.

People like Eric Gooden, who runs District, (where we held our first GDS event), gave four girls trying to drive change, celebrate diversity, and champion a new wave of artists a real chance. District is one of the only Black-owned venues in Liverpool, and has always been more than just a music space; it’s a cultural hub that’s fostered community and creativity across generations for years. Being part of that ecosystem felt powerful, especially so early on in our career, it will always be a reminder of how vital these spaces are to the landscape of club culture. Without venues like District, the next generation of DJs, promoters, and music lovers lose a place to connect, grow, and find their voice. As we began playing out as a group, we naturally gravitated to these venues rooted in the underground; Meraki, Hidden, Motion, and Old Red Bus Station, spaces that played a key role in our growth,  and whose recent closures are a stark reminder of how much the scene still needs protecting.

We can’t ignore the bigger issue: our government must urgently recognise and protect a vital part of our culture, not just overlooked, but actively being dismantled. Funding cuts have devastated the arts sector, galleries, museums, and beyond and to us, grassroots clubs are just as crucial. We believe they should also be acknowledged as fundamental and essential cultural landmarks where passions ignite, identities form, spanning generations and communities, and careers are launched across the UK. It’s the ravers, the staff, the artists, and the relentless energy, DIY ethos and commitment that keep this culture alive. It is a given that clubs are undeniable cornerstones of culture and community but they also fuel our economy, a £36 billion industry as well as supporting over 425,000 jobs every year. Yet, in the last decade, more than half of the UK’s grassroots clubs have shut down… and the future of British music and culture is under serious threat.

In acknowledging the void that has been left in the nightlife industry, the question we have to ask ourselves is, “what is the solution?” We’ve seen people unite, raising their voices and galvanising their efforts both online and offline to defend these spaces. Take the facts and figures presented by NTIAs Night Time Economy Report or the introduction of London’s first ever Nightlife Taskforce; these new and very practical steps certainly provide us with a huge glimmer of hope for the future.

As artists, we believe we have a responsibility to protect nightlife in whatever ways we can. It’s more than a job, it’s our livelihood, our escape, our connection to community. That’s why we feel so strongly about supporting the spaces that shaped us. We have the power to create demand, to direct audiences, and to uplift grassroots venues and collectives from the ground up. And while these shows might not bring the same money as a big festival, what they offer in culture, energy and connection is unmatched”.

An incredible collective who continue to grow and are bringing so much togetherness and joy through their music, ethos and record label, I wonder if an E.P. or album will be coming this year or next perhaps, as there will be demand. I absolutely love everything about them and feel they are such an important and powerful voice(s) for good. Make sure you follow them and show support! Go catch them play if you are nearby. These four incredible women are a phenomenal D.J. collective but there is much more to them than that. It is clear they are going to be releasing incredible music and making changes in the world for…

MANY years more.

__________

Follow Girls Don’t Sync

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty: Nine: Under Ice

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional image for Hounds of Love’s second side, The Ninth Wave/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

 

Nine: Under Ice

__________

MOVING through Hounds of Love…

as we look ahead to its fortieth anniversary on 16th September, we have reached the majestic The Ninth Wave. Discussing the tracks in order, I am now to Under Ice. After And Dream of Sheep and its yearning for sleep. A woman adrift at sea after going overboard on a boat/ship, from the dreams of sleep and counting sheep, she is now struggling under ice. Maybe pulled under in the cold water, it is one of the most terrifying songs on the album. Up there with Waking the Witch. Suspenseful and tense, there is not a lot written about it. I will come to, as I am with all songs on the album, Leah Kardos’s fantastic 33 1/3 Hounds of Love book. At 2:21, it is the shortest song on the album. Before getting to Leah Kardos’s words – I think her section on Under Ice is the shortest when it comes to the songs -, there is a little bit of background. Another crucial track, from the potential struggle and terror of And Dream of Sheep, this is a very real and urgent song where the heroine might have fallen asleep or has been dragged beneath the water. However, there is not that sense of manic in the music. Not like Waking the Witch. Multitracked vocals (from Kate Bush) imploring the woman to get out of the cold and to safety, there are not a lot of musical components. It is the vocals that particularly resonate. I will comes to the lyrics of the song, as they are especially standout. Kate Bush performed this song – as part of The Ninth Wave – during her 2014 residency, Before the Dawn. I have included the audio for that at the end of the feature.

However, I will come to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia and their interview archive, where Kate Bush spoke about one of The Ninth Wave’s most important songs. If you have not heard the song then you really need to now. It is so powerful and spinetingling:

“It was very much the idea of going from very cold water, it’s getting dark, you’re alone, the only way out is to go to sleep, no responsibilities, and forget about everything; but if you go to sleep, the chances are you could rool over in the water and drown. So you’re trying to fight sleep, but you can’t help it, and you hit the dream. The idea of the dream being really cold, and really the visual expectancy of total loneliness, and for me that was a completely frozen river, no-one around, everything completely covered with snow and icicles, and it’s that person all alone in this absolute cold wilderness of white, and seeing themselves under the ice, drowning, to which they wake up and find themselves under the water.

Kate Bush in an Interview by Tony Myatt at the 1985 Kate Bush Convention

This was all kinda coming together by itself, I didn’t have much to do with this, I just sat down and wrote this little tune on the Fairlight with the cello sound. And it sounded very operatic and I thought “well, great” because it, you know, it conjured up the image of ice and was really simple to record. I mean we did the whole thing in a day, I guess. (…) Again it’s very lonely, it’s terribly lonely, they’re all alone on like this frozen lake. And at the end of it, it’s the idea of seeing themselves under the ice in the river, so I mean we’re talking real nightmare stuff here. And at this point, when they say, you know, “my god, it’s me,” you know, “it’s me under the ice. Ahhhh” [laughs]

Richard Skinner, ‘Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992”.

I like how her brother Paddy Bush is on harmonic vocals. It is this familial voice maybe urging his sister to be safe. Bush’s family does feature throughout The Ninth Wave. Under Ice is a track that many people do not know. I am going to source almost all of what Leah Kardos writes about this song. We head down to the “cold atmosphere of A minor”. I hear this song and think of her 2011 album, 50 Words for Snow. That is an album all about the cold and wintery vibes. If Mother Stands for Comfort is the standout on the first side of Hounds of Love because it is cold and skeletal compared to the much warmer and fuller songs around it, Under Ice might be its companion piece on The Ninth Wave. Leah Kardos observes, interestingly, how Under Ice’s “lean arrangement…consists of three layers of Fairlight (all using the TRAMCHLO preset that featured all over side A). One layer is a bass octave, poking rhythmically on the root notes; above it, a nervy staccato theme on parallel 5ths and behind it, a Fairlight pad that holds an A (sus2) shape throughout”. I was fascinated to learn (and I did not know this) that Under Ice might be unique because it is a thought-composed song. Meaning there are no repeating parts. The track is “one continuous unfolding movement from start to end”. The strings that stab and are a staccato joy – composed on the Fairlight and not real players – have similarities with those on Cloudbusting. Parallels and connections between songs on side A and The Ninth Wave. “Bush sings in sync with the parallel 5th Fairlight part, with accented rhythms in groups of three and two (‘won-der-ful’ … ‘ev- ‘ry-where … ‘so-o’ … ‘whi-ite’). Under Ice has this sense of disorientation and something almost witch-like. A spirit coming to the heroine. Maybe something lurking under the water!

Leah Kardos remarks on the lyrics. Noting how the lyrics paint something wonderful and safe, “but the music and sound design tell us different, with the bleak texture backdropped by the vague sounds of threatening wind and weather Bush’s voice is deep, tremulous and severe. Then a different voice – gentle, elongated, untethered from the stabbing Fairlight motif – describes the scene; a frozen river, no one else around, they’re skating fast across the ice”. Whereas one might listen to Under Ice and think that this sound and figure under the ice is a spirit or vision, the heroine actually realises it is her. “As she cries, It’s meee! Ohh!’, her voice reaches up high, only to slide slowly down as the pulse slackens to a stop, leaving the Fairlight pad shivering in the wind”. Kardos commends Bush’s production skill and instinct because Under Ice is terrifying and immersive without loading layers of instruments and ideas. The “Incidental sonic flourishes heighten the cinematic effect”, as she writes. Paddy Bush’s harmonic vocals are on the final drone. Sampled in the Fairlight. Under Ice has fewer words than nearly any other Kate Bush song. Split into that almost positive and hopeful section, before we get to the second section, where the struggling woman understands what is trapped beneath the ice is actually her. I love the first section: “It’s wonderful/Everywhere, so white/The/river has frozen over/Not a soul on the ice/Only me skating fast/I’m speeding past trees/Leaving little lines in the ice/Splitting, splitting sound/Silver heels spitting, spitting snow”. The second of seven songs on The Ninth Wave, it is the first moment when you fear the woman on the ocean is genuinely in danger of dying. Waking the Witch is the extension and companion piece. It is voices of her friends and family trying to wake her. Whether exhausted from her icy struggle or actually dying, these are her final dreams. The song is busier and faster. An urgency that you do not get from Under Ice. A remarkable song that creates genuine chills and shivers with very few elements and words, Under Ice is…

A mini masterpiece.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: The Last Dinner Party

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

PHOTO CREDIT: Rachell Smith for Rolling Stone UK

The Last Dinner Party

__________

I have featured The Last Dinner Party…

IN THIS PHOTO: The Last Dinner Party backstage on day four at Lollapalooza on Sunday, 4th August, 2024 at Grant Park in Chicago, IL/PHOTO CREDIT: Barry Brecheisen

a few times on my blog. Their debut album, Prelude to Ecstasy, arrived last year. It won a slew of positive critical reviews and saw the group nominated for the Mercury Prize. Consisting of of Abigail Morris, Lizzie Mayland, Emily Roberts, Georgia Davies and Aurora Nishevci, the band have this incredible chemistry and connection. I am looking ahead to their second studio album, From the Pyre, which is due on 17th October. They have said in an interview how this new album is more character-driven and a bit darker than their debut. It will be interesting to see what comes out. Because I feel they are incredible influential and empowering so many women and female artists, I am going to explore The Last Dinner Party in more depth. Specifically, I am including a couple of recent interviews with them. So that you can get a sense of where they are now and what we can expect with From the Pyre. Before getting to a new interview from Rolling Stone UK, I want to head back to last year and an interview from earlier this year first. I am starting out with an interview from The Guardian from last summer. The Last Dinner Party spoke about misogyny, maximalism and making it big:

“From the beginning, the music and aesthetics “came hand in hand”, says Morris. Regular gig-goers themselves, they aspired to generate a sense of occasion and community. “Being in a room of people jumping around, having a great time – that’s what we wanted to create,” says Mayland.

Although they were rehearsing throughout 2021, they didn’t pursue gigs until pandemic restrictions had been lifted fully. “We didn’t want people to be sitting down,” says Morris. “From the beginning, we were taking it so seriously.” They even staged a photoshoot to launch their Instagram account, styling themselves and roping in friends to dress the set and photograph them. Ironically, those images were later held up as evidence that the band was cynically assembled by Island Records, the label to which they had signed. “‘Their first shoot clearly shows loads of money; they’re obviously industry plants,’” Morris laughs, recalling one comment. “But we did that all ourselves.”

The charge dogged TLDP through their early press. I’m not sure myself what an “industry plant” actually is, I admit. “I don’t think anyone is,” says Davies. “There’s no definition. It’s typically just young women who are successful.”

The criticism conflates investment with inauthenticity, she complains. “The Beatles were industry plants. If that’s your definition – ‘the industry helps you’ – then every single artist who’s been aligned with a record label is the same.” I recall Lorde and Billie Eilish – both teenagers when their music was discovered – being tarred with that brush. “Hmm!” Morris cuts in, with her formidable comic timing. “I’m noticing a trend!”

More recently, the criticism has given way to acclaim. Prelude to Ecstasy became the bestselling British debut album by a band since Years and Years’ Communion, in 2015, and received rave reviews. That itself has been “disturbing”, says Morris: “The impostor syndrome sets in – and the confusion.” She doesn’t want to come across as churlish, or disrespectful of fans, she adds. But “when you’re told one thing over and over, it loses the significance and sincerity”.

How has the band learned to protect themselves? “TBD [to be determined],” quips Nishevci, to raucous laughter and rapid‑fire suggestions. “Therapy,” says Roberts in an undertone. “Stop reading comments,” says Mayland. “Stop reading interviews,” adds Morris. Davies: “Just log the fuck out.” They now post to social media via an intermediary, having last year made headlines with their rebuke of some male fans on Twitter: “We see the weird shit you post about us and are highly unimpressed! Have some fucking decorum.” (Davies claims authorship.)

Although squarely gen Z themselves, playing to “screaming women”, as Morris proudly describes their recent crowds, TLDP’s classic rock influences and heavy airplay by 6 Music meant they were embraced, early on, by an older male audience. There is a strand of paternalism to the Darkness frontman Justin Hawkins’ approval of Roberts’s “proper guitar solos”, while interviewers emphasise their youth and style.

“It’s always the tone of surprise with men: ‘You impress me – well done,’” agrees Morris. “It’s a strange kind of avuncular gatekeeping, like they’re the ones who are the arbiters of rock music: ‘Have you heard of the Slits?’” Early on, Davies says, they were treated “like we were the first women to have picked up guitars” – erasing their influences and their individuality (Mayland is non-binary).

They are excited by the possibility of pushing open those rusting gates. At Latitude festival last year, the band was set upon by two small boys who wanted their guitar picks. They had always hoped to inspire young girls, says Morris; now, they are dreaming of helping the next generation of men to be “not afraid of women, or intimated, or angry … It was so wonderful to see young boys, pre‑tarnished by patriarchy, not looking at us in any way other than with awe and respect”.

Speaking with NME from the red carpet at this year’s BRIT Awards, The Last Dinner Party discussed mental health, burnout, and the revelation that new material is on its way. They also stated how, when they started a band, they did not realise that it was so much like starting your own business. Quite an intense lifestyle:

“While at the BRITs, The Last Dinner Party discussed how they want to encourage more discussion around artists’ mental health, and told NME that their second album is on the way.

The band caught up with NME while on the red carpet for this year’s BRIT Awards, where they were nominated for four awards, but walked away with Best New Artist – and used their speech to voice support for grassroots music venues.

During the interview, the band looked back at the milestones they’ve seen since taking home the Rising Star award in 2024, and revealed what changes they have implemented since facing mental health struggles on the road.

Looking back at how they were forced to cancel several live shows at the end of last year due to “emotional, mental, physical burnout”, the group told NME about the realisations they have had going into 2025.

“[It’s about] planning your year with limitations. Not just seizing every single opportunity because it’s great,” bassist Georgia Davies told NME. “You have to value yourself as the greatest thing. If you don’t put that first, everything else will crumble. Setting out your expectations for the year and what your physical and mental limitations are [is vital].

She continued: “We hope other artists learn from that, because we learned a really valuable lesson from having to [cancel shows], and we hope the industry at large absorbs some of it. A lot of other artists have had to do the same thing, and it’s tragic for the fans and everyone involved. I hope it’s something we all learn from going forward.”

Keyboardist Aurora Nishevci agreed, explaining how the band hope to encourage more widespread awareness across the industry: “There is not a lot of discussion. Historically, artists have not had a

She continued: “When you start a band, you just want to write music and play music. It’s something you love, but you don’t think you’re starting a business. You have to set the safeguarding for yourself, you have to learn how to run it and employ people. So when you enter into making any music from music — which is really hard in the first place — then there is that whole other learning curve that comes”.

I am going to start out with an in-depth new interview from Rolling Stone UK. Apologies if it seems a bit random in terms of what I have sourced. I have selected parts of the interview that are of particular interest to me, though do go and check out the complete interview:

“Now, with their excellent second album From the Pyre set for release in October, the band returns to Rolling Stone UK, this time as bonafide cover stars. “This feels like our Almost Famous moment,” singer Abigail Morris says with a smile when we meet the five-piece in the café of the National Theatre a week before the band’s cover shoot. The London group say that this record — which arrives a mere 18 months after their debut — came partly from a desire to embrace the momentum, but also simply because they never stopped writing.

“There’s never been a gap of separation where at one point we were like, ‘OK, it’s now time for album two,’” says Morris. “It was always happening; we wanted to write new songs and we knew that’s what we had to do.”

A listen of the second album reveals that the band’s familiar and brilliant brand of 70s-flecked baroque pop and art-rock bombast is as present as ever, but change is evident too. They began working on the record with producer James Ford in late 2024, but the reins were taken up by Markus Dravs — known for his work with Coldplay and Florence & The Machine — when Ford was diagnosed with leukaemia earlier this year.

Ford — who is now thankfully in remission — told the group in a text message to “have fun, be bold and make a classic record”, and it was these words that loomed large after they were written on a studio whiteboard.

In heeding that advice, they have created an album they believe to be more “fearless” than their debut and more direct too. That’s shown on the bold lead single ‘This Is The Killer Speaking’ — which feels like their first ever country pop moment and is enriched by one of their biggest choruses to date. Fittingly, recent performances have seen Morris striding the stage in a cowboy hat to give the song a powerful dose of yeehaw.

When the Last Dinner Party first emerged in 2023, there was a sense of boldness and an overall feeling that here was a band who knew exactly what they wanted to be from the very start. When ‘Nothing Matters’ arrived in April 2023, it established Morris as a singer with shades of Kate Bush and the face of a band so singular and fully formed in their vision that it felt impossible for many to comprehend.

This — paired with the fact that they landed a record deal with Island before releasing a single — led to accusations that the band were industry plants. The fact of the matter is that a YouTube video of a scrappy early gig near Millwall FC’s ground in deepest south London was enough to spark a label bidding war, but the damage — in the form of vitriolic backlash online — was already done.

It was a tricky time, the band say, but they’re no longer willing to let the truth get distorted on the eve of a new era. It no doubt helps that they’re an incredibly close unit too. There’s an unspoken shorthand throughout our chat where the eyes of each bandmate will collectively land on the person that they feel is most suitable to answer a question. Or, quite simply, the overwhelming sense that they’ve managed to stay really good mates during the kinds of storms that could easily strain a lesser connected band.

“I think we do have thicker skin when it comes to people talking bullshit online about us. We’re more prepared to be like, ‘OK, but that’s a lie,’” says Georgia Davies. “It was quite shocking to see it for the first time and for people to believe it, but at this point we’ve seen it thrown at people who are quite obviously not a plant and have had a well-documented rise like Chappell [Roan]. I think seeing it happen to female artists across the board is just like, ‘OK, mate! Sure!’

“In the band, we live in such a bubble of being so heard and so valued as artists. Our abilities are trusted among each other and among our crew. With that moment and other moments through a woman’s life you realise that misogyny is still a big thing, and it’s very alarming to be like, ‘Oh, you do think that I’m not as smart, as capable, because I’m a woman, and we’re women in the band.’ It’s quite confronting to see someone who thinks there’s no way that this could exist without a man pulling the strings behind it. It’s just very, very sad.”

Then there’s the small matter of the fuel on the fire that engulfed the band last year when an article from The Times asked: “Is there a future for bands?” and featured a quote attributed to Morris which claimed that “people don’t want to listen to post-punk and hear about the cost-of-living crisis anymore.”

The piece then went on to pointedly note that Morris had attended “the liberal boarding school Bedales” in Hampshire “where fees can be £43,000 a year” and suggested that “the cost-of-living crisis probably isn’t a huge issue for Morris.” Within hours of the piece’s publication, Morris was pilloried and deemed “tone deaf”, as an entire Daily Mail article dedicated to the furore noted.

The only problem, as an apology from The Times acknowledged, was that Morris never said those words. They instead came as part of a wider point, stripped of all context, made by Davies in a separate interview some six months previously. She noted how the band’s theatrical music could provide escapism from “the brutality of our current political climate”. But by that point, the quote had spread across the whole internet and back again.

“It was my worst nightmare, and it still stresses me out,” Morris explains. “I get very anxious doing interviews now. I feel fine at the moment, but it hurt me so deeply and made it incredibly hard for me to be confident doing interviews or speaking publicly at all. Even at the BRITs this year I didn’t want to say anything if we won because I didn’t want anyone to perceive me or my voice in a certain way. I’m still getting over it, honestly, because it hurt me, and it was really horrible.”

They supported Olivia Rodrigo at BST Hyde Park in June and say that the US singer was keen to tell them how ‘The Feminine Urge’, a stand-out track from their debut album, will likely take its place in her Spotify Wrapped at the end of the year. There is also the sense that both are moving mountains to make rock music more inclusive, as shown in the thousands of young women in attendance to see both Rodrigo and the band.

“It’s pretty lovely,” notes Nishevci of their young, heavily female crowd. “It’s sweet, it’s wholesome and you feel a sense of community like you’re in something together.”

They also have, as Guitar World noted last year, a “Queen-inspired indie guitar hero” in the form of Emily Roberts, who even invited Brian May to a Hammersmith show last year. Roberts’ solo on ‘Nothing Matters’ was a defining part of the track’s success, and there’s a sense that, to borrow a phrase from another set of guitar gods, she gets to turn it up to 11 on this new record. In the process, she’s inspiring women of all ages to pick up the axe”.

I am looking forward to hearing From the Pyre. Without doubt one of the most important bands around, these queens have no doubt helped to open doors and to break down tired barriers. Even if there are some sections of the media who question them or feel they are inferior to male bands because they are women – a sexism and misogyny that you do still see -, there is this received wisdom that The Last Dinner Party are very special indeed. An important band that we need to listen to. Ahead of their second studio album being released, I wanted to salute and highlight…

THE London quintet.

____________

Follow The Last Dinner Party

FEATURE: Spotlight: Indy

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Elinor Kry

 

Indy

__________

WHEREAS some might simply…

PHOTO CREDIT: Elinor Kry

see her as the sister of Lorde (Ella Yelich-O'Connor), Indy (Yelich) is a superb artist in her own right. One that I want to spotlight here. Again, like I say with many, she has been on the scene a little while. However, I feel that with her new E.P., Fame Is a Bedroom, out in the world, it is a perfect time to feature her. I am going to start out with a feature/interview from Teen Vogue. She discussed her Fame Is a Bedroom E.P. and talked through all of the tracks. I have included her words about the first two singles:

“To Addison Rae, fame is a gun. To 26-year-old singer-songwriter Indy Yelich, fame is a bedroom — one she witnessed take shape firsthand from the moment her sister Ella Yelich-O’Connor launched her public career as Lorde with the 2013 “Royals” music video, set in a suburban bedroom.

It’s also the title of Indy Yelich’s latest EP, out August 1: Fame Is a Bedroom. The title is, in part, a reference to “leaving your identity at the door and being blood and being sisters, and everything else kind of falls away,” she tells Teen Vogue. “It's the emotional tug-of-war of loving a sister who belongs to the public, but learning to trust that private relationship when it feels like the world is watching.”

That’s not to say this EP is wholly about Lorde, or even about fame in a literal sense. The intimacy of sisterhood in the public eye carries over into the idea of knowing someone in a deeper way than other people do, whether it’s a friend, a lover, or a famous sibling. Growing up with people watching — and they’re always watching, even if you’re not a celebrity — changes the way you see the world and your relationships. What once felt like true love can eventually be seen for all its flaws, and how you see yourself at 23 can shift totally by 26. On Fame Is a Bedroom, Yelich processes breakups with friends and the ends of romances, but also an end to a past version of herself.

Below, in her own words, Indy Yelich takes us through the making and meaning of her new EP, from the songwriting to the sound to the Sex and the City references.

Track 1: “Savior”

Sample lyric: “You're 35 and you've got a daughter / How would you feel if this happened to her?”

You know the five stages of grief? I wanted to start on this [moment when] it felt like the end of a formative relationship, and it's the first time I started to see it as it really was. I wanted to come in swinging. I wanted to lay the foundation for Fame Is a Bedroom as, not a violence per se, but a cut you open. And then, as the EP kind of goes on, you're starting to understand what's happening.

Each track is an act of departure, and I feel like this one, sonically, is my most jarring, so by the time the song is done, there's some kind of acceptance in the lyrics. You're going to see me everywhere and all the things I do. I'm going to haunt that bar you like on 7th Avenue. A lot of “Savior” was written in a few dive bars. I would write down notes on little pieces of paper.

It's very raw, the strings are very vulnerable, and it's very rich in imagery. The first post chorus —it's like the gold that I can't get back. I'm 26 now; I started writing it at 24, so it's unlocking this part of me that's very, not just Carrie and Big-coded, but a version of myself that I've had to claw back to. I'm single and I'm very kind of happy in that fact, and it brings back a past version of myself I'm very protective of, I think.

Track 2: “Up in Flames (The Wayland)”

Sample lyric: “I saw you on a date, she’s just as young.”

I can only write as much as I know at the time. “Up in Flames” and “Idol” solidified that for me, because those are songs just written for me truly, down to the co-production, down to using a lot of my vocals, turning them into instruments. It was really important as a 26-year-old for this record, [for me] to write songs that I would want to listen to myself, the kind of inspirations that I like. The ability to enunciate — that was really validating for me because I'm realizing that I'm doing this art, yeah, of course to connect with people, but ultimately it's to make sense of my own experience.

I wrote “Up in Flames” in New York, so that was the one record that was actually written in New York, which I feel like you can tell just because it's so me. I knew that I wanted to have this really sad, kind of dirty, jarring electric guitar, a pulsing synth.

The themes — it's a lot of things. It's borrowing someone else's body to get a new one. It's my part in a fling. It's the first time I'm thinking, I'm not perfect here. I'm essentially, maybe subconsciously, using someone to get over somebody else. The outro, for example, relates to another song.

That outro, that bridge outro, is my favorite work. "Where is that world we lived in? I tried to find my way back / You're on a plane to Reno to meet her mom and dad / You're in my blood now / You're in the taste of everything I miss, so I go back to the Wayland." I felt very Ethel Cain-coded in that bridge.

I co-wrote that song with Gaia Menon and then Noise Club, these two producers I really like. I could hear Gaia singing in the room — the “oh oh oh” part — and I was like, "Gaia, it's really important. Can you sing this on the mic?"

“Up in Flames” is not just my debut as a songwriter, in a sense; not a co-producer, because I didn't get those credits, but someone who trusted herself enough to hear those instruments, and I'm carving them out. I felt a little bit like a director. It was incredible.

Sometimes it's not my voice that is most powerful in moments. Sometimes it's an instrument, sometimes it's what someone else can bring out in me. It's funny, because that's the one song that I feel like people have been like, "That's your best one yet." There's actually this playlist where they put “Broken Glass” by Ella and me next to each other on Spotify — I think it was on the “Young and Free” playlist. I thought that was really special, to see us together like that”.

This interview from FADER chats to a New Zealand-born artist who has drawn a lot of influence from New York. Indy is navigating her own career and someone that you cannot compare to Lorde in that sense. Fame Is a Bedroom is very much her own experiences and sound:

“Indy says that moving to New York City at 18 sparked her transition from poet to songwriter, and her new EP is packed with nods to the city. The shaky music video for “Sail Away,” a song about a codependent queer friendship, was shot in front of Indy’s favorite local bar, while the bridge of the pensive “Grace” was inspired by Carrie Bradshaw’s popularization of the taxi cab theory.

“I'm attracted to bars and people and things that aren’t the norm because my life is not necessarily the norm,” Indy says. She’s hinting at not only the unique experience of being a young artist, but also the connection at the core of her new song “Idol” — her relationship with her older sister Lorde.

Ahead of the arrival of Fame Is A Bedroom, a project that grapples with the “abnormal” and brings hidden parts of her life up to the surface, Indy talks honing her identity as a songwriter, doing album rollouts with Lorde, and the New York City of it all.

The FADER: I saw your Instagram post celebrating the Virgin release and thought it showed a really wonderful relationship. What has it been like to do album rollouts with Ella (Lorde) at the same time?

Indy Yelich: We're only two years apart and we spend a lot of time in the same city. So I think that we became a lot closer, as you do with your siblings when you're older. I heard a lot of Virgin throughout it being made, and she heard a lot of my songs. There's a song “Idol” that I've written about her that she's heard and she loves.

It's kind of funny, there's this [Spotify] playlist called Young and Free and this new song I have, “Up in Flames,” has just come out and it got all this amazing Spotify play. But there's one thing that I noticed. There was [Lorde’s] song “Broken Glass,” and they put “Up in Flames” right next to it, which I thought was really special. It's quite magical, especially because I'm really over the moon about Virgin. It really feels personal to me in a sense because we spent so much time together when it was being made and so many sleepovers and things like that. It's quite surreal as Fame Is A Bedroom is starting to come out and it's alongside each other.

One of the things that you've talked about quite a bit is the impact of moving to New York when you were so young at 18. How do you think that you and the city have both evolved since you first came here?

New York doesn't really take bullshit from you. I moved overseas so young, with such a preconceived idea of who I thought I was. Being in a fast-paced city actually helped me slow down, I think. It helped me get a sense of community, just learn about myself, my own identity. I've been [in New York] so many years that I have seen it change. I moved there way before COVID, so it just felt very different. Even my favorite bars I go to, you know, that are cash only, local dive bars, I've just seen such an influx of people.

What do you love about The Knicks?

It's joyful and people love it, and it's American, and it makes me think of New York and my love for it. I met some of my best friends through just talking to people at Knicks games. I don't know what it is, and I don't know where it came from, but it's truly my obsession. I know I would have made it when I'm going courtside. And truly one of the reasons why I want to do this is so I can go to Knicks games”.

I am going to end with a very interesting interview that I want to people to read in full. It is from SPIN. Published back in March, Indy discusses the single, Savior, and how “lessons in love shaped her songwriting”. It is a great place to end. Make sure you follow Indy on social media and listen to her music:

“While Indy notes her parents never neglected her, 31-year-old lawyer Jerry, or 23-year-old engineer Angelo amid Lorde’s rise, it helped that she was a “typical middle child—loudest, naughtiest, and would never let myself be forgotten.”

With Lorde’s success having inspired grander dreams, Indy moved to L.A. to pursue acting at age 18, before New York won her heart. The bustling, vibrant energy invigorated her, whether it was by sitting in bars with a book, attending New York Knicks games, or lugging suitcases of laundry to the laundromat.

The creative stimulation meanwhile spawned two poetry books, sticky notes and Dudette, which helped her develop her artistic identity enough to feel ready to venture into songwriting. “Then it took a few years of doing sessions and demos and chatting away to people so I could get in rooms with them and learn how to write songs. Songwriting versus writing is still very new to me.”

“I wanted to work on my creative voice and figure out what I had to say first,” she adds about her unhasty transition into music. “I didn’t put music out until I was sure about it and my first song, ‘Threads,’ is still one of my favorite songs ever. I knew in my heart I wanted to give this a shot and I’m lucky to have this unique perspective and upper hand [of learning from Lorde’s experiences].”

While comparisons to Lorde were inevitable, Indy was never hesitant about following in her footsteps. Writing and releasing music simply felt “natural” and necessary. “I would regret not expressing myself if I didn’t do this. I don’t want to be 80 years old and have been too fearful to express myself because of what people may say. My sister gives me good advice because she’s experienced the industry and my mom’s an artist as well—we’re a family of artists, so it’s like create or die!”

Lorde’s advice has been invaluable to Indy. Having released three records, topped the charts and toured the world, Lorde, 28, has urged Indy to trust in her personality, experience and musical instincts.

“Especially if I’m in a room full of producers and I think something sounds good and they think something else sounds better,” she says. “It’s about trusting your artistic vision, sound, and ability to enunciate what you’re going through. Learning how to advocate for my art has really helped me. I’ve had to fight for a melody or guitar part to be a certain way. It’s a skill that takes time to learn, but it’s so important for young women to have it and to also have role models—especially someone like my sister. Having her guidance has helped me so much with remembering to protect my art and remembering it’s my art.”

Indy also credits her New Zealand background for instilling traits which have proved beneficial in the cutthroat music industry, like talking to anyone and not taking herself too seriously. “Kiwis are just chill. Things don’t faze them and applying that to life is nice.”

It was en route to New Zealand that Indy couldn’t help being fazed by the devastation she’s now sharing in “Savior.” What should have been an exciting flight home to release her first EP turned into a “shell shocked” 13-hours in the air after her ex dumped her before she boarded the plane. “There were all these rom-coms on the plane and I was like, ‘I cannot watch a rom-com,’ so I watched Shrek … which turned out to be a rom-com. I felt like I was going to break down. I ended up watching a documentary about birds”.

A tremendous talent, there will be a lot more coming from Indy. If you do not know about her music already then do go and check it out. Fame Is a Bedroom is a terrific E.P. In terms of where she goes from here, it will be interesting seeing how her music grows and develops…

THROUGH the years.

________________

Follow Indy

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: Fiona Apple

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

IN THIS PHOTO: Fiona Apple in 2020/PHOTO CREDIT: Malerie Marder for The New Yorker

 

Fiona Apple

__________

IN this series…

IN THIS PHOTO: Fiona Apple in 1996/PHOTO CREDIT: David Corio/Getty Images

I celebrate the work of incredible and legendary American artists and songwriters. This time out, it is Fiona Apple. Her 1996 debut album, Tidal, is among my favourites. Apple released her most recent album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters, right near the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. It was another remarkable album. All five of her studio albums are astonishing. A singular songwriter whose work I admire above most other artists, I am ending with a twenty-song look inside her brilliance. Hard to hone down to only twenty songs. That said, these do give you an idea of why she is so respected. Apple has received a wealth of accolades, including three Grammy Awards, two MTV Video Music Awards and a Billboard Music Video Award. The New York City-born artist is such a phenomenal songwriter. It was an easy choice including her in this series. Let’s hope that she has more albums in her, as the world always needs music from Fiona Apple! This is a salute and show of respect to one of the greatest songwriters and artists…

WHO has ever lived.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Something Like a Song: Lake Tahoe (50 Words for Snow)

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: Something Like a Song

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a publicity photo for 50 Words for Snow, creating Lake Tahoe

 

Lake Tahoe (50 Words for Snow)

__________

I want to feature…

this Kate Bush song, as the seven songs on 2011’s 50 Words for Snow do not get the respect they deserve. The latest album from Bush, it often features quite low when critics rank her work. Maybe in the bottom three. It is disappointing as, when it was released, 50 Words for Snow got a lot of praise. Some five-star reviews. I do feel many people need to revisit this album. It is a wonderfully rich album where the songs are longer than her previous work. They provide this more immersive experience in my view. You can inhabit the tracks and hear the production brilliance. Bush, still, not talked about enough as a genius producer – which is what she is. Because of all of this, for this Kate Bush: Something Like a Song, I am honing in on one of the best tracks off of 50 Words for Snow. If it were shorter, I feel Lake Tahoe would have been great as the second single from the album. As it was, only one song was officially released as a single. That is Wild Man. I will go into a bit more depth about this song. To get the true sense of why 50 Words for Snow is brilliant, you have to listen and let the album infuse into the senses. It meant a lot to Kate Bush. Earlier in 2011, she released Director’s Cut. That sort of cleared the way for a new album. One that had clearly been on her mind for a long time. A wintery album that is almost the opposite of A Sky of Honey – the second disc of 2005’s Aerial, it is the course of a summer’s day, where we go full circle -, I do love how transformative the music is. I at least was really stunned the first time I heard the album. It changed something in me. Director’s Cut was reworking songs that appeared on 1989’s The Sensual World and 1993’s The Red Shoes. Seven jewels on her 2011 album, Lake Tahoe is a song that is really interesting. One of her very best tracks, I feel.

What is interesting about 50 Words for Snow – among other things – is the featured vocalists. No stranger to using other voices, the array of guests that provide their voices is impressive. Bush’s son Berte is on Snowflake. Elton John is on Snowed in at Wheeler Street. For Lake Tahoe, Stefan Roberts and Michael Wood provide their vocals. Steve Gadd is on drums. Kate Bush is on the piano. It is a tight and wonderful group that recorded a song that has a really interesting story. In terms of influence, Bush has taken from so many unusual sources. A lot from horror or fiction or television. I mean they are unusual in terms of the fact it was unconventional for artists to approach songwriting inspiration away from their personal lives. Bush was a much more ambitious and interesting songwriter. Even though it was not a single, Bush wrote and directed a short animated video to accompany Lake Tahoe. Called Eider Falls at Lake Tahoe, it features five minutes from the eleven-minute track and contains elegant shadow-puppetry. The Kate Bush Encyclopedia provides a part of a 2011 interview where Kate Bush talked about the inspiration behind Lake Tahoe:

“It was because a friend told me about the story that goes with Lake Tahoe so it had to be set there. Apparently people occasionally see a woman who fell into the lake in the Victorian era who rises up and then disappears again. It is an incredibly cold lake so the idea, as I understand it, is that she fell in and is still kind of preserved. Do you know what I mean?

John Doran, ‘A Demon In The Drift: Kate Bush Interviewed’. The Quietus, 2011”.

Before finishing up, I am bringing in some reviews of 50 Words for Snow where Lake Tahoe was mentioned. One of the standouts from the album, I do hope more people listen to the album. It is a spectacular work from Kate Bush. As part of their review, Pitchfork said this about Lake Tahoe: “Similarly, while the lake-bound ghost of "Lake Tahoe" is overjoyed to find her long-lost dog-- coincidentally named Snowflake-- at the end of the song, the reunion comes with its own specter of bittersweet afterlife”. This is what DIY observed about a beautiful song that you really fall inside and visualise: “Lake Tahoe’ sees Bush showing off her experimental side and features an operatic duet between Stefan Roberts and Michael Wood”. Even though they awarded 50 Words for Snow a three-and-a-half-star review, NME’s observation about Lake Tahoe is interesting: “‘Lake Tahoe’, featuring classical singers Stefan Roberts and Michael Wood, is a chilly choral ghost story based around the urban myth of the cold Californian mountain lake, whose bottom is rumoured to be lined with perfectly preserved bodies. The smoky and sparse feel of the piano puts us somewhere between minimal modern classical and Carole King or Laura Nyro”. In 2014, The Quietus selected some of their favourite Kate Bush deep cuts. Lake Tahoe was among them:

“Just as Benjamin Britten blended the voices of a tenor and a countertenor in his second canticle – singing together in perfect and still unison, they represented the voice of God advising Abraham to sacrifice his own son – fifty-nine years later Kate Bush scored Lake Tahoe for a tenor and a countertenor. Singing together they become the voice of a ghostly narrator. “Cold mountain water, don’t ever swim there”, they warn. Lake Tahoe is 1,645 feet deep. Lake Tahoe is filled with mosquito fish, bluegill, cutthroat trout, the bodies of Chinese railroad workers from the 1870s and a drowned Victorian woman still dressed in white satin.

The dead don’t float in Lake Tahoe, the cold preserves them. A thousand feet down their blue eyes are open but once a year they walk the shore. Kate Bush sees her Victorian woman searching for a dog. “Snowflake! Snowflake!” she calls out. Kate Bush becomes a Victorian woman. “Snowflake! Snowflake!” she sings out. Her dog is warm at home sleeping in the kitchen. Kate Bush’s skin and hair are wet, her eyes blue, underneath her fingernails is Tahoe silt. We cannot save her. And the snow is falling – softly at first but soon in deep plodding flurries like the heavy walking chords of her piano as she climbs the keyboard out of Lake Tahoe. Quavers of snow crown the surrounding peaks, melting into the chilled water. Lake Tahoe doesn’t freeze. You cannot walk across it, unless you are Snowflake running towards his ghostly mistress – ears flailing, curly white hair windswept behind him”.

There is no doubting the fact that Lake Tahoe is a terrific and accomplished piece of music. Bush’s piano playing so gorgeous and moving. The lyrics are ones that could only come from Kate Bush. My favourite example is this: “No-one's home/Her old dog is sleeping/His legs are frail now/But when he dreams/He runs...Along long beaches and sticky fields/Through the Spooky Wood looking for her/The beds are made. The table is laid”. Even if it is a deep cut, that is not to say people should overlook it. Every time you pass through Lake Tahoe, it offers up some new and compelling. A truly grand and magnificent track, this is one that everyone needs to hear. Once you do, it will definitely leave an impression…

IN your memory.

FEATURE: Spotlight: The New Eves

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Kate Silvester

 

The New Eves

__________

I am focusing on…

this Brighton-based band, The New Eves. They are currently in the middle of a run of in-stores and live dates. Go and catch them if you can. Formed in 2021, The New Eves consists of Violet Farrer, Nina Winder-Lind, Kate Mager and Ella Oona Russell. Their album, The New Eve Is Rising, was released on 1st August. I will end with a review of that album. I shall get to some recent interviews soon. However, here is some more details about a band that definitely need to be in your mind:

“Nestled somewhere between primal rock’n’roll live performance and transcendent ritual, there’s an unmistakable alchemy that happens when Violet Farrer (guitar, violin, vocals), Nina Winder-Lind (cello, guitar, vocals), Kate Mager (bass, vocals) and Ella Oona Russell (drums, flute, vocals) step onto a stage together. It’s a boundless, uninhibited kind of magic that feels completely new; that’s writing its own rulebook for how to exist - as a band, as women, as humans in the world - from the ground up.

“The space we go into when we perform feels quite far away from regular life. It takes a lot out of us and we really go into this other dimension, so it’s amazing that we can bring people there with us,” says Ella. “The live show is what’s got us everywhere - we had barely any music out, it was all so underground, but people just wanted to come and they’ve never stopped coming”.

Published back in May, Rolling Stone UK spoke with the band about, among other things, their anticipated and extraordinary forthcoming album. I am new to The New Eves but I know that they are going to have a very long future. You can just tell! Everything on The New Eve Is Rising is instantly memorable and original! A band forging their own path and releasing music that will endure for many years:

“Your debut album, The New Eve Is Rising, encompasses your whole story from your formation until now – can you tell us about how you have developed in that time?

Kate: When we started writing the first songs, we didn’t really know whether we were going to even like play shows or do anything. We weren’t planning for them to be in an album, but once we thought about making an album, it just made so much sense to for it to encompass the whole first chapter of us as a band.

Violet: [All the songs] work together regardless of which one’s older and which one’s newer. It’s not that we haven’t like advanced, but they all go together, and they’re all just us.

Nina: Are we more refined? No, we’re not more refined. Are we more assertive? Ah, we were very assertive at the beginning!

Kate: Every time we write a new song, we look into a slightly different place, but, like the others were saying, it all just seems to fit together. That’s what always amazes me. We go from such a different angle but somehow it still fits together. We’re like, ‘How does this work?!’ But it just does.

If this album is presenting the band’s first era, what do you think are the hallmarks of The New Eves so far?

Nina: There’s a real honesty about this body of work – this is literally what just came out of us, whether we wanted it or not. What do you guys think?

Kate: We don’t have this direct comparison of what the next chapter ais nd what’s different about it. There is something really great about all of this stuff just coming from us without having that feedback of people listening to it and defining what it is for us. It’s very free in that sense, and anything that comes afterwards will  partly be an interaction with that.

Nina: It’s very honest and it’s very confident, in the way that a child is really confident. Maybe we didn’t really know what we were doing all the time, but in some way, we really, really, really did know what we were doing and we did it, and this stands as proof of that.

You’ve said you want to create your own mythology as a band – can you explain that?

Kate: It feels like the right way to properly announce ourselves to the world by putting out an album rather than an EP. There are quite big differences sometimes between the songs and the themes that any one of them on their own feels like it misses out this other part of what we are. The album doesn’t necessarily have  a story that runs throughout it, but it does say something as a whole thing that you can’t do with just one song. We really felt it was really important to do that.

Nina: It was parallel to the songwriting process. One of us will have read a book and we bring it in, nd then it ignites something”.

In July, The Line of Best Fit chatted with The New Eves. This literary Punk-Folk group are conjuring magic and urgent music that is sending them into uncharted territory. A sound that, once experienced, becomes addictive! They are one of the most impressive new groups I have encountered in many years:

“Brighton has been both a creative incubator and a bit of a challenge for the group. They describe the scene as unusually supportive. “It’s a really nice container to grow in,” flautist and drummer Ella Oona Russell explains, “but you could pay £500 for a cupboard,” she adds, only half joking. It’s a place that forces bands to get resourceful, something The New Eves have turned into an art form.

From the beginning, their creative process has been less about planning and more about giving the songs a space to reveal themselves. “Most of our material we make together in the same room,” Winder-Lind explains. “We’ll have a jam and things will happen… between us in the space.” You can hear that looseness in the album: some tracks spiral and churn like spells being cast, others unfurl more slowly, drawing you into their world rather than pushing for attention.

They call their sound Hagstone Rock – an appropriately mythic label for music that references 12th-century lovers, the Bible, and highwaymen’s caves, while also pulling influence from krautrock, Patti Smith, The Velvet Underground, and the accidental grandeur of DIY shows. It gives the music a timeless quality. They are not loyally revisiting these old stories but instead doing something more like rewilding them. Take their song “Highway Man”, for example: a reimagining of Alfred Noyes’ 1906 poem, warped into something darker, stranger, and freshly feminist.

The band’s audiences are a mix of the devoted and the unexpected. Despite the distinctly feminist current running through The New Eve Is Rising, they’re quick to point out that the atmosphere is anything but exclusive. “Even though there is this big feminine element,” Russell says, “it’s actually very open and inviting.” Winder-Lind agrees: “We’ve had young boys come up to us like, ‘Wow.’ That’s really cool! It makes me really happy that it’s not such a closed group.”

Despite their growing following, the band are keen to connect with one group in particular: “We want to get to the teenagers,” they laugh. “We do have a TikTok now, but none of us have really ever been on it.” Russell adds, “I’ve literally never seen what TikTok looks like. It feels like too much!”

What emerges in conversation with The New Eves is that this is not a band trying to define themselves, but instead determined to explore. “This chaos,” Winder-Lind says, “it’s coming out because it needs to come out.”

“We’re going into the future,” Russell says. “It’s going to be different. We’ve been making all this music for such a long time without much public engagement… we really have no idea what to expect.”

And yet, the momentum feels inevitable. The New Eve marches on – somewhere under a hand-stitched banner, frayed at the edges, proudly DIY, and all the more powerful for it”.

Before getting to a review of The New Eve Is Rising, I want to highlights part of an interview with DIY. Since they released their debut single in 2023, The New Eves have enjoyed this incredible rise. With their debut album out, they are expanding their horizons and are capturing new fans and followers. A group that you most definitely need to follow:

“Accordingly, whether it be photography, painting, or their tailored, cottagecore-leaning apparel, the group place equal importance on an array of artistic mediums. As these practices already play a huge role in their individual selves, Kate explains, “it would be hard to keep [them] out of what we’re doing.”

Given that many of the band’s visuals are set against strikingly provincial, quintessentially British backdrops, it feels appropriate that they chose the rural Wye Valley’s iconic Rockfield Studios to record most of their debut album. “We weren’t in London, and there was no outside noise. If you needed some space, you went up in the hills,” Nina details. “We all had our own rooms with our own bathtubs - it was incredible.”

Those who have caught The New Eves in concert will likely attest that the finished recordings stay very true to their live counterparts - something that Nina notes was “really important for us”. Continuing, she explains: “Because that’s kind of where the magic happens - when we play together in a room.”

Whether delighting in the fraught, bristly propulsions of ‘Highway Man’, or losing oneself in ‘Astrolabe’’s droning strings and primal incantations, the journey to the enigmatic heart of the band truly begins with the album’s powerful opener and pseudo-title track, ‘The New Eve’. Challenging religious, societal and gender conventions with captivating poetic conviction, the song is a goosebump-inducing portal into their world. “There’s middle-aged men who have had an incredible experience listening to that song,” Nina shares. “It revealed itself in a mystical way: I made a painting called ‘The New Eve Is Rising’, and then a bit later I wrote that poem, and then we did the song.”

The chord-striking boldness of these lyrical expressions in the context of the band’s all-female lineup has led many to brand The New Eves as ‘feminist’. However, they make clear that their relationship to the term is actually much more complex and far-reaching than the label leaves space for. “It’s like when we get called a ‘female band’,” Nina tells us. “I think it’s very, very simplifying and sometimes a bit patronising when someone [says] ‘oh, you’re a feminist band’. I think we need a different language around these things. Right now, we have these terms like ‘feminism’ and ‘female’, and they’re still very present in our language, but I feel like it’s shifting. We’re on the edge of something.”

The last year has well and truly been a whirlwind for the group, from their signing to Transgressive Records, to bagging slots supporting Black Country, New Road and YHWH Nailgun. “It’s crazy - we haven’t actually had that much time to look back and feel proud, because it’s been so busy,” Nina admits. It may be mile-a-minute at the moment but, to their audiences, The New Eves undoubtedly make a lasting impression - one which, they hope, will inspire people to “feel something they haven’t felt before, and do something they haven’t done before”.

Before rounding off, it is worth including a review for The New Eve Is Rising. It has won a lot of praise. And it is easy to see why! I have said this about a few recent albums, but I do think that The New Eves’ debut album could be in with a shout of inclusion on the Mercury Prize shortlist this year. The Guardian commended a band with a scent of The Velvet Underground and a mix of “trad folk, anarcho-punk and hippy whimsy”:

“Something of the Raincoats’ rickety post-punk explorations seem to haunt its sound, albeit relocated from Notting Hill to a more pastoral setting. So does the lo-fi avant-garage rock of the early-80s Fall, which is audible amid the simple riffs and relentless drumming of Highway Man. There is occasionally a bleating quality about the vocals that automatically summons the ghost of Tyrannosaurus Rex-era Marc Bolan. Equally, at their most full throated, they recall the powerful but ascetic harmonies of folk family the Watersons. When the vocals tend to spoken word declamation – as on opener The New Eve – you might think not only of Patti Smith but those moments in Crass’s oeuvre when the microphone was ceded to Eve Libertine and Joy De Vivre.

And yet, if there are plenty of artists other than the Velvet Underground whom you could compare the New Eves to – from trad folk to distaff anarcho-punk to hippy whimsy – the band’s central point still stands. Whatever ingredients went into the recipe, the result doesn’t ultimately sound like much else, and there is often something rather thrilling about being in its presence. The weird blend of glam drums, sawing strings and folky vocal roar on Cow Song, for example. Volcano’s slow surge from gentle fluting bucolia to a potent sense of menace. The moment on Rivers Run Red when the scrabble of strings and guitars dramatically finds an urgent percussive shape.

It’s given an extra frisson by the fact that, whatever the circumstances of its recording, The New Eve Is Rising sounds as if it’s being played live, by a band who prize immediacy over virtuosity, with all the teetering potential for disaster that suggests. There’s a certain white-knuckle intensity to the moment when Circles shifts its rhythm, and given that the change is counted in with such vociferousness, perhaps it hasn’t always come off in the past.

Said disaster never strikes, although you do occasionally wonder if something may have been lost in translation from live show to studio, despite their best efforts. The spoken-word manifesto of The New Eve probably feels more viscerally powerful delivered in front of your eyes than it does coming out of your speakers. But the moments when the album doesn’t quite work are tempered by the sense that this is a band still in a state of flux and progress, working out where they might go next – the “rising” in the title seems the operative word – rather than a perfectly finished product with all of the doubts about how to move on which that would entail. That the New Eves are overflowing with ideas is obvious from their interviews and their debut album alike. The latter presents them in rough hewn and occasionally chaotic style: it feels exciting, as does their future”.

Do go and check out The New Eves. Genuinely a band who can endure for decades, they have the talent to rank alongside the very best of the best. The next few years are going to be very busy and exciting for the group. The New Eve Is Rising is an album you need to hear now. This amazing quartet are thoroughly deserving of…

ALL the hype.

__________

Follow The New Eves

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty: Eight: And Dream of Sheep

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty

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 

 

Eight: And Dream of Sheep

__________

I am going to come…

to Leah Kardos’s 33 1/3 book, Hounds of Love, and what she says about Kate Bush’s And Dream of Sheep. I am embarking on a twenty-feature run to mark Hounds of Love’s fortieth anniversary on 16th September. I have written about every song on the first side. Now, we flip the record over and look at the first song from the second side: the majestic and cinematic The Ninth Wave. One of Bush’s most-streamed and popular songs, And Dream of Sheep, has been performed live. It was actually filmed. A filmed piece that was shown on a screen during the 2014 Before the Dawn residency shows, she was filmed from the point of view of an overhead camera. Bush slips under the water at the end of the song. This article from The Guardian provides more details:

“In the lead-up to her 22-date run of sold-out Before the Dawn performances in 2014, Kate Bush spent three days submerged in a tank filled with water. Not for some new-age cleansing ritual, but to create a sense of authenticity while shooting the video for And Dream of Sheep, a song about a woman who is lost at sea.

This realism however, became more tangible than Kate had initially imagined. According to a spokesperson for the artist, she spent so long in the water during the first day of filming that she contracted mild hypothermia, but recovered after a day off and carried on filming. “Everyone agreed it had added to the authenticity of the performance,” they said.

Recorded at Pinewood Studios, the video for the track – which features the musician strapped to a lifejacket, hoping to be rescued – was created for her unexpected return to the stage, during which she performed The Ninth Wave, her 1985 song cycle that the Guardian described as “disturbing, funny and so immersive that the crowd temporarily forget to applaud everything Bush does”.

For And Dream of Sheep, Kate Bush travelled to Dublin in the spring of 1984 for some amazing sessions. Also part of those sessions was given up to Jig of Life (a song that features later on The Ninth Wave). Dónal Lunny later recollected how Bush asked him to play the single whistle note at the end of the track over and over again for three hours as she was searching for just the right ‘bend’ in the note.

Prior to getting to Leah Kardos’s interpretation and analysis of And Dream of Sheep, below are some interview examples where Kate Bush talked about a hugely important song. One that opens The Ninth Wave. The heroine adrift and wanting to be somewhere cosy and safe where she can fall asleep. Little does she know that her experience being stranded in the water is about to endure and get much worse:

“[The Ninth Wave] is about someone who is in the water alone for the night. ‘And Dream Of Sheep’ is about them fighting sleep. They’re very tired and they’ve been in the water waiting for someone to come and get them, and it’s starting to get dark and it doesn’t look like anyone’s coming and they want to go to sleep. They know that if they go to sleep in the water they could turn over and drown, so they’re trying to keep awake; but they can’t help it, they eventually fall asleep – which takes us into the second song. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, Issue 18, 1985)

An engineer we were working with picked out the line in ‘And Dream Of Sheep’ that says ‘Come here with me now’. I asked him why he liked it so much. He said, ‘I don’t know, I just love it. It’s so moving and comforting.’ I don’t think he even knew what was being said exactly, but the song is about someone going to sleep in the water, where they’re alone and frightened. And they want to go to sleep, to get away from the situation. But at the same time it’s dangerous to go to sleep in water, you could drown. When I was little, and I’d had a bad dream, I’d go into my parents’ bedroom round to my mother’s side of the bed. She’d be asleep, and I wouldn’t want to wake her, so I’d stand there and wait for her to sense my presence and wake up. She always did, within minutes; and sometimes I’d frighten her – standing there still, in the darkness in my nightdress. I’d say, ‘I’ve had a bad dream,’ and she’d lift bedclothes and say something like ‘Come here with me now.’ It’s my mother saying this line in the track, and I briefed her on the ideas behind it before she said it. And I think it’s the motherly comfort that this engineer picked up on. In fact, he said this was his favourite part of the album. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, Issue 21, 1987)”.

I will end this feature by including the live version of And Dream of Sheep from the Before the Dawn residency. Leah Kardos opens her section about And Dream of Sheep by noting how The Ninth Wave opens in the same tonality as the final song from the album’s first side, Cloudbusting. It is fascinating how Kardos talks about the notes and gets deep into the music and composition. For example, “The melody across the opening lines is marked by the distinctive upward interval of a perfect 5th; the words leap up from E to B (‘Little Light’), the vocal melody underlined by bright, ringing, [piano octaves. The 5th is immediately restated (‘shining’), from a lower B up to F#”. Kardos writes, regarding one of Hounds of Love’s most beautiful and important songs, how, throughout, there is this “upwards extension of the melody is the urgent blink of wakefulness; the sloping, softened melodies that curl downwards to the tonal resolution are the figures that lull Bush’s protagonist to the irresistible comfort of slumber”. I have always though that And Dream of Sheep is a dream in itself. Maybe a woman who is having this dream about being lost at sea. Or the song in which our ill-fated heroine is taken by the water and everything that goes after is a dying thought or did not happen. That sounds grim, though The Ninth Wave compels each listener to provide their own interpretation. Leah Kardos continues by saying that the “harmonic progressions waver between minor energy in the ‘A’ phase, circling around the similar chord relationships of ‘Cloudbusting’ and ‘Running Up That Hill’, C#m7 to A6 then B (i- VI -♭VII); in the ‘B’ phase, the music feels comfortable and assured with grounded harmonies that are vaguely familiar to what we’ve heard on ‘Hounds of Love’ and a similar pedal point tethering the emotion firmly in position: E (flashes of E6), F#m/E then B/E”. That sublime and soothing magic is observed by Kardos.

It is interesting that in the breaks between verses that there are various voices. The radio transmission of a coastguard. Bush’s family appear in various moments on Hounds of Love. Hannah, her mother, can be heard saying “come here with me now”. This soft and reassuring line is what she would say to her young daughter whenever she had a nightmare. I love learning more about the notation and compositional elements. A real depth and forensic look in the way few other people have provided. It shows songs like And Dream of Sheep in a new light. Kudos to Leah Kardos! She writes how the “arrangement is led by piano, and the texture is predominantly organic, with a brief flash of orchestration that swells dramatically through the words ‘sound of engines’”. Bouzouki and multitracked whistles are “tender and reassuring”, whilst Bush’s vocal is “delicate and dramatic, wrapped in artic Quantec reverb; you can almost feel the chill mist on her breath”. This feels like one of her most personal songs. A genuine fear of being on the water and not knowing what is beneath. You will roll over if you fall asleep and drown, so this is her trying to stay awake against impossible odds and a lack of hope. Rather than neatly segueing into the next song on The Ninth Wave, Under Ice, Bush sings with “a descending, wilted voice, the music stalls on the dominant B7 over E – the song has no ending, but rather it connects directly to the nightmare hallucinations of ‘Under the Ice’”. As I move to Under Ice next in my look inside Hounds of Love, its songs, the album cover and aspects around its legacy, I reflect fondly on And Dream of Sheep. It is a track that connects with so many listeners. And Dream of Sheep is the starting point of…

A brilliant, nerve-shredding and emotional suite.

FEATURE: Beneath the Sleeve: Madonna - Ray of Light

FEATURE:

 

 

Beneath the Sleeve

 

Madonna - Ray of Light

__________

THERE are three reasons…

IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna photographed in 1999/PHOTO CREDIT: Peggy Sirota

why I am including Madonna’s Ray of Light in this Beneath the Sleeve. Well, four, actually. Not only is it one of the best albums ever; one that was very important in 1998. I was a teen then and absolutely love this album. My favourite Madonna album. Veronica Electronica was released on 25th July. Madonna always thought of this as a companion remix album to her seventh studio album, Ray of Light. However, unfortunately, Veronica Electronica was put on hold due to the ongoing success of Ray of Light and its singles. Now out in the world, Veronica Electronica features rare and previously unreleased remixes by several of Madonna's collaborators from the Ray of Light era, including Peter Rauhofer, William Orbit, Sasha, BT, and Victor Calderone. There are two other reasons for spotlighting Ray of Light. It is Madonna’s sixty-seventh birthday on 16th August, so this is a chance to celebrate that by focusing on a masterpiece of hers. Also, a couple of recent articles – around the release of Veronica Electronica – write why Ray of Light is guiding the sound of Pop in 2025. However it is perhaps at its most relevant now, some twenty-seven years after its release. Released on 22nd February, 1998, Ray of Light hit the number one spot in many countries, including the U.K. A different sound and direction from 1994’s Bedtime Stories, Madonna worked with producers William Orbit, Patrick Leonard and Marius de Vries. Iconic singles like Ray of Light, Frozen and The Power of Good-Bye are among Madonna’s best songs. With this new sense of spiritualism that moved away from perhaps the more sexual and liberated sound of her previous work, this was not Madonna entirely looking inward. Ray of Light’s title track is as euphoric and extravert as anything she would ever release! I would advise people go and get this album on vinyl. I am going to explore some features. That give us insight and depth. Take us beneath the vinyl sleeve and into the grooves.

I am starting out with The Quietus and their thirtieth anniversary feature in 2018. Lucy O’Brien has written about Madonna and published a book about her (2007’s Madonna: Like an Icon). She shared her thoughts on Ray of Light three decades after it took Madonna’s legacy and brilliance to new heights. One of the most influential albums ever:

“The album came at a crucial time for Madonna. After the high octane success of the 1980s, her 1990s were testing and difficult. Slut-shamed over her Sex book and the Erotica album, Madonna engaged in angry attention-seeking exercises like saying “fuck” 13 times on Late Show with David Letterman. She had lost confidence, and the tentative R&B of 1994’s Bedtime Stories felt like marking time. Veering off into musical theatre with the Evita project took her into safe MOR territory, but, ironically, rather than turning her into a 1980s pop has-been, those strenuous theatrical songs sung with a full orchestra gave her voice depth and tone. By then Madonna was in her late 30s and re-evaluating life, casting around for answers in study of Yogic philosophy. The birth of her daughter Lourdes in 1996 knocked out some of that infamous ego, so that when she returned to the studio in 1997 for the Ray Of Light sessions she had discovered a more intense, personal voice than the so-called “Minnie Mouse on helium” of earlier years.

Ray Of Light was created in old school prog rock fashion – with mainly one producer, over a period of months, in an intensively collaborative process. “She produced me producing her,” said William Orbit. Recorded in a modest studio in an unfashionable part of LA, the album was intentionally un-industry. Early sessions with Babyface were shelved, and Madonna’s longtime producer arranger Pat Leonard was sidelined in favour of an awkward English eccentric whose hardware kept breaking down. Although Orbit’s perceived amateurism made her nervous, Madonna knew from his dancefloor remix of 1990’s ‘Justify My Love’ that he could create the futuristic tone she craved. With Bass-O-Matic’s Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Bass (named after a Pink Floyd album), and the rave anthem ‘In The Realm Of The Senses’, Orbit had already declared an interest. Kabbalah and new motherhood opened Madonna’s mind, but it was the alchemy between her and Orbit – his trippy underground vibe and her willingness to experiment, that triggered her transformation of consciousness. With Ray Of Light they created the sonic space and musical textures for the sparse poetry that’s embedded in her songwriting. Previous hit-driven albums, with the exception of moments on Like A Prayer and Erotica, hadn’t allowed room for that potential to emerge. For the first time she could express herself in-depth.

Madonna did her background reading – everything from JG Ballard to Anne Sexton to Shakespeare’s sonnets were inspirations here – and did lengthy songwriting sessions with Leonard and Rick Nowells (“her lyric writing was poetic and intelligent,” the latter says, “she knows how to channel a song”) before she set foot in the studio. Once there, little Lourdes was installed in a playroom, and Madonna focused on the tracks that would eventually piece together a story. “I traded fame for love/ Some things cannot be bought… Now I find/ I’ve changed my mind,” she sang on opening track ‘Drowned World/Subsitute for Love’. The apocalyptic dreamscape of JG Ballard’s Drowned Worlds sets the tone. From there she moves into ‘Swim’, a low-slung electro song where Madonna delves into the religious themes of her pop past as the Sin-eater, carrying “these sins on my back”. ‘Ray of Light’ then provides a giddy moment of reawakening, with Orbit pushing her to sing a semitone higher than her comfort zone in order to stretch out that sense of hedonist abandon. This is the song, with its accompanying Jonas Akerlund video – all speeding lights, winking urbanscapes and fast motion skies – that relaunched her career, that married techno beats to cranked-up oscillators and wall-of-sound pop, and begged the question, did Madonna neck a zesty pinger?”.

Prior to getting to those two new articles about Ray of Light’s influence today, I want to bring in an archive interview from 1998. SPIN shared this feature of their interview that was originally published in April. A couple of months after Ray of Light was released. It is interesting reading interviews with Madonna at that time and what she says about the album:

“As much as she’s perceived to be pop’s shrewdest businesswoman, Madonna has rarely taken he most direct route to the bank. Working deviance-phobic nerves with the queer boys and girls of her Sex Book was not exactly playing it safe. There has to be a surer way of getting paid than creating a decade and a half’s worth of gay nightlife soundtracks. She’s obviously made a few unpopular cinematic choices. So the only real option for the sole ’80s icon still thriving in the ’90s was to make the kind of record she puts on her boom box — a blend of haunted singer/songwriter introspection and beat-savvy electronic exotica that may not play in Topeka, if U2’s Pop is any indication.

In doing so, Madonna still pushes buttons. Just as she once sang that she wasn’t sorry for sharing her erotic fantasies, Madonna does not apologize for turning inward and employing the language she’s learned while journeying to the center of her still-firm chakras. On her new album, Ray Of Light, she sings about karma, quotes mystics, changes Sanskrit as she would in her yoga class, kisses emotionally stunted lovers good-bye, and croons a lullaby to daughter Lourdes as if her warble breathed butterfly kisses. Her brazen vulnerability is destined to be someone else’s touchy-feely-trendy hogwash: Madonna has not lost her ability to endear and annoy, and in its digitized, navel-gazing way, Ray Of Light is Madonna’s most radical, mask-free work.

The comparatively sexless tunes take their time to generate heat, but the sonic bacchanalia crafted by William Orbit (and, on four tracks, by Massive Attack associate Marius DeVries) is as propulsive as her newly bolstered vocal chops are controlled. Despite Ray Of Light’s aural hipness, Madonna asserts sincerity to the point of occasional — and affecting — awkwardness. When she sings to baby Lourdes, “You breathe new life into my broken heart,” she turns shamelessly sentimental syllable into the spine-tingly stuff of which sweet pop dreams are made.

“If it looks like I just got out of bed,” Madonna announces as she arrives at her neighborhood coffee shop without a bodyguard, assistant, or publicist, “I did.” She’s dressed in a nondescript black knit shirt, black pants, and chipped black nail polish. Brown roots inches long lead to a tangled mess of brassy blond. At the end of the interview, Madonna politely refuses the reporter’s request for a snap-shot. “Maybe next time when I don’t look like and old sea-hag,” she suggests. Throughout the interview, she remains candid, but rarely does the club-queen who would be king lapse into her infamous dis-intensive talk-show persona. She even tried to be kind about Yanni. Sometimes, I miss the old Madonna.

Why make another album?

Why breathe? Because I love it. Because I love making music. It’s what I do.

When I got this assignment, I wondered, “What can I possibly ask Madonna that hasn’t been asked?” And then I thought, “Music! I’ll ask her about music!” So, for starters, how was making Ray Of Light different than making your other records?

Well, my daughter came to visit me every day in the studio so there were lots of baby interruptions; that’s new. Mostly, though, I look at more musical chances. I let William [Orbit] play Mad professor. He comes from a very experimental, cutting-edge sort of place — he’s not a trained musician, and I’m used to working with classically trained musicians — but I knew that’s where I wanted to go,so I took a lot more risks Oftentimes the creative process was frustrating because I wasn’t used to it; it took a lot longer than usual to make this record. But I realize now that I need that time to get where I was going.

What’s the songwriting process like between you and your collaborators?

Well, it happens differently every time. In William’s case, he would often given me tapes of snippets he was working on — eight-bar phrases, 16-bar phrases, stripped-down versions of what you hear on the record. And I’d listen to them over and over and it would just inspire lyrics. I’d start writing a little bit and then I’d go back to William say, “Okay, let’s expand on this musical idea.” And as we’d expand on this music, I’d expand on the lyrics. That was true for most everything except for the album’s last track, “Mer Girl.” I decided I would write a song to the music as given to me, and when William asked me if I wanted to do something with it, I said, “I want it just like it is, I want you to put the tape up right now and I’m gonna sing to it.” And did it in one take. For “Frozen,” a song wrote with Pat Leonard, I was obsessed with the movie The Sheltering Sky and the whole Moroccan/orchestral/superromantic/man-carrying-the-woman-he-loves-across-the-desert vibe. So I told Pat that I wanted something with a tribal feel, something really lush and romantic. When he started playing some music, I just turned the DAT on and started freeassociating and came up with the melody.

How has you approach to vocals changed with this album? You seem to be going for a more European approach to singing, almost operatic, less colloquial.

I studied with a vocal coach for Evita and I realized there was a whole piece of my voice I wasn’t using. Before, I just believe I had a really limited range and was going to make the most of it. Then I started studying with a coach. God bless her. My secret dream is to sing Italian at songs, so at the end of my lesson my teacher would let me sing Italian operetta. Maybe that affected me unconsciously.

Ray Of Light is a very soulful record, but it sounds nothing like contemporary soul, à la Mary J. Blige. Have your feelings about black culture and black music changed?

I don’t think that a lot of soul searching is going on in soul music these days, so in that respect it’s pretty disappointed and uninspiring. There are definitely artists whom I respect and admire, but for the most part R&B is not what it used to be.

Why do you think that is?

There seems to be a certain kind of formula that is getting over right now. No disrespect to Puff Daddy — he’s a real pioneer in a lot of ways — but constantly recycle other people’s music is not very inspiring. You’re just hearing things you’ve already heard before. It makes you want to sing along but you’re not really going to another place with it. As I was driving over here, I was listening to the radio and there was this Stevie Wonder song. Where is somebody who writes like that now? It’s so sad. I guess Babyface comes closest, but I consider his stuff more pop. I can’t think of anybody who’s as deep and as layered as Stevie Wonder. Instead we get the cartoon version of life: being powerful, rich, and having beautiful woman. I don’t think they’re setting out to push the envelope or take music to another level. It’s about intention.

How do you pick who you’re going to collaborate with? I’m sure you could have anyone you want

Well I could, but I always go for the cook in the kitchen [laughs]. I like to work with people who take chances. Usually they’re undiscovered, because once people are successful they don’t like taking risks.

But you’ve worked with Patrick Leonard all along.

Yes, on songwriting, but no production. We write great songs together, but from the production point of view, the music that I listen to comes mostly from England and France, and there’s a certain European sensibility that I couldn’t have gotten from an American producer.

Why is that?

There’s a greater acceptance of cutting-edge things there. That goes for fashion, film, music. There is a real competitive thing going on in England about who can sell the most records, who can have the biggest box-office receipts. I’m much more inspired by the stuff coming out in Europe than i am out of America.

Like who?

Bjork, Everything but the Girl, Trickly and Martine.

What about Bjork attracts you?

She’s incredibly brave and she’s got a real mischievous quality about her. I find her very compelling, really daring.

How about Everything but the Girl?

There’s a plaintive quality to Tracey Thorn’s voice that I really respond to. And that song, “Missing”? I know they’ve played the shit out of it and I ‘m over it and everything, but it was such a brilliant song”.

The first of this year’s features that looks at the modern relevance of Ray of Light is from The Independent. Back in April, Madonna responded to a comment on her Instagram page. It concerned how many modern artists seem to be following in Madonna’s footsteps in terms of their sound and stage presentation:

“Did you see so-and-so copied you?” Madonna is asked, in this hypothetical but presumably factual exchange – one as likely to have taken place in 1992 as it is 2025. “God forbid a woman takes inspiration,” Madonna coolly replies. The dialogue, pasted on top of an image of the star strutting down a London street in shades, was accompanied by a further caption: “I see you, I love you. You’re doing great sweeties.”

Madonna has thawed over the decades, both when it comes to her own back catalogue (her 2023 greatest-hits tour would have been unthinkable a handful of years earlier) and her relationship to the many artists who’ve cast themselves in her image. But there’s still a glint of prickly, passive-aggressive menace to how Madonna views the pop world – a kind of “I know, adore and support the fact that you’re ripping me so brazenly off” – that feels uniquely, hilariously her. Case in point: the announcement, just a few weeks after her Instagram post, of a long-rumoured collection of remixes locked in the Madonna vault since the late Nineties, each of which feels like a sonic blueprint for the exact kind of music currently being produced by music’s most outré pop girlies, from FKA Twigs and Addison Rae to Arca, Caroline Polachek and Erika de Casier. Jade, Britain’s next big pop hope, even threw out a cover of Madonna’s stark ballad “Frozen” in March. God forbid a woman takes inspiration.

Veronica Electronica, which is released tomorrow, takes its name from an alter ego Madonna teased in 1998 during the promotion for Ray of Light – her sensual, nocturnal dance record that housed hits such as “Frozen”, as well as “Drowned World/Substitute for Love”, “Nothing Really Matters” and the still-dazzling title track, with its twisting, twirling techno melody and euphoric vocals. A remix album bearing the Veronica Electronica title was mooted for release a year later, until Madonna grew distracted by sessions for her 2000 record Music – an album that would build upon her work with Ray of Light’s key producer, the spacy genius William Orbit, as well as the French electronica pioneer Mirwais Ahmadzaï.

But whether it’s truly new or not, Veronica Electronica feels like an attempt to root the pop sounds of 2025, as if to remind modern listeners of the inky, plaintive dance music from whence they came. It is a truth universally acknowledged that everything in pop music sounds like Madonna, because Madonna is more or less all pop music, or at least the template for everything we recognise as female pop stardom today. But it’s been more pronounced than usual lately, with the year’s two best pop records – FKA Twigs’s Eusexua and Addison Rae’s Addison – both fusing traditional pop hooks with a chilly, introspective, ambient gloom, much like Madonna did on Ray of Light and Music.

On January’s Eusexua, a portmanteau of “euphoria” and “sexuality”, Twigs shifts out of the eerie midtempos of her earlier material and into full-blown experimental pop. There is an almost cyborgian eroticism to the record, her vocals warped into metallic purrs, the production bubbling and curdling underneath her toplines. “Girl Feels Good”, a slinky celebration of female sexuality co-produced by Ray of Light’s Marius de Vries, is a clear highlight, shifting from a sparse oddity into a busy lab experiment full of dramatic strings and glitchy synths. It could be lifted from turn-of-the-century Madonna – which Twigs herself has directly acknowledged, performing the track on her tour with choreography borrowed from the video of Madonna’s 2000 folktronica masterpiece “Don’t Tell Me”.

Six months on from Eusexua came Rae’s full-length debut Addison, which traded the Britney-aping power-pop of the former TikTok star’s early EPs in favour of lush trip-hop and sensuality. It’s partly out of necessity: Rae is not a powerhouse of a vocalist but a 24-carat whisper singer, Addison’s soundscape matching the limitations of its star’s pipes. But it helps evoke a gorgeous airiness across the record’s 12 tracks (its producers have stated Ray of Light was a key influence). Rae’s lyrics are often abstract and opaque, like dream logic, or what comes out when you pop a foreign language into Google Translate (“Tell me who I am, do I provoke you with my tone of innocence?”).

While Madonna is known for her steeliness – that sense that she’s almost infallible when it comes to criticism or emotional setbacks – Ray of Light was itself born of pain. She called the period prior to its recording her “rock bottom”, in which she faced relentless backlash over her sexually provocative output, questions about her marketability and relevance in an increasingly busy pop landscape, and a resulting crisis of confidence. “I think Madonna’s been of the opinion that it’s self-indulgent to admit sadness and loneliness,” her friend, the filmmaker Alek Keshishian, told Vanity Fair in 1998. “Before, it was always, ‘I have no regrets.’ This time it’s [quoting ‘Drowned World/Substitute for Love’] ‘...now I find I’ve changed my mind.’ That, to me, takes a great amount of courage.”

Ever a magpie, she sought to replicate sounds on the pop fringes – Bjork, Massive Attack, Everything But the Girl, Tricky – and blow them up to their most commercially viable. (As if something was in the water, Janet Jackson and Kylie Minogue both released their most sonically interesting albums to date – 1997’s The Velvet Rope and Impossible Princess, respectively – around the same time.) Ray of Light touches on grief, faith, depression and nascent motherhood – Madonna had given birth to her first child just over a year earlier. The record was a smash, selling 16 million copies worldwide and netting Madonna four Grammys. Orbit was himself transformed into pop’s go-to producer for a time, too, working his magic in the studio for No Doubt, Blur, Melanie C and – most satisfyingly – on All Saints’s “Pure Shores”, arguably the most serene piece of Y2K ear-candy put to record.

And now we’re here. Why the resurgence of this particular Madonna sound? Call it a kind of musical reset, perhaps, from the wordy, wink-wink-nudge-nudge of Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan or the maximalist, Eighties-tinged pop of Dua Lipa or the non-industrial segments of this year’s middling Lady Gaga comeback record. Or maybe it’s even a response to the newfound, post-Covid allure of sweaty, underground nightclubs and dancing with strangers. The “Ray of Light” video concludes with Madonna losing her mind, all by herself, on a crowded dancefloor – just one restless speck of humanity in a massive universe beyond any of our comprehension. Haven’t we all felt that way at least once in the past few years?

Whatever the reason, Veronica Electronica is here to remind us of who dove into this terrain first. Or if not first, at least the most successfully. And where’s the harm in that?”.

I will end with a brilliant article from BBC. They argued how Ray of Light is 2025’s hottest album. With Veronica Electronica released, it did get journalists considering the power and endurance of its sister album, Ray of Light. I do think that Ray of Light is one of the most important albums ever. One that many did not expect Madonna to release following Bedtime Stories. That album was a reaction to 1992’s Erotica and the criticism it got from many due to its sexual nature and ‘controversy’. Ray of Light marries her innate ability to write instant Pop classics. Motherhood and spirituality enforces many of the 1998 album’s best moments:

“Madonna's varied discography is a mother lode of musical inspiration. With her early albums such as 1984's Like a Virgin, 1986's True Blue and 1989's Like a Prayer, she helped to invent the concept of the instantly recognisable, clearly delineated pop "era". But, during the past year or so, a slightly more recent Madonna album has become a touchstone for a new generation of musicians – 1998's Ray of Light, a cutting-edge collection of swirling electronica, which she largely crafted with British producer William Orbit.

"It's the perfect blend of pop sensibility and electronic innovation: it manages to deliver both, which is rare," Welsh electronic musician and producer Kelly Lee Owens tells the BBC. Owens, who cites Ray of Light as a major influence on her 2024 album Dreamstate, believes Madonna's masterpiece feels like "something that was fated to be made" in that "it was created at exactly the right time and place and has now become timeless".

British singer-songwriter Mae Muller also drew from Ray of Light while working on her new EP My Island, which was released earlier this month. Muller says the album's euphoric title track helped to put her in "a magic place of nostalgic melancholy" that made her "want to dance", which is her "favourite place" musically.

The album's spin on 90s electronica – beautifully fluid and flecked with techno and trip-hop – is disarmingly contemporary once more

This year alone, music critics have detected Ray of Light's sonic legacy in acclaimed albums by British avant-pop alchemist FKA Twigs (Eusexua), Portuguese-born Danish R&B musician Erika de Casier (Lifetime) and US TikTok creator-turned-pop singer Addison Rae (Addison). The album's aqueous-sounding spin on 1990s electronica – beautifully fluid and flecked with techno and trip-hop – is disarmingly contemporary once more. In March, former Little Mix singer Jade Thirlwall (now known as JADE) released a suitably dramatic cover of Frozen, Ray of Light's chart-topping lead single. She said she was drawn to Madonna's haunting ballad because "it feels like a mix of genres" and "isn't your typical pop song". In a way, this cuts to the crux of Ray of Light's enduring appeal: because the album was such a cultural disruptor when it came out, it retains a rare cachet more than 27 years later.

IN THIS PHOTO: Addison Rae is among the contemporary artists whose work displays influences of the 1998 Madonna album/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

Now, Madonna herself is revisiting the Ray of Light era with an accompanying (if somewhat belated) remix album called Veronica Electronica. Just released, it collects seven club-centric reworkings of songs from the original LP alongside one previously unreleased demo: the resilient break-up song Gone Gone Gone. When Madonna announced Veronica Electronica's release in June, a post on her website explained that it was "originally envisioned by Madonna as a remix album in 1998", but the project was "ultimately sidelined by the original album's runaway success and parade of hit singles that dominated the spotlight for more than a year".

No self-respecting pop star undersells their achievements, but this isn't hyperbole. When Ray of Light was released in February 1998, it debuted at number one in 17 countries and at number two in the US. In the UK, it spawned no fewer than five top 10 singles: Frozen, the pulsating title track, the reflective ballad Drowned World/Substitute for Love, a touching double A-side of The Power of Good-Bye and Little Star, and the existential club anthem Nothing Really Matters. Ray of Light would go on to sell 16 million copies globally: an especially impressive total given that Madonna released the album when she was 39, a challenging age for female performers who refuse to narrow their ambitions”.

Ray of Light's intoxicating sonic cocktail wouldn't pack such a punch if the album didn't contain some of Madonna's most ruminative and revelatory songwriting. She celebrates the birth of her daughter Lourdes on the lovely Little Star, but also confronts the death of her mother on the astonishingly stark album closer Mer Girl. "And I smelled her burning flesh, her rotting bones, her decay," Madonna sings in hushed tones. "I ran and I ran, I'm still running away." Owens says the overall effect is "so emotionally raw and sonically intimate" that what Madonna is singing about, a devastating visit to her mother's grave, "feels almost tangible somehow".

IN THIS PHOTO: Ray of Light's influence can be heard on EUSEXUA by FKA twigs/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

Elsewhere, Madonna explores the essential emptiness of fame on Drowned World/Substitute for Love, social unrest on Swim, and her yearning for human connection on standout album tracks Skin and Sky Fits Heaven. Frank believes Ray of Light's spiritual streak is another reason why it chimes with so many contemporary artists. "A sense of the spiritual and introspective is all over pop music now," he says. "When you listen to Charli XCX's [2024 album] Brat or Ariana Grande's most recent album [last year's Eternal Sunshine], they're soundtracking their journey of spirituality and self-care – their search for meaning – on top of a foundation of electronica."

On one occasion, Madonna takes her quest for spiritual enlightenment a little too far. The album track Shanti/Ashtangi, which she sings in the ancient Indo-European language Sanskrit, sets lines from an Indian hymn, the Yoga Travali, to a rattling techno beat. It's doubtless well-intentioned, but also feels like crass cultural appropriation coming from a world-famous white woman.

In a way, though, Ray of Light's occasional flaw only adds to its appeal. "The album feels 100% authentic to Madonna, which is what people have always wanted from music, but maybe even more so today," Muller says. Owens agrees, saying that while "the electronic landscape Orbit created is timeless", Madonna's "vulnerability still resonates deeply" too. For this reason, Ray of Light's influence seems unlikely to wane. It's an album that redefined, and continues to shape, the kind of music that pop stars can make and achieve success with”.

I will finish here. No doubt a seismic album in terms of Pop history and the impact it is still having, Ray of Light is one that everyone needs to own. Though Pop artists today are not copying Madonna, it is clear they are compelled and moved by Ray of Light and want to show their love for it. When you hear the amazing music right through the album, then it is pretty…

EASY to see why.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Blusher

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight 

 

Blusher

__________

MAYBE I am…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Brianna Da Silva

a bit late to this wonderful trio. An Australian group who released their E.P., RACER, earlier this month, they are on my radar now. I am going to end with a review of the E.P. I want to start out with an interview from last year from The Line of Best Fit. They shone a light on the amazing Blusher. This is a trio (Miranda Ward, Jade Ingvarson-Favretto and Lauren Coutts) that you need to have in your life. They are going to go places:

“Formed in reaction to the isolation of pandemic, the camaraderie of the three members is the propelling force behind Blusher. Completed by Lauren Coutts and Jade Ingvarson-Favretto, they began writing in bedrooms as lockdown lifted, before signing with Atlantic off the back of their first ever show. Their ascent has been something of a whirlwind ever since, taking in international headlines, a wealth of new music, and a slot supporting homeland queen Kylie.

Although based in Melbourne, it’s only Ingvarson-Favretto, who is part-Swedish, that grew up in the city, playing in an ABBA tribute band with her family. “My parents are still in it and that's been their career for my whole childhood and life up to now. I perform in it with my siblings as well. I would play the part of Agnetha and we would do the accents and the outfits and everything,” she says. “I used to force my dad to play piano for hours and I would make up gibberish songs as a kid with him. That was kind of my first taste of music and writing.”

As they’ve progressed, their creative process has become more collaborative, working with outside songwriters and producers in sessions around the world, and collaborating fluidly in the studio. “We all do a little bit of everything. We all play multiple instruments a little bit, we all have a hand in the top lines,” says Ward. “We do fall into creative patterns sometimes, but a lot of the time we just see what happens. I guess we have the things that we gravitate towards; Jade's very melody-focused and Lauren’s really production and lyric-focused and I love a good bassline. But also we all do everything.”

Their recent releases are an explosive rush of slick production and instant songwriting, platforming their combined talents and sugar-rush delivery. Tracks like “24 Hours in Paris” tread a sophisticated line of feeling familiar yet idiosyncratic, while previous offering “Rave Angel” glows with sass, clever construction and inventive hooks.

Blusher also individually worked on their own versions of the singles, bringing different aspects of their own sonic identity to the music. “We got the stems for ‘Accelerator’ and I was like, ‘God these stems are good,’” laughs Coutts. “I think that was just a bit of a passion project for me, I didn't really think anything would necessarily come of it and then it became something quite special. We talked about releasing it and then I think it was also just a really good opportunity for us to showcase our production skills.”

With a sold out London headline behind them and headline dates in Australia awaiting their return, Blusher are ready to continue their breakneck progression, still developing and expanding while keeping that formative connection at their core. “We're working on a remix for another artist altogether at the moment, which is something we haven't done, but maybe the next step is a Blusher remix where we all collaborate on it,” says Ward. “We're just experimenting a lot at this point and writing in different ways and who knows what is gonna be the vibe for singles coming up. We are collaborating a lot but we're also just bringing it back to the three of us a lot as well. Just bringing it back to how the band started, in the room with the three of us”.

There is quite a lot to cover when it comes to Blusher. There were a lot of interviews from last year and there is some stuff from 2023. They have been out there for a little bit, though I think this year is their biggest and most important. Wonderland. included Blusher in their New Noise feature. I have heard them on the radio here, though I don’t think they are been giving enough airplay. Blusher are pushing Pop boundaries:

“Congrats on your new EP, “RACER”. How are you feeling about the release?

Miranda: I don’t think we’ve ever been more excited for a release. RACER feels like the perfect combination of our three individual tastes and experiences coming together to make something that is so us, but also so much bigger than us. We’ve been working on the EP in one way or another for more than a year, and it’s pretty surreal at the moment to think that we get to see how everyone else connects to it. The best feeling is hearing peoples’ stories of our songs helping them get through a breakup, or pumping them up when they feel terrible, or that they’ve made their new best friend at a Blusher show. We’re hoping these songs lead to more of those moments.

What’s the story behind the project’s title?

Jade: Being a RACER is a state of mind where someone is their boldest, brightest, most magnetic and unapologetic self. They’re their own stunt person, they’re the ones starting the dance floor while the rest of the party is trying too hard to be cool. Being the most authentic possible version of yourself is very “RACER”.

What inspired the thematic direction of the EP?

Lauren: The camaraderie we share with each other through all of our experiences being a band — from the start it’s felt like we’re a tight knit team encouraging each other to be our most RACER selves. The energy you have when you’re in the ‘getting really into fitness’ part of a breakup. Girlhood, confidence, and clubbing as a team sport. The first song we wrote for the EP was about taking your best friend on a marathon night out to help them through their breakup, and the concept snowballed from that moment. 

Across the project, you flirt with the expectations of what pop is and has been — is that intentional or emblematic of your fluidity as musicians?

Miranda: I think that’s unavoidable with us, to be honest. We’re all total music nerds at heart. We all have a lot of respect and love for our elders. We’re always listening to ABBA, The Beach Boys, Madonna, Kylie. We’re also obsessed with futuristic, boundary-pushing pop and dance music. One thing we basically never do is reference something that’s big or trending at the moment. We’re super fluid with what we listen to and what we’re inspired by, but creating through the venn diagram of the three of us means it will always turn out quintessentially Blusher.

You’re hitting the road once again later this year. What can attendees expect from a live show?

Miranda: Bangers, bubbles, bass, choreography, remixes, covers, new merch, CD’s, energy, afterparties.

You’ve previously toured with Sugababes, Tove Lo and played with Kylie Minogue — what did those experiences teach you?

Lauren: These shows were such a dream come true. We definitely took many notes from each of their shows from choreo to band set up to fashion – but I think the most inspiring thing for me is just to see these women having long, sustainable, fun careers in the music industry. Our job is made a lot easier by the path that these women have forged.

What else is to come from you — this year and beyond?

Jade: We’re so excited for the RACER era and we have big plans for remixing the EP and touring and travelling a lot. We love writing when we travel and we find a lot of inspiration from whichever new city we’re in at the time. We want to write for the next project, make as many new friends all over the world as we can, and find some matching vintage Adidas boxing boots”.

The final interview I am including is from The Honey Pop. It is great that Blusher have some U.K. dates coming soon. It is going to be an opportunity for fans here to see the trio being their new E.P. to the stage. That will be some experience! Go and follow them on social media if you have not done so already:

“One thing we’re obsessed with is how every part of the band has a creative voice—from something as simple as ‘mp3’ in your Instagram handle to Jade’s iconic ribbon fishnet tights. But to really get to know you as individuals: if each of you had to pick one thing as your personal brand—a signature move, look, or vibe—what would it be?
Impossible! Artists are complex creatures with way too much going on under the hood to be able to explain themselves like that – it’s why we have to keep writing songs. But okay, we’ll try our best

Miranda: violin nerd turned bass-drop fiend

Jade: dorky fairy who shreds omnichord and does the worm at weddings 

Lauren: golden retriever with headphones on

‘Racer’ is the perfect opener for the EP—the name alone sets that wild, handkerchief-flailing kickoff for the whole body of work, especially ending with ‘Running To You.’ What was it about that track that made you want to grab listeners by the collar and hook them right from the jump?

Jade: Thank you! We wanted this song to feel like your best friend bursting into the room, convincing you to come on a night out and filling you up with chaotic energy. It feels like it’s daring you to be the boldest, most unstoppable, and fizzy version of yourself. Like a lot of the songs on the EP, it was inspired by the bond the three of us share and how we bring out the RACER in each of us. The RACER ethos is about being the person to start the dance floor while everyone else is worrying about what other people think.

We love the lyric “The track is fading out, you know the feeling” on ‘Marathon’—it captures that wistful moment of something ending, both sonically and emotionally. Is there a closing lyric on the EP—whether literally the final line or just one that feels like a full-stop—that you’re especially proud of? Something that really lands the plane for you?

Miranda: “Crying in the club, yeah, I’m so cliche. But I’m crying in the club in a cool new way” – really sums up how I feel about writing pop songs. There’s always an interesting new perspective to explore on the classic topics of pop like heartbreak or love.

Lauren: “We’ve got matching blisters now, they call us sisters, wow” – this is a special one to me because it’s a direct window into our friendship, which is the heart of RACER and everything we do.

Jade: “I do it for the love of the sport” feels like it captures our passion and grit completely. We formed this band because we wholeheartedly love making music. As long as we can say we have put every ounce of sweat and conviction into the art, who cares if anyone else likes it or not?

Supporting Kylie Minogue at British Summer Time in Hyde Park is a massive moment, but it also feels like two eras of Australian pop colliding. What kind of wisdom do you think you can take from how she broke out in 1988, and how does that merge with what you’ve learned navigating 2025—where handing someone a cassette has turned into chasing virality on socials?

Lauren: Supporting Kylie was such an unbelievable moment for us; even now, it’s hard to believe we did that! She’s such an icon and an inspiration for us. There’s obviously a lot to take from her and her performance, but for me, I think it’s the everlasting nature of great songwriting. The music industry is always changing, whether we’re burning CDs or becoming video editors, we’ll be adapting with it for our entire careers – but the thing that doesn’t change is the power of a great song, a great performer, and their ability to bring people together. It’s really inspiring to see the way Kylie has sustained this incredible pop stardom for decades, plus she seems to be really happy and healthy, which we love to see!

And finally, because Aussie music deserves all the love, who’s an Australian artist you’re really vibing with right now? Someone you think more people need to have on their radar?

Jade: Memphis LK

Lauren: Phoebe Go 

Miranda: Sycco”.

NME were among those who shared their views on the sensational RACER. There have been some incredible E.P.s. released this year. Blusher’s is among the best. I am excited to see where the group goes from here. One of the brightest names in new music:

“In a post-‘Brat’ world, it’s easy to draw a line between Charli XCX’s culture-shifting record and any project of hard-hitting, bittersweet club sounds that comes after. While shades of the British popstar’s impact can certainly be found on Blusher’s second EP ‘Racer’, the Australian band have been drawing from a similar well of influences since their sublime 2023 debut EP, ‘Should We Go Dance?’.

The pop-minded trio – made up of Lauren Coutts, Jade Ingvarson-Favretto and Miranda Ward, who all trade roles as producers, singer-songwriters and multi-instrumentalists – recommit to the dancefloor on the six-track ‘Racer’, where they’ve sharpened their sound and, more importantly, their hooks. Take the cheeky ‘Don’t Look At Me Like That’, where the chanted cadence of the chorus ( “Don’t make it / Ro-man-tic / Don’t look at me like you’re in love / Don’t make it / Dra-ma-tic / Don’t look at me like that”) is an inescapable earworm.

The same stickiness can be found across most of the EP. High-octane title track ‘Racer’ is a gorgeous cross between ‘Tension’-era Kylie Minogue and ‘Brat’’s rave energy. Meanwhile, ‘WHATEVERWHATEVER’ might be light lyrically (“I wanna go out, I wanna stay in / I want to get delirious and do it all again”), but the breezy synth-driven anthem about brushing off pressure is great for setting the mood for a night out.

Not every song can be a banger, though. The melody of ‘Marathon’ is instantly familiar, even if you can’t put your finger on it – but once you realise it’s reminiscent of the children’s tune ‘Camptown Races’, the song is ruined for good. Pair that with lyrics that are more cringe than cool (“Crying in the club, yeah I’m so cliche / But I’m crying in the club in a cool new way”), and you have the EP’s only skip.

A better surprise is earnest closer ‘Running To You’. At first, it comes off as lovely but quite typical – like one of those label-mandated ballads you’d find on almost every K-pop album. But, just as it’s winding down, the lasers and synths start swirling and the hi-hat kicks in, transforming the song into a euphoric Boiler Room-esque instrumental as their vocals loop in the background.

It’s Blusher themselves who best encapsulate the EP on the joyous, ABBA-coded disco tune ‘Last Man Standing’, where they sing “And I do it for the love of the sport, and I do it ’cause I just want more” over a driving bassline and shimmering synths. Both the line and song sum up the band’s entire vibe and ethos: turning the dial up to 10 and giving it their all just because they love pop that much. It comes through in droves on ‘Racer’, where they’ve turbocharged their fun-loving electro-pop sound, bringing it to the next level”.

Anyone who has not heard of Blusher, go and check them out. They are primed for big things. Even if I am slightly new to them, I will make up for a bit of lost time. I am definitely invested now. Following the release of RACER and some tour dates in their diary, the group will grow and build their fanbase. There is no doubt that Blusher’s Miranda Ward, Jade Ingvarson-Favretto and Lauren Coutts are trhe real deal. This year has been busy for Blusher. I am looking ahead to see what is in store…

IN 2026.

____________

Follow Blusher

FEATURE: Groovelines: The Cinematic Orchestra (ft. Patrick Watson) - To Build a Home

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

  

The Cinematic Orchestra (ft. Patrick Watson) - To Build a Home

__________

A name that some people might not know…

Patrick Watson is a remarkable artist with this beautiful and entrancing voice. Some people know about his solo career and tracks like Je la laissierai des mots (that has over a billion streams on Spotify). Watson is a Canadian artist whose debut album, Waterproof9, was released in 2001. Actually, that is technically his only solo album, as everything past that was from his group, Patrick Watson. One of his most well-loved moments was singing with The Cinematic Orchestra on their album, Ma Fleur. The opening track on that album was To Build a Home. It was released as a single on 29th October, 2007. It is a gorgeous and spine-tingling track I wanted to explore more for this Groovelines. Although there were mixed reviews for Ma Fleur, many highlighted To Build a Home as an especially captivating moment. I will go more in depth with this track. I want to start out with Wikipedia and their section regarding the critical reaction to the track:

“To Build a Home" had a positive reception from music critics. Critics often saw Watson's vocal performance as a highlight on the song. For The Observer, Stuart Nicholson wrote that "Swinscoe transforms three- and four-chord vamps into something special." For Drowned in Sound, Shain Shapiro regarded the vocals as "bellowing [and] haunting", while Tyler Fisher of Sputnikmusic said that Watson "nearly steals the show". Maggie Fremont of Vulture called it "one of the most emotional songs ever performed."

"To Build a Home" has been used in several different television shows and films, including This Is Us, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, One Tree Hill, Grey's Anatomy, Criminal Minds, Friday Night Lights, and Orange Is the New Black”.

I want to move to an interview from Red Bull Music Academy. Jason Swinscoe from The Cinematic Orchestra. He was invited for a talk about “his career at the RBMA Bass Camp in Vienna before a performance later that night”:

“Can you tell us about this song? It has a different approach to rhythm, because there are no drums. For a guy coming out of club culture, it must have been quite a step to leave out the drums completely.

It was definitely a considered thought. I was in clubs a lot at that time, and what I think was happening around Ma Fleur was that I was actually losing interest in the club scene. And so I wanted to write a record which was a little less beat-oriented. For me, it got to the point where it was just all about the beat, it’s like, “Where’s the music?” I was consciously trying to do more songwriting stuff.

Music is such a strong language, and it’s one that I’m just going to continually explore.

With “To Build a Home,” I had a chord progression in Paris, and I went to Montreal, where my manager Dom put me in touch with Patrick Watson. Patrick was introduced to this guy Jeff, who was running Ninja Tune in Montreal at the time. He used to be on the same hockey team. Yes, because they’re Canadians. They love their hockey. Patrick was, I think, quite a pathetic hockey player. He was the goalkeeper, that’s why he got the shit position. But Jeff heard this guy singing occasionally, and he was like, “You should check this guy out.” I got in touch with him and he was doing his own music at the time, writing music to short films.

I just went to Montreal for five days, and we sat down and just wrote that tune. We did it in the first couple of days really. It was a very collaborative experience. I was like, “Patrick, I’ve got these piano chords,” and he just came up with the melody and we wrote the lyrics together. It was just one of those magical combinations of right time and right place”.

There are not that many reviews for To Build a Home. However, it is a song that a lot of people love. Drowned in Sound awarded the track eight out of ten in 2007. This was a track I first heard in 2007 and instantly was affected by it. I still listen to it now and am moved every single time. It is a stunning song that is so evocative and dreamy. You can close your eyes and picture yourself inside of it:

“That was worrying, back there: the piano keys were dabbed gently and Jason Swinscoe’s vocal arrived, angelic, offering a sweet melody. Oh no - it’s going to sound like Keane. The Cinematic Orchestra have lost the plot.

But that was about 20 seconds into this six-minute long, download-only single - the first taster from new album, Ma Fleur. Yes, this is sensitive stuff, but it’s saved from soppiness by its artistic vision: while strings start to swell up, crescendo-ing, ‘To Build A Home’ never fully takes flight. Instead, it toys with you, undulating up and down, devoid of percussion, light as an eddying breeze. The combination of dainty music and themes of love, loss and feeling safe at home could become twee and over sentimental, but Swinscoe’s turn of phrase and cracked, world-weary cry makes ‘To Build A Home’ reminiscent of Elbow’s ‘Scattered Black & Whites’ in tone, or some of Nick Drake’s more plaintive material, skirting the line between simple shite and simple genius, and fainting onto the right side.

As a sign of things to come from Ma Fleur, this is very promising indeed”.

It is strange highlighting and praising a song that is not particularly liked by either The Cinematic Orchestra or Patrick Watson. Jason Swinscoe said he feels shackled to the song and sort of feel that it defined them - and regrets that. Patrick Watson was not hit by the song and feels others are a lot better. However, millions of people do love the song and it is a sublime and stirring work. Before finish up, I want to bring in this Patrick Watson interview from last year:

“While many have offered heaps of money to license the Montreal musician’s acclaimed work over the years, he says there are certain ethical lines he refused to cross.

In the case of “To Build a Home,” his 2007 piano-string ballad with the Cinematic Orchestra, one corporation with a history of what he calls “reasonable ethical doubts” wanted to license his song for an internal marketing video. Watson said he flatly declined their request.

“We were offered half a million,” he said in a recent conversation from his Montreal home.

“I’m not anti-corporation. I just think there’s a difference between corporations.”

Watson said he wrestled with similar moral quandaries numerous times early in his career, concluding that musicians sometimes have to pick their “evils” and settle on rights deals that allow them to sleep at night.

“To Build a Home” has appeared on TV shows spanning “One Tree Hill” to “Schitt’s Creek” and an array of live sports montages.

“CP: You didn’t have a previous working relationship with Cinematic Orchestra before “To Build a Home,” so how did that come about?

Watson: I got the gig in the weirdest way possible. I was a goalie when I was a kid. And Jeff (Waye, former North American label manager of the U.K. record label) Ninja Tune was my coach. I was on their team at the Exclaim! Cup (a longtime charity Toronto hockey tournament consisting mostly of musicians). I played this great game and Jeff was a competitive hockey coach in a really funny way. He’s like, “All right, since you played such a good game, Cinematic Orchestra is looking for this singer for a song.” Which was good for me because I was a nobody. They sent me the tune and it was this four-on-the-floor house track with the chord progression in it. And then Cinematic Orchestra’s Jason Swinscoe came to Montreal to work with me on a piano version. It was a demo and it was not supposed to end like that. I thought they would chop it up and do s–t to it because they’re an electronic band. But instead, they’re like, “We’re releasing it like that.” And I’m like, “You guys are nuts”.

I always think that there is another music video that could be made for the song. Not to say the one out there is bad. However, I always imagine scenes when I hear the track. Something about a child growing into adulthood. Starting out in this home that was once full of life and a place for adventures. That child now an adult and seeing scenes projected on the wall. Now, the house left and is collecting dust. The tree in the garden one of the only things remaining from those early days. I feel, about eighteen years after it was released as a single, there have been that many songs that are as affecting and transcendent. I am not bothered that its creators are not kind to the song. It is for the public and is not theirs anymore. To Build a Home is this startling and gorgeous piece of music I think connects with people for different reasons. Maybe it is something universal about home and memories. Looking back to the past or recalling childhood. I am not surprised it has been used so much on the screen, though it is best heard without other people’s visuals. Having this solitary experience. It has not aged at all. You can listen to it a hundred times and it does not lose its beauty and atmosphere. For anyone who does not know the song, I would strongly encourage you to listen to it. A gem from The Cinematic Orchestra’s Ma Fleur, I will always love this song. It is why I wanted to spotlight it. A wondrous piece of music that will always…

STIR emotion in me.