FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Guy Garvey at Fifty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Thomas Butler/The Guardian

Guy Garvey at Fifty

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ONE of my favourite people in music….

turns fifty on 6th March. Guy Garvey is the leader of Elbow. To mark his upcoming birthday, I have ended this feature with some great Elbow hits and deep cuts. A selection of their music that also demonstrates Guy Garvey’s amazing vocals and songwriting. I am sourcing from Wikipedia here for some Garvey biography, as it seems to be the fullest and most up-to-date:

“Garvey grew up in Bury, Greater Manchester and comes from a working class, Catholic family and he is one of seven siblings. He told The Guardian in 2015, that he was named Guy, after another Catholic, Guy Fawkes. He also told them he was bullied at school, due to his ears, which he had pinned back at the age of 12, his sister Gina, told the Guardian that the school bullying may have contributed to her brother's sensitivity. His parents separated when he was aged 12, and they had divorced by the time he was 13. His father was a former grammar school boy who could not afford to go to University; a Trade Unionist, he spent most of his working life as a newspaper proofreader and as a chemist at ICI. His mother was a police officer who went back to university and became a psychologist. Garvey has five older sisters: Gina, Louise, Sam, Karen, and Becky. His younger brother is the actor Marcus Garvey.

In the early 1990s, while at sixth-form college in Whitefield, near Bury, Garvey formed Elbow with Mark and Craig Potter, Pete Turner, and Richard Jupp. He serves as the lyricist of Elbow, and has been widely praised for his songwriting throughout his career. As well as vocal duties Garvey has also played a wide variety of instruments live including both electric and acoustic guitar, trumpet, and various forms of percussion. Elbow won two Ivor Novello awards for best song writing for the 2008 single "Grounds for Divorce" as well as best contemporary song for "One Day Like This". He was awarded a lifetime achievement honour by the Radio Academy in 2014.

Amongst other work, Garvey produced and recorded the I Am Kloot album Natural History (2001). Alongside Elbow keyboard player Craig Potter he also produced I Am Kloot's single "Maybe I Should" (2005, not associated with any album), their Mercury Music Prize nominated 2010 album Sky at Night and their 2013 album Let It All In. Elbow were themselves Mercury Music Prize nominees, in 2011, for the album Build a Rocket Boys! and won the prize in 2008 for their album "The Seldom Seen Kid". In addition, Garvey made an appearance on Massive Attack's 2010 album record Heligoland.

He is a member of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA).In April 2012 Garvey became a patron of the Manchester Craft and Design Centre. In recognition of his outstanding contribution to music he received, in July of the same year, an honorary doctorate from Manchester Metropolitan University, a Doctor of Arts.

Garvey has been a presenter on BBC Radio 6 Music since 2007 (Sunday afternoon 2 pm to 4 pm, British time) and previously presented a show on Sunday evenings on XFM. He had a monthly column in the now-defunct listings magazine City Life and is a patron of the Mines Advisory Group (MAG), the Manchester-based charity responsible for clearing war zones of mines and munitions worldwide.

In 2015, Garvey announced that he would be releasing his first solo studio album while continuing his duties as Elbow's lead songwriter. The resulting album, Courting the Squall, was released on 30 October 2015, by Polydor Records in the UK. On 27 October 2015 Garvey appeared on BBC Two's Later... with Jools Holland, where he performed "Angela's Eyes" and "Belly of the Whale".

In January 2024, Elbow performed on the The Graham Norton Show and afterwards Garvey joined Norton's guests to promote Elbow's tenth studio album, Audio Vertigo which will be released on the 22 March, their tour starts on the 7 May 2024”.

To mark the approaching fiftieth birthday of the wonderful Guy Garvey, I thought it would be appropriate to compile a playlist. I would suggest people check out his solo ands non-Elbow work, though I am going to keep it strictly Elbow here. Such an incredible talent, there is nobody in music quite like him. Such a distinct and consistently brilliant songwriter and artist, let’s hope we have many more years of the phenomenal Elbow. It is true that Guy Garvey is…

A music legend

FEATURE: The Kate Bush Interview Archive: 2006: Philippe Badhorn (Rolling Stone France)

FEATURE:

 

 

The Kate Bush Interview Archive

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2005/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton

2006: Philippe Badhorn (Rolling Stone France)

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I feel a bit guilty….

about doing this feature, as all the hard work and passionate research is already been done by this great archive! One that collates all the print interviews from Kate Bush from 1978 to 2011. I guess I select the interviews, write a bit around the text, select the part of the interview that is the best, then add in videos and photos. Even so, at least it allows Kate Bush fans to read interviews they may not have come across. A lot of my recent features have mainly been from the 1970s and 1980s. I have not focused on Kate Bush’s Aerial/mid-'00s period. The interview I am focusing on now is from Rolling Stone France. It was published in 2006. Philippe Badhorn was charged with speaking with Kate Bush following the release of her superb 2005 double album. Aerial reached twelve in France. I guess the language barrier may mean some questions and interactions are a little more strained or different to other interviews. Even so, as you will see below, the interaction between Bush and Badhorn is interesting and quite comfortable. We get some interesting and often funny answers from Bush. Standard and over-used questions around Bush’s privacy and ‘reclusiveness’. I love the interviews from the Aerial period. Kate Bush was no stranger to the French media. This fascinating interview from 1990 is one of the best. Rolling Stone France have some much-deserved coverage of one of Kate Bush’s greatest and most personal albums. One that was a ‘return’ after 1993’s The Red Shoes:

“Twelve years to release a new album. The eighth since 1978. Because she prefers life to glory, Kate Bush has been too long away. But her aura has not faded. Rare meeting with an artist who has always called the tune.

The masterless voice.

In Abbey Road studios, west of London, some Beatles don’t record every day. John, a young assistant, tells that a big company’s big wig hired studio 2 a whole day last week to practise how to deliver a speech with emotion. Just where the Fab Four recorded most of their music. Just where Kate Bush supervised together with Michael Kamen the orchestral arrangements of Aerial, her double album released at last after 12 years of discographic silence. Kate Bush gives one of her rare interviews in the control room of this very studio, a comfortable place overhanging a large wooden room where stands a Steinway and waits an army of microphone feet.

To say the truth the lady is late. Her house is hidden just 2 hours north of London, but the traffic seems heavy today. At last she arrives, alone, handing a big wicker basket filled with a thick Filofax and all kinds of notebooks.

First of all its disappointment. The press photographs soften the fact that at 47 Kate Bush isn’t any longer the emotion stirring white which, the sensual, sophisticated and eccentric savage who inflamed the senses of the aesthetes of a whole generation (or even two). But she holds graciously her ample figure with the ease of those who get along with their body.

We sit side to side on the sofa in front of a cup of tea. The sweetly searching look of her hazel eyes, the irresistible and indefinable smile, the voice with deeply musical intonations : nothing more is needed to be under her charm.

Philippe Badhorn: You remain faithful to Abbey Road studios, still you record mainly at home. You wanted very soon (1983) to have your own studio.

Kate Bush: I like Abbey Road for its atmosphere. I feel quite comfortable there. But to have my own studio is not only a question of artistic freedom. In a very pragmatic way, it’s also a question of money. As soon as you get into a long period of time, the bill becomes overwhelming. In a regular studio, I couldn’t have had enough time to experiment.

Philippe Badhorn: You started this record 9 years ago. Did you have to re-record a lot so that it sounded consistent ?

Kate Bush: I was very much concerned about the cohesion. So I tried to give it a global atmosphere of flow, of flux. King of the mountain, Sunset and An architect’s dream were there very soon. But in the definitive version of King of the mountain, a lot of stuff from the early work is still there, the keyboard for instance. Most of the vocals too were recorded 9 years ago. On the other hand, the drum parts and the rest were recorded the 45 last days (she says years instead of days, Freudian slip), a very intense period. What’s been done during that period creates the cohesion. I am glad when I am told that the album doesn’t sound like a collection of moments apart.

Philippe Badhorn: King of the mountain was the first title. It draws a picture of Elvis living in a kind of childlike Olympus. Elvis reappearing was mentioned at that time.

Kate Bush: Yes, now that you say it, it’s true. I thought it was a lovely idea that someone so cherished would still be alive and happy somewhere in some limbo (in the song Elvis goes tobogganing riding Rosebud, symbol of childhood and lost innocence in the film Citizen Kane by O. Welles ). I remember a show in the 50s with Elvis. The host didn’t talk about him as an egocentric and selfish person but as an unpretentious and sweet one and I do believe he was. When he got older, he didn’t seem to be happy. Maybe he was.

Philippe Badhorn: Is Elvis your opposite? You work at your own pace, you manage to have a life away from show-business when he stepped out of day-to-day reality.

Kate Bush: I believe he really was a sweet and fun loving nice guy who couldn’t say no. Nobody would want to be that famous. I was already asked if I felt I was like him. Thank god I don’t. I’m not as famous, nobody is, except maybe Frank Sinatra or Marilyn Monroe, but she died because of that sooner than him. It’s hard to have the whole world looking at you.

Philippe Badhorn: Have you ever wanted to be famous ?

Kate Bush: No.

Philippe Badhorn: But you need other people’s opinion, don’t you?

Kate Bush: It’s ambiguous, it’s true, like for every artist. I spent a lot of time on this record. I want people to listen and appreciate the music. But being the centre of attention makes life more difficult. We all feel that some aspects of modern life are intrusive, it’s hard to keep one’s own space. I consider myself as a writer. Maybe people don’t think of me that way but that’s how I feel. A writer needs a strong connection with reality. My family and my domestic life are incredibly important for me and essential for my work. It maybe comes from my Irish roots on my mother’s side.

Philippe Badhorn: But you don’t like being described as a recluse.

Kate Bush: Because I’m not. Someone who never meets people and never goes out is a recluse. I’m not like that, I meet people but I spend a lot of time in the studio and I don’t go to parties or premieres often. Especially these ten last years I have lived a normal life. And was happy with it. The only trouble is I was sometimes afraid I wouldn’t finish this record. Time seemed to evaporate during this period. I hadn’t planned it would take so long. I would have been terrified if I was told so. It was profitable time though.

Philippe Badhorn: You devoted yourself to your son

Kate Bush: I moved to the country. We had another studio built. Albert was born (Bertie, in 1998). It’s difficult to make a record and raise a little boy. But the time spent with him hasn’t been lost. He’s aware his mother is well-known but it’s not been a problem for him. I’m a normal person, not some strange and absent entity.

Philippe Badhorn: You protect your private life but one song is named after your son (Bertie). It’s the most wholehearted declaration of love from a mother I’ve ever heard.

Kate Bush: My life, friends and family, was always part of my work (a very Bushian example : her partner Danny MacIntosh plays the guitar on the album and her ex, Del Palmer, now a friend, recorded and mixed it ). My work is very, very personal and intimately connected to my everyday life. This is one of the reasons why I want my house to be a home, not a goldfish bowl. I have this place, my home, my base, that should stay a bit secret. But how not to have a song about my son when he’s such a big part of my life? I don’t think I put him on public view, as I would if I showed him on television. It’s inside my own creative space. There are some photographs of Bertie in the record booklet. But he doesn’t really look like that any longer, it’s not like a photograph in a tabloid. But it’s true, in this world, there’s a worship of celebrity on many TV programs. I can’t believe it ! It’s somehow funny but I think it’s crazy and I really don’t want to be involved in it !

Philippe Badhorn: You moved house, you had a baby, OK. But your perfectionism certainly put off the release.

Kate Bush: Perfectionism isn’t the right word, I’m rather quick-tempered and I know what I want. Getting right the images I have in my head is always delicate. People think I spend years to write a song. Actually it’s often wooorg (she pretends to vomit). What takes time are the arrangements, finding the right atmosphere, the right emotional quality of the vocals. But I don’t try to erase all imperfection. I don’t believe in perfection. For instance in Mrs Bartolozzi the voice plays with the piano. There’s a part I really hate. But as part as the whole song, I could’nt get the same emotional quality on the other takes. This version is a bit out of tune, I don’t pronounce the words the way I wished but the emotion I was looking for is there.

Philippe Badhorn: It’s probably the most ambiguous song on the album (her eyes sparkle as I say ambiguous). An ode to domestic happiness (especially the laundry) but one can think of a darker meaning.

Kate Bush: Some of my friends loved it, others thought it was a funny interlude, and others didn’t feel comfortable either they thought it was about the disguise of a crime or it was too personal. But it’s not me in particular.

Philippe Badhorn: Don’t you want everything clean and shiny?

Kate Bush: I do a lot of housework, I especially like the laundry. There’s a link between the washing, the clothes and the person wearing them, the water in the washing machine and the sea. I do a lot of laundry especially since I have a child. I think it’s a way of being close to my roots and to life. As a child I saw my mother wash and be the main character at home (daddy was a doctor). It’s incredibly important for me. I like to have a connection with this work. Holding a house isn’t that slavery to me.

Philippe Badhorn: The feminists will appreciate. On the other hand you also sing about Joan of Arc (Joanni) without a ring on her finger and wearing a bright armour.

Kate Bush: I wanted two records for this album. One is a concept about the changing of light and birds songs during the day. The other is about very different persons, Mrs Bartolozzi, Elvis or Joan of Arc are archetypes, very strong people.

Philippe Badhorn: Are you a mix of the three ?

Kate Bush: Do you think so? Maybe (laughs)”.

A wonderful interview that you should read in full, 2005 and 2006 was quite busy for Kate Bush in terms of press and promotion. Even though this was the first album with no T.V. press or much visual promotion, she did plenty of print interviews and some great radio chats. In future parts of The Kate Bush Interview Archive – I said I would end the run but, with some post-2005 interviews still to go, I may do a few more -, I will look at the period between Aerial and 2011’s Director’s Cut. Aerial, a magnificent and expansive album where Bush is in peak form, still sounds remarkable nearly nineteen years after its release. You can tell how much it meant to her. If you have not heard the album in a while, take some time out and explore its…

PHENOMENAL songs.

FEATURE: Do It Again: First The Dan…Maybe Don? One Final Look Inside the Remarkable Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan

FEATURE:

 

 

Do It Again: First The Dan…Maybe Don?

IN THIS PAINTING: Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen/ART CREDIT: Joan LeMay/University of Texas Press

One Final Look Inside the Remarkable Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan

_________

I am going to take….

another look inside Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan. With text by Alex Pappademas and paintings by Joan LeMay, I bought three copies of the book. I was lucky enough to get a couple of signed copies from LeMay when there was a book launch in London last year. I was instantly immersed in this book. I have been a Steely Dan fan since I was a child. Now forty, I am as amazed and obsessed by them as I was back then. I am going to come onto some points  regarding Steely Dan and their influence. For any Steely Dan fan who does not have this book in their collection, I would urge them to go and get it. Here is some more detail:

“A literary and visual exploration of the songs of Steely Dan.

Steely Dan’s songs are exercises in fictional world-building. No one else in the classic-rock canon has conjured a more vivid cast of rogues and heroes, creeps and schmucks, lovers and dreamers and cold-blooded operators—or imbued their characters with so much humanity. Pulling from history, lived experience, pulp fiction, the lore of the counterculture, and their own darkly comic imaginations, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker summoned protagonists who seemed like fully formed people with complicated pasts, scars they don’t talk about, delusions and desires and memories they can’t shake. From Rikki to Dr. Wu, Hoops McCann to Kid Charlemagne, Franny from NYU to the Woolly Man without a Face, every name is a locked-room mystery, beguiling listeners and earning the band an exceptionally passionate and ever-growing cult fandom.

Quantum Criminals presents the world of Steely Dan as it has never been seen, much less heard. Artist Joan LeMay has crafted lively, color-saturated images of her favorite characters from the Daniverse to accompany writer Alex Pappademas’s explorations of the famous and obscure songs that inspired each painting, in short essays full of cultural context, wild speculation, inspired dot-connecting, and the occasional conspiracy theory. All of it is refracted through the perspectives of the characters themselves, making for a musical companion unlike any other. Funny, discerning, and visually stunning, Quantum Criminals is a singular celebration of Steely Dan’s musical cosmos”.

The language used throughout the book is beautiful and evocative, Beautifully written and phrased, you are stunned by the words of Alex Pappademas! These rich and interesting characters from Steely Dan’s songbook brought vividly to life. We get insight into the songs and the period in which they were written. Accompanying these characters are the paintings of Joan LeMay. Many of us have images in our mind of various characters. What Rose Darling, Jack (from Do It Again) or Kid Charlemagne looks like. Her artwork, together with Pappademas’s words, are a match made in Heaven. So wonderful to see alongside one another, Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan is such a wonderful and gorgeous book. One that you will read over and over. I have often wondered about the influence of Steely Dan. Maybe still seen as an acquired taste, Alex Pappademas felt the world was much more Steely Dan-esque now than it has ever been. In terms of the politics and sense of unease in the air. That their music and lyrics are more suited to the world today than maybe back in the 1970s. Because of that, they seem more relevant than ever! Maybe not as popular as they should be, you only hear the odd few songs of their played on U.K. radio. Something I argued recently is how many listeners and fans love Steely Dan and keep their music alive. Their influence is definitely felt there. Even so, how many artists in music now as obviously influenced by the group? How many take to heart the music of Walter Becker, Donald Fagen and crew?! I feel that there is nobody in modern music very obviously continuing the legacy of The Dan. That is a real shame!

I do think that artists need to read the book. The more you learn about the characters, songs and process of Fagen and Becker, the more you will listen to the albums. I hope that we do see Steely Dan’s music infiltrate into modern music. I have been inspired to write songs and think about an album similar to a Steely Dan one. Constructing ideas and thoughts very much influenced by reading Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan. Kudos to Jessica Hopper for getting Alex Pappademas and Joan LeMay together for this book. For manoeuvring them into each other’s orbit. There are interviews like this and this that go into detail and depth. Alex Pappademas and Joan LeMay discussing Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan and their memories and love of Steely Dan. Prior to moving along, there is a portion of this NPR interview that struck me:

“The chapters in this book give such deep studies of the personalities who populate Steely Dan's songs (and, by extension, of the musicians who brought them to life). Did your relationship with any of these songs change while writing about them, illustrating them, or otherwise getting inside the heads of these characters? Did you learn anything about the songs that genuinely surprised you while working on this project?

LeMay: I learned so much. On our weekly calls, Alex always excitedly ushered me into the entrance of several wormholes he'd been traversing, and it was a constant delight. Thinking deeply about what these characters were wearing, what they might've been doing in the narrative beyond the narrative, thinking about their environment, how they held their faces, how they held their bodies — it was an immersive way to listen. I'd had ideas in my head about so many of the characters because I tend to think visually, but there were lots of fantastic surprises, like when we dug into Cathy Berberian, for instance. I'd never looked up what she looked like before.

Pappademas: I think what surprised me the most as I dug deeper into these songs was how much empathy Donald and Walter seemed to have for their characters. It's not something they're usually given credit for — the idea people have about them is that they're always snickering amongst themselves, making fun of the people they write about, but I think that's actually more true of somebody like Randy Newman than it is of Becker/Fagen. I think there's always a real sense of humanity's plight underneath whatever coldness or archness is more easily detectable in their work on first blush — even when the people they're writing about are doomed or deluded or depraved, you don't get the sense that they're judging these characters, most of the time. There's an attention paid to the human longing that motivates people to these weird actions and they don't judge the longing, of, say, the guy who's hung up on a sex worker in "Pearl of the Quarter" — whereas Frank Zappa, given the same storyline, would absolutely write about what a moron that guy is.

Steely Dan's lyrics are famously somewhat cryptic, and Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were quite averse to having their lyrics read as straightforward personal narratives. It's clear that so much research went into illuminating these songs, but there's also a healthy dose of creative speculation, too, both in how the subjects of the songs are described and how they're depicted.

LeMay: The only characters I painted that weren't 100% creative speculation (and really, less speculation and more my personal interpretation) were those having to do with actual, living people, like Cathy Berberian, Jill St. John and G. Gordon Liddy. I had a folder on my computer called "DAN CASTING GALLERY" full of images of people in my life, found photos, '60s and '70s fashion catalogs, advertisements and sewing pattern packaging. I painted from a melange of those images mixed with things that had been in my head forever, as well as from a ton of photos of my own body posing in different ways for reference. The most important thing to me was getting the humanity — the profoundly flawed humanity — of these characters right.

Pappademas: And it works — I try to get across that humanity in the text, but having Joan populate this world with real human faces made the finished product into something greater than I could have gotten to on my own.

IN THIS PAINTING: The El Supremo from Show Biz Kids/ART CREDIT: Joan LeMay/University of Texas Press

Anyway, my answer to the question above is that when I'm writing criticism, for sure, but also when I'm writing reported pieces, I feel like there's always an element of creative speculation in what I do. It's just more or less constrained by facts depending on what kind of piece it is. Even if you've sat in a room with somebody for hours you're ultimately imagining their inner life based on what they've told you, and sometimes on what they haven't told you. In terms of Quantum Criminals, yeah, Steely Dan definitely tried to discourage any attempt to read these lyrics autobiographically — and the fact that all their lyrics were composed by (or at least credited to) two writers was their first line of defense against that kind of reading, because even when they're writing in the first person you're conscious that the "I" in every Dan song is to whatever degree a fictional character and therefore a distancing device. But I think it's human nature — or at least it's my human nature — to intuit the opposite and look for places where the art seems to correspond to what we know to be the contours of an artist's life. Because the other thing about Steely Dan is they liked to obfuscate; the fact that they rarely owned up to their music having an autobiographical component (with certain exceptions, notably "Deacon Blues," which they admitted was pretty personal) doesn't mean it wasn't autobiographical. And at times — as with "Gaucho," a song about a duo torn apart by a third party who might be the personification of drugs or other forms of hedonism, recorded for the album Donald made mostly without Walter because Walter's addiction issues had pulled him away from the band — the correspondences became too tempting to not explore. Which is what happens when you write cryptically; it's human nature to decrypt.

I don't know; I guess I'm doing the same thing Taylor Swift's fans do when they decide that some opaque lyric is an Easter egg about this or that relationship of hers, or what A.J. Weberman was doing when he decided "The sun isn't yellow, it's chicken" was Bob Dylan confessing to faking his own death, or what the people who think The Shining was Stanley Kubrick exorcizing his guilt over faking the moon landing. The difference is that I think I'm right and I think those other people are all nuts, because I'm in my bubble and can't imagine the view from theirs”.

It is sad that we will never see new music from Steely Dan. The great Walter Becker left us in 2017. He would have been very proud of Joan LeMay and Alex Pappademas’s book. I am not sure what Donald Fagen thinks of it. The passion and detail does great justice to Steely Dan’s unique and genius music. Fleshes out these incredible and intriguing characters. As there is so much love for Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan, and it is clear LeMay and Pappademas have this shared love and connection, it makes me wonder whether we will see them back together again. As of this month, there is no news as to whether Donald Fagen will follow up 2012’s Sunken Condos. We await a fifth studio album. I know he did interviews in 2022 where the subject of new music came up. He said how he has written some songs and spent some time in the studio. Still busy touring as Steely Dan, I guess we will hear new Donald Fagen music in the next year or two. Would Joan LeMay and Alex Pappademas do anything with Donald Fagen’s characters?! Steely Dan’s discography is more expansive and character-filled, though there are so many Donald Fagen songs with these Steely Dan-like characters that would be fascinating to know more about. From titular characters like Security Joan, Morph the Cat, Maxine; there is also the Slinky Thing from the track of the same name (from Sunken Condos), H Gang (Morph the Cat), Miss Marlene and Planet D'Rhonda (both from Sunken Condos), Morph the Cat’s Mary Shut the Garden Door and The Night Belongs to Mona; the album’s depiction of Death in Brite Nightgown.  There is also Tomorrow's Girls (from 1993’s Kamakiriad) and Ruby Baby (from The Nightfly).

Donald Fagen as a solo artist has created some wonderful characters across his four solo albums so far. Even if Alex Pappademas and Joan LeMay do not work on anything else Steely Dan-related/adjacent again, it would be epic if they came together for something. Such is the brilliance of Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan we hope, like Donald Fagen and Walter Becker reuniting for 2000’s Two Against Nature – after Steely Dan went on hiatus after 1980’s Gaucho -, that the multi-talented LeMay and Pappademas do more. On 2nd March, Steely Dan’s third studio album, Pretzel Logic, turns fifty. It compelled me to dive back into Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan. Not only an essential purchase for Steely Dan fans, I would advise anyone knew to the genius of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker to read it. It made me think about Donald Fagen’s solo work and all the incredible characters in the albums. The history and background of the albums and how, in 2024, we look ahead to see if the master will grace us with any new music. Pages and pages of beautiful paintings, spellbinding words that do full justice to the songs of Steely Dan, I will keep reading Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan. It offers up something new with each visit. It truly is a…

WORK of dedication and genius.

FEATURE: Stay Flo: Solange’s When I Get Home at Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Stay Flo

Solange’s When I Get Home at Five

_________

WITHOUT doubt….

one of the best albums of 2019, I wanted to mark the upcoming fifth anniversary of Solange’s When I Get Home. The follow-up to her 2016 debut, A Seat at the Table, it is a phenomenal album that remains her most current. We all hope that Solange gifts the world with a third studio album soon enough. I will come to some reviews for the astonishing When I Get Home. Reaching number seven in the U.S. and eighteen in the U.K., Solange’s When I Get Home was a commercial and critical success. Let’s start off with a Pitchfork feature from 2019. It reacted to a film screening of When I Get Home:

“Tonight in Houston, Solange hosted “album experience” events across Houston for her new album When I Get Home. The event, which streamed live on Apple Music and her BlackPlanet website, began with a screening of the Solange-directed When I Get Home film and ended with a conversation between Solange and writer/art curator Antwaun Sargent.

The new album features contributions from Panda Bear, Blood Orange, Cassie, Earl Sweatshirt, and others. During the conversation, Sargent asked Solange about her process of incorporating collaborators. “Editing is just such a huge part of my process,” she said. “I would say that it’s 80% editing, and for some reason, I just have the discipline for it.”

She also discussed the process of giving collaborators the freedom to create on their own terms before deciding how to incorporate their contributions in the final product. “The best for me is to invite people into the space and say ‘do you.’ It could be six hours before I hear the one ad-lib or the one thing where I think, ‘OK, that is how I can extend this into an expression of what I want to achieve.’”

She emphasized her role as the album’s producer, calling producing “my heart and soul.” “Speaking my truth, it is rather difficult as a producer to be reduced to just the songwriter or just the artist when you spend 18 hours editing one drum sound,” she said. “We’ve come a long way from that for women, but it’s still got a little ways to go—the way we’re able to have that conversation about Rick Rubin but we’re not extending that conversation to others.”

When asked about the process of writing the new album, Solange revealed some musical inspirations she turned to at the time, including Stevie Wonder (and specifically his album The Secret Life of Plants), Steve Reich, Alice Coltrane, and Sun Ra—music that emphasized repetition.

She also discussed the difference between When I Get Home and her previous album, 2016’s A Seat at the Table. “Obviously with A Seat at the Table I had so much to say,” she said. “With this album I had so much to feel. Words would have been reductive to what I needed to feel and express. It’s in the sonics for me.”

At the beginning of the talk, Solange revealed that she quietly rented a house in Houston to begin work on new music. “I think after touring the last record, there were a lot of things that were happening to my spirit—things that feel sort of out of control,” she said.

Later, she discussed Texas’ influence on the When I Get Home film. “I knew about a year and a half ago, it would be really really important to me to tell a story about black cowboys.” She added, “I feel so privileged to meet so many of these cowboys and hear their stories and see them pray before they go in the bull ring and see what they’re willing to do to their bodies for the sake of entertainment, which is something I can relate to.”

She finished by addressing the feeling of being home in Houston for the album’s rollout. “It’s just joy everywhere,” she said. “It just feels good. That’s what home does for you. I could be anywhere in the world, but nothing is gonna make me feel like this place does”.

I want to stay with the visual and cinematic aspect of When I Get Home. In collaboration with WeTranfer, there were these incredible and extended screenings of When I Get Home at institutions across the world. The reaction from those watching the screening was powerful. This article explained more:

“It’s essential for museums to recognize the important cultural contributions of artists across disciplines, beyond static artwork that hangs on walls,” says Lauren Argentina Zelaya, the Director of Public Programs at Brooklyn Museum where the film screened last week.“Institutions need to include music, film and video that reflects the contemporary society we live in, and to showcase art and creativity that reflects the lived experiences of people who do not historically feel welcome in museum’s spaces.”

It’s a truth that When I Get Home speaks to, the reassurance and justification of your own identity in a time when the fundamental idea of belonging has been called into question. Peeling off its layers further, we speak to Solange to delve into the core messages at the heart of When I Get Home, and find out how her roots taught her more than any history book ever could.

When I Get Home is about identity and self expression, what do feel you’ve learnt about yourself through the process of creating it?

I’ve been telling a story about a really pivotal moment in my life when I was around ten years old that left an explosive impact on me. I went to a church summer camp in Houston and it was my first time experiencing what I would call the spirit - however you feel closest to interpreting that - and, because I really did not know how to unpack it all, it scared the hell out of me. I struggled with confronting that force for so long, this idea of an energy so strong it could transform your tongue or cause you to faint or shout and dance in ways that were out of your body. I would just want to run from it.

The film is really about standing still in that unknown, and feeling solitude and sanity in the silence of it all. The reckoning of what I may hear and see if I did in fact silence all those parts of myself and if I could really live with, and swallow, the truths that come up. For me personally, it speaks a lot about reimagining the infinite possibilities of darkness, and changing the way we experience that vastness of space. I got to sit with Scarface while I was making this album and he said some really powerful shit to me about his constant need and attraction to darkness, and I realized in that moment how much we have been taught to only rely on light as a guiding force for healing and rebirth. I wasn’t leaning into the possibilities of darkness out of fear, but even from a filming perspective leaning into the vastness that blackness creates was so expansive for my process.

All of these conversations for me have been grounded in evolution. Thinking that you know the way and then having gone through something completely out of my control - which for me at the time was my health - and coming up with new ways of experiencing and coping with the world. For me rebirth always starts at the beginning, which was coming home.

Growing up in my mother’s hair salon constantly reinforced that I never had to subscribe to this one dimensional version of myself.

PHOTO CREDIT: Saint Records/Columbia

Home and the idea of belonging are integral to the film. What does this notion of ‘home’ mean to your creativity?

I started touring at 13 which often made me feel this overwhelming sense of longing for home. Even when I was actually home sometimes in the physical sense of dwelling, I still felt like I wasn’t home in my body and my spirit, and returning to Houston started to answer a lot of these questions for me. I still have a real issue with sitting my ass down in one space, but I recognized how much of me was grounded in the city and how there are parts of me that are just so damn Houston that I feel really proud of.

Starting to unpack what it really meant to grow up in a neighborhood like Third Ward and being able to say the phenomenal Debbie Allen and Phylicia Rashad are from there, or Devin the Dude, who informed so much of my young adulthood, lives in Third Ward, or Pat Parker, a brilliant poet who was also activating in really incredible revolutionary ways is from Third Ward is powerful. I feel really proud, and honestly honored to have been able to invite them into the fabric and the storytelling of this album because those are the moments that express things I could never fully articulate about myself.

Discovering that video of Debbie and Phylicia singing to their mom, and starting off with “I boarded a train, kissed all goodbye” instantly felt like home, in the sense of both leaving and returning, and so to be able to sample that was incredible.

And sampling Pat Parker’s poem “Poem to Ann” is for me about creating connectivity to the work that she’s done but also saying this is all in the lineage of where I’m from and who I am. Or being able to say that I witnessed hundreds of cowboys trail riding from Texas to Louisiana on any given weekend at the Zydeco playing the accordion and line dancing with pride. That informed my vantage point of Western culture long before my dusty American history book could ever. Things like the innovation of Screw and how transformative it was for me to put on a Swishahouse ‘Fuck Action’ tape to do my homework to, and I swear that pace and frequency has impacted the entire wavelength I operate from! I’m like, ‘everybody need to slow the fuck down!’

I was also so honored to have worked with other insanely talented filmmakers and artists from Texas on this project who could really translate the spirit of all that into the film; Terrance Nance who directed the piece for ‘Dreams’ and Autumn Knight whose piece ‘Directions to Prairie View’ is a historical black college in Texas I used in the video for ‘Beltway’. Robert Pruitt, who’s also from Houston, lent his work and that resonates with me so deeply. I feel forever grateful to have had such phenomenal hands touch this project and help me reach places I couldn’t have reached on my own. 

Speaking of the powerful education you received growing up in Third Ward, what did being amongst women of the black community there teach you about beauty, and how you see yourself?

Man, it’s taught me everything really! I can’t even put into words how grateful I am for the experiences I had growing up in my neighborhood, in my community of women, and I never ever take that shit for granted. I mean, growing up in my mother’s hair salon constantly reinforced that I never had to subscribe to this one dimensional version of myself because I got to bear witness to so many bomb ass incredible black women all on their own personal walks and journeys figuring this shit out. There were parts of all of them I wanted to reflect in my own existence. I got to see and hear their stories in a space where they felt safe, cared for and radiant, and could unapologetically celebrate their beauty and transformation. I got to go to the Ensemble Theater and have teachers who looked like me encourage me to write out my little itty bitty feelings, and then teach me how those little bitty thoughts could be transcribed into something they called a monologue, which back then was mind blowing for me - that expansive allowance of thinking. I simply would not even be close to the woman I am without those experiences.

And who are the female artists and creatives that are leading the way and inspiring your practice now?

That list could go on forever! We out here! I’m a big fan of Megan Thee Stallion and Tierra Whack and all the innovative energy and damn skill that they are bringing to the music space. Then there’s Jenn Nkiru and Frances Bodomo. All of the conversations and visual languages they are establishing through filmmaking have had an impact on me. My girl Kelela is really shining and killing things both musically and visually and I’m so excited to see all the places she’s going to continue to take us. And Syd is a wonder! I’m so lucky to have a tribe of incredible friends who are all killing it in their own practices of film and art.

Then there’s also Melina Matsoukas, Armina Mussa and Toyin Odutola. Lynette Yiadom leaves me speechless every time I experience her work and is a huge source of inspiration. Kilo Kish is also doing really incredible things through different expressions of mediums and artwork. Karon Davis’ sculpture always blows my mind. Honestly, I could go on and on and on! The list is endless. It’s such a pop’n ass time for boundless expression and I’m really excited to witness all of it.

Where do you plan to take your art, it’s now such an integral part of your musicality and your career?

I think the thing I feel the most is just an abundance of gratitude that I’ve been able to have and be a part of a community of people who support my work as it evolves and activates in so many different spaces and mediums. These are people who nurture that and inspire me to keep creating and give me an even greater understanding of the work I’ve created to this point. People who haven’t told me to shut the fuck up for being really annoying when I’ve said I can’t say this through music, or even dance, I need to say this through sculpture or architecture. I’m really interested in expanding on more tactile practices and exploring all of the ways in which new materials can help articulate parts of me I am yet to really dive into. I’m getting to know my body more and more every damn day and that includes all the ways I want to continue to explore my physical self through new work. I’m also feeling really excited about the future of creating new pieces and musical arrangements to present in a more philharmonic space with larger ensembles and combining that with more theatrical interpretations of my performance”.

I will come to reviews now. Pitchfork were among those to show plenty of love and respect to Solange’s When I Get Home. As A Seat at the Table was so regarded and successful, there was a sense of expectation on an album that followed three years later. I know that many are asking whether there is going to be new music from the amazing Solange:

“In a T Magazine interview with Solange published last fall, writer Ayana Mathis described the making of the new album as taking the singer back to “a kind of Houston of the mind.” It’s a city that figures heavily in Knowles family mythology as the birthplace of Solange and her sister. At the time of the interview, we didn’t know the name of the record, When I Get Home, which indicates that this is an album about return. Now we have music and an accompanying short film that reconstructs the Houston of Solange’s mind.

It’s not literal objectification of the past so much as a future memory of the city, an ephemeral mental grid. See-sawing bass booms from phantom slabs, wood-grained and candy-painted per local tradition. Synthesizers and samples ricochet off the tall, empty office buildings of downtown Houston, reverberating to the heavens. Black cowboys gallop through the dusk—the clip of hooves a drumbeat. Space refuse is treasure. And snatches of vocals from hometown rappers Devin the Dude and Scarface float like murmurs from passing car windows.

Three years after releasing the soul-baring opus A Seat at the Table, Solange has ditched traditional song structure and world-weary lyrics for a sonically and thematically ambiguous record that feels freer, and less burdened by the white gaze. Although Houston is the beating heart at its core, much like New Orleans pulsed through A Seat, the music’s spectral, free-associative quality suggests that the idea of “home” is less rooted. Solange offers a fundamental lesson of those who leave: Home isn’t something you can possess, it lives on without you. Perhaps she also understands that we can’t trust our memories and so Solange gives her music motion. We slide into this “Houston of the mind,” on a repeated refrain that reinforces the slipperiness of recall: “I saw things… I imagined/Things… I imagined.”

The music is so in motion it’s hard to pin down. Its obliqueness does not give it automatic significance; instead, like in jazz or drone music, engaged listening instigates feeling. Because Solange doesn’t offer a clear thesis like on A Seat at the Table, the onus falls on the listener to get close and make their own meaning. That can be a liberating creative impulse, particularly for a pop star who is widely considered an auteur. Solange and her musical collaborators—for what it’s worth, nearly all men aside from Abra and Cassie—duck and weave through various time signatures, burying Easter Eggs beneath bold keys, Moog magic, and textured drum lines that embellish the omnipresent low end. There are samples, background vocals, and additional personnel credits to people representing Houston’s past, present, and future: from Phylicia Rashad and the poet Pat Parker, to Solange’s young son Julez Smith II, who has a production credit on the interlude “Nothing Without Intention.”

When I Get Home is exploratory, but still kind of glossy. The melodies on “Down With the Clique” and “Way to the Show” could be rearranged remnants from her first album Solo Star, released in her teen pop days. Pharrell, the king of sheen, shows up with his signature four-count intro on “Sound of Rain,” a song that perfectly channels the kitschy, pixelated optimism of late ’90s/early aughts futurism. He also brings his toolkit staples of tightly wound drums and syncopated piano for “Almeda,” an early fan-favorite because of an unexpected feature by a baby-voiced Playboi Carti who raps about diamonds shining through the darkness on a track where Solange heralds Black ownership. We’re in Houston, so only one track hints at the time Solange recently spent in Jamaica. “Binz” is a wall-slapper, waist-winder, booty-popper. The airy three-part harmonies that have been her true calling card since covering the Dirty Projectors’ “Stillness Is the Move” ascend over a dense arpeggiated bassline, and then give way to playful back-and-forth toasting between Solange and The-Dream that echoes the incantations of Sister Nancy: “Sundown, wind chimes/I just wanna wake up on C.P. time.”

Solange is frolicking here, using a freeform template that aspires to the endlessly uplifting magic of Stevie Wonder, the psychedelic pleasures of chopped and screwed music, or the spiritual jazz of Alice Coltrane and the Arkestra of Sun Ra. One of her chief collaborators throughout is John Carroll Kirby, whose solo music could only be described as New Age. Standing on the Corner, a young New York City jazz group, provide some sublime moments of drama and tension—a perfect template for the gestural, post-modern, Kate Bush–esque choreography that Solange prefers.

When I Get Home is particularly beautiful as an ambient piece that’s unencumbered by the emotional catharsis of A Seat at the Table—but it is missing a palpable thesis statement. Fourteen of the album’s 19 tracks clock in at under three minutes, but the patchwork effect suggests a more stream-of-consciousness bricolage than, say, Tierra Whack’s idea-led brevity. She’s got a lot of ideas, but I’m still left wondering what this album can tell us about her aesthetic practice. (Despite its title, the interlude “Nothing Without Intention” doesn’t provide a clue.) But this need for direction only matters because A Seat at the Table felt so urgent.

Here, Solange is unhurried. The album rewards repetition, in listening and in execution. Repetition can cue a meditative state; it can also be code. “I saw things I imagined, things I imagined,” she sings on the opener. “We were down with you, down with you,” she continues on “Down With the Clique.” And by the time she switches up the single phrase repetition on “Almeda,” listing with pride, “Brown skin, Brown face, Black skin, Black braids,” the album is half over and the mood, the dream state, resets.

Some spiritual traditions use repeated mantras or prayers to invite awareness and presence, others as a way to invoke the past or alter the future. Design principles teach that repetition communicates unity and cohesion—enter “My Skin My Logo,” where Solange trades admiring verses with a cooing Gucci Mane, whose name conjures an endless monogram of interlocking Gs. The song itself is childlike and loving; the macho rapper softening his nursery rhyme-flow for something that sounds like an actual nursery rhyme. It’s through repetition that Solange resurrects a timeless, formless Houston of her mind. She uses the device extensively and almost compulsively, trying to remember, trying harder not to forget, and trying even harder to situate these traditions within a wider context of Black music and culture in America”.

Before rounding off with news around new music, I want to introduce NME’s five-star assessment of 2019’s When I Get Home. Turning five on 1st March, I think it is important to revisit this incredible album. One that is not played and shared as much as it should be:

“On the February 28, Solange announced the surprise release of her follow-up to the stunning 2016 album ‘A Seat At The Table’. The frenzy that erupted was colossal, and rightfully so, as she released a record that confirmed her already established greatness.

Each of the 19 tracks on ‘When I Get Home’ is magical. The opening intro consists of minimal piano with the repeated phrase, ‘Things I imagined”; this simplicity runs throughout the whole album, as airy beats, like pillowy clouds, elevate the listener. The tactical use of repetition is used to place the listener where she wants them to be; right up there with her – there’s a real sense of intimacy throughout the record.

‘Binz’, for instance, has a 46 second intro of a repeated drum sequence and bass guitar. She gives us up-tempo and groovy vibes, and we can’t help but bask in the song, yet she strips this away with the vulnerable ‘Beltway’. This is where Solange lets the fun and playful side of ‘When I Get Home’ melt into something more unguarded and raw. Here she displays a powerful ability to manipulate her audience – though you’ll be more than happy to go with her.

In addition, ‘When I Get Home’ is a celebration. A celebration of females. A celebration of black culture. But mostly a celebration of music. With exceptional – and somewhat unexpected – features (Gucci Mane, ’90s rapper Scarface), Solange’s blended approach to R&B is nothing short of breathtaking. The ninth track, “Almeda”, boasts a universal hook, while Playboi Carti’s staccato ad-lib “what”, intertwined with Solange’s lullaby-like vocals, is spectacular, and tips the song into a masterpiece. The song’s celebration of blackness runs through Solange’s lyrics (“Brown skin, brown braids / Black faith still can’t be washed away”). The lighthearted feeling of track uplifts the powerful words.

In dropping her self-produced record without fanfare, she’s showed us the magnitude that women can achieve on their own. And then there are the lyrics. ‘We deal with freak’n’ is a spoken word skit about encouraging women to see their self worth (“Do you realise how magnificent you are?… We are walking embodiments of God’s consciousness”). Solange is using her platform to say: “We are unbreakable”, and she can’t be commended highly enough for that.

‘When I Get Home’ reminds us that she’s a frontrunner of R&B in her own right. With soothing production, enveloped with numbing vocals, she leaves you in a state of utopia. This surprise album of 2019 was something we didn’t know we needed”.

On the subject of new music, Solange discussed her plans and current activities in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar. Ahead of the fifth anniversary of When I Get Home, there is a lot of speculation around a third album. I know that we will get new music from Solange soon enough. It is understandable there is a lot of excitement and demand given the power and quality of her first two albums:

“Solange knows her fans are eager to hear new music from her, but she’s still marching to the beat of her own drum—or in this case, tuba.

In an interview for Harper’s Bazaar’s March 2024 cover story, the superstar opens up about finding her latest musical obsession in the brass instrument.

“I love it,” she says. “I’ve started writing music for the tuba, and I am trying to talk myself into releasing it, but I can only imagine the eye rolls from people being like, ‘This bitch hasn’t made an album.’ ”

The last time the artist released a musical project, it was in 2019’s When I Get Home, her fourth studio album, which featured contributions from Pharrell Williams, Steve Lacy, Dev Hynes, Playboi Carti, and Tyler, the Creator.

Explaining her love for the tuba, Solange says, “It sounds like what the gut feels like to me. … There’s a way that it takes up space that you can’t deny, and it also just feels very Black to me.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Larissa Hofmann

On working with her on When I Get Home, Tyler, the Creator tells Bazaar, “It’s such a pure feeling that she’s really tapped into. … I think that’s why I liked her, because [her art] wasn’t based on chasing any zeitgeist, whether it was something political or like, yeah, I’m down like a fucking undercover cop. She’s not an undercover cop. She’s just her, and she makes whatever she wants. I feel like 80 percent of artists with these opportunities to put something out don’t do that, because they’re chasing numbers. She got daughters … like, it’s a lot of them out there that’s not citing her.”

Solange also reflected on the album that preceded When I Get Home, 2016’s A Seat at the Table, widely considered her artistic breakthrough.

As she explains, “A Seat at the Table, and the work that went into it, was all about origin: finding the way that history was generationally repeating itself or evolving and all of the ways that I found those stories within me”.

On 1st March, the wonderful When I Get Home turns five. Such a wonderful and moving listening experience, go and check it out if you have not done in a while. I wonder whether Solange will react to the fifth anniversary or say anything. One of the best albums of the last decade, When I Get Home showed that Solange was in a league of her own. A singular artist creating some of the most important music around. All eyes will be on her when it comes to…

WHAT comes next.

FEATURE: Sherbert Sunset: Little Simz’s GREY Area at Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Sherbert Sunset

Little Simz’s GREY Area at Five

_________

SOME might say….

PHOTO CREDIT: Jen Ewbank

that a fifth anniversary is not a big thing. Like it is half-way to a proper anniversary. In my opinion, it is important to mark a fifth anniversary. It is quite a big deal. In any case, there are two albums that arrived on 1st March, 2019 that are worth highlighting. The other, Solange’s When I Get Home, is one I am also covering. For this feature, I want to go deeper with Little Simz’s GREY Area. Since the release of her third studio album, Simz released the Mercury-winning album, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, in 2021. NO THANK YOU came out at the end of 2022. The E.P., Drop 7, came out on 9th February. I also forgot to mention that Drop 6 came out in 2020. She has been pretty busy since 2019! There will be great excitement around a possible new album this year. She seems to get stronger and more amazing with every release. GREY Area is arguably one of her best albums. Nominated for the 2019 Mercury Prize – it lost out to Dave’s PYSCHODRAMA -, this album should get love ahead of its fifth anniversary. I will come to a couple of the glowing reviews for GREY Area. Even though it charted low in the U.K., it did reach number one on the R&B Chart, oddly. Regardless, GREY Area is now seen as one of the finest albums of the 2010s. A masterful and stunning work of brilliance from one of our best artists and musicians. I want to start with an interview from The Line of Best Fit:

“Essentially, this is what the album’s about. It’s one big grey area. Nothing is black and white. Nothing is set in stone,” Simz says.

It’s not the only time that Simz, whose real name is Simbi Ajikawo, debates life’s twists and turns during our conversation. There’s an uncertainty, she says, that’s symptomatic of this period of adulthood. “I think the more I speak to my friends and people in my age group about it, the more I realise we’re all going through it,” she says.

“Some people go through it silently and some people are a bit more vocal. I think I was someone dealing with it to myself silently until I started opening up and was like, ‘Oh, so you’re going through it as well? Oh, sick.’ I mean, not sick! But just that I don't feel so alone in it.”

GREY Area arrives after a couple of years of intense highs and lows in which Simz has played sold-out headline shows, collected MOBO nods, and joined Lauryn Hill on the hip-hop queen’s recent anniversary tour. Simz talks of “life-changing” experiences, including a tour with Gorillaz in 2017. “A lot has changed. My life is changing in such a drastic way. Just being in that environment with Gorillaz, around legends – it definitely changed my perspective on a lot of things.”

But the peaks met the troughs. “I think, personally, the more I was on the go and away from home, the more I missed out on family and friends,” Simz explains. “I guess I just found it a bit hard to keep that balance of work and personal.”

Simz thinks that she possibly overwhelmed herself in 2017 for her second record’s promo cycle and other collaborations, which spun her into a “constant state of anxiety” and “just being down.”

“Obviously people see you on stage, and they live through your social media, but there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes,” Simz says, addressing the facade of a ‘glamourous’ music industry. “There’s a lot of moving parts, a lot of hard work. I took on a lot. I think it kind of affected my physical and mental state a little. I hadn’t given myself a moment to just breathe. I felt like people expected a lot from me, and I was just giving and giving and giving and burning myself out.”

The antidote was throwing herself back into making music once the tours were over. “I really took time and just got in the studio and worked. I kinda needed that; I kinda needed that time to cleanse and be stationary. Hone in on my thoughts and focus everything.”

Simz is grateful, for herself at least, that creating music is both a passion and a coping mechanism. “Some people will go through stuff and, I dunno, turn to substance abuse – whatever it is they need to deal with certain things,” she says. “But I’m lucky enough that my outlet was music, getting in the studio and being able to write about these things. After I’d written the album I did feel a sense of clarity and like, ‘Ok, I know where I’m at at now. It feels like I’m normal again. I’m functioning like a human being as opposed to a robot.’”

Perhaps this is little surprise; those familiar with Simz’ back catalogue will know that she’s a prolific writer. In the space of nine years she’s released four mixtapes, seven EPs, and – including GREY Area which drops this Friday – three studio albums. To date, everything has been released on her own label AGE 101.

Growing up, Simz was a keen, precocious performer. She was showcasing her talents in drama classes from the age of nine. By 11, she was playing her own music at Islington Academy. In her teens she secured a role on the CBBC superhero show Spirit Warriors and later a role in E4 youth drama Youngers. Then she turned back to music. In 2013, aged 19, Simz released her fourth mixtape Blank Canvas, premiering it via Jay-Z’s Life + Times website.

Simz’ debut record, 2015’s A Curious Tale Of Trials + Persons, was a concept album about fame replete with role-playing characters and Simz’ pithy rhymes. Its 2016 follow-up, Stillness In Wonderland, displayed musical vignettes about navigating life’s uncertainties via a rich tapestry of R&B, electronica and jazz. On the latter record’s track, “Wings”, Simz spits: “This the type of music that ain’t never going to sell? / Well, what if I prove you wrong?”

"I’m tapping into the more musician side of me as opposed to just the rapper side...I play instruments so I’m listening to things with different ears now”

Is she trying to prove naysayers wrong? Simz has no doubt produced some of her most impactful, immediate material to date in GREY Area. In “Offence” it’s clattering beats, contorted synths, and jazz flutes bolster incredible affirmations: “I'm Jay Z on a bad day / Shakespeare on my worst day.” Meanwhile, “101 FM” is an engrossing tale of Simz’ life story over a looping, pentatonic video game 8-bit hook. “Boss” has the bluesy snarl and stomp of Kanye West’s “Gold Digger”. In fact, she namedrops West later in the song: “Learnt from 'Ye then went and touched the sky n****” Throughout the record Simz equips artistic self-belief with sturdy mechanics.

“I think it was all a natural progression to be honest,” she says of these brasher sounds. “I didn’t go into writing this album thinking, ‘I want this to reach more people.’ I mean, obviously I want it to reach more people, but I want to make music that this time round is going to transcend. It was more that, for me, I wanted to be more experimental and try new things.”

Simz, who describes the writing and recording process as “a true collaboration”, adds that GREY Area is her most musical work to date. She’s picked instruments up more than ever this time. In the past she’s been stuck with the label “UK female MC” or “rapper” (a mistake she once corrected The Guardian about).

Really, Simz is an artist in myriad ways. She raps, writes lyrics, composes, produces, and ‘dabbles’ with the drums, guitar and bass. ‘I’m tapping into the more musician side of me as opposed to just the rapper side,” she says. “I play instruments so I’m listening to things with different ears now”.

I think GREY Area was the album where I discovered Little Simz. When I truly tuned into her work. I went back and listened to Stillness in Wonderland (2016) and A Curious Tale of Trials + Persons (2015). The Independent sat down with Little Simz to discuss the awe-inspiring GREY Area. Many observing how this was her most complete and confident work to date:

“I don’t open up to people,” she says. Yet the 25-year-old, born Simbi Ajikawo, is hardly reticent, as we sit by the window of a pub overlooking the Thames – around 20 minutes away from where she grew up in North London – to discuss her superb new album, GREY Area.

“At the time I was writing, I was in a very confusing headspace,” she explains. “Everything was in this weird area, and it was all a shade of grey. Being in your mid-twenties feels like a strange place to be. I’m still discovering myself and things are a lot more complex than they were five years ago. Nothing’s straightforward. I’m peeling off layers as I’m getting older, and finding more and more about myself.”

This feeling of being adrift provided the title for her new record. GREY Area is her third studio album, in a career that has also seen the release of five EPs, a mention on Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list, praise from Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar, collaborations with everyone from Ghetts to Gorillaz, and a tour with her idol Lauryn Hill. It is an LP that, one hopes, will finally snag her a more mainstream audience and put a stop to the “underrated” tag that precedes most mentions of her name.

“I did go through a phase where I didn’t understand what more I had to do to prove myself,” she recalls. “Sometimes I go on my Twitter and I see comments like ‘Simz is so stepped on, so underrated’, but I can’t keep focusing on the people who don’t wanna f*** with me. I’m over it. I’m just putting my energy into the people who have been supporting, and who get it and understand what I’m trying to do. Maybe that’s just me getting older.”

I think that’s what makes my music have this international feel,” she says. “I’m from London – this is my home – but I feel as though my music can stretch way beyond. And especially with this album, I think we’ve found a clever way to open it up a lot more.”

It helped to surround herself with a team of people she trusted to make the record, such as her childhood friend Inflo, GREY Area’s producer, whose previous credits include Michael Kiwanuka’s breakthrough album Love & Hate. “We had that chemistry there already,” Simz says, “so getting in the studio was easy.”

There are moments of startling vulnerability on GREY Area, but before you reach them you’re met with the full-throttle assault of “Offence” – where Simz weaponises her formidable lyrical skills (“I’m Jay-Z on a bad day, Shakespeare on my worst days”) before unleashing the war cry: “I said it with my chest and I don’t care who I offend”.

“If you get offended, then that’s on you,” Simz says now. “I’m not doing this cheap stuff just because I’m female.” She wanted this record to have a gritty, Nineties underground vibe, which led to elements like the vocal distortion on “Boss”. She also worked with live musicians rather than samples, which she “didn’t have the luxury of doing” on the 2017 concept album Stillness in Wonderland. She has also included three featured artists, all carefully chosen and vastly different to one another: Jamaican reggae star Chronixx, with whom she last collaborated on the 2016 track “LMPD”; Kiwanuka; and the Swedish electronic band Little Dragon”.

It is worth bringing in an interview from Vice. There are some interesting exchanges and revelations from the interview. A very natural and honest artist who is inspiring others coming through. GREY Area was a massive statement that announced Simz as one of the finest voices of her generation:

“Simz started rapping aged nine, putting music up online and getting on mics wherever she could around London via her star-making youth clubs (I’m talking Leona Lewis and Alexandra Burke as other alums). Born Simbi Ajikawo and raised in Holloway by her mother, a devoted foster carer, Simz’s gallons of creative energy needed an outlet. So as a teen she acted too, appearing on TV shows like CBBC’s Spirit Warriors and E4’s Youngers, but music kept drawing her back. By the time she’d started her music technology degree at University of West London, in Ealing, her career was taking off. And she soon realised she couldn’t do both. Quitting uni would show both sides to herself: her ambition, and her insistence on doing things her own way. Really, she’d been like that her whole life. As a child, she remembers, “100% my vibe was ‘I’m just doing my thing,’ literally. And as much as it may be shocking to people that I’m indie and doing music, if you know me from when I was little I’ve always moved in a way that is independent. I’ve always done my own thing. My friends and that, close people, my family, they know this about me: Simbi moves how she wants to move. I’m not following no this and that.”

You can see that in how she’s built a career as an independent artist. But beyond that, Simz has pushed on with unorthodox projects – absolutely loads of EPs, curating a festival, never once changing her sound to please others, slapping away the dreaded “femcee” label – without much initial support from the traditional UK music industry gatekeepers. Yes, she’s received MOBO Award nominations and recognition from ticketing app Dice, for her live shows, plus an Association of Independent Music Award for her 2016 debut album A Curious Tale of Trials + Persons. But it took a good few years for her co-signs to flood in outside the easily siloed world of black music (which now underpins the majority of pop, even when people try to brush it away with an ‘urban’ tag). She still hasn’t received a major award nod.

Even spending a short time in her presence, you clock that she’d rather get on with the work. I mention how Grey Area feels like a snapshot, of her headspace and outlook now. Unlike her past releases, focused on near-fantastical worlds and dream-like states, Grey Area is grounded in today, in London, in her. “It’s funny you say that, cos the other day, I was listening to my oooold music. My Soundcloud stuff, and that. And I was like, ‘oh my days, I proper remember feeling like that.’ I just… remember, you know? As I’ve continued on my journey, I’ve forgotten some things, cos I’m so focused on going forward, going forward, going forward. But what I deeped is that without me even knowing, I’ve been documenting my life for as long as I can remember. And that’s so cool… I’ve had so many streams of thoughts, and I’ve put them all out there.” Sometimes, doing so felt daunting, she adds, but it was all worth it.

Our conversation meanders for a bit, as our food now sits cold on our plates. We discuss how young rappers are now expected to arrive fully-formed, engaging on social media and opening themselves up to public scrutiny without much protection. Since she started so young too, I wonder if she ever takes the time to reflect on what’s she’s accomplished so far, as an independent artist in such a wild wild west industry. It’s a few days shy of her 25th birthday. She pauses for a bit, sipping her juice. “You know what’s mad? Last night, I prayed.” She sounds relaxed now, more at ease. “I was praying for aaaages, it was a long prayer. I was going through points in my life and thanking god for that time when I done that, and done this. And as I was saying it out loud I was like, ‘oh yeah… I’ve done that. I’ve been an award nominee, I’ve played there…’ I can forget those things. Going forward, the next five years, when I’m 30 – and I know I’m chilling now – I’m so excited to grow wiser”.

I will come to some reviews now. AllMusic highlight how Little Simz comes out swinging from the opening track. GREY Area is an album that wastes no time in getting under the skin and into the head. A faultless work from a genius:

“British rapper Little Simz has been a prominent figure on the scene for several years; even so, she is often sidelined by the rise of grime and U.K. drill in spite of her introspective, prescient wordplay and desire to explore interesting and diverse styles. On her third full-length album, Grey Area, Simz has reached a new peak, with an honest record that isn't afraid to take shots at the world at large. It's also incredibly concise -- an aspect that many of her peers often miss the mark on -- with no filler despite the broad variation the record boasts.

Simz comes out swinging on opening track "Offence," which acts as a declaration of intent for everything that follows, as she bellows "I said it with my chest and I don't care who I offend." It acts in part as a battle cry but also as a primer for truths, both personal and social, that she is capable of exploring. This double-edged approach is demonstrated over the next two tracks, with "Boss" aiming outward and "Selfish" decidedly inward; the latter is a master class in songwriting -- it manages to be soothing and powerful in equal measure. The lush instrumentation draws comparisons to Solange's "Cranes in the Sky," as the vocal range and classy atmosphere in both tracks brings them unavoidably parallel to each other.

Grey Area has no real weaknesses, as Simz takes her sound in multiple directions without sacrificing quality. Take the nostalgia trip of "101 FM," which has an unconventional melody and takes an unashamedly rose-tinted look at days gone by yet remains captivating. It slides straight into the low-slung groove of "Pressure" featuring Little Dragon -- who continue to stun with their guest spots. They act as one of four collaborators, also including Cleo Sol, Chronixx, and Michael Kiwanuka, all of whom are used to add flavor rather than dominate the songs they appear on.

At this stage in her career, Little Simz is at the top of her game, asserting herself as a global contender by displaying well-realized variety and concise lyrical flow. Her evolution up to this point was a clear signifier, with all the components in place even in her early work; on Grey Area, it feels as if everything has come together in perfect unison, resulting in one of the strongest rap albums of 2019”.

I will end with NME’s assessment of GREY Area. It does turn five on 1st March. I hope that Little Simz gives it a nod. An album that took her to new heights, go and listen to it if you have not heard it before. It is an album that will instantly draw you in:

“Fiercely confident and unapologetically forthright, the stunning new album from Little Simz is a reminder of her bold – and, sadly, sometimes underrated – talent. With punching bass lines and whip-smart melodies, 25-year-old Simbi Ajikawo takes us on a wild ride through her world, laying her vulnerability bare with admirable openness.

The London rapper has been co-signed by Kendrick Lamar and was the first independent artist on Forbes’ ‘30 under 30’ list. But her previous record, 2016’s ‘Stillness In Wonderland’, flew under the mainstream’s radar, perhaps because it’s a knotty concept album that demands the listener’s close attention. She’s since confessed that she’s questioned her craft, and wondered whether her hard work is worth not having her loved ones around. Well, ‘Grey Area’ is filled with immediate, punchy hooks, and we’re all the better for it.

The record swells with pride, and Simbi’s celebration of her sense of worth is catching. See opening track, ‘Offence’, where she reminds us that she’s back again and has to pick up where she left off before (“I said it with my chest / I don’t care who I offend – uh huh!”). Her unapologetic words, coupled with that vicious beat, make you feel unbreakable, and set the tone for the journey you’re about to embark on.

On ‘Flowers’, the final track, Simz wonders if the ambition she has for herself – wanting to be legendary and iconic – comes with darkness. Here, she reflects on her idols, such as Amy Winehouse and Jimi Hendrix, and ruminates on their dizzying highs, but tragic endings. It’s a indication of the mindset she was in while writing ‘Grey Area’; the north London powerhouse was going through a dark time, which became pivotal in her creative process. You can hear this free-flowing energy – up and down– that runs through the album.

Across these 10 tracks, Simz utilises her most valuable commodity: honesty. Having stripped away the narrative cloak that shrouded the highlights of ‘Stillness In Wonderland’, she’s crafted a knockout record – and finally come true on her early promise. This is the best rap record of the year so far”.

On 1st March, we mark five years of GREY Area. From the peerless Little Simz, she would go on to create perhaps even stronger work. I feel her third studio album is very important. A moment when she shifted up a gear. A gem from 2019, it deserved more awards and chart success. Even so, now, it is viewed as one of the best albums from the last decade. Five years from its release, GREY Area has lost…

NONE of its brilliance.

FEATURE: Groovelines: Hole – Miss World

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

Hole – Miss World

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ON 28th March….

Hole’s Miss World turns thirty. The first single from their second studio album, Live Through This (which is thirty next month), I wanted to go deeper with one of the defining songs of the 1990s. Written by Courtney Love and Eric Erlandson, this is a song that will be instantly recognisable to fans of Hole. One of their most-loved moments. I wanted to look ahead to that anniversary. Eric Erlandson and Courtney Love began writing Miss World in the summer of 1992 following the departure of former band members, Jill Emery and Caroline Rue. I will quote from Wikipedia:

“An early version of the song, recorded with drummer Patty Schemel and Love's husband and Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, was recorded in BMG Ariola Ltda in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on January 21, 1993. Featuring Love on lead guitar and vocals, recently recruited drummer Patty Schemel and Cobain on bass, the trio recorded the song, alongside others such as "She Walks on Me", "Softer, Softest" and "Closing Time", during breaks in Nirvana's session. Sound engineer Craig Montgomery stated that though some songs were "half-baked ideas", "'Miss World' was a fairly complete song at that point" and "'the most fleshed out song' of the session"

The band played the song live on July 15 and 16, 1993, during their performances at the Clapham Grand in London and at the Phoenix Festival in Stratford-upon-Avon, respectively. The official album version of the song was recorded as part of the Live Through This sessions at Triclops Studios in Atlanta, Georgia in October of that year”.

There are features and reviews of the fabulous Miss World. Even though the single does not turn thirty until next month, its  promotional music video for was recorded in Los Angeles in February 1994. It is the only music video by Hole that features bassist Kristen Pfaff. Directed by the legendary Sophie Muller, it is the perfect accompaniment to the song’s lyrics and themes. There is a poignancy to Miss World. A week after its release – on 5th April, 1994 -, Kurt Cobain died. One of the most tragic and heartbreaking events of the 1990s, we lost an icon. A death that obviously deeply affected Courtney Love. Burning Blogger discussed this in the context of his review of Hole’s Miss World from 2014:

“A single so good and a video so superb, and also a song so precious to me, that I thought it was worth marking in a completely separate post.

Released on March 28th 1994, Miss World is a song that, like the entire album it preceded, has had a special place in the immortal playlist of my mind for twenty years. I think I may have said the same thing in a post about Nirvana’s In Utero album, but there comes a point where a work of art – in whatever medium – transcends beyond its initial nature, be it a painting, a film, a song or whatever else, and has been with you so long that it has become part of the fabric of your very consciousness, of your very life.

Although Doll Parts and Violet are more popularly thought of as the primary singles from Live Through This, it’s Miss World that was the first; and it has, especially because of its video, always seemed like the single that most acts as a microcosm of its parent album, in terms specifically of its evocative themes and imagery.

The superb Sophie Miller directed video features the same Carrie connotations and beauty-queen motif that characterizes the iconic Leilani Bishop cover image of the album. Being the single that preceded the album’s release, we can presume this was the deliberate idea.

The imagery is so resonant, the tone so perfectly captured, the essence of the song so powerfully evoked. Sophie Miller’s video is like a mini film in itself, as well as acting like a fitting thematic trailer for Live Through This.

This is Hole’s best music video, by far. The imagery is iconic. The whole thing – musically and visually – resonates powerfully.

Another reason I’ve always liked it so much is that it seems to capture the band as a whole (or as a Hole) in a way that other Hole videos didn’t do; although of course it’s always Courtney-centric, there’s nevertheless appropriate coverage given to Patti Schemel, Eric Erlandson, and Kristin Pfaff. I also think – I might be wrong – that it’s the only Hole video to properly feature Pfaff, who died barely a couple of months after the single was released.

Pfaff is said to have influenced the lyrics of the chorus, which she also provided haunting backing vocals for, her voice offsetting Courtney’s utterly hauntingly in the mix.

Wonderfully conceived and brilliantly executed, it really is a video perfectly tailored to so beautiful a song. No one makes music videos as tasteful and as beautifully conceived as this anymore. “Music is dead” is a tired, cliched thing to say these days, but in artistic terms there’s probably a case to be made that “Music videos are dead”, or at least dead as a meaningful art-form in itself and not just as over-indulgent promo material.

Another thing too I’ve always liked about the Miss World video, and about the song itself, is Courtney’s emotional nakedness and vulnerability; vulnerability not being a facet that often comes across in Courtney Love’s screen persona, even though it does in her music. The highly Carrie-influenced motif and the Courtney-as-Miss-World-character at the beauty pageant juxtaposes the same triumph/tragedy, elation/sadness duality that permeates the song and much of the Live Through This album.

With hindsight that duality also is all the more poignant in light of subsequent events; what’s extraordinary is that Kurt died precisely a week after the single’s release and a few days before the album’s release-date. What should’ve been Courtney’s and Hole’s creative and commercial triumph and a celebration of an extraordinary album was overshadowed, almost swallowed up, by that soul-destroying tragedy.

The themes and imagery seems so eerily prophetic: Live Through This itself was set up to be Courtney’s and Hole’s commercial and creative triumph or coronation – and instead, it was a moment or event marred by tragedy. You can see that distilled in the Miss World video: the triumphal coronation or homecoming is underpinned by an ever-present bittersweetness or sadness.

As for the song itself, it is of course superb. Tender, plaintive, even heartbreaking, but yet with a chorus that manages to be kick-arse and bittersweet at the same time. Written by Courtney and Eric Erlandson, that classic Courtney/Erlandson dual guitar dynamic is probably most memorable on this track of all the songs on the album, really evoking a perfectly bittersweet tone to act as vehicle for the lyrics in the same way the verse-guitars on Violet does, while the dual Courtney/Pfaff vocals for the chorus are just absolute perfection.

Lyrically, the song, though said by some to be partly about substance abuse, is more obviously a song about warped or damaged self-image, self-loathing, self-esteem, distorted body image, and a theme that seems to flow through a number of Love’s songs; that of the duality/paradox between inner beauty/ugliness and the outer ugliness/beauty as projected into the world and onto others.

It’s not even my favorite song on the album (which illustrates just how good that album is); I probably think Violet or Jennifer’s Body are better songs. But really that’s just minutiae, as it’s virtually impossible to separate the different tracks on that album, as that’s like taking apart chapters in a novel – the whole album is threaded together inextricably, Miss World being a vital piece of a larger story.

But even on its own, what an extraordinary song and how beautifully visualized in the art of video”.

In 2021, Rolling Stone revisited the classic and unforgettable video for Miss World. For anyone who was a teenager in the 1990s, this song and video would have resonated in some way. The first taste of the second album from the sensational Hole, I do think that Miss World deserves more airplay today. Such a strong and incredible single that didn’t really trouble the charts (though it reached thirteen in the U.S .Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart):

“THINGS GOT HEATED (or, shall we say, brutal) last week when Olivia Rodrigo announced her Sour Prom concert film, which featured a photo of her as a Gen Z Carrie wearing a tiara while holding a bouquet of roses. But as her mascara-streaked eyes gazed into the distance, trouble loomed ahead.

Within hours, Courtney Love pointed out the similarity between Rodrigo’s photo and the cover of Hole’s 1994 album Live Through This, and the two musicians had a heartfelt exchange about “twinning” (with Love playfully asking for flowers and a note). Instead of leaving it at that, Love then took to Facebook, where she responded to users’ comments a bit differently. “Does Disney teach kids reading and writing?” she wrote. “God knows. Let’s see. Yes, this is rude. Rage inducing? Honey if I had a dollar for everyone this happens? I’d be real rich!”

None of this is surprising — in fact, the exchange is reminiscent of Love and Lana Del Rey in 2012, when Love called out the singer for covering Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box.” (“You do know the song is about my Vagina right?” she said). But Love and Del Rey formed a friendship following these comments. Hopefully, she’ll soon befriend Rodrigo, too.

But enough of that. Let’s revisit Hole’s “Miss World,” a legendary video soaked in beauty pageant glory and angsty riffs. Love stars as Miss World, who pampers herself before taking the stage in her signature kinderwhore outfit. With a backdrop that reads “Cleanliness Is Next to Godliness,” Love tears through the track with her band; it’s the only Hole video to feature the late bassist Kristen Pfaff, who assists on backing vocals.

As the video concludes, Love is crowned queen and gifted a bouquet. It’s Carrie but somehow more tragic, as Love sings lines like “Kill me pills” and “I’ve made my bed, I’ll die in it” that contrast with the glamour. What teenager — especially one of a younger generation who didn’t grow up with MTV — wouldn’t be enamored by it!”.

I will wrap up now. I will look at the thirtieth anniversary Live Through This closer to April. It is, in my opinion, one of the defining albums of the 1990s. Of course, one cannot really discuss it without also talking about Kurt Cobain. The first single from the album, Miss World, deserved a spotlight. Such a powerful and important song that has endured all these years. It turns thirty on 28th March. I wonder how Courtney Love feels about the track today. If you have not heard this song in a while, I would suggest that you…

PLAY it now.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Beck’s Mellow Gold at Thirty: Songs from Brilliant Third Albums

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

Beck’s Mellow Gold at Thirty: Songs from Brilliant Third Albums

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I recently marked the tenth anniversary….

PHOTO CREDIT: Wellington Cunha/Pexels

of Beck’s Morning Phase. So soon after, I was thinking of celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of Beck’s third studio album, Mellow Gold. It was released on 1st March, 1994. It is considered to be one of his classics. Three years before Odelay, this is Beck’s first masterpiece. It is arguably his best studio album. At the very least, it is up there with Odelay and 1999’s Midnite Vultures. Rather than write an extensive feature about Mellow Gold, I would suggest people check out articles like this and this. Instead, I want to salute brilliant and standout third albums. Maybe not the absolute best from artists, these third albums are classics/legendary in their own right. I think that the third album is the most difficult. The moment where you have to keep sustaining pressure and ensure that the quality up. Some artists reach their peak by the third albums. Others find form after a rather lacklustre first couple of album. In honour of Beck’s third studio album turning thirty on 1st March, below are cuts from some other classic and brilliant third studio albums. I hope that you enjoy this…

ECCLETIC mixtape.

FEATURE: Golden Threads and Treasured Pages: Kate Bush’s Desirable and Sought-After Rarities, Collectibles and Expensive Treasures

FEATURE:

 

 

Golden Threads and Treasured Pages

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a shot from John Carder Bush’s book, Cathy

Kate Bush’s Desirable and Sought-After Rarities, Collectibles and Expensive Treasures

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I have sort of covered this before….

but there is a bit of a disconnect when it comes to Kate Bush merchandise and items. No official website or source that collates all official releases, plus books and rarities. You can find various record, books and merchandise on various websites. Kate Bush’s shop offers some delightful and must-own goods. I wonder whether a superstore or big website will be created where you can link to everything Kate Bush. I bring this up as I have been thinking about Kate Bush products and attachments to her. I have most of her albums and many books/magazines dedicated to her. Of course, as I research a lot about her, I think I know most of what there is to know. When it comes to passing down some sort of legacy regarding Kate Bush and having keepsakes, there are things that I yearn to possess. I know there are Kate Bush T-shirts available on websites like Redbubble or Etsy. This wonderful out-of-print/stock T-shirt is among her most sought-after bits of merchandise. It is a gorgeous Never for Ever T-shirt. I am the sort of person that would love to start random conversations about Kate Bush. There are T-shirts available, yet not as many options as you’d think. Some rare T-shirts from way back that fans would love to see reprinted. Just as a way of displaying our love for Kate Bush on our chests, having an option of T-shirts would be amazing. I have been thinking more deeply about those high-price items and things that you can preserve and keep.

I think I have said this a few times before. If I had to name one item about Kate Bush that I would love to own and keep, it would be Cathy. It is available to own, yet it is quite pricey. The lowest price I have seen is about £250. It is a photobook featuring snaps of Bush as a child. Taken by her brother Jay (John Carder Bush), who is a professional photographer and continued to shoot Bush right up till 2011, they are so emotional and amazing. Before her career started and she became the artist we all know. These intimate and extraordinary photos of a verry young Kate Bush. Or Cathy. It is almost like a different time in her life. Before she became ‘Kate Bush’. Born Catherine Bush, that was shorted to Cathy. I guess with most photos taken in and around the Bush family’s home at East Wickham Farm, this is Kate Bush in the 1960s. A wild and wonderful decade, she was absorbing music, learning from her brothers and growing up at this amazing and changing time. I think that this is a book I would own but maybe not flick through too much, lest I damaged it or spilled something on the pages! It is a book I would cherish and pass down to someone. I think every Kate Bush fan has the dream list of what they would like to own.

PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

The reason I am revisiting this subject now is because, in my opinion, people do not really know Kate Bush. So many people I speak to have either not heard of her or they know her from one song. I do think that a deeper knowledge would compel them to find out more and listen more intently. If people know her from Hounds of Love and a particular song, then that means she risks becoming a novelty or one-song act in years to come. Of course, people should listen to the albums and see as many interviews as possible. In truly understand an artist or getting a fuller picture, books such as Cathy takes us way back. We can see where she grew up and what her surroundings were. There is a bit of a discrepancy when it comes to Kate Bush merchandise and what you have to pay. I know there is merchandise from 2014’s Before the Dawn that sells for a pretty penny. Auction sites where you can get 1st pressings and rare records. I still think that an online store where a whole range of rarities and great bits of merchandise, sold at a reasonable price, would increase this curiosity about Kate Bush. TikTok videos are spreading her music, though a whole new generation – and existing fans – who can buy Kate Bush T-shirts, get easy access to some very cool and important merchandise and goods would be awesome to see. I keep wondering about whether old-style T-shirts and merchandise from the 1980s and 1990s will come back. Whether a book like Cathy will be lowered in price so that it is more accessible to all fans.

In researching for Kate Bush features and heading back, I come across various merchandise that is either not in stock or is quite high in price. I feel there would be a real desire and demand if Never for Ever and Hounds of Love T-shirts were printed and back in stock. I feel, as time goes on, aside from vinyl and the music, it would be important keeping aside artefacts and wonderful items connected to Kate Bush. Many fans feel the same. Having Cathy on a bookshelf. Maybe having a coffee table book like Guido Harari’s The Kate Inside. Some cool and eye-catching T-shirts that you can have and cherish. Of course, there is a world of choice when it comes to rarities and what is available on auction sites. I know so many Kate Bush fans have a wish list of Kate Bush memorabilia/items. Given how many costumes she wore and how much stuff she wore and was stored somewhere makes me wonder how much is available somewhere or was discarded. Old lyrics sheets and some very valuable things that a fan would give their all to own. Maybe Kate Bush does have them and doesn’t want to part with them. Maybe it is dreaming and fantasy, though you never know what might come to light. I will own Cathy one day. Perhaps find an old T-shirt on an auction site that is in good condition. It helps build my appreciation of Kate Bush. I think it can do the same for new fans and those unaware. It just makes it clear how compelling…

IN THIS PHOTO: Lindsay Kemp and Kate Bush in a scene from 1993’s The Line, the Cross and the Curve/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

THE wonderful Kate Bush is.

FEATURE: Darkness Before the Dawn... 21st March, 2014: Kate Bush Drops a Wonderful Bombshell

FEATURE:

 

 

Darkness Before the Dawn…

21st March, 2014: Kate Bush Drops a Wonderful Bombshell

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THERE will be a lot to discuss….

as we head closer to the tenth anniversary of Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn. The first of twenty-two nights from Hammersmith’s Eventim Apollo took place on 26th August, 2014. One of the most spectacular and moving live events in generations, I was sadly not one of the fortunate ones who was in attendance. That retrospective anguish of missing out on something never to be repeated still cuts deep! Regardless, the live album is available. We can get a semblance of what it must have been like witnessing something so spectacular and epic! No other artist but Kate Bush could mount such a live spectacle. Her only tour happened in 1979. This 2014 residency came thirty-five years later. Understandably, when 2014 began, nobody expected Kate Bush to announce Before the Dawn! To be fair, I am not sure what the exact moment was when Kate Bush decided to do it. She was convinced her son, Bertie. A wise and passionate child, he knew that his mother had the confidence and ability to get on the stage again and produce something magnificent! Considering expectation, nerves and pressure, it is fair that Bush would have been reluctant to do something as committed and large as a residency. A one-off gig is big enough. Twenty-two dates of such a gruelling and demanding show is something else! When the residency began, Kate Bush was fifty-six. Even though artists like Madonna right now are embarking on huge worldwide tours, not many of Kate Bush’s similar-aged peers were. In terms of solo artist at least. Even fewer who had been away from the stage for years. I can imagine there would have been doubts in her mind when it came to pulling off such a feat. There is still so much ageism in music. Especially when it comes to women and their ability. Kate Bush, who found 1979’s The Tour of Life so draining and tough (though she had great fun on the tour), would have cast her mind back and remembered why she never repeated it.

katebushnews.com · BBC Radio 4 News reports on Kate Bush 'Before the Dawn' 21/03/2014

Regardless, there was this moment when doubts around cost, scale, physical and emotional demands, nerves…and wondering whether an audience would embrace and welcome her after all these years was allayed and she committed. I shall come to the actual first night itself. In a tenth anniversary feature closer to August, I hope to speak to people who were actually at the residency – hopefully including a few famous faces and artists! I am getting too far ahead. Imagine being a Kate Bush fan on 20th March, 2014! That day was a Thursday. Looking forward to the end of the week, there was not much to distinguish it in terms of its special-ness. In terms of Kate Bush anniversaries, there would have been nothing people were planning for. As Twitter and social media was still fairly young and there was not this buzz and sense something was going to happen, people were taken aback. 20th March, 2014 was the final day of ‘nothing’. Bush’s 50 Words for Snow came out in 2011. Since then, there has been the odd bit here and there. Nothing in terms of a follow-up album or any inkling of live work. On 21st March, 2014, that all changed. This was the day when Kate Bush announced through her website that Before the Dawn was born. I remember that date. I was naïve enough to think I could go to work, return, and that there would be tickets left for any of the dates! It is no wonder that there was such media and fan frenzy that day. Waking up on a Friday and relieved the working week was over, many were given a bonus and extra reason to celebrate when the news dropped! It was a monumental moment out of the blue. Nobody realistically would ever imagined that the next thing we would get from Kate Bush was news of a residency. Maybe an album or new single. But this extensive and huge live commitment?!

Thanks to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia for this information about the residency: Originally, fifteen live dates were announced. A pre-sale ticket allocation took place on 26th March for fans who had signed up to her website in previous months (and years). After this pre-sale, a further seven dates were added due to the high demand. Tickets went on sale to the general public on 28th March. Most of them were sold out within fifteen minutes. Think back now, it almost didn’t seem real. But it was! Kate Bush News looked back at that magical time:

“About Before the Dawn…..

Kate performed a series of 22 live dates in August/September/October 2014 at London’s Eventim Apollo, Hammersmith. These were her first live shows in 35 years! The venue was the same (now renamed) Hammersmith Odeon where the Tour of Life ended in 1979. All dates sold out on the morning of March 28th in a matter of minutes. The performances were called “Before the Dawn” and in her announcement on March 21st 2014 Kate said on the official site:

“I am delighted to announce that we will be performing some live shows this coming August and September.

I hope you will be able to join us and I look forward to seeing you there.
          We’ll keep you updated with further news on the web site.
                  Meanwhile, all details of concert dates and tickets are in the note below.

Very best wishes,

Kate”

The 22 dates were: AUGUST: 26th, 27th, 29th, 30th. SEPTEMBER: 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 9th, 10th, 12th, 13th, 16th, 17th, 19th, 20th, 23rd, 24th, 26th, 27th, 29th, 30th OCTOBER: 1st

During the show’s run, the concerts received hugely positive reviews (see below). All of Kate’s 11 albums re-entered the UK charts in late August, with Kate becoming the only female artist in history to have 8 albums in the UK Top 40 in the same week, rivalling similar records by The Beatles and Elvis Presley. The concerts were filmed over two nights in September, for a possible DVD/Blu-ray release, but Kate has never said anything publicly about such a release. Kate wrote detailed production notes in the accompanying tour programme, describing the enormous efforts of the large team of talent that brought the shows together”.

katebushnews.com · Sean Twomey interviewed on BBC Radio 6 Music 21/3/2014

Of course, on 21st March, 2014, nobody really knew what the live show would consist of. Scrambling for tickets, Kate Bush fans were more concerned about claiming their place. Getting to one of those nights! What was unveiled was the realisation of ambitions from Kate Bush and dreams of many fans. Not only was she bringing songs to the stage she had never performed live before. Two distinct and beloved suites were going to be combined. The second disc of Bush’s 2005 double-album, Aerial, is called A Sky of Honey. Charting the course of a summer’s day, it is this gorgeous, almost symphonic (in a domestic way) look at nature and the unfolding day emerge. Normality and the mundane alongside the extraordinary. Also, for the first and only time, Bush mounted Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave. Released in 1985, Hounds of Love made an instant impact. Bush was going to bring The Ninth Wave to the cinema or T.V. She has planned a filmic version but, as was often the case, other things got in the way. We have seen no televisual or filmed version of this. The only full realisation and construction of the suite was seen by those lucky enough to see Before the Dawn. It makes it gutting that  DVD of the residency will never be released!

katebushnews.com · Seán Twomey interviewed by Dave Fanning on RTE 2FM 23/3/2014

It is going to be great officially marking the tenth anniversary of Before the Dawn in August. That first night (26th August, 2014) was one that many thought would never happen. I felt that it was crucial marking the announcement of the tour. That shock that we got when news was posted! Ten years ago on 21st March, we were all in for a massive and wonderful revelation. Since 2014, Bush released the live album of Before the Dawn (in 2016). She has remastered and re-released her studio albums. She has had chart success with Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), with a big helping hand from Stranger Things. She has posted updates to her website, been interviewed for Woman’s Hour (in 2023). She has also published a book of lyrics, How to Be Invisible (2018). We have no idea what the next project from Kate Bush will be. Whether an eleventh studio album will ever come. What we do know is, that back in 2014, a host of fans from around the world converged to the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith to watch an icon return to the stage. That announcement on 21st March, 2014 was like a bomb going off! Almost blind-sided by it, there was this enormous fever and happiness. I guess the days previous offered up a hint that something might happen. For those who managed to get tickets and were looking ahead to Before the Dawn in August 2014, they had little idea what a spectacular and life-changing concert they would see! It is hard to believe that that was nearly…

TEN years ago.

FEATURE: Your Constant Heart: Looking Ahead to the Thirty-Fifth Anniversary of Deacon Blue’s When the World Knows Your Name

FEATURE:

 

 

Your Constant Heart

Looking Ahead to the Thirty-Fifth Anniversary of Deacon Blue’s When the World Knows Your Name

_________

I do not know whether….

IN THIS PHOTO: Deacon Blue seen here posing in the studio for the Daily Record on 10th February, 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Mirrorpix

Deacon Blue have any special plans for the thirty-fifth anniversary of their second studio album, When the World Knows Your Name. Following the acclaimed and remarkable Raintown of 1987, the title of their second album is very apt. The Scottish band very much were a band on many people’s radar. Released on 6th April, 1989, this is one of my favourite albums from my childhood. With standout cuts like Real Gone Kid, Wages Day, Fergus Sings the Blues and Queen of the New Year alongside gorgeous cuts such as Sad Loved Girl and Your Constant Heart, everyone needs to hear this. With lead songwriter Ricky Ross together with Lorraine McIntosh, James Prime, Ewen Vernal, Graeme Kelling and Dougie Vipond, the band released a true classic. The group are still playing and going strong. Sadly, we lost Graeme Kelling in 2004. His guitar brilliance is key to the album’s sound and success. A remarkable musician much-missed! I am going to dive deeper into When the World Knows Your Name. Their second studio album almost plays like a greatest hits collection. Opening with a remarkable four-song run of Queen of the New Year, Wages Day, Real Gone Kid and Love and Regret, Deacon Blue were wasting no time ensuring that their second studio lands in the memory as soon as possible! It is a shame there have not been podcasts or deeper looks into a wonderful album. I want to compile some feedback and reaction to 1989’s When the World Knows Your Name. Pop Rescue had their say in 2015:

“This 13 track album opens with the snare drum intro of fifth and final single Queen Of The New Year. Guitar, bass and bass drum join in to create a chugging platform for Ricky Ross‘ crisp vocals to effortlessly take us through this track. It’s definitely a foot-tapper. Ricky is joined by the soft backing vocals of Lorraine McIntosh (the pair throw in some great ‘hoo hoo hoo‘s) and a fun little fiddle section. This song gets faster and faster as it draws to a close, in what seems like a drums and vocals vs fiddle play-off. This was a moderate hit in 1990, reaching #21 in the UK.

Next up it’s Wages Day, the second single. This track sounds a little familiar – and it’s catchy use of pianos against a strong up-tempo beat, keeps it bouncing along. Ricky’s vocals is strong and confident again, and the contrast between him and Lorraine’s occasional backing vocal contributions really help to keep the song up-beat and light.

This is followed by lead single and big hit, Real Gone Kid. I remember this song well, and I had it on my Brit Awards ’89 double cassette album – although sadly they didn’t win anything. This song is fantastically up-beat – Ricky and Lorraine have a much more even balance of vocals – and Lorraine’s vocals really given a central role. Again the ‘ooh oh ooh oh ooh oh’ feature, and the piano is scattered throughout, all building up to a brilliantly rocky vocal duel at about 3m 15s in. This catchy track gave them a #8 UK hit – which by that time was their biggest. It also contains a great lyric mondegreen ‘And a plate of Baboons‘ turns out to be ‘And the paperback rooms‘ – my 80’s childhood is shattered.

In contrast, Love And Regret follows, with delicately tinkling piano but then suddenly we’re into rock ballad territory. Chugging guitar and beats lead us into the verse, which instantly reminded me of Starship‘s 1987 Mannequin-themed hit Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now meets John Waite‘s 1984 hit Missing You. This was the 4th single from the album, but it scraped into the top 30, reaching #28 in the UK.

Fifth track, Circus Lights feels a bit like a filler, if it wasn’t for the chorus lyrics of ‘you wanted to display your charms on this bright night‘, and it’s mention of Christmas, it would pretty much forgettable. Otherwise, musically it just kind of ‘happens’ with little real redeeming moment.

This Changing Light is a bit of a contrast, roaring in with electric guitars. Ricky’s vocals sit comfortably alongside these, and he, Lorraine, and these guitars play cat and mouse through the chorus, giving quite a nice catchy and building-up moment. The song has a mellow moment around 3mins 15, where Ricky takes centre stage, with support from Lorraine’s backing vocals.

Next up is a short 1m 11s track titled Sad Loved Girl, which sees Ricky pitched against a piano and double bass and not much else. Lorraine offers up some dreamy backing vocals. This is a delightful little track, that really stands out as being unlike anything else on this album. It’s short, and very sweet.

Fergus Sings The Blues follows this, and this track was the album’s third UK single, and it reached #14. From the off, there’s a great little bass and piano line. There’s almost an echo of disco here, but thankfully they keep themselves on the 80’s rock-pop mould side of it. There’s some great brass going on here – thanks to trumpets and trombone. Again, Lorraine’s here with some perfectly placed backing vocals. Mr 80’s Obligatory Saxophone gets to do a little sultry outtro.

Next up it’s The World Is Lit By Lightning – a great title. This track is laden with synths and is less rocky than some of their songs. Again, there’s plenty of piano, and some brass moments. Ricky is briefly joined by Lorraine for some vocal parts, but the vocals are a little quiet in comparison to the music. The use of contemporary keyboard sounds seems to dominate, leaving their vocals a bit buried.

Silhouette is quite a simple little track, seeing the return of the double bass, ‘woo hoo’ vocals, and a light sprinkling beat and guitar section for the chorus. This song really helps to show off Ricky’s vocals, but thankfully lets Lorraine take a lead at about 2mins.

This is followed by One Hundred Things, which really is quite a nice up-beat track. Vocally, musically and even lyrically (that ‘case of old photographs‘ is back again) feels like a companion track for Real Gone Kid. The track has a great musical and vocal pace to it – leaving it feel catchy and as if it should have been a single.

Up next is penultimate track Your Constant Heart, which brings the pace down again. This is definitely well in the 80’s stadium pop-rock genre. Musically it feels a bit busy with a lot of background layers going on, which includes guitar and harmonica. Ricky’s vocals vary from sounding like he’s singing on stage to singing in a cupboard.

The album closes with the brooding drums and piano of Orphans. This is almost lullaby-esque. Ricky’s vocals feel raw here, aided perfectly by the softer backing vocals of Lorraine and a swelling synth. I could easily imagine this being sung by Sinéad O’Connor instead. This is a wonderfully gentle ending to an album”.

There is a great article from Glasgow Skyline that goes into detail regarding When the World Knows Your Name. Raintown is a stunning debut album. Deacon Blue’s second album was bigger and more ambitious. Perhaps more hit-driven. Recorded between the U.K. and U.S., we are still hearing singles from the album played on the radio to this day. You can catch the band on the road. You can guarantee that cuts from their epic second studio album will be featured in the set:

“If one word could describe When The World Knows Your Name then surely it would be 'Bigger'. Raintown had given the band a great start, critical acclaim, a solid fan base and famed live shows had seen their hard work pay off. But despite their success, one thing eluded them, the 'Hit Single'.

Ricky Ross had a clear vision that the follow up to Raintown would be singles driven. From the outset there was a desire to break away from the mould of Raintown, work with multiple producers, in different studios. A bigger sound with more production.

Originally to be titled "Las Vegas" the album was frustrating to make. The bands producer was ill delaying production in the UK, whilst disappointing sessions in America with 2nd producer David Kahne saw the recording drawn out over an entire year.

Disappointment was short lived though, Real Gone Kid delivered the band their first hit, peaking at number 8 in the UK chart and gaining worldwide radio play.

The success of Real Gone Kid had given them the dream start to the When The World Knows Your Name campaign. On it's release the album went straight in at number one knocking Madonna's "Like A Prayer" off the top of the charts. Tour dates across the UK were selling out in a matter of hours. University halls and student unions were long gone, this time it would be arenas, this time it would be 'Bigger'.

Most of When The World Knows Your Name was recorded with Warne Livesey at the helm. Livesey started playing music in London amidst the punk and new wave revolution of the late seventies. Originally a bass player in many bands and on the session scene he soon realised that his main passion was for recording. Although self taught he soon established himself as an up and coming engineer, working with producers such as David Lord, Rhett Davis and Robin Miller. Through his work with the Specials he broke into production by recording projects for their ground breaking two tone record label and other indies such as some bizzare.

Additional recording was done with American producer David Kahne, these sessions did not go well. With the band finding the producer too hands on and disliking the sound and direction the recordings were taking. Most ot the recordings were abandoned with only Silhouette surviving.

Deacon Blue also produced themselves taking to the controls to record Orphans.

When The World Knows Your Name spawned five hit singles, but it was often mentioned in interviews that the band and CBS had visions of releasing as many as six.

Circus Lights had been part of Deacon Blue's live set since October 1987. Early 1988 the band played the song on Scottish Television on the FSD show. Soon after, the band played the famous Glasgow Barrowlands Ballroom, to the amazement of the band, the fans knew all the words.

So shocked, Ricky Ross was even caught on mic shouting "I don't believe this!" to the rest of the band.

So it comes as little surprise that Circus Lights was once lined up to be the follow up single to Real Gone Kid. These faxes from Edinburgh based design company Bridges & Woods dated 20th December 1988, show the proposed artwork for the 7" single.

The keen eyed will notice that although the single never made it, the artwork did, it was re-used for the eventual follow up single Wages Day months later”.

The dynamic and chemistry between the band makes When the World Knows Your Name such a compelling listen. Primarily written by Ricky Ross (with co-writing by James Prime and Ewen Vernal), I think one of the most compelling and powerful elements of the album is the greater use of Lorraine McIntosh’s astonishing vocals. As Mat Snow infamously observed it up in his Q Magazine review, she “adroitly feminises the band’s texture and so saves us on more than one occasion from being flattened by an excess of overwrought macho breast-beating”. Maybe it is a little cruel and short-sighted in some ways…though it is clear she adds something very special and distinct to the album. Turning thirty-five on 6th April, I wanted to spend some time with When the World Knows Your Name. We know that the band were named after a Steely Dan song. If some overlooked Raintown or did not connect, When the World Knows Your Name took them to a new level. Steely Dan’s Deacon Blues talks about this lovable loser observing that the U.S. college football team of Alabama were called The Crimson Tide. He wanted a similarly grandiose name. I think about Steely Dan and the fact Deacon Blue’s second album relates to fame and growing attention around them, By 1989, the world definitely knew their name:

CALL them Deacon Blue!

FEATURE: Cue Fanfare: Prefab Sprout’s Swoon at Forty

FEATURE:

 

 

Cue Fanfare

Prefab Sprout’s Swoon at Forty

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THE debut album….

from a truly legendary band, Prefab Sprout’s Swoon was released on 12th March, 1984. Led by the phenomenal songwriting of Paddy McAloon, I want to go into more depth. I am going to come to some reviews and insight into a magnificent debut album. Released through Kitchenware and produced by Prefab Sprout and David Brewis, this is an album that everyone should know about. Paddy McAloon sways Swoon is among his favourite albums, though he feels he could have been more concise when it comes to the songwriting. Not completely happy with the vocals. It is modesty and self-criticism from a masterful songwriter. Together Martin McAloon and Wendy Smith, Swoon was unlike anything else that came out in 1984. Ahead of its fortieth anniversary, it is worth learning more about the magnificent Swoon. I will start with Wikipedia’s background details. It is remarkable discovering how Prefab Sprout formed and the way Swoon came together:

“Prefab Sprout, formed by brothers Paddy and Martin McAloon, first played live in 1979, having been joined by drummer Michael Salmon. Songs that would appear on Swoon such as "Ghost Town Blues", "Here on the Eerie" and "Technique" were already part of their set by April 1980. The band recorded their first single "Lions in My Own Garden (Exit Someone)" on 25 February 1982, and self-released it on their own Candle Records. Their lineup expanded shortly after to incorporate vocalist Wendy Smith, and they recorded a second single "The Devil Has All the Best Tunes" that September. In a 1981 interview McAloon expressed a dislike of well-regarded songwriters such as Paul Weller, Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello, the last of whom he said he disliked intensely, and he attributed the band's lack of success up to that point to laziness. Prefab Sprout were signed by Keith Armstrong's Kitchenware Records in March 1983, after Armstrong heard their music played in the Newcastle branch of HMV he managed. Kitchenware issued "The Devil Has All The Best Tunes / Walk On" and additionally reissued the first single. These releases attracted notice including laudation from Elvis Costello.

After the departure of Michael Salmon, the band recorded their debut album in a 24-track studio in Edinburgh on a budget of £5,000. It features session drummer Graham Lant and was produced by fellow Kitchenware artist David Brewis of The Kane Gang. The songs were written over a 7-year period, and the album was titled Swoon, standing for 'Songs Written out of Necessity'. McAloon mostly avoided the material the band had been playing live for the preceding years, instead favouring more recent complex material he felt would "only work on tape".

The basic tracks were recorded in just one day, and put the band under intense pressure. During a session, McAloon made a crying Wendy Smith sing two words over and over for three hours. McAloon wrote piano parts for the songs despite being unable to play the instrument, and recorded the parts with the aid of drop-ins. A synthesiser was used on several tracks, chosen for its sparse and refined sound. Swoon was completed in August 1983, and the band was then signed to CBS for distribution Graham Lant's relationship with Prefab Sprout ended soon after recording due to his disappointment at being given a flat fee for his work rather than a percentage of album sales. In the months leading to the album's release in March 1984, the band performed live with a succession of short-term drummers. In December 1983, they opened for Elvis Costello at several concerts. Costello's championing led to Prefab Sprout being tagged as "Costello's little band!”

I will move to an article where Martin McAloon recalled working on Swoon. Published in 2019, he looked back on the remarkable Swoon. If the band would arguably go on to record more powerful and enduring albums, it is clear that Swoon is very special. The sprouts (pardon the pun!) of something beautiful starting to come through. I would recommend that everyone buys Swoon and adds it to their collection:

“I’m not one for reminiscing. So when the wonderful people at Sony Legacy asked me for a few anecdotes about Swoon, just a couple of facts about the recording of an album that took place thirty-six years ago, I fretted. We don’t do facts: there are no facts and I’ve not actually listened to any of our albums since the year 2000.

However, when the arrival of the re-mastered test pressing of Swoon coincided with a road trip I was planning to Berwick for the JMW Turner exhibition at The Maltings, my alter-ego Feliks Culpa and I thought it the perfect opportunity to reacquaint our older and younger selves and perhaps, in the spirit of looking forward rather than backwards, describe how it feels to time travel.

I strap myself in, and we’re out of the blocks on the “B of the Bang”: drums and guitar, my bass run, the harmonica, just as I’d left it – Don’t Sing – flooding back. The memories are a tsunami, a thick muffled constant of debris churning towards me, and then the vocal: “Don’t Sing”. He’s not singing. Why is my brother shouting? He’s commanding me from atop a lamppost, he’s lashed himself to a tree to avoid the deluge, he’s warning that it’s not going to stop for another forty-five minutes, and as with the Sirens, I’ve got to listen!

Fragments form in the swirl, reconstituted facts, the drums; Graham Lant, brother of Venom’s Cronos, available for one day. Eleven backing tracks, five first takes, the songs Cherry Tree and Diana languish unfinished in Ampex limbo. Rehearsing at extreme altitude in exhausting temperatures above Wadds the glass fitters, 62 Clayton Street, Graham in boxer shorts to keep his Top Shop suit crease free. What do all these facts mean?

Cue Fanfare: “I can only play this once,” Graham warns. That’s all he needed. Wendy’s supersonic vocals taxiing on the runway, “Some expressions take me back”, I cut to my fourth birthday, “hair of gold and sweet Mary”. I’m somewhere else. I’m in a version of Michael Apted’s 7Up. Paddy’s singing The Green, Green Grass of Home into Anne Salmon’s tape recorder, I’m reciting “Dolly had the measle, dolly had the flu…” Bass harmonics cut me back to the present: Morpeth to my left and the carriageway narrowing, I squeeze the chevrons and avoid the speed camera. I’m loving it!

I need to concentrate – Green Isaac 1 – the memory provokes a premonition of Green Isaac 2, the end of the album, the culmination of the journey. I’m ahead of myself, I’m Tom Cruise, a “pre-cog” in Stealers Wheel. Is there a time before or between Green Isaac 1 and 2, a time before playing live, when the song could exist without pandering to the muddy fields of festival expectations? Stevie Smith at Glastonbury, “Not drowning, but waving to Guy Garvey”.

I’ve Just realised I’m typing this while listening to Jessye Norman singing Ravel’s Sheherazade with Pierre Boulez conducting from 1984, the same year as Swoon’s release. We met Boulez a year later and gave him a copy of Steve McQueen. That’s a fact and almost an anecdote but it’s from the future. Am I a “Looper” sent to cancel myself out?

Cut to the here and now, a full throttle Here on the Eerie, Paddy’s Hagstrom guitar solo.

The closest we came with Swoon to playing on the “T of the Beat” was Cruel, recorded sans drums or click, brushed snare and hi-hat being added after the event, hence the less than quantised groove. Paddy’s vocal, head cold intact, squeezed onto the last available track. My contribution to urban blues? An upright bass and the Ebony Concerto.

Muff Winwood at Sony (neé CBS) signed us after hearing only five songs from Swoon; “By the time I get to Felton, he’d have signed us”.

Couldn’t Bear to be Special streams above the engine noise. Was this the order, is this how side two starts? Is Basketball next? (Memo, check label copy). Just like I pictured it, Wendy’s voice, the shiver of the fur, Dave Brewis’s Hawaiian lap steel guitar, the “go to” instrument for crashes, bangs, wallops, glissando, skyscrapers and everything.

I Never Play Basketball Now: the chords, the endless chords, 164 and counting. Why? Igor Stravinsky made us to do it! I can still play them all, and in the correct order! John Sunter’s bounced ball, no click track, no count in, no editing, pure luck.

Ghost Town Blues. I may amble past Amble, but I still rush the bassline!

Elegance, I play it once, twice, three times a sublime melody, a lacerating lyric. Technique the same again, the way we were, the sound of wild abandon, of being young, fearless and fretless. We can’t go back, but it all still resonates!

Clowns to the left of me, Holy Island to my right, we were out there, among the waves, cut off from the mainland but somehow still immersed in pop culture. Saintly hermits intoxicated on home brewed mead, Prefab Stout, Lindisfarne. (Now they were a great band)

I’m almost there, the end of the journey, the final track, Green Isaac 2, the glockenspiel, Wendy’s chromatic “Suggest…”. I hear the music of Nino Rota drifting up the stairs. I cut back to the intro of Green Isaac 1, (back to Morpeth 20 minutes ago), then back again to Green Isaac 2 1983. The Godfather 1 and 2 are showing on TV in sequence for the first time, or are they out of sequence, perhaps in chronological order? Is this the order of time, do we shape time? I’ve been here before! “Suggest…” Is there a prequal, a missing section, before Green Isaac 2, ”Suggest…”? Between the intro and the outro, before The Godfather 3?

I’m falling through floorboards, between fact and fiction.

The facts are: we recorded Swoon, Sony / Kitchenware released it and an audience heard it. From there on in, it’s up to the listener to create the facts, add their own memories – “the song that was playing, will help you recall, the feeling of falling, the thrill of it all”.

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in”.

It is worth getting to some reviews. In 2014, this review from movingtheriver.com explored the wonderous and hugely original Swoon. It introduced Prefab Sprout to a legion of people. Many unaware of who they were and how they would progress as a band. Forty years later and Swoon still sounds utterly compelling:

“Perhaps like a lot of Prefab fans, I came to Swoon some time after I’d bought and fallen in love with the later albums Steve McQueen, Protest Songs, From Langley Park to Memphis and Jordan The Comeback.

The dry, Thomas Dolby-less production came as a bit of a shock at the time but Swoon stands up pretty well today.

Though some critics have compared the album to Steely Dan, my contemporary reference points would be Lloyd Cole, The Smiths, Aztec Camera and Songs To Remember-era Scritti, though it’s basically impossible to locate Prefab’s influences.

It’s tempting to say that Swoon sounds like the epitome of an ‘indie’ record, 1980s style, with its stripped-back production values and jagged edges. Prefab singer/songwriter Paddy McAloon recently told The Guardian that he thinks of it as more akin to Captain Beefheart, nicknaming the album ‘Sprout Mask Replica’!

Swoon definitely still sounds very much like a debut album; it’s perky, eager to please, naive, studenty, slightly pretentious. McAloon’s vocals occasionally resemble the ramblings of a slightly squiffy, randy teenager. But the album’s adolescent in a really good way with its literary flights of fancy, indulgent ruminations on romantic love and lots of audacious melodic flourishes.

paddy prefabIt sounds almost like rock, with solid 4/4 drums, always-inventive bass from Paddy’s brother Martin and ‘girlie’ backing vocals from Wendy Smith, and yet it resolutely refuses to ‘rock out’ with not a single power chord or jangly electric guitar in the mix.

Instead, the intrepid layering of synths and acoustic guitars (utilised to far greater effect on Steve McQueen and Jordan) probes the songs’ pressure points. And Smith’s pristine vocals give the music an enigmatic, otherworldly flavour.

Lyrically, Swoon reminds me of Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’; a survey of a young man’s hopes, dreams and romantic/professional disappointments. From a songwriting perspective, the words presumably came before the music, resembling stream-of-consciousness prose rather than traditional verse/chorus songcraft.

Novelist/essayist Dave Eggers wrote a great piece about how much he was influenced by this golden generation of literate British songwriters.

As befitting a band from the North East, work (and the lack of it) is a recurring theme, particularly on ‘I Never Play Basketball Now’ and the extraordinary ‘Technique’. ‘Couldn’t Bear To Be Special’ is a classic Prefab ballad (though surely never the right choice for second single) and seems to offer a truly original take on the doomed love affair – the narrator simply doesn’t feel worthy to deserve the attentions of another. Very Nick Hornby-esque.

Future producer Thomas Dolby has talked about the shock of hearing ‘Don’t Sing’ when he was a guest reviewer on the Radio 1 ‘Round Table’ show.

‘Cruel’ is still a delicious piece of pop/bossa nova, more than a decade before the likes of Belle and Sebastian mined similar ground. Some of Paddy’s chords are gorgeous on this. Lyrically it’s original too, an expression of lust and affection from someone who is desperately afraid of offending his ‘enlightened’ paramour. A very modern love song. It was once covered by Elvis Costello”.

The final review I want to get to was published in 2015. I wonder how Martin and Paddy McAloon will mark the fortieth anniversary of Swoon on 12th March. Whether Wendy Smith has any particular memories and special recollections. Many may not have heard Swoon, so it is a perfect opportunity to dive into a spellbinding audio experience:

“The band’s debut, the difficult to track down Swoon gave no clue to how the band’s lead singer and primary songwriter Paddy McAloon would evolve into the Thomas Dolby collaborator and maker of slick alternative pop. No dreamy Wendy Smith singing in the background here – or at least not as much.

Swoon might be the band’s least accessible album. It’s sound teeters somewhere between the quirky but dry jazz/funk of Steely Dan, China Crisis or Aztec Camera. It’s challenging structures are sometimes crammed with what sounds like multiple arrangements in one song. “Here on the Erie” and the amusing “I Never Play Basketball Now” are as much infused with catchy rhythms as they are they are overlapping lyrical references. All clever stuff from the mind of a young under employed genius.

McAloon in many ways was like Green Gartside during the earliest period of Scritti Politti. While Gartside mixed forms of post punk with academia, McAloon does something similar. There’s so much going on lyrically and musically, that you might easily miss some of it with cheap iPhone headphones.

This is exactly the kind of album that I tend to gravitate back to over the years. While Steve McQueen (Two Wheels Good in the States) or Jordan: The Comeback might be easier to enjoy right away, the sublime notes of Swoon can an acquired taste that gets better with time.

In sounding so unconventional for 1984, it has aged well over the years. The album’s rough edges are fitting with the musical legacy of Northern Soul with its subtle black American musical influences. “Crule Fanfare” for instance mixes these musical legacies to create a back-beat with some swing to it.  It’s far from  traditional R&B, but then again much of Swoon is far from most new wave and pop music released in 1984.

The mix of mid tempo and ballads at times hints to a future of Thomas Dolby produced polish that would come later. “Elegance” and “Cruel” prove that McAloon and Dolby were equals when it came to the vision of the band’s sound in subsequent albums.

If you are already a Prefab Sprout fan, you’ve likely heard Swoon. For new fans, Swoon offers a peak into the mind of a very young McAloon who was bursting with interesting musical ideals. He of course is still one of the great singer songwriters of his generation, even if many Americans are ignorant of his later work”.

A very happy fortieth anniversary to Swoon. I am not sure whether there is an anniversary release planned or whether any events will take place. The latest Prefab Sprout album, Crimson/Red, was released in 2013. Essentially it was a Paddy McAloon solo album. It would be wonderful to see Paddy McAloon, Wendy Smith, Martin McAloon and drummer Neil Conti reuniting and recording more material. Maybe it will not happen. In the meantime, let us celebrate the magic Swoon. An album that sounds captivating…

FORTY years later.

FEATURE: Second Spin: Brian Wilson - Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE

FEATURE:

 

 

Second Spin

Brian Wilson - Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE

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THERE are reasons why…

I am suggesting people listen to Brian Wilson’s Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE. It is an album that is very well-regarded and is magnificent, yet I don’t see too many tracks featured on the radio. It is not as exposed and shared as music from The Beach Boys. That is a shame! It was released on 28th September, 2004. Recently, the family of Brian Wilson asked a court in Los Angeles to place him under a conservatorship. The legendary musicians is living with a ‘neurocognitive disorder’, similar to dementia. Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE turns twenty in September. I am going to get to some reviews. Featuring all-new music, this was Brian Wilson reviving an unfinished album by The Beach Boys that he abandoned in 1967. By all accounts, revisiting this album – also referred to as SMiLE - was a hugely emotional undertaking for Wilson. He had been traumatised by the circumstances that had originally surrounded the project. Brian Wilson and his band premiered Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE at the Royal Festival Hall in London on 20th February, 2004. Buoyed by an enormously positive reception, Wilson adapted the performance of Brian Wilson Presents Smile as a solo album. None of the other Beach Boys were involved with the album. There is not as much written about this majestic album as there should be. In terms of its making and legacy. How it is such an important album. I will start out with Pitchfork’s review. They discuss the background and circumstances behind Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE. How originally it took so much out of Wilson. When it was finally released in 2004, it was met with unanimous praise and positivity:

“Brian Wilson was the son of a songwriter. He was a naturally creative boy, though also prone to the same sunny interests and obsessions as his friends and cousins. He came of age just as thousands of other kids did at the time, learning that this place really could be the land of the free, home of love, peace, self-discovery and where everyone he cared about lived. He loved music. He still does, though at 61, despite the full mane of hair, he doesn't quite sound or write like the same boy who once scored the perfect soundtrack for an American summer. He was obsessed with George Gershwin and vanilla white harmony groups like The Four Freshman; he gave the world "In My Room" and Pet Sounds in return. Brian Wilson is touring Smile right now, with, they say, an unplugged keyboard and the same stiff onstage demeanor he showed during the "Brian is back" days. But then, performance has never been his bag.

Wilson abandoned Smile, his painstakingly planned follow-up to Pet Sounds, in 1967 because he had a nervous breakdown. He was emotionally unfit to continue. He was 24, only a few years older than I was when I bought my first bootleg copy of the music. If you want to know the precise details about how he broke down, there are dozens of accounts available (including mine here at Pitchfork). The short end of it has to do with drugs, growing pains, a new cast of friends, and a dysfunctional family. Brian had too much of all those things in the mid-60s; working on what was supposed to be the greatest record ever made might not have been the most realistic endeavor. Or maybe it would have been, had he surrounded himself with more understanding people. Or fewer drugs. Or better drugs. Or been able to keep his overbearing dad out of the picture. And on and on and on, until being a fan of the guy is more exhausting than it is rewarding. I really don't blame him for staying in bed for the 70s.

I first heard Smile when I compiled my own version of it. The Beach Boys' Good Vibrations box had just come out, containing the first "officially" sanctioned missing pieces of the album. I, like many amateur Beach Boys historians, used them, along with the best songs from the boots to make ad-hoc masterpieces. I'd read how "Our Prayer" was supposed to go first, and it seemed naturally to segue right into "Heroes & Villains". Then I had to decide which versions to use. I strung together the single mix with the "Cantina" version with "Do You Like Worms" (its cousin), using a complex system of cassette deck editing techniques-- that is, I got really good at using the "pause" button. I put Wilson's solo vocal and piano performance of "Surf's Up" last. It ended my tape on a bittersweet note, which I guessed was in the spirit of what Smile would have been. I was wrong. Sigh. A lot of us were.

Darian Sahanaja was right. Wilson's wife Melinda suggested that Brian take Smile on the road, and Sahanaja, keyboardist and backing vocalist in Wilson's touring band (aka The Wondermints) took up the sizable task of organizing the project. He dumped every Smile song and song-fragment he could find onto his laptop, took them to Wilson's house and watched as Wilson proceeded to phone no less an authority than original lyricist Van Dyke Parks when he needed help remembering lyrics. They hadn't really kept in touch for a few years, but Parks was at Wilson's place within 24 hours-- and would stay for five days-- to settle past scores and finish the lost record.

The trio made subtle changes to the music when necessary, and in the spring, Wilson headed to Studio One at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles to make his record. Just as he'd made the original "Good Vibrations" and "Heroes & Villains" there, Wilson gathered his band, strings and brass to record the tracks, cutting the basic arrangements live while doing the vocals on the same tube consoles his old Beach Boys had.

The end result is a great album, albeit one more lighthearted than its myth would suggest. The music I hear is like round pegs in square holes; it's just as insular and manic-compassionate as "In My Room" or "God Only Knows", but filtered through an amiable resolve. It sounds pleasant and assured, lacking the vulnerable, shy wave of hope drenching the old Beach Boys records. Yet, Wilson's voice sounds great. It's a bit lower, and his inflections have lost some subtlety over the years, but it still carries the weight of those angelic melodies (and when it can't, his band helps him out).

And what of his band? The eight musicians who contributed to recording Smile with Wilson not only live up to the material, but also make possible what could not have been all those years ago. They are not the Beach Boys. There is no Carl Wilson. For better or worse, there is no Mike Love. But there is the music, and all concerned parties should be given some kind of musical amnesty award for managing to avoid the pitfalls of posthumous reworking and re-recording. This is no ghost record or bout of nostalgia. Rather than study the lonely, bittersweet passions of Wilson's youth, it celebrates the return of his muse and his gift to the world in the form of a "teenage symphony to God”.

In a recent feature, Rolling Stone spoke with multi-instrumentalist Probyn Gregory about working with a genius on Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE. They asked what it was like touring with Wilson and helping him finish this classic album. It is a fascinating piece I would advise people to check out in full:

“How did you learn about the lost Smile record?

I heard rumors of it in college, but when I first came to L.A., someone loaned me a cassette with a few fragments on there. I thought, “Wow, this is crazy stuff.” I began seeking it out at what they call “swap meets,” these places where you could buy bootleg records. I don’t know how this stuff leaked out of the vaults, but various parts of Smile would come my way, or come other people’s way.

When I met Darian, he had fragments that I didn’t have, and I had fragments that he didn’t have. We would meet at each other’s houses, along with Nick Walusko, or this person, Domenic Priore, who was a Smile scholar. He may not have been a musician, but he was a real fan of all that Smile stuff.

What captivated you so much about this music?

The vibe. One of the things about the Beach Boys has always been their ethereal vocal blends. Even after I joined the Brian Wilson Band, we would try to sound like that, but we couldn’t because we weren’t the brothers. We didn’t have the history that they did of sitting around the Wilson family piano, with Al Jardine and Mike Love. They had a sound like no one else did. There was something that came across in the yearning and the mournful feeling that imbues a lot of Brian Wilson’s music.

hat came through in spades, to me, in the Smile fragments. I got a real sense of, not incompletion, but world weariness, and an understanding. Pet Sounds was all about that too, the teenager trying to become a man.

There was this sort of illicit thrill of listening to Smile bootlegs back then. It was this forbidden music you knew drove Brian insane trying to finish, and no longer wanted anything to do with.

I know what you mean. Every time I heard a new fragment that I fell in love with, I would thank God for my little inner circle of people that allowed me to hear this music that otherwise wouldn’t be heard. I really wished that other people would hear it. At some point, there was a paper in Los Angeles called The Reader. I took out an ad in the back, and I said something along the order of, “Capitol Records, please release Smile. This music needs to be heard.”

Was your mind blown when you got the job?

Oh my God. Todd Rundgren, Neil Young, and Brian Wilson, especially Brian Wilson and Todd, those are my heroes. To be able to play with one of my heroes, it just blew my head off.

Tell me about preparing for that tour. You guys approached the material very differently than the Beach Boys touring band of that time.

Yes. But I didn’t even really know what the touring band was up to. My friends told me in the Seventies and the Eighties that the touring band didn’t float their boat. They said, “Just listen to the records. Don’t bother going to the show. You’ll be disappointed,” which was stupid, and I’m sorry I ever listened to them, because I could have seen Dennis play. I never saw Dennis play before he passed away. And similarly with Carl. But the time I got around to seeing the Beach Boys, it was 2000. I felt cheated that I didn’t get to see those earlier versions of the band”.

I will end with a couple of reviews. The Guardian were among those who shared their opinions about Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE. It is a masterpiece that I would urge everyone to seek out and listen to. Up there with any album by The Beach Boys in terms of its beauty, quality and musicianship. Such a wonderful album from one of the greatest songwriters ever:

“There has been much hand-wringing about the detrimental effect of hype on rock and pop music. But no manufactured pop single or media-darling indie album can hope to match the hype preceding Smile, which has been going on not for weeks or months, but for 37 years. It was the Beach Boys album that was supposed to revolutionise pop music, to dwarf even its predecessor, Pet Sounds. Instead, composer and producer Brian Wilson suffered a drug-induced breakdown in 1967, declined to finish the album and took to his bed.

Smile became mythic, a status fuelled by the outrageously inventive tracks that trickled out on later Beach Boys albums and bootlegs. They suggested that, during the Smile sessions, Wilson and lyricist Van Dyke Parks had variously been writing elegiac ballads of startling beauty (Surf's Up, Wonderful, Wind Chimes), attempting to condense the entire history of America into a series of LSD-skewed musical fragments (Heroes and Villains, Do You Like Worms?, Cabinessence) and, perhaps less ambitiously, making animal noises and banging bits of wood together (Barnyard, Workshop).

The news that Wilson and his backing band (based around American 1960s revivalists the Wondermints) were going to completely re-record and release Smile, after touring a completed version of it, was enough to cause an outbreak of mild hysteria. One Sunday supplement urgently sought the government's opinion. Even they may have been surprised to get an answer not from the arts minister, but from defence secretary Geoff Hoon. Luckily, the past 18 months have been exceptionally quiet for the British armed forces, giving Hoon plenty of time to ponder the influence of the Beach Boys' mid-1960s work on current alt-rock. He certainly seems well informed - "It's such a good time for its re-release," he told the Observer; "the indie bands my son listens to are building on Wilson's ideas" - which will doubtless come as some comfort to the 8,900 British troops stationed in Iraq.

Despite the hype, it is hard not to be impressed with the new Smile. Ever since his 1967 breakdown, Wilson has looked pretty bewildered by life. Even today, ostensibly healthy, he gives off the air of a man not entirely sure which way round his trousers go, let alone how the myriad parts of Smile were ever supposed to fit together. And yet, fit together they now do. The album's "concept" may be as baffling as ever (even Parks seems at a loss to explain precisely what the richly evocative imagery of his lyrics is evoking), but the music flows beautifully - no mean feat when it encompasses barbershop singing, acid rock, early pop, Hawaiian chanting and mock-religious plainsong.

You suspect this may have more to do with Wilson's "musical secretary", Wondermints keyboard player Darian Sahanaja, than anybody is letting on. The painstaking re-creation of Heroes and Villains' complex harmonies or the orchestral arrangement of Mrs O'Leary's Cow sound less like the work of a songwriting genius than that of a particularly dogged fan given free rein in the studio. The feeling that some of the re-recordings are otiose - given that you can't improve on perfection, it's hard to see the point of a new version of Good Vibrations - is undermined by the fact that if Wilson had simply wanted to complete the original 1960s recordings, he would presumably have had to negotiate with Mike Love, the vocalist who now owns the Beach Boys' name. Negotiating with Mike Love is a state of affairs you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy, let alone a fragile 62-year-old.

Sahanaja also deserves credit for reining in his band's excesses. On their own albums, the Wondermints tend towards a wearisome brand of wackiness, which must have been hard to keep in check, given the nature of Smile's music. Only once does the temptation become too much to resist: the joyous Holiday now comes with a monologue about pirates going yo-ho-me-hearties that could make even the soundest of minds consider following Wilson's lead and pulling a duvet over their head for a few years.

For his part, Wilson seems reinvigorated by Smile's resurrection. His last album, Gettin' in Over My Head, was marred by his disconcerting vocal technique: he sang everything in a halting, distressed bark, as if he were reading a ransom note rather than his own lyrics. Here, he may not always reach the high notes, but he oozes a relaxed confidence, and with good reason. Confronted with Cabinessence's breathtaking chorus, the unfathomably lovely melody of Wonderful or the sudden explosion of lavish vocal harmonies that brings Wind Chimes to a close, you're forced to conclude that four decades on, the songs Wilson wrote for Smile still sound like nothing else rock music has ever produced. Its release may not warrant a quote from the defence secretary, but only the hardest heart would not be gladdened by its contents”.

I shall end with a review from AllMusic. Reaching the top twenty in the U.K. and U.S., I would urge everyone to listen to Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE. It is a true masterpiece! I don’t think that you have to be a big fan of The Beach Boys to appreciate the album and its sound:

“The white whale of '60s record-making, the Beach Boys' aborted SMiLE album gradually gained a legend that not only inflated its rumored importance and complexity, but gave credence to an odd notion -- that completing it, then or ever, was impossible. In truth, SMiLE should have been released and forgotten, reissued and reappraised, and finally remastered for the digital era and ushered into the rock canon ever since Brian Wilson halted work on it in May 1967 (after an exhausting 85 recording sessions). Instead, it languished in the vaults and remained the perfect record -- perfect, of course, because it had never been finished. Reports that the recording of "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" had caused a nearby building to burn down and whispers of "inappropriate music" gave it the character of a monster, one that cursed all those who approached it and claimed the heart and mind of its major participant. Wilson's love of "feels" -- short passages of cyclical music that could be overdubbed and rearranged countless times -- had made 1966's "Good Vibrations" the ultimate pocket symphony, but had also quickly spiralled into the instability that consumed him during its follow-up, "Heroes and Villains," projected to be the centerpiece of SMiLE.

Happily, a new recording of SMiLE by Brian Wilson reveals the record as nothing more (or less) than a jaunty epic of psychedelic Americana, a rambling and discursive, playful and affectionate series of song cycles. Infectious and hummable, to be sure, and a remarkably unified, irresistible piece of pop music, but no musical watershed on par with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or Wilson's masterpiece, Pet Sounds. For the first time ever, the program for SMiLE was compiled, after Brian Wilson first listened to the original recordings with his musical midwife, Darian Sahanaja of the Wondermints (which has long functioned as Wilson's live backing band), and then worked them into a live show and album recording. The work that evolved divides into three sections: SMiLE begins with Americana, which takes the dream of continental expansion from the old Spanish town saga of "Heroes and Villains" to the landing at Plymouth Rock and, finally, the end of the frontier at Hawaii; it continues with a Cycle of Life that progresses from the virginal grace of "Wonderful" to the simultaneous peak and decline of the creative life on "Surf's Up"; and ends with an environmental cycle called The Elements, which includes "Vega-Tables," (Earth), "Wind Chimes" (Air), "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" (Fire), and "In Blue Hawaii" (Water).

Since Wilson himself was previously the most opposed to SMiLE appearing in any form, it's a considerable shock that this new recording justifies even half of the promise that fans had attached to it. Everything that Wilson and his band could control sounds nearly perfect. Every instrument, every note, and every intonation is nearly identical to the late-'60s tapes; one has to wonder whether vintage hand tools weren't acquired for "Workshop" and Paul McCartney wasn't flown in to add chewing noises to "Vega-Tables." (The players did, however, book time at one of Brian's old haunts, Sunset Sound, and utilized a '60s tube console to record their vocals.) No, the harmonies here aren't the Beach Boys' harmonies, and Brian's vocals aren't the vocals he was capable of 37 years ago, but they're excellent and (best of all) never distracting. Aside from the technical acumen on display, Wilson has also, amazingly, found a home -- the proper home -- for all of the brilliant instrumental snippets that lent the greatest part of the mystery to the unreleased SMiLE. Van Dyke Parks' new (or newly heard) lyrics fit into these compositions, and the work as a whole, like hand in glove. (The former instrumentals include "Barnyard"; "Holiday," which is here called "On a Holiday"; "Look," which is now "Song for Children"; and "I Love to Say Da-Da," which is now part of "In Blue Hawaii.") Most surprisingly, nearly all of this thematic unity was accomplished by merely reworking the original material already on tape, which proves that Wilson was never very far from finishing SMiLE in 1967. (It's very likely that the gulf was psychological; SMiLE had few supporters among Brian's closest friends and family.) Hopefully, Capitol is readying a SMiLE Sessions box set to release all of the vintage material, but it's clear that nothing they dig up from the vaults will be able to match the unity of this attractive recording. It's up to the standards of anyone who's ever scoured the bootlegs to create a SMiLE tape, and further, it beats them all, which is the highest compliment. So, if you've never been burdened with a friend's SMiLE tape before, count yourself lucky that Brian Wilson's is the first you'll hear. And if you have heard a few, prepare to listen to them much less religiously”.

Go and listen to the magnificent and unforgettable Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE. Many of us are thinking about Brian Wilson because of his health issues. Whether he will ever record music again or perform live. As it turns twenty later in the year, I wanted to spend time with an album that is not as played and known about as it should be. Pick up a copy and listen to this phenomenal album. It is one of the greatest works ever from…

A true music master.

FEATURE: To Watch in 2024: Hannah Grae

FEATURE:

 

 

To Watch in 2024

Hannah Grae

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AN artist I have highlighted previously…

PHOTO CREDIT: Frances Beach for DORK

I feel that Hannah Grae is going to do some incredible things before the end of the year. Definitely someone that we should all be looking out for. There are a few interviews from last year I will start with before ending one from recently. I will start out with an interview from DORK. They chatted with her back in August, Earlier in the year, in April, Grae released the E.P., Hell Is a Teenage Girl:

“Growing up, Hannah believed music only existed within the worlds of film, TV and theatre. She loved Hannah Montana and had her mind blown when she discovered Justin Bieber as a ten-year-old. Her original plan was to work in musical theatre, but then she saw an episode of Friends where Phoebe Buffay writes a song, which sparked something within her. Hannah wrote her own “ridiculous” track called ‘The Chicken Song’ and would play it constantly. “I just loved creating something from nothing and playing it to people.” She carried on doing that throughout her teenage years, writing stripped-down, piano-led pop songs based on stories and suggestions sent in by her blossoming YouTube following. A rejection from theatre school coincided with her first proper studio session, and she quickly realised playing her own music is all she really wanted to do.

From there, she started posting rock-inspired covers and reworkings on TikTok as she chased what felt good and set about figuring out how to bring that untethered joy to her own music. In 2021, she shared an updated version of Aqua’s ‘Barbie Girl’ featuring pointed lyrics like “they think that they can stare, undress me anywhere. ‘It’s just romantic, stop being dramatic’.” It quickly racked up millions of views on YouTube and TikTok.

“It was weird because nothing like that had ever happened to me before,” she explains. “I read every single comment, and I got really emotional because I felt this strange sense of responsibility knowing I was responsible for the conversations that were taking place. I think people wanted to share their own stories and experiences, and they saw that video as a safe space for that.”

After seeing the impact that sharing something so honest had with others, Hannah started writing the super personal, super direct songs that she’s known for today. “I’m so proud of how brutally honest I am in my songs now. And I’m only getting more confident in doing that,” she teases, her background in musical theatre giving her permission to not hold anything back and removing any fear about being “too much”.

Hannah Grae’s ambitious, nine-track ‘Hell Is A Teenage Girl’ was released earlier this year. Inspired by Paramore, My Chemical Romance, Queen and Taylor Swift, the record sees her revisit her shitty high school experiences with all the swaggering, disruptive attitude of Mean Girls. “I wanted it to feel like a movie,” she explains, with a focus on worldbuilding as well as killer songs.

“School was a really tough time for me, but I always knew I’d get my revenge someday, somehow,” she grins. The entire process was a cathartic one, offering Hannah a much-needed sense of closure. It also gave others a chance to “scream about their feelings at the top of their lungs,” she explains. The entire project was written before Hannah had ever played a proper gig. “Seeing people’s faces and just knowing which moments hit, that was a really important thing that I took into writing this next era.”

And that next chapter starts today with ‘Screw Loose’. According to Hannah, the fiery, twisting track sits well with ‘Hell Is A Teenage Girl’ but is also quite different. “I’m not worried about that, though; it’s exactly what I wanted to say in this moment.”

Still imbued with the theatrical might of what’s come before, the track also features the angst and humour of early Green Day with Weezer’s emo slacker anthem ‘The Sweater Song’ another big inspiration.

“When I wrote ‘Hell Is A Teenage Girl’, there was a clear story, and it was all written in hindsight,” explains Hannah, who approached each song wanting to make something she needed to hear. “This second endeavour was written in real-time, as Hannah moved to London in January 2022 to pursue a career in music.

For some, that shift wouldn’t be as much of a gamble, but for Hannah, it meant she was the first person in her family to ever move away from Wales. While both her mum and dad worked in creative fields (drama teacher and film, respectively), she still had to promise them it was just a gap year and she’d return to education if things didn’t work out. “Oh, I always knew I was never going to go to uni,” she grins today.

Hannah soon found herself sitting in her cold room of a house she shared with strangers in an unknown city, questioning her decisions. “I’d spent so long dreaming of living in London, and I’d been so excited to get out there and chase my dreams, but I just felt lost,” she explains. “‘Screw Loose’ is about that feeling.”

“No matter what you do with your life, you probably feel confused about it at some point,” starts Hannah. “Isn’t it weird that if I had listened to my parents and gone to uni, I’d have just finished, and I’d probably be asking myself, ‘What do I do now?'”

This upcoming project might be more eclectic than what’s come before, but the themes are altogether “darker and less blind” than what Hannah has previously explored. “It’s got way more perspective,” she explains. “Life hit me hard over the past year, and I realised it wasn’t all roses. It’s actually quite a sad collection of songs.”

While ‘Hell Is A Teenage Girl’ offered empowerment and giddy catharsis around every corner, Hannah isn’t sure you’ll finish listening to this next record and feel excited. “It’s more a picture of a really bad time in someone’s life. Hopefully, if anyone has gone or is going through that, they’ll feel seen. That’s all you need sometimes”

I want to come now to an interview with The Line of Best Fit. I was not sure about some of the artists who have inspired Hannah Grae’s own music. She is someone in turn who is going to inspire a lot of artists coming through. Such a compelling and strong artist who is going to have a very long and bright future in the music industry:

“Grae’s music is littered with female influences, from Swift’s songwriting sentimentalities and melodic prowess to the energy of No Doubt and a powerful vocal dexterity that, at its highest reaches, carries echoes of Paramore’s Hayley Williams and Disney alumni Demi Lovato. “Alanis Morrisette is a huge influence, just how honest she is. She’s one that I definitely sometimes sit and think, ‘What would Alanis do?’” This writing as her influences and embodying their quirks helps Grae trial what feels right in her own music, but she reflects that on Hell Is A Teenage Girl she can tell that she was playing a character even though it’s autobiographical. “I’m just not getting to the core of things, and the more I’m writing, I’m just getting more vulnerable which has reflected in my real relationships as well.

“Before I started writing [for myself], I never wrote about myself ever – I was writing about scenarios or different perspectives of different songs. I was quite a closed book and I didn’t really love to be vulnerable at all,” Grae says. “I can’t tell if my communication has become better with people because of songwriting or because I’ve experienced more and got a bit older, but they probably go hand in hand.”

Grae describes some of her upcoming music as her most “devastating” yet, even if her feelings are masked under upbeat drums or an epic guitar riff, but others songs have challenged her to strip back the arrangement to allow her vulnerability to shine. One track, unnamed, was recorded in one take with acoustic guitar and documents the experience of grief. Another, “Number Four”, talks of Grae’s relationship with her mother”.

Rolling Stone spoke with Hannah Grae last year. Even though she is a fledgling artist still coming through, there is an ambition there. She wants to take over the world. Make sure that her music is making an impact and reaching people. As we look ahead to a new E.P. or album, it is interesting learning more about Grae’s past and what comes next. There is this loyal and growing fanbase behind Grae. So many people love her music. She is an artist everyone needs to check out:

“When did the transition from doing covers and reinterpretations to writing your own music happen?

When I first did my first proper writing session two and a bit years ago, I knew I wanted to be very autobiographical, because I had so much pent up anger and bitterness from school and I needed to get it out in some way. I realized that I got a lot of closure from writing about things, so that’s when that journey kind of started.

How does your debut mini album, Hell Is A Teenage Girl, reflect that anger and bitterness?

That whole project is different angles of my teenage years and my school experience. ‘Time Of Your Life’ is about me feeling like I’ve maybe wasted those years, because I didn’t have the best time. But, you know, that’s ridiculous. You can’t force an experience. So I’ve kind of took a little sarcastic tone in that song. There’s also like songs about friendship breakups and then ‘I Hope You’re Happy’ is kind of like a little ‘See ya, I’m doing better now.’

How does your next project build on what you were doing with ‘Hell Is A Teenage Girl’?

I took a five month writing break between those two projects, which was really beneficial. In that time, I moved to London, and I wrote the whole of Hell Is A Teenage Girl when I was still living in Wales. So I experienced a lot of new things in that five month period. The second project in terms of concept is more about starting your 20s. I guess a lot of it is about me choosing a life that I didn’t think I would choose, I thought I would go to university and I didn’t. In terms of musicality, I wrote that project when I had started playing live, because with Hell Is A Teenage Girl, I hadn’t played one live show yet. I took the experience of playing live seeing people’s reaction to certain things into writing my second project.

You’ve said your new single ‘Screw Loose’ “kickstarted a new headspace” for you. Where were you in your mind when writing it and the other songs you have that are yet to be released?

I was in a pretty bad place when I was writing that project. I was struggling elsewhere in my life and I threw myself into writing, completely just distracting myself with these songs. They’re literally my favourite songs I’ve ever written. They make me feel so happy now in hindsight, but if you actually listen to the lyrics [closely], pretty much all of the songs are pretty devastating! The first song that I wrote for this project was ‘Screw Loose’ and it was just when I was feeling like every day was the same and I lost a lot of hope for what I was doing.

What would you say the big dream is for you right now?

A big dream is for me to take over the world! My main goal is to be in a room full of people, no matter how big or how small, and every single person in there knows every single lyric and [it feels] so alive when I’m playing live”.

In fact, when reading this recent interview with Kerrang!, that I discovered that her mini-album, Nothing Lasts Forever, is out this month. A perfect time to highlight and celebrate the remarkable and distinct Hannah Grae. I hope that there are going to be more interviews with her. I feel we have only scratched the surface:

“When she first began writing music, Hannah was more accustomed to telling stories not about herself, but about others. She’d always fancied herself as a performer, but after being rejected from drama school she shifted focus, giving herself a more unconventional, self-directed education by making music for her YouTube channel in lockdown. As well as recording herself playing covers, she wrote reinterpretations of existing songs based on suggestions her followers would send in, such as a new version of Olivia Rodrigo’s 2021 mega-hit drivers license.

Hannah was far more reserved about exhuming her own feelings for the purpose of music. “I literally was never, ever vulnerable,” she admits. “I never spoke about my feelings to anyone. I just pushed them down and ignored them. The idea of writing a song that was about me, and the idea of playing it to people, was so scary.”

Eventually, Hannah felt more able to tell the world exactly how she was feeling at a given moment, set to a vibrant alt.rock sound inspired by everything from No Doubt and Alanis Morissette to Taylor Swift and Disney pop-punk. Her breakout moment arrived in the form of her mini-album Hell Is A Teenage Girl, a diaristic expulsion of coming-of-age growing pains determined to tear to shreds the idea that your school years are the best years of your life.

Growing up doesn’t stop when you hit 20, however, as Hannah has learned. When Hell Is A Teenage Girl was released, she was still at home in Port Talbot, Wales, but then moved to London to grow her career. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is a dream come true,’ and then I got to London and realised I had way too high expectations,” she says. “I really struggled for a couple of months and I was worried I wasn’t going to be able to write again.”

Fortunately, songwriting was still there for Hannah as a means of distracting herself from the awkward adjustment to leaving home, which forms the basis of her second body of work, Nothing Lasts Forever. The latest taste from that release is her fiery new single Better Now You’re Gone, whose fun and upbeat feel is contrasted by angst and regret. “It’s about that phase in a break-up when you’re convincing yourself that you’re fine and as the song unravels, it becomes more clear that I’m not fine,” Hannah explains.

The rest of Nothing Lasts Forever is a more ambitious, mature project than its predecessor. “I had so many ideas and I executed them all. It means it’s not the most concise, fluid project you’ve ever heard, but it really is just [going into] every pocket of my brain. There’s some very high-highs and some very low-lows on there, but it’s really honest. I’m really proud of it”.

Check out Hannah Grae and her forthcoming project, Nothing Lasts Forever. She is an artist who is going to be playing massive stages and headlining festivals in years to come. I think that she is a standout artist this year. Someone that should be known far and wide. If you have not yet discovered her music, then make sure that you spend time with…

THIS incredible talent.

_________

Follow Hannah Grae

PHOTO CREDIT: Sam McMahon

Official:

https://www.hannahgrae.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/hannahgrae/

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@hannahgrae

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/HannahGraeMusic

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/06vyPLBCJLDF8EGgQJEEhV?si=E9Gb2orPT6Snw7qLeYuocw

Facebook:

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YouTube:

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FEATURE: Spotlight: FIZZ

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: JP Bonino

FIZZ

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EVEN if modern-day supergroups…

PHOTO CREDIT: Em Marcovecchio for DORK

might not have the same stature and clout as some of the classics, I think there is more variety now. In terms of the great artists who can come together and form a new project. In the case of London-based FIZZ, we have Orla Gartland, Dodie, Greta Isaac and Martin Luke Brown. Before coming to a few other interviews with them, back in September, the BBC introduced us to the amazing FIZZ:

“It started as a way to blow off steam in the studio. Now it's become a fully-fledged psychedelic pop group.

That's Fizz - a sort of indie supergroup formed by Irish singer-songwriter Orla Gartland and her musical friends Dodie Clark, Greta Isaac and Martin Luke Brown.

Over the past 10 years, all four have achieved a degree of success as solo acts, with Orla and Dodie both scoring top 10 albums. But the music industry can be a lonely place when you're on your own. The pressure to create, promote, find money and drum up opportunities often becomes a treadmill.

"We'd been working on our own projects so hard and for so long that they started to feel like jobs," says Martin.

"I was like, 'I want to go on a holiday but still do music'."

Plans were hatched in a WhatsApp group. The quartet booked themselves into a studio in Devon and went crazy.

Over two weeks, they recorded an entire album from scratch, using every colour in the crayon box to create a giddy, freewheeling pop sound that shrugs off the straitjacket of streaming algorithms.

"We were like, 'Let's play, with no thoughts about what playlist the music's going to be on'," says Martin.

"We wanted to be completely uncorrupted and have a laugh... And as soon as the chains were off, of course there were so many ideas."

"It happened so fast," adds Orla. "We didn't have time to overthink it. No-one was like, 'Ooh, is this guitar part right?' It was all done on pure instinct.

"I think it sounds like happiness bottled."

With this anything-goes approach, producer Pete Miles encouraged the group to pick up instruments they'd never played before, from clarinets to pipe organs.

Vocals were recorded as a gang, standing in a circle, rather than isolating each voice to obtain a clean recording.

"Pete understands that if we spend too much time getting everything sounding really polished, everyone starts to feel lethargic and demotivated," says Greta.

"He really focuses on capturing the energy, and we definitely just sing differently when we're all together."

For Greta, this even involved singing in character as "two old ladies" for the backing vocals on the single High In Brighton.

"Silliness is definitely good and to be celebrated in this band - and perfection doesn't matter," she laughs.

Indeed, if you listen to the individual vocal recordings (which the band kindly shared on their podcast), there's what you might call a relaxed attitude to pitch. Mariah Carey this is not. Instead, the music gains a giddy sense of fun and togetherness.

"All together, we sound so powerful," says Dodie. "But if you take everyone else away and it's just your vocal, you sound like a child."

Unused to musical democracy, members make compromises and concessions that dilute what makes them unique.

The opposite seems to have happened for Fizz. Maybe it helps that Dodie, Greta and Martin share a flat, so the group dynamics were already in place. Or maybe it's because they've established a musical shorthand by working on each other's projects.

"I know exactly what you mean about how the edges can get sanded off," says Orla, "and I think if we didn't know each other so intimately, that could have happened. But instead it was about pushing each other to be braver and more confident and more untethered and just slightly feral.

"You know, Dodie sings famously quietly but this was like, 'Dodie, get out there and yell!'"

Fizz made their debut at the Great Escape Festival in May and signed to Decca Records soon after. The album is due in October and, in tandem with the music, there's a lack of inhibition to their presentation.

Speaking at July's Latitude Festival, the quartet are kitted out in colourful outfits from their childhood.

"I'm dressed like a baby," laughs Martin. "If you saw a five-year-old wearing this you'd be like, 'Oh my God, cute!' But because it's me, in my 20s with a moustache, I'm getting some interesting looks!"

The band's high concept artwork has already spawned imitations

The Harlequin aesthetic extends to their artwork and music videos, which are set in a fictional theme park called Fizzville. And although it's still early days, fans are starting to adopt the look.

"Everyone's definitely on board with the circus vibe, Willy Wonka chic," says Martin.

"Even online, we're getting tagged in a lot of messages from people who are dressed up and saying, 'I'm feeling very Fizz today'," adds Orla.

"The band seems to be encouraging people to be creative and elaborate and loud."

"I think we're missing theatre in pop music," Greta agrees. "We had it with Queen and Abba, that high-camp theatricality, inviting people to let go of themselves."

And that, says Martin, is what makes the band special.

"When I was a kid, that's all I wanted from the show: To be outside of myself.

"If something's too cool, you shrink. You feel like you have to like play the role of a cool person in a cool crowd.

"It's nice to just be, like, part of a big group of people screaming”.

FIZZ are just about to complete a string of amazing live dates. I suspect that they are going to be appear on a few festival bills. Even there are not many interviews from the past few months, I will take us back to late last year. One of the acts that are going to make some big moves this year, FIZZ should be on your radar. Their debut album, The Secret to Life, was released in October. It is an album I would recommend people seek out. In September, FIZZ spoke with NME about their album and how the band’s dynamic and songwriting will affect how each member writes as a solo member. An act of rebellion in the industry, FIZZ definitely got people excited and intrigued:

“NME: ‘The Secret To Life’ begins with ‘A New Phase Awaits You :-)’, where you offer listeners something to “lift you up and get out of that funk”. Did you find making this album got you out of a funk?

Dodie: “Oh my god, totally. I was absolutely stuck, and we said yes to everything when we were writing, there were no bad ideas. In fact there were too many ideas, I’ve never written songs so fast and so fun.”

Gartland: “It felt like we were running the collective tap in a way that I had definitely not experienced for a really long time – if ever – and it was like the energy of us all being there made the writing really different. When someone’s energy dipped, someone else could pick it up, and that’s not something I had ever experienced before.”

Do you think this experience will change how you write your solo projects?

Dodie: “Definitely. I think letting go a little bit more will hopefully allow some doors to open. Before Fizz, I felt like there was a structure I had to stick to and a lane that was mine”

Brown: “I feel like I’m more ambitious now. Everything feels achievable after you’ve written a song with eight key changes. Before, the task of aiming for something big and grand was something I talked myself out of all the time.”

Isaac: “I definitely feel much braver, and like I trust my instincts a little bit more creatively. Being around these guys and feeling validated in your experience really helps your creative process. I’ll definitely carry that into my own music.”

‘As Good As It Gets’ is a powerhouse single that sees you take on misogyny in a really cathartic way. How did it come together?

Isaac: “I was doing these down plucky things on the rubber bridge [of the guitar], and we wanted it to feel quite punky and have a lot of drive to it. Originally it really did sound like ‘American Idiot’, very punk-y and loud, with a lot of energy behind it. Slowly it turned into something different. We built a bit of a story around it, and then we wanted it to sound soft and feminine and beautiful to begin with, and then erupt into something much more angry later on.

“We had an assistant engineer called Soren Bryce at the studio with us, who’s also got a project called Tummyache, which is very dark and post-punk and beautiful. She felt like quite a subtle reference point for us creatively; and she sang on the song with us. I was having a shit day that day, and it felt like a really cathartic moment. It felt like that anger I was holding in my body was fuel to be able to sing the song.”

Was there a specific moment that inspired that song lyrically, or is it a lifetime of moments?

Dodie: “There’s definitely a few nuggets of real stories in there that we all just inherently know, because we’ve shared them.”

Gartland: “I think a lot of experiences of just not feeling enough. Particularly as a female, in the industry and out of it, where you get that little fire in you and you’re told or shown in some way that your feelings aren’t enough. For me when it erupts into that really high note Greta sings, it feels like that’s been building up for years.”

Isaac: “It feels like the whole thing is a pressure cooker. In my experience, I’ve equated a lot of worth to my appearance or how palatable I am to dudes, and deconstructing in my 20s has been really powerful, and this song’s a direct mirror to that.”

The music industry has changed hugely since you all started your careers. Were there things you felt like you had to consider – like TikTok – when working on this project, you didn’t before?

Gartland: “I think for all of us, the release plan was not thought about during the making of the music. What was essential to the bubble that we created making [the album], was ignoring completely how it might come out, and how you might present it, or even whether we will put it out at all.

“There were points where I was thinking ‘I would be so happy if this music never came out’; it was all about the process and about the time. But I also felt really proud of it and felt like I wanted to put it out. But yeah, [the industry] has definitely changed a lot since we’ve all started. God knows where it ends up!”

Brown: “I really feel like the culture of Fizz is so apparent, what we’re about, without us having to shove it down people’s throats. If people come across it, they will get it, even if they absolutely hate it, which I’m totally fine with.

“And I think people will hate it as well. It is what it is, and it’s so boldly what it is, and that in and of itself is so amazing, because I know people can just discover it. I don’t feel like we’re fighting for a way to cut through the noise”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Karina Barberis

I will move on to an interview from CLASH. Speaking with FIZZ in October, we get to learn more about a fascinating group. For those who have not heard of them or experienced the music, go and check them out on social media and investigate what they have put out so far:

“Welcome to Fizzville – your new favourite indie supergroup has arrived. Fondly referring to their fans as ‘fizzlets’ and sporting bright, clashing colours, FIZZ is infused with the psychedelia, euphoria and sheer imagination necessary for when friendship is the only thing saving you from disillusionment with an extractive industry. Comprised of Martin Luke Brown, Orla Gartland, Greta Isaac and dodie, the band blend everyday moments with surreal levels of theatricality on debut full-length, ‘The Secret To Life’.

In spite of their respective successes as individual artists, FIZZ evidently provides the opportunity for a new era of experimentation for its members. ‘The Secret To Life’ is a cathartic release of emotion and tension, blending the band’s musical maturity with a charmingly youthful spirit for life. The process behind the record was crucial. Motivated by an inherent desire to avoid overcomplicating music-making, FIZZ’s time at Middle Farm allowed them to go back to basics and focus on the most crucial theme of all, friendship.

Describing this project as infused with play and a liberating sense of creative freedom, it’s clear that the four friends believe their solo work has been enhanced by FIZZ. Providing the perfect chance to embrace their inner child, ‘The Secret To Life’ is about exploring the weird and wonderful spectrum of emotion.

CLASH caught up with the super group to discuss origin stories, avoiding the tendency to overthink and the delirious laughter that takes over when four friends decide to record together over two weeks.

What was it like recording as a group at Middle Farm?

Dodie: It’s the best bit for sure. We were writing and recording at the same time because, again, we were really trying not to think too hard about anything. Pete Miles is the producer at Middle Farm, which is the studio we went to. He really encourages play. He basically set us up little recording stations where we stayed and recorded. There was a lot of red wine and vibes. Yeah we had a great time. Lots of fits of giggles.

Greta: So many hilarious vocal takes that are probably still buried somewhere in the album if you listen closely. I think simultaneously singing together is so powerful, and kind of spiritual in some ways. But then also can be fucking hilarious if someone sings a bum note or pulls a funny face when they’re singing or whatever.

Martin: We tracked all the vocals round; we had four mics and we were all facing each other tracking vocals at the same time. By the nature of being directly opposite each other and being able to look at everyone – just the faces that people would pull while they’re hitting certain notes – we laughed a lot for sure.

Greta: There’s something about also singing with your friends, when you’re laughing in a recording environment and you’re not meant to laugh, because of time, pressure or tiredness and you just want to get it done. There’s something about that kind of laughing. It’s almost like vomiting, it’s like involuntary vomiting. You’re just like, I need to stop laughing but I can’t.

What are each of your favourite moments on the album?

Orla: The second verse of ‘Close One’ right at the beginning, where it goes “careful”, and it drops. That’s just so fun.

Greta: There’s a guitar solo in ‘The Secret To Life’ at the end where Orla is playing it, and it’s just so sick, and so sexy I always forget that Orla can play guitar so amazingly.

Martin: There’s a bit in ‘The Grand Finale’, which is the last song in the album. Me and Gret do a verse. We call it ‘Paul’s a Plumber’. That’s the section. And it’s like Thomas the Tank Engine meets…

D: The Beatles, I think.

M: Yeah, it’s just so so silly. It’s such a fun thing. Maximum, maximum silly. I love it.

D: My favourite is in ‘As Good As It Gets’. There’s a note that Gret hits, that when she was recording it I was literally like ‘Ahhh!’ It still gives me goosebumps, literally it will always give me goosebumps.

The album explores a variety of different emotions so effortlessly. How did you go about approaching the blend of emotional intensity and playfulness?

Martin: We honestly just did it. We just did it and afterwards we were like “Oh, it worked! Cool.” Yeah, truly.

Orla: I think so much of it was unspoken about intentionally because it felt like such an experiment. The only thing I was intent on, and felt across the board, was fighting the urge to overcook or overthink any decision. It’s not something that we’ve ever discussed as a band, because the whole point of it was not to discuss anything and build up a trust in your own instinct that I definitely lost in my projects. The speed at which we wrote with, lent into fighting the urge to overthink things. We would just go in and throw the vocal down, and the vocal you sing the first time is the final take. It’s like this really fast fever dream.

Martin: It’s how we were feeling on the day. We were just gassed and excited because it was this playground for us.

Greta: Yeah, the songs are like a huge mirror of how we were feeling that day. We were writing them and finishing them in a day or two essentially, there wasn’t much time spent on properly going through the tracks and tweaking anything. We just didn’t allow time for that. I think Martin’s right – each song is a true reflection of how we were feeling that day. We have sad songs and more funny, stupid songs, which is testament to the full spectrum we allow ourselves as a friendship group; to both be vulnerable and cry one minute, and then crack jokes and chat about Paul the Plumber the other.

Much of the album feels like they’re almost a guttural scream into the void. Were they cathartic to record?

Dodie: Yes, totally.

Orla: Especially ‘Hell Of A Ride’ for me. I think I was thinking about aging so much at that time, without even ever having acknowledged that within myself. There’s something really amazing that happens when you have a feeling in you that you haven’t said out loud, and then someone else suggests a lyric that is literally like a mirror to that. ‘As Good As It Gets’ as well, but in a different way. It was the three of us gals and our friend Soren Bryce, she was like a character in the studio for the whole album and her own projects are post-punky amazingness. We channelled her energy when all four of us were yelling around the mics. That was so cathartic”.

I am going to end with a snippet of a NOTION. Even though there may not be a set long-term plan for FIZZ in terms of how long they are together, you can tell they are going to be around for a long time. Lots of exciting music to come. The bond and chemistry between them is incredible. You can feel how much they love recording together:

“What are the challenges of being a young band in the UK music industry?

I think the hardest thing has been navigating social media as a group. Portraying four distinct personalities through one channel has been challenging at times. We all care so much and are so involved in every decision, it feels much more democratic than our own projects, which we all dictate individually.

Why did you feel it was the right moment to produce your first album?

It just felt serendipitous. Orla was between albums, dodie had just released an EP, Martin was wrapping up his first album campaign. It logistically lined up and just felt like the right time in our lives to fuck shit up and try something completely different for a sec. I think the project itself and all of our individual projects can only ever benefit from that new perspective.

Can you discuss your journey with The Secret To Life album? what inspired it, what were the highlights and what were the challenges?

Truly, there were very minimal challenges. It was a complete inverting of our usual way of working. No ego, no cerebral overthinking about how it was gonna be perceived; it was just total joy and escapism. We’re all so proud we managed to follow through on that intention. I guess it’s been hard at times navigating business and pleasure but again it all just boils down to trust and communication and we’ve got so good at that now.

PHOTO CREDIT: Karina Barberis

What are each of you most excited about going on this tour?

All of it: the singing, the costumes and the energy. The campaign has felt largely online so far but nothing compares to that sense of community you get being in a room of like-minded people having a daft old time, singing, dancing and celebrating life. We’re all gassed for that. Orla always says you top and tail campaigns with the fun stuff, the tour feels like the reward for all the hard work.

Aside from your tour, what will you be working on the next few months?

We’ve already started writing for whatever’s next, we can’t help it. Orla is prepping for her next release, we’re all working on various bits and pieces, but we’re all open to being reactive with FIZZ too. It’s all completely unknown and out of our control so we’re doing our best to prepare for absolutely anything!

Where do you hope FIZZ will be 2 years from now?

On holiday.

Do you have a collective dream as a band?

Honestly, no. The band is the dream, everything else is a bonus!”.

Go and follow the brilliant FIZZ. This is a group that are going to make some exciting moves through this year. After the release of their debut album, The Secret to Life, they are going to be looking ahead. They put out their Acoustic E.P. last month. A few acoustic versions of track that appeared on their debut album, I am sure that we will get a further E.P. later in the year. The music of this wonderful quartet…

TRULY pops.

_________

Follow FIZZ

PHOTO CREDIT: Karina Barberis

Official:

https://www.yourfavebandfizz.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/yourfavebandfizz/

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@yourfavebandfizz

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/favebandfizz

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/0zooagBp2tYdvvSLp74S7U?si=t8X3J7RiQXSuG7G0sj6Ckw

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/yourfavebandfizz

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@yourfavebandfizz

FEATURE: Huge Originality from the Start… How Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside Announced An Artist Like No Other

FEATURE:

 

 

Huge Originality from the Start…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz 

How Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside Announced An Artist Like No Other

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I am briefly returning…

to Kate Bush’s amazing 1978 debut album, The Kick Inside. Not only did it turn forty-six earlier this month. It reminds me just how radical and original the album is! We often take for granted the fact Kate Bush is such an individual artist. I feel many do not appreciate how refreshingly different and original Kate Bush was in 1978. Still a teenager, she came into the music scene with a debut album that was far from conventional. Hugely feminine in some respects, The Kick Inside is also so accomplished in terms of its lyrics and vocal performances. Extraordinary range from Kate Bush, the sort of things she was covering on her debut album is mind-blowing. Not as heard and revered as it should be, many people do not respect The Kick Inside in terms of its boldness, bravery and beauty. Often open to mockery and ridicule by the music press, I don’t think anyone was ready for The Kick Inside. Not sure how to handle this extraordinary and unusual talent that was in front of them. I am compelled to come back to The Kick Inside, as MOJO recently marked its forty-sixth anniversary. They saluted its originality. An album that includes whale song, ancient murder ballads, gothic fiction and meditations on love and sex:

“The first sound heard is whale song, sampled from the 1970 The Song Of the Humpback Whale, recorded by pioneering bio-acoustician Roger Payne (excerpts were also included on the Voyager space probes’ Golden Records, both of which are now in interstellar space). Alien yet somehow familiar, they lead us into Moving. A rising, falling theatrical rock tribute to Lindsay Kemp – who didn’t know his pupil was a singer until she put a copy of the album under his door – it finds her soprano voice reaching out like lighthouse beams through the mist. Balletic and expressive, the suspicion that its lyrics could also be interpreted sexually are not assuaged by The Saxophone Song. Progressive pop with gutsy sax by British jazz ace Alan Skidmore, it’s earthy stuff, as she ladles on a fantasia of juxtaposed images that elude concrete interpretation: “It’s in me/And you know it’s for real/Tuning in on your saxophone… the stars that climb from her bowels/Those stars make towers on vowels”, before the static frenzy of the outro.

A vivid internal world made external, this is music which presents female experience and feeling to an intense degree (this writer was harshly informed by one female fan that not inhabiting the same biological reality as a woman means a man’s understanding of Bush’s oeuvre will remain incomplete). A feathery, hovering prog-pop question mark, Strange Phenomena contemplates menstruation, déjà vu, synchronicity, intuition and unconscious communications, and was portrayed by the singer dressed as a magician in a TV special filmed at the Efteling theme park in the Netherlands in May 1978.

The male gets a look-in on the next song, but the message is ambivalent. A Number 6 hit in July ’78, the orchestral, exquisite The Man With The Child In His Eyes was, it’s claimed, written for early boyfriend and future TV presenter Steve Blacknell, who was then working cleaning toilets at a Kent mental hospital. On that year’s US interview promo the Kate Bush Radio Special, she described the song as, “a theory that I had had for a while that I just observed in most of the men that I know: the fact that they just are little boys inside and how wonderful it is that they manage to retain this magic.”

Before offence can be taken by the liberated sensitive man of 2024 – does she actually mean me? - the ground zero of Wuthering Heights stops time, again. Sung in a morphing, trilling voice that straddles the world of the living and the dead, it’s quixotic, brilliant and utterly mesmeric. Surprisingly, it didn’t come from obsessive readings of Emily Bronte’s 1847 gothic romance, but was written in one night after watching a 1967 BBC TV adaption starring Ian McShane and Angela Scoular – later the wife of British screen cad Leslie Phillips – who died in 2011 after drinking drain cleaner. And this is just Side

Side 2 continues its sophisto-rock explorations via a unique artistic sensibility, with reflections on firearms and masculinity (James And The Cold Gun), sex and intoxicating romance (a non-prurient triple-punch of Feel It, Oh To Be In Love and L’Amour Looks Something Like You), spiritual enlightenment (Them Heavy People) and childbirth (Room For The Life). The closing title song’s voice, piano and strings arrangement is lulling and sweet, but death and madness lurk at its heart. Adapted from Lizie Wan, an old British song collected by folklorist Francis James Child, with added references to the Olympian gods, it concerns a sister killing herself after becoming pregnant with her brother’s child. Few other singers could pull off this sleight of hand, of lightness and something genuinely unsettling, so convincingly”.

In 1978, there was a particular scene and sound at the forefront. An industry still favouring and celebrating male artists, there was not a great deal of awareness and promotion of female artists. Aside from the Debbie Harry-led Blondie, a lot of the female artists in the charts in 1978 sounded a lot different to Kate Bush. Maybe Patti Smith was the only woman challenging a male-dominated year that saw albums from The Jam, Elvis Costello, Wire and Buzzcocks gain huge critical acclaim. There was not the sort of diversity we would see in years to come. Because of that, against a backdrop where you had a lot of male bands in demand and filling the scene, hearing a female artist of such distinction and originality come through must have been startling! Of course, there were those who applauded Kate Bush and were kind to her music – though there were plenty more who were not. Because she was not like anyone around her and was this beguiling and hypnotic voice, there was this cynicism and mockery. A voice that definitely was nothing like the edgier and masculine sounds of 1978, The Kick Inside did get a rough ride from some. Bush seen as quite screechy or eccentric. In fact, rather than her being this alien and strange thing, she was an extraordinary artist who would change music forever.

The Kick Inside did recently turn forty-six. Released on 17th February, 1978, maybe we take for granted today the fact that it is distinctly the work of Kate Bush. Not enough people discuss the album. In terms of its sheer and consistent quality, though also how strikingly and stunningly original it is. If one would expect a teenage female artist to discuss love on a debut album, you would be a little disappointed. Bush does do that. As she was influenced a lot by literature, there are these more evocative and imaginative songs. Spiritualism and self-examination stands alongside sex and meditations on womanhood and life-giving. Wuthering Heights sounds nothing like The Man with the Child in His Eyes. Moving is one of her most beautiful and stirring opening songs. Them Heavy People name-checks spiritual teacher George Gurdjieff. The Kick Inside did reach number three in the U.K. It got some positive reviews. However, I still feel that it was written off by many. And Kate Bush. Seen as this oddity that was not in keeping with what was expected in 1978. There has been retrospection in years to come. Perhaps not as much as there should be. I hope ensuing years recognises the brilliance and importance of The Kick Inside. An album that has influenced so many other artists. One that was hugely refreshing and important. From the transcendent whale song that opens the album – on Moving – to the haunted lines and piano that closes with the title track, The Kick Inside is this astonishing work from an artist like no other. I don’t think it quite gets all of the credit and respect…

THAT it deserves.

FEATURE: Groovelines: Shania Twain – Man! I Feel Like a Woman!

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

Shania Twain – Man! I Feel Like a Woman!

_________

ONE of the biggest albums ever…

PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

Come On Over did receive mixed reviews from music critics upon its release in 1997. At the 41st GRAMMYs in 1999, it was nominated for Album of the Year and Best Country Album. An extraordinary success story, Come on Over achieved sales of over forty million copies worldwide. It was recognised by Guinness World Records as the biggest-selling studio album of all time by a solo female artist. It is testament to its popularity and commercial appeal that twelve singles from the album were released! It seems insane now that any album would get that many single releases! I can’t think of any other album in history where almost the entirety has been put out as singles. Because of that, in 1999, Come on Over was still getting exposure because of single releases. On 3rd March, 1999, the music video one of the standout tracks from the album, Man! I Feel Like a Woman!, came out and was a huge hit. Hitting the top ten in many countries – and topping the charts in some -, I want to come to some articles about the single. I shall come to some reviews and reception around Man! I Feel Like a Woman! I had no idea about the origins and background. How Shania Twain came up with a song that seems to be a little ambiguous. Or at least not too obvious. Written with producer Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange, critics noted the hooks and merits of the track. This Wikipedia article talks about the history of Man! I Feel Like a Woman! One of Shania Twain’s most popular tracks:

“The title and thus the lyrics of the song were based on Shania Twain's experience while working at Deerhurst Resort in Huntsville, Ontario to provide for her brothers and sisters after their parents died in a car crash. Twain recalls seeing some drag performers working at the resort and credits them as the source of her inspiration. Later in 1993, after being signed to Mercury Nashville and releasing her first album Shania Twain, Twain met Robert John "Mutt" Lange, whom she would collaborate extensively with and marry at the end of the year. In 1994, while composing songs for what would become her second studio album The Woman in Me, Lange played to Twain a riff he had been working on and Twain sang lyrics for what would become "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!". Speaking of the writing of the song, she stated "There was no time to waste on ideas that wouldn't make the album, but something like [the song] was just there. I was inspired right off the bat with that one, for example, by a riff Mutt had going, and the lyrics and phrasing just came out of the blue."

After reaching domestic success in the United States, and selling over 15 million copies with The Woman in Me, Twain was determined to become an international star and decided to do whatever was necessary to achieve her goal. In order to achieve a worldwide success, Twain recorded her third studio album, Come On Over, with the intention of being "international". After completing the album and delivering it to Mercury Records, Lange spent four months remixing 70 percent of the album for its international edition, diluting and removing the twang elements. While writing for the album, Twain and Lange revisited "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!" and insisted on having the track on the album. The track was then the final song recorded for Come On Over. The song is the opening track of the U.S. edition of Come On Over, however, the international edition starts with "You're Still the One", since the song has country elements.

Seen as a powerful feminist anthem, it has been dissected and discussed through the years. As it turns twenty-five on 3rd March, I wanted to mark a quarter-century of a huge song from one of the most acclaimed and successful albums of the 1990s. At the end of last year, Biography highlighted how the inspiration for Man! I Feel Like a Woman! has its roots at Toronto’s L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ bars:

“On the surface, Shania Twain’s 1999 radio hit “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” is the ultimate girl power anthem. With lyrics like “No inhibitions, make no conditions / Get a little outta line / I ain’t gonna act politically correct / I only want to have a good time / The best thing about being a woman is the prerogative to have a little fun,” it’s all about letting loose for a no hold’s bar night on the town.

But the actual inspiration behind the song? Men at Toronto’s LGBTQ bars.

The singer co-wrote the song, featured on her 1997 album, Come On Over, with her producer-turned-ex-husband Robert John “Mutt” Lange. Twain has said the hit was likely inspired by nights out at gay clubs with her friends during her teen years. And it’s no wonder that today, it’s become as popular with drag queens as it has with audiences of every kind.

“I was just going to give up music,” Twain told Country Weekly in 1995. “I thought, my family comes first. I have to take care of them. I didn’t even think of the future.” As fate would have it, taking care of her younger siblings—Carrie-Ann, Darryl, and Mark—came in the form of a performing job at Deerhurst Resort in Huntsville, Ontario. “I’m lucky I got the job at Deerhurst because it was music,” she continued.

Not only did the job keep her on track, but it also introduced her to the world of showmanship. “Deerhurst was the first time I was directed on stage, and it was the first time I had dancers. It educated me,” she told the Canadian publication Macleans in 2015.

“When it was time to put together my show in Vegas, all that dazzle wasn’t foreign to me. I was familiar with the whole feel of a big stage show because of my being there,” she said of the resort. “It was like a mini-Vegas! Or like attending a Vegas performing arts school.”

Some sources report that her exposure to drag performers during her time there also contributed to the influences of “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”

Twain believes the song brings people together

Twain’s early influences from her Toronto club days and her Vegas-like training likely combined to bring the frivolous fun to “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!,” extending wide appeal to a broad swath of listeners. Rolling Stone even called the music video, in which Twain dresses up in a menswear-inspired look, complete with a top hat, “stereotypically male and indulgently female.” And, like in her early gay club days, the men in the video don perfect eyeliner.

“A lot of straight men sing ‘Man! I Feel Like a Woman!’ just for the sheer entertainment of it,” she said in a 2017 interview with PrideSource. “I think songs like that have been great, maybe, contributors to bringing us together, if not for anything than just for the common denominator of music... and that breaks down barriers.”

In fact, that’s what Twain relies on when she’s performing songs that she’s written like this—appealing to the love of music over anything that could spark controversy. “I like to have a sense of humor about everything, especially things that can have a lot of tension,” she continued. “A song like ‘Man! I Feel Like a Woman!’ just smacks it dead for me. The audience issue is not something I worry about. I’m respectful to my audience, and I appreciate them for relating to my music regardless of their point of view on whatever it is, whether it’s politics or social issues. I’m not here to judge.”

Twain believes “entertainment doesn’t have a gender”

More recently, Twain has said the song is about fully embracing her own femininity. She shied away from being overtly feminine when she was growing up to avoid unwanted male attention. But dancing at Toronto’s LGBTQ bars, while all dressed up with makeup on, was a liberating experience where she could “feel good about being female,” she told The Messenger. “That’s why it’s such a statement—not just ‘I Feel Like a Woman,’ but ‘Man! I Feel Like a Woman!’ and I love it, and I’m enjoying it, and I’m wearing it well.”

No matter her original intention, Twain has become an idol, especially in the drag queen community. The first time she came across a drag performer dressed as herself was at a Las Vegas imposter show.

“It was incredible,” she said. “The country world... might be more conservative, but it’s funny, three of the artists that were in the show were myself, Reba McEntire, and Dolly Parton. I thought that was so wonderful… Any artist that is, on a visual level, very expressive would make a great imposter night subject.”

Ultimately, Twain isn’t worried about her work and her legacy fitting traditional gender norms. “Entertainment doesn’t have a gender. The fashions that ended up stringing together my career—especially the epic, iconic looks—[go] both ways,” she told Macleans. “It can be drag queen-y as easily as it can be a sophisticated woman. We created a seamless, natural place for all of us.”

In fact, she even proudly doles out advice for drag performers who want to mimic her style. As she told PrideSource, the essential ingredients are: “Something leopard print, and I would say a top hat. The boots, for sure!”.

First released as a single in the U.S. on 3rd March, 1999, maybe she was not concerned with taking a song like Man! I Feel Like a Woman! internationally. As Come on Over had been out for over a year, maybe keeping singles in the U.S. was the plan. Feeling there would not be much commercial success and desire from other nations. Selling huge amounts and receiving big critical acclaim, Man! I Feel Like a Woman! was released around the world. This article also goes into the background of an iconic Shania Twain song. We get to learn more about its standout and arresting video:

“The country superstar explained that it was pretty late for her to acknowledge that she was becoming a woman. She added that she grew up as a rowdy girl who was always with the boys playing football and other sports. However, she noticed that she is getting curvier day by day, making her uncomfortable with her body.

Even so, Twain learned to embrace such changes. She began appreciating the fact that she can absolutely have fun being a woman, and that became the central theme of “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” She decided to write the song to share her own self-empowerment – a symbol of her shift into womanhood.

However, many other people relate to the compelling track that it eventually developed into a girl-power anthem.

In another interview, the country music hit-maker said that the song’s title and lyrics were based on her experiences while working at Deerhurst Resort in Huntsville, Ontario. Twain remembered working with some drag performers at the resort, and she finds it fascinating enough every time they transform themselves into gorgeous women. She also credits them as the source of her inspiration.

Equally Frivolous Music Video

The song is also accompanied by a music video shot in New York City. Twain can be seen standing in front of a group of men dressed in the same way, donning perfect eyeliner. They were meant to imitate the women in Robert Palmer’s music videos for “Simply Irresistible” and “Addicted to Love.” It became Twain’s second most watched video, garnering 240 million views while “From This Moment On” was on top with 250 million views as of this writing.

Indeed, it’s the most iconic among Shania Twain songs. You can listen to “Man! I Feel Like A Woman” by Shania Twain in the video below”.

Crowned the number one karaoke song by Billboard in 2022, Shania Twain shared her reaction on The Jennifer Hudson Show. Feeling it was pretty cool, the track has taken on a life of its own. Still played a lot to this day, I doubt Twain would have realised what a legacy and impact the song would have. And how it would be adored and known so widely twenty-five years later. That is why I wanted to go deep with it for Groovelines. On an album like Come on Over with so many singles, Man! I Feel Like a Woman! ranks alongside the very best. Her most-streamed song on Spotify – with over 539,000,000 streams -, the video has been viewed over 400,000,000 times. It is a colossal success story from an artist who made history with a globe-conquering album. I remember when Man! I Feel Like a Woman! reached the U.K. a little while after its U.S. release in March 1999. I was instantly hooked by it. Even to this day, I feel it sounds fresh and alive. Influencing a whole host of artists, this incredible anthem has stood the test of time. It is an incredible song that so many Shainia Twain fans hold dear. Impossible to resist and not sing along to, I know we will be talking about Man! I Feel Like a Woman! for…

DEACDES longer.

FEATURE: Contenders: Mercury Prize-Worthy Albums from July 2023 to February 2024

FEATURE:

 

 

Contenders

IN THIS PHOTO: Sprints 

Mercury Prize-Worthy Albums from July 2023 to February 2024

_________

EVEN though…

IN THIS PHOTO: Corinne Bailey Rae

we have to wait until the summer to find out which twelve albums are shortlisted for this year’s Mercury Prize. Last year’s dozen was a very strong field. The prize was won by Ezra Collective for their album, Where I’m Meant to Be. There was a blend of debut albums, albums from legends, in addition to some eclectic and experimental albums mixing alongside darker Folk and Disco-Pop. Since the 2023 ceremony, we have seen some tremendous albums from British and Irish albums. The eligibility for shortlisting ran up to 15th July, 2023. I assume everything released after that and before 15th July or thereabouts this year will be eligible. I think there have been a selection so far that could well be in contention when we discover who will make the dozen shortlist Mercury albums this year. From a brand-new album from Nadine Shah to the debut from The Last Dinner Party, it is clear that some of these magnificent albums are going to be named later in the year. Rather than get the hopes up of these artists, it is a temperature check and early prediction. I will do an updated feature in three or four months. Right now, sort of at the half-way point, there are albums I feel are Mercury-worthy. Below are ten terrific releases that should be on that prestigious shortlist…

IN July.

___________

Nadine Shah – Filthy Underneath

Release Date: 23rd February, 2024

Label: EMI North

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/nadine-shah/filthy-underneath

Producer: Ben Hillier

Standout Tracks: You Drive, I Shoot/Sad Lads Anonymous/Twenty Things

Key Cut: Topless Mother

Review:

“Like countless singer-songwriters before her, South Tyneside-born auteur Nadine Shah has used her lived experience as a springboard. Love Your Dum and Mad, her 2013 debut, channelled her grief after two friends took their own lives. Kitchen Sink, Shah’s 2020 outing, pilloried the absurdities of thirtysomething womanhood. Between records, she has been outspoken on racism and musicians’ dwindling incomes. Filthy Underneath is, though, her most personal statement yet. Topless Mother details a sub par therapy experience with Shah’s usual unsparing eye; Twenty Things pays homage to her fellow-travellers to sobriety, some of whom did not make it.

The idea of trauma porn has deservedly come under scrutiny, particularly where race and gender are factors. But Filthy Underneath feels like an intelligently calibrated vehicle in which musical and emotional progress is made, even as suffering laps at the running boards like flood water. Shah nursed her mother through terminal cancer, got married and divorced, tried to take her own life and entered rehab. She handles the anguish of it all with a deft observational touch. You can hear the link, via producer Ben Hillier, between Shah’s intimate interiors and the stadium goth of Depeche Mode, with whom she recently toured (Hillier has produced both). But a heightened sense of rhythm pushes Shah along relentlessly, and her glacial, swooping melodies contain non-western inspirations such as Sufi singer Abida Parveen” – The Guardian

CMAT - Crazymad, For Me

Release Date: 13th October, 2023

Label: AWAL

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/cmat/crazymad-for-me

Producer: Matias Tellez

Standout Tracks: California/Where Are Your Kids Tonight?/Have Fun!

Key Cut: Rent

Review:

“On last year’s debut ‘If My Wife New I’d Be Dead’, CMAT swung open the doors to her bold, brilliant world via a set of sparkling heart-on-sleeve anthems, and a good dose of pop culture nous. On its follow-up, though, the ante’s been upped considerably. Arriving with a suitably bonkers concept in tow (involving a 47-year-old CMAT and a malfunctioning time machine), this second album not only delves into the anger and heartbreak of a toxic relationship, but manages to do so with such a deft sense of wit and flare that it’s impossible, as a listener, not to feel embedded within the story itself. Once again, she transforms pop culture into poetry, painting the most vivid of worlds in the process, while her brand of country-indebted pop feels even richer this time around. From the gentle acoustics of the Sex and the City-inspired ‘Such A Miranda’, to the Bowie-esque glam stomp of ‘Rent’’s outro; the soaring sass of the John Grant-featuring ‘Where Are Your Kids Tonight?’ to the glitzy self-aware wink of closer ‘Have Fun!’, ‘CrazyMad, For Me’ is a triumphant whirlwind of pain and self-preservation, which reveals more of itself with every listen” – DIY

Sampha – Lahai

Release Date: 20th October, 2023

Label: Young

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/sampha/lahai

Producers: Ricky Damian/El Guincho/Kwake Bass/Kwes/Teo Halm/Sampha

Standout Tracks: Dancing Circles/Only/What If You Hypnotise Me?

Key Cut: Spirit 2.0

Review:

“Last time Sampha Sisay gifted us with a full-length record, the London-based singer-songwriter produced Process, a record centered on grief, anxiety, and mourning in the aftermath of his mother’s passing. Now, the electronic chaos of his earlier work is traded for softness as he sings of higher powers, healing, and – perhaps most of all – his daughter, born during the pandemic. 

The warm synths of lead single “Spirit 2.0” create a fitting backdrop for the artist as he sings of waves, light, faith, love, time, and spirit. In the context of the record, “Spirit 2.0” comes after “Stereo Colour Cloud,” which opens Lahai with a female voice proclaiming “I wish you could time / time-missile back-forward.”

Time is an ever-present motif on Lahai. On the interlude “Time Piece,” another female voice asks (in French) for a time machine ‘to go back’ in time. “Can’t Go Back” is the track that follows, interpolating the opening lines from “Stereo Colour Cloud” in its hook.

There are a handful of featured voices on Lahai; and every single one is female. It’d be foolish to then not note Lahai’s devotion to Wassoulou music, the West African genre performed almost entirely by women.

As Sampha declares his daughter ‘heaven-sent’ on “Can’t Go Back,” the singer’s words call back to his description of himself as a prisoner to heaven on 2017’s “Timmy’s Prayer.” Singing of spirits, surrounded by female voices reminding him of time, and amidst his musings on the connection between his past and his future, Lahai’s remarkable second half pulls together the record as an expressionist painting of life’s cyclical nature as Sampha reflects on his daughter’s place in his life, and her connection to her late grandmother. “You’re enough evidence for me,” the singer declares on “Evidence.”

On the penultimate track “What If You Hypnotise Me?” we get a glimpse into the anxieties and fears that still burden Sampha: “Please articulate my anguish / please explain to me why these raindrops accompany better times.” The classic Sampha drum-driven beat is broken, giving way to a steady beeping akin to a heartbeat on an ECG machine.

Finally, one more female voice enters. Maybe it’s the spirit of Sampha’s mother, with new life breathed into her, her memory living through her newborn granddaughter. Or maybe it’s Sampha’s daughter. Or maybe it’s nobody. No matter who it is, we know who Sampha is: a generational talent who has once again delivered a rich, emotional work for us to process. Lahai is phenomenal” – The Line of Best Fit

Corinne Bailey Rae - Black Rainbows

Release Date: 15th September, 2023

Labels: Black Rainbows/Thirty Tigers

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/corinne-bailey-rae/black-rainbows-2

Producers: S. J. Brown/Corinne Bailey Rae/Paris Strother

Standout Tracks: Black Rainbows/New York Transit Queen/Peach Velvet Sky

Key Cut: Erasure

Review:

“I feel it’s this weird punk, jazz kind of moment for me,” Corinne Bailey Rae told Stereoboard last year. It’s not a statement you might expect from a Grammy-winning singer who’s best-known for warm, easy-going neo-soul that soundtracked many a suburban dinner party in the late ‘00s. What next? Katie Melua dabbling in speed-metal? Norah Jones in corpse paint?

And yet here we are: ‘Black Rainbows’, Rae’s fourth album, swings from crunching glam-punk to skronking experimental jazz that wouldn’t sound out of place on David Bowie’s ‘Blackstar’. There are left turns, and then there’s this. The Leeds-raised musician’s creative epiphany occurred on tour in Chicago, where she visited the Stony Island Arts Bank, a centre of Black history that honours African-American citizens while holding the country’s brutally racist past to account.

This challenging array of exhibits fired Rae’s imagination. Her new album’s centrepiece, lead single ‘New York Transit Queen’, was inspired by a photo of Audrey Smaltz, a Black 17-year-old model who won the Miss New York Transit pageant in 1954. The result is a fabulous blast of riot grrrl with enough handclaps, guitar squalls and joyously chanted vocals to blow a hole in the 6 Music playlist. We’re a long way from ‘Put Your Records On’.

On the flipside is ‘Erasure’, a pummelling neo-grunge track that sees Rae spit, through distorted vocals, about her disgust at the violence that besets Black children: “They try to erase you / They try to eviscerate you.” It’s a stunning piece of protest music that puts many a full-time punk band to shame (which is less surprising than it seems, given that she fronted a teenage riot grrl group with the extremely hardcore name Helen).

Rae initially planned to release this record – her independent debut – as a “side project”, but ultimately found the confidence to place ‘Black Rainbows’ front-and-centre. Perhaps that’s why the album also trades in the accessible sounds with which she made her name – take the pretty piano ballad ‘Peach Velvet Sky’ and loungey Winehouse pastiche ‘He Will Follow You With His Eyes’. Even the latter, though, segues into a spooky electronic soundscape.

The gear shifts can be jarring, but album four is actually more cohesive than it has any right to be, a fact its creator has attributed to her common thread of influence in Stony Island Arts Bank. Horns up: Corinne Bailey Rae has thrown the musical curveball of the year” – NME

Blur – The Ballad of Darren

Release Date: 21st July, 2023

Label: Parlophone

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/blur/the-ballad-of-darren-2

Producer: James Ford

Standout Tracks: The Ballad/The Narcissist/Avalon

Key Cut: Barbaric

Review:

“Early on in The Ballad of Darren, the unexpected and understated Blur reunion album, Damon Albarn sings "We have lost the feeling that we thought we'd never lose," a line that could easily be interpreted as the vocalist addressing his bandmates. Blur lost an intangible feeling during an acrimonious split in the early 2000s, the band limping forward after the departure of guitarist Graham Coxon during the sessions for Think Tank. Within a few years, the group tended to their lingering wounds, healing enough to play the occasional reunion concert, a union that eventually led to The Magic Whip, a happy accident of an album. The Ballad of Darren is something entirely different. Where Coxon crafted The Magic Whip from studio jams the band left behind after a week exiled in Hong Kong, Blur recorded The Ballad of Darren as a unit within the studio, shaping and coloring compositions Albarn wrote while on tour with Gorillaz in 2022. It's how Blur made records back in the '90s but, notably, the group replaced their mainstay Stephen Street with James Ford, a producer who has worked with Arctic Monkeys and Florence and the Machine, not to mention Gorillaz. Ford teases out the louche, loungey aspects of Albarn's songs, lending a lushness to the melancholy undercurrents that flow through The Ballad of Darren. Apart from "St. Charles Square," which announces itself with a flurry of guitar skronk and profanity, there's no direct evocation of Blur's younger days; far from conjuring the ghost of the melodramatic "To the End," the hints of hi-fi sophistication lend weary texture to melodies that sigh and linger. Albarn spends the album pondering severed connections and vanished spaces, sentiments that could be read either as mourning a personal loss or as a meditation on a post-pandemic world, yet The Ballad of Darren doesn't feel precisely sad, not in the way Damon's solo albums often can. Blur gives Albarn's songs depth and dimension, as Graham Coxon decorates the margins left by the elastic rhythms of Alex James and Dave Rowntree. The Magic Whip hinted at the essence of this chemistry but The Ballad of Darren revels in it, resulting in an album that feels age-appropriate without being stodgy: it's mature and nuanced, cherishing the connections that once were taken for granted but now seem precious” – AllMusic

The Last Dinner Party – Prelude to Ecstasy

Release Date: 2nd February, 2024

Label: Island

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/the-last-dinner-party/prelude-to-ecstasy

Producer: James Ford

Standout Tracks: Caesar on a TV Screen/Sinner/Nothing Matters

Key Cut: The Feminine Urge

Review:

“It could have been a very different outcome. When you have a debut single that bulldozes through the music scene in the way that Nothing Matters did last year, it’s usually only downhill from there. Indeed, the enormous early success of The Last Dinner Party soon led to accusations of the London band being either nepo babies who were fast-tracked to the top or manufactured industry plants – charges not subdued by their top placing on the BBC’s Sound of 2024 poll and a Brit Award as rising stars. Really, there is only one way to quieten the naysayers: make a killer debut album.

Prelude to Ecstasy is just that: a pop album that swerves and swoops into unexpected places but with plenty of hidden depths to discover with every listen. The band, led by Abigail Morris, take a forward-thinking approach to songwriting yet are similarly unafraid to dip into nostalgia for a brief wallow. Opening the record with a classical overture, borrowing from 1980s acts such as Kate Bush and Siouxsie and the Banshees, and plundering a hearty baroque influence throughout, this is a delightfully offbeat and incredibly accomplished collection, steered by the steady hand of James Ford, its producer.

More to the point, these are simply great songs. Morris, her versatile voice laden with both charisma and firepower, sells her lyric sheet with a convincing side of melodrama, as heard on Burn Alive (“I break off my rib to make another you”) and Portrait (“I’d die for you, no questions asked/ If anyone could kill me, it probably would be you”), songs that sound as if they were plucked from the soundtrack of the 1980s cult horror film The Lost Boys. If Florence Welch is too screechy for your taste, the slightly more understated Feminine Urge ticks a similar box without the vocal histrionics. Sinner and Caesar on a TV Screen do a line in barbed, tongue-in-cheek indiepop; My Lady of Mercy deftly switches between a Sparks-like surrealist pop verse and a beefy stadium-rock chorus, while the sultry Portrait shows that the band are not afraid to pull out the big guns when required, building to a powerful, string-drenched climax.

Is there an element of shtick to it all? Undoubtedly: this is a band that thrives on image, as their stylised music videos and extravagant stagewear have shown. Yet beneath the facade is also thoughtful, well-crafted songwriting that instils a confidence that we’ll be hearing more of The Last Dinner Party in years to come. And if not? Well, they’ve made that killer debut album, regardless” – The Irish Times

The Smile – Wall of Eyes

Release Date: 26th January, 2024

Label: XL

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/the-smile/wall-of-eyes

Producer: Sam Petts-Davies

Standout Tracks: Wall of Eyes/Read the Room/Friend of a Friend

Key Cut: Bending Hectic

Review:

“As far back as 2009, Jonny Greenwood was fed up with the faff of the world’s most studious stadium band. “He can’t stand it anymore, the pace of the way we work,” Thom Yorke said that year. Despite the guitarist and composer’s impatience, he was prone to obsessing over what Yorke called the “extra things”: the sly strings and choked squeals that thread razor wire into Radiohead’s pillowed luxury. “‘Come on, we need some wrong notes,’ he’s always saying. OK, you got ’em,” Yorke joked.

But never have we heard Greenwood quite like this. On Wall of Eyes, the second album from the Smile, his hostile harmonies and expediency in the studio nudge the trio somewhere new; it is his most exciting and volatile performance since In Rainbows. No time for their usual effortful cohesion: Producer Sam Petts-Davies resolves to stress, not conceal, the eclecticism of Yorke and Greenwood’s songs, while drummer Tom Skinner squirrels around making nests in their inhospitable time signatures. After the debut’s big bang, Wall of Eyes connects the particles into somewhere you, and perhaps these restless musicians, might like to make a home.

More than anything on A Light for Attracting Attention, the Beatlesy “Friend of a Friend” and riotous “Bending Hectic” present contrasting spectacles of the Smile’s allure. The former draws inspiration from lockdown footage of Italians uniting in song on their balconies; the coda juxtaposes that pandemic solidarity against the elites’ response. “All of that money, where did it go?/In somebody’s pocket, a friend of a friend,” Yorke laments, invoking the COVID cronyism of Britain’s Conservative Party. But the tune is divine, even hummable—his deftest lunge for your heartstrings since unshelving “True Love Waits.”

At the other extreme, “Bending Hectic” indulges Yorke’s time-honored passion for calamitous automobile events—in this case the last moments of a public figure, apparently disgraced, who vows to drive off the Italian mountainside. The band plays the car-crash suicide ballad as a brilliantly twisted love song: Such is the narrator’s hubris that, when an orchestral crescendo signals the plunge, and Greenwood’s lustrous string bends transmute into tire squeals, we hear the infernal crusade as a valorous final act.

Across the album, Greenwood’s haywire guitars and arrangements veer between Can’s warehouse expressionism and Robert Wyatt’s alien-abducted folk fusion, conspiring with the live production and convulsive rhythms to save his bandmate from his more ponderous impulses. Yorke’s ethereal vocal register has long been his calling card and his crutch, tested to dizzying effect on the verses of “Climbing Up the Walls” before taking root on The King of Limbs. These days, he is split between warring impulses to command a song or spritz it with ghostly vapor. But even his weaker spells enchant, and Wall of Eyes opens with two irresistible slow burners: the wintry bossa nova title track, where he murmurs about digital surveillance and sedation (“You will go behind a wall of eyes/Of your own device/Is that still you with the hollow eyes?”), and “Teleharmonic,” from the “All I Need” school of fraught narrators caught in whirlpool synths, clinging to love like a life preserver.

By sequencing the two foggiest songs up front, the album lulls you into a trance. Then Greenwood’s guitar, coaxed from the sidelines, electrifies the nerve center on “Read the Room” and “Under Our Pillows,” an alt-rock suite of clanking-piston hooks and motorik finales. When the tension lifts with a music-box melody or swell of London Contemporary Orchestra strings, the songs have surprised us twice: first by forestalling expectations of beauty, then by providing it anyway.

The second side’s tour-de-luxe falters only on “I Quit,” one of those Smile songs that perhaps suffers from Greenwood’s desire to release records “90 percent as good [that] come out twice as often.” Where the arresting closer “You Know Me!” evolves Yorke’s paranoid balladry, “I Quit” is the discount “Codex” or “Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor”: intoxicating as ever but without the final revelation—the sense of dawn penetrating some murky underworld—that tilts those Radiohead songs into the sublime.

After decades refining, refusing, and reformulating the Radiohead sound, Yorke and Greenwood seem emboldened to stop resisting—to loosen up and let their songwriting impulses absorb whatever happens to be on their stereo that day. Wall of Eyes gives center stage to jazz, kosmische, prog—aesthetic signposts and satellite genres usually kept in the more established band’s wings. The Smile, though stranger and wilder, more comfortably fit in the omnivorous art-rock tradition.

Greenwood’s fusion of refinement and insurrection echoes that of his beloved pianist Glenn Gould, who once made a nice observation about the pioneering modernist composer Arnold Schoenberg: “Whenever one honestly defies a tradition, one becomes, in reality, the more responsible to it.” As Radiohead defied rock convention, so the Smile cannot help but defy Radiohead. Yet defiance, Gould suggests, is the lifeblood of tradition. To defy classicism or rock or a cherished old band may finally preserve their sanctity. The defied thing endures—and then, if we are lucky, defiance provokes it to react” – Pitchfork

Bill Ryder-Jones – Iechyd Da

Release Date: 12th January, 2024

Label: Domino

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/bill-ryder-jones/iechyd-da

Producer: Bill Ryder-Jones

Standout Tracks: If Tomorrow Starts Without Me/I Hold Something in My Hand/Christinha

Key Cut: This Can’t Go On

Review:

“A decade ago, Bill Ryder-Jones made what he would come to think of as the defining record of his career. Then a few years out of The Coral – the band he had co-founded with a group of school friends as a teen, and a solo album deep (an instrumental recording with the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra that served as an imaginary soundtrack to Italo Calvino’s novel If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller) he released A Bad Wind Blows In My Heart.

The album set out Ryder-Jones’ stylistic and thematic stall: songs marked by a remarkable closeness, by the intimacy of place and people. It was a world filled with colloquialisms and gentle wit, where we were all on first-name terms and the geography sat in our marrow. He carried the style further on 2015’s West Kirby County Primary, and through to 2018’s Yawn (and its stunning acoustic companion, Yawny Yawn). Not nostalgia exactly, but a certain squaring with the past – former loves, distant conversations, things he should’ve said or done.

Across his solo catalogue, there has been a kind of wet leaf quality at the heart of many of Ryder-Jones’ songs; something beautiful and sad that seems to cling to the singer. We might trace this to the early loss of his older brother, to his experiences of depression, anxiety and agoraphobia, but wherever its source lies, what it brings to his music is a beguiling elusiveness; the sense that something is halfway gone and just out of reach.

His seventh record, Iechyd Da, follows a five-year gap, in which he spent time producing albums for other artists – among them Michael Head’s Dear Scott, and Brooke Bentham’s Everyday Nothing. The time away has allowed for a certain recalibration, and the singer has said that the new record is an effort to return to the feeling he found in A Bad Wind Blows In My Heart. This desire seems in itself wholly in keeping with Ryder-Jonesian sentiment – a reaching-back, once again, to an earlier time and place. But regardless of its intention, the result is impressive; Iechyd Da is an album that confirms Ryder-Jones as one of Britain’s finest songwriters.

Certainly there are nods to his 2013 album here – a reappearance of the characters Christinha and Anthony, for instance, the return of mixer James Ford, and a track named “A Bad Wind Blows In My Heart Pt 3”. There is also a similarly exploratory approach to style, grown bolder now, perhaps through his own production experience. The record is filled with orchestral swells and sonic oddities, a Gal Costa sample here, a wink to Lou Reed’s Street Hassle there, a children’s chorus, skewed instrumentals. On “…And The Sea…”, Michael Head pops up to read an excerpt from James Joyce’s Ulysses, his rich Scouse tones mixed beneath waves of strings as he makes his way through Molly Bloom’s closing thoughts. It leads to something strangely affecting, like a more disco take on Van Morrison’s “Coney Island”.

Like Head, Ryder-Jones was raised in Merseyside, and still lives in his native West Kirby. He sings with the characteristic melody of the Liverpudlian accent: muffled and mish-mashed, fricative, debuccalised, taking clear relish in his delivery. And so we find the pleasing sing-song of lines such as “From Ant’s to Our’s to Arrowe Park/ Somewhere around the seven-minute mark…” on “Thankfully For Anthony”, or the distinctive Scouse pluralisation of “Oh no I’m feeling blue/And it’s all because of yous…” on “Nothing To Be Done”. It brings a sense of warm informality, as if the accent itself stands among the record’s run of familiar characters.

Ryder-Jones’ voice isn’t quite ASMR-inducing, but it sits soft and low and just at the edge of hearing, as something heard through walls, or in somniferous recline. It catches sometimes, or seems to give out completely, and in these moments the effect is for the listener to lean in even closer.

It’s a neat trick, and Ryder-Jones has a particular gift for experimenting with where sound sits and what effect that can exert on the listener. Where instrumentation dominates, it seems to replicate an intense surge of feeling, burying the singer’s voice, obscuring the lyric, obliterating all. Sometimes, as on “This Can’t Go On”, the music works counter to the subject matter — the old disco trick of a rum tune carrying great sorrow. In the gulf between grows a lurching disorientation, in much the same way as he starts the song walking at night listening to “The Killing Moon”, spurred by the memory of some advice to “get outside, go get some sun.”

What frames this record is a kind of love. The opening track, “I Know That It’s Like This (Baby)” begins as a heady take on romantic love, filled with besotted canoodling and the joy of staying in and watching TV with someone you adore. By the chorus it’s curdling. Ryder-Jones singing of being at once too much and not enough, as the Gal Costa sample, taken from a song that soundtracked that particular relationship, rises and falls.

The track is followed by “A Bad Wind Blows In My Heart Pt 3”, which sees the singer rejecting the lonely advances of an ex, reminding her of their troubled relationship. But above, around, between runs an acknowledgment: “Oh how I loved you.” He sings the line repeatedly, each time resting on the low, heavy vowel of ‘love’, and the simplicity of it grows quietly devastating.

There are other loves here: the ones we’ve hurt, the ones we hope might return, the love of belonging, the surprise of being told you’re beautiful. All the heartfelt moments we still think about, and a dispassionate acknowledgement that, after all, a relationship can simply come to a natural end: “A sun just sank into some sea,” he concludes on “Cristinha”.

But it’s the penultimate track, “Thankfully For Anthony”, that gives the real heart-lurch. One of the album’s standouts, it presents an altogether different kind of loving: this is not hurly-burly romance, but a love marked by constancy and choice. Ryder-Jones finds it among his friends, and even for himself: “And I felt love/I’m still lost, but I know love,” it runs. “And I know loss/But I choose love.” The lines land plum, like a gut-punch.

When Ryder-Jones left The Coral, the band were at the height of their success – five Top 10 albums, critical acclaim, touring with the Arctic Monkeys, a Mercury nomination. But the bigger they became, the more Ryder-Jones, the band’s lead guitarist, seemed to pull in another direction. He became more interested in string arrangements, he grew weary of the demands placed on a commercially successful group, he began to experience panic attacks ahead of live shows.

What he chose instead was a creative life that was altogether more intimate. Success was measured not so much in sales as craftsmanship. The big venues and festival stages were abandoned for smaller rooms. In the studio, he largely worked alone: singer, lyricist, producer. The songs grew closer, truer, tougher.

There have been turbulent moments along the way, of course. But Iechyd Da feels a culmination of all he set out to do. It’s a record that beckons you over and invites you in, that rewards your faith and careful listening with moments of extraordinary beauty, unflinching honesty, a sonic exchange of love” – Uncut

SPRINTS – Letter to Self

Release Date: 5th January, 2024

Label: City Slang

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/sprints-2/letter-to-self

Producer: Daniel Fox

Standout Tracks: Heavy/Shadow of a Doubt/A Wreck (A Mess)

Key Cut: Literary Mind

Review:

“Dublin four-piece Sprints signed to City Slang in 2023, and blast into the New Year with debut album ‘Letter To Self’. Opening with the brooding beats of ‘Ticking’, the vocals of Karla Chubb begin low, full of foreboding. Questioning and self-doubt are apparent from the very beginning, an uncertainty about oneself. The instrumentation builds into an all-encompassing soundscape – a thrilling start which sets the scene for what is to follow. And to hear lyrics in German, the guttural nature of the language fitting perfectly with the atmosphere of the track. Although born in Dublin, Karla Chubb spent part of her early childhood in Germany, initially turning to music as a consequence of feeling out-of-step with the world.

It’s then straight into the scuzzy static-fuelled guitars of ‘Heavy’.  The external questions continue: “Do you ever feel like the room is heavy?” they ask. The energy and passion evoked here are raw and true. The lyrics build, eventually exploding in an air of frustration “watching the world go around the window”.

‘Cathedral’ is in a similar vein. There is a darkness here; “Maybe living’s easy / Maybe dying’s the same.”  The emotional intensity continues to seep through the music. The combination of Sam McCann’s bass and the guitars of Chubb and Colm O’Reilly combine to create a cacophony of sound, fast and furious.

‘Shaking Their Hands’ takes us to a different place, with its weariness with life.  More contemplative, witnesses Chubb deliver a softer vocal.  The theme is more thoughtful with the singer “counting the minutes until the clock strikes six” – a sentiment most can connect with.  However it’s an intriguing song as the question is inevitably “whose hands?”.  ‘Adore, Adore, Adore’ was released as a single and projects the idea of being judged with its question “Do you adore me?” The pace rattles along and its chorus of “they never call me beautiful, they only call me insane” suggests a desire to fit in, to be accepted.

‘Shadow Of A Doubt’ has an eerie start with its haunting plucking guitar chords.  Again there is a atmosphere of foreboding, a lack of belonging.  The repetition of “I am lost” is gut-wrenching and Chubb builds the tension until the frustration boils over “can you hear me calling?” The sentiment is heart-breaking as it seems to be a call for help, and that wavering guitar chord perfectly evokes the anxiety.  Likewise with ‘Can’t Get Enough Of It’, the agitation remains. The inevitable ear-worm of the repeating “This is a living nightmare” is breath-taking, as it combines with the soaring soundscape. The mid-track key change takes the listener by surprise as it punches at the very core with its emotional impact. Perhaps there is a sense here of not being able to be oneself, a lack of self-belief, of security in ones own self-worth.  And goodness do those guitar parts add to the overall sense of anxiety.

The sign of a great song is that it still elicits an emotional response long after its initial release. And so it is with the 2022 single ‘Literary Mind’. Re-recorded for ‘Letter To Self’, Sprints have shared that this track has evolved over time. It is pacier than the original single version and is all the better for it. A love song, it relieves the tension felt so far on the album. It’s a song to belt out at the top of your voice, and is thus cathartic for us all. And just listen to McCann’s vocal on the outro, you know Sprints love playing this track. ‘A Wreck (A Mess)’ opens with electrifying guitar riffs and the percussive beats of Jack Callan.  The lighter tone set by ‘Literary Mind’ continues. Again lyrically reflective ‘A Wreck (A Mess)’ is delivered with wild abandon, all scuzzy guitars and thunderous drums. The ebb and flow of the pace keeps the listener on their toes, plus lyrics that will live long in the memory including: “is everyone a wreck, is everyone stressed?”

Latest single ‘Up And Comer’ reached the dizzy heights of the 6Music A-list. The opening guitar riffs stops the listener in their tracks every time.  And then the full force of ‘Up And Comer’ kicks in and once it reaches top speed you just know it’s not stopping with its full-frontal assault. The chorus is simply electrifying.

The title track closes out ‘Letter To Self’ and it takes a stand against the internal turmoil. “I’ll give as good as I get”.  Here there is defiance. The expression is one of hope, of possibility, of coming out from under the weight of expectation, of fighting back. It sees the journey through the album reach its conclusion.  Now the lyrics question those who criticise, those whose behaviour is inappropriate.  ‘Letter To Self’ states confidently “I am alive” compared to the questioning “am I alive?” from opener ‘Ticking’.  It’s a thunderous end, the theme of the track completely different from the rest of the album.

With ‘Letter To Self’ Sprints have produced an album brutally honest and personal. They have not been afraid to express the feeling of being an outsider, of looking for validation, of attempting to overcome self-doubt. The human condition and thus society is complex and difficult to navigate but Sprints have not been afraid to express uncertainty and vulnerability. And all the while they have enveloped these themes in the most glorious noise for us all to find comfort and lose ourselves in.

Is it possible to have an album of the year contender on only the first week in? Of course it is.  9/10” – CLASH

Crawlers – The Mess We Seem to Make

Release Date: 16th February, 2024

Label: Polydor

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/crawlers/the-mess-we-seem-to-make

Producer: Pete Robinson

Standout Tracks: Better If I Just Pretend/Come Over (Again) /I End Up Alone

Key Cut: Would You Come to My Funeral

Review:

“Crawlers arrive with their long-awaited debut album not on hands and knees, but with strident purpose and fractured hearts beating out of their chests. It’s understandable. Having blown up on TikTok and been invited out on tour with giants like My Chemical Romance and YUNGBLUD, the Liverpudlian quartet have every reason to be overloaded with strident self-belief, but the striking vibrancy and surging energy with which they translate it to these 12 tracks is utterly remarkable.

There’s little time for looking in the rearview mirror. Yes, mega-hit 2021 single Come Over (Again) makes the tracklist – its grungy, hooky, melancholy brilliance shines as brilliantly here as it on each of the tens of millions of streams already racked up – but this is an album built for the road ahead.

As pumping opener Meaningless Sex thrusts into the fuzzy Kiss Me, their meld of vulnerability and intimacy with stadium-ready composition continues to bear fruit. Hit It Again proves a willingness to crank the heaviness when the moment calls. The brilliant Would You Come to My Funeral is a teasing lyrical masterclass with a pulsing bassline and soaring chorus that are impossibly full of life.

For a band who broke out on attention-deficit social media, Crawlers command the long-form with no lack of substance and impressive pacing. The mournful, piano-driven Golden Bridge finds room to sprawl and fully develop mid-album. The probing Kills Me To Be Kind loses nothing for sitting alongside their breakout hit, painting a picture of how the band have grown up since. The tentative alt. pop of Call It Love wears the influence of icons like PJ Harvey and Fiona Apple on its sleeve before heart-rending closer Nighttime Affair delivers a masterclass in theatrical understatement.

Perhaps most impressive is how this is a record destined to delight not just Crawlers’ fans – the affectionately named Creepy Crawlies – but pretty much anyone whose earways it happens to invade. The, ahem, crawl to superstardom is well underway. Verdict: 4/5” – Kerrang!

FEATURE: Revisiting… Iraina Mancini – Undo the Blue

FEATURE:

 

 

Revisiting…

 Iraina Mancini – Undo the Blue

_________

PEOPLE know how much I love…

Iraina Mancini’s music! A hugely talented D.J., artist and songwriter, she released her much-anticipated debut album, Undo the Blue, on 18th August. One of the last year’s best albums, I crowned it my favourite of 2023. Mancini, too, was my artist of 2023. Such an amazing and natural talent, I was lucky to get Undo the Blue and hear it early. I was impressed by many things: the breadth and eclectic nature of the sounds and styles Mancini covered; the incredible songwriting and her wide and stunning vocal range. She brought you into every song and truly captured the imagination and heart with every single note! I wondered about some of the love songs and who inspired them. Which vinyl albums in her collection influenced particular numbers. A flawless album that could naturally translate to a short film/visual project from Mancini, I think that Undo the Blue hints at a very long and prosperous music career. As we wait for the second album – new music is planned but, as it is early days, no release date yet for a second album -, enjoy a golden album full of musical bounty and sonic pleasure. Go and get this truly magnificent album:

“Needle Mythology, the label founded by music writer, author and broadcaster Pete Paphides, release the eagerly anticipated debut album by London singer-songwriter and renowned DJ Iraina Mancini. Iraina’s singular pop vision will be known to regular listeners of 6 Music, where her singles ‘Undo The Blue’, ‘Deep End’, ‘Shotgun’ and ‘Do It (You Stole The Rhythm)’ have all been enthusiastically embraced. Iraina's obsession with music stretches back into her early childhood, much of which was spent absorbing her parents’ collection of old 45s, in particular her dad’s Northern Soul records – an alternative education which meant that, by her early 20s, she was a familiar presence in the DJ booth at many discerning London club nights. Her love of French ye-ye, British freakbeat, Brazilian bossa nova, soul, and Turkish psych will be well-known to regular listeners of her Soho Radio show. Having always sung from a young age, Iraina embarked on a string of collaborators such as Jagz Kooner (Sabres Of Paradise), Sunglasses For Jaws (Miles Kane) and Simon Dine (Paul Weller, Noonday Underground) which truly saw her find her metier as a songwriter, conjuring melodies that stand shoulder to shoulder alongside her impeccable influences. Iraina describes her first single for Needle Mythology ‘Cannonball’ as “a celebration of that moment when you meet someone you really fall for and it knocks you for six. It can be a bit scary, but you’ve just got to go with what your intuition is telling you.” Written with Simon Dine, the vertiginous heart-in-mouth abandon of the song perfectly mirrors the circumstances that brought it into being. Iraina cites Jacqueline Taïeb’s 1967 single 7h du Matin as an early inspiration for the song: “There’s such a great energy about that song. Her vocal is amazing and all those stops and starts that grab your attention.” “This is an artist I absolutely love, one of our rising stars at 6Music.“ Lauren Laverne BBC 6Music”.

I will come to some positive reviews for Undo the Blue. Even though stations like BBC Radio 6 Music gave the singles a lot of love, I think that more publications and websites should have reviewed and spotlighted Undo the Blue. I want to start out with some testimony from Needle Mythology. Run by broadcaster, D.J. and author Pete Paphides, he was thrilled to announce a mighty debut from the tremendous London-based Iraina Mancini:

“Please give a warm welcome to Needle Mythology’s latest signing.

Can I tell you about the first proper conversation I had with Iraina Mancini? We’d met three or four times in passing, at Soho Radio, where we both host radio shows. And by the most recent of those occasions, I’d heard her own music, three self-released singles.It says a lot about the quality of those songs and about Iraina’s sheer determination that she managed to get them playlisted on 6 Music *without a plugger*. That’s almost unheard of. But if you listen to Deep End, Undo The Blue and Shotgun, you’ll know why. These are songs that stick to you on first listen the way they did when you were a kid and you couldn’t rest until you’d either taped it off the radio or got the money together to get them from your local record shop.

So, last November, on the most recent of those in-passing conversations, I asked Iraina if there was an album on the way. She told me that half of it had been recorded, and the other half existed in demo form. “Who’s putting it out?” I asked her. That process was ongoing right now; a bit of back-and-forth with a couple of major labels. They were dragging their heels. I sensed a sliver of opportunity.

“I run a small label,” I said. “Would you mind sending me the songs?”

“Sure!” she nodded. That night, ten songs landed in my inbox. Ten individually beautiful songs; but also, thirteen songs which, all together, propelled you into the fully-furnished, flawlessly-curated pop universe of their creator. Every detail just-so.

Iraina and I met a few days later at Maison Bertaux. I told her about the label. I told her that my job, as I saw it, was to just get out of the way and let her finish what she’d started. She told me about her – for want of a better word – method. About the melodies that come to her as far back as she could remember. Fully fully-formed tunes that flow into choruses that pitch up in your brain, kick off their boots and make themselves at home. A lifetime spent obsessing upon pop in all its myriad forms: northern soul; French ye-ye; bubblegum; freakbeat. From the Supremes to Betty Boo – her interior world was like a radio station to which no-one else had access.

When she talked to me about Deep End, she hymned “the scuzzy sound of 60s garage rock”; the atmosphere of early Jacques Dutronc records, and the adrenalised harmonies of The Shangri-Las. For Undo The Blue (the song), she talked about creating something that might make people feel something of what she felt the first time she heard the luxuriant psych-soul of Rotary Connection.

We also talked about Jacqueline Taïeb, Margo Guryan and Astrud Gilberto. When Iraina stepped up to the mic to sing Sugar High, she asked herself, “How does it make you feel when Julie London and Dusty Springfield sing about love?” If you want to know what the answer is, listen to Sugar High.

During the course of that conversation, I sent myself a dozen texts – reminders of records she’d mentioned that had in some way established the sonic mood board of Undo The Blue. I had a lot of homework to do. But when I heard them all, no single album managed to resound with quite the iridescent joie de vivre that pours forth from these songs. That’s 100% Iraina.

When pop is done with this sort of full-pelt brio and impeccable taste, what you end up with is an album that will repeatedly remind you why you fell in love with this supposedly ephemeral art form in the first place.

And that’s why everyone who has worked with Iraina on Undo The Blue – Will Harris , Mark Wood , Craig Caukill, Julian Stockton, Martin Kelly, Rupert Orton, James Gosling, Erol Alkan,  Mig and everyone at Cool Badge – is thrilled to have been part of this adventure.

I had a few ambitions when we started this label, but one of the big ones was to put out at least one genius Platonic-ideal-of-pop album. The sort of record just as good on a sunny Saturday morning when you’re doing the dishes as it does when you’re getting ready to go on a night out with your friends. This is all of that and so much more”.

An artist impossibly cool and wonderful – I am predicting she will play Glastonbury and many other big festivals this year -, I feel she is worthy of a big interview with the likes of The Guardian, Rolling Stone, or even U.S. publications like The New Yorker. I feel that her music could translate to the U.S. easily. Maybe there is not a big budget to tour international, though I can imagine Mancini rocking Los Angeles and New York audiences. Paris seems like a natural haven and home for her music. She toured through the U.K. last year, yet I can feel American attention coming her way soon. In addition to her amazing Soho Radio show, Mancini also does D.J. work at a variety of events and locations. She is someone I can also see having an acting career and being on the small screen soon. Last year, House Collective spoke with Iraina Mancini about her route into music:

“The sublime retro chanteuse Iraina Mancini is a singer-songwriter whose star has been in the ascendent since the mid-pandemic release of her first single “Shotgun” - a delectable slice of francophile summer-of-love-inspired pop that has been championed by the likes of Jo Wiley and Lauren Laverne, becoming a firm favourite on the BBC Radio 6 playlist. Effortlessly channelling the style of the yé-yé’ girls of the 60s, it's fair to say that Mancini has a somewhat encyclopaedic knowledge of every element of her craft, having DJ’d rare northern soul and funk sets at festivals all over the world as one-half of the disc-spinning Smoking Guns, and via hosting her own weekly radio show on Soho Radio. And she is a musician with strong pedigree, being the daughter of the singer, dancer and composer Warren Peace, who worked extensively with the legendary David Bowie throughout the 70s, among many others. Culture Collective caught up with the soul songstress to talk about the new single from her forthcoming debut album "Undo The Blue", and to get the lowdown on manifesting your dreams as reality.

What set you out on the path to be a musician?

I grew up in a very creative household, my mother was a photographer and my father was a music producer, so I was surrounded by the importance of expressing yourself through art as a kid, whether it was watching my mum develop film in dark rooms or sitting in on music sessions at my dad’s studio. My dad used to sing with David Bowie back in the day, from Aladdin Sane through to Station to Station, so I used to listen to old tapes and watch videos of him on stage – all of that had a huge impact on my life. My love of singing started at a super young age – I used to do vocals for dad in the studio when he had an advert or film to write for, so, even at the age of four, I was singing on a song he wrote for an Italian clothing brand, hilarious! I also had a music teacher at school that really believed in me. I used to write songs, and he used to push me to sing them in church in front of the whole school. When people started to ask for copies of the songs afterwards, I knew that perhaps I was okay!

Why is musical expression important to you?

If I have gone though a bad patch, I tend to need a way to vent those feelings, and emotion and tension can be expressed so beautifully through melodies and harmonies. I have always had a crazy love affair with music, though. There have been times when I have had long breaks from writing, then, all of a sudden I will get a creative burst and won’t be able to stop. It was actually during the pandemic when my music seemed to take off the most, which was interesting. I really had time to focus on it. I released my first single ‘Shotgun’, and that did really well – it got picked up by lot of radio stations and was playlisted on BBC Radio 6, so that was kind of when I thought, oh, okay, hold on, this is kind of working. Then I really buckled down, and, as with all things in life, when you really focus on something, it kind of works out.

PHOTO CREDIT: Kirk Truman

How would you describe your music?

I would describe it as psychedelic pop. I am very inspired by the 60s and French singers, I love the style of that era. I discovered the album Melody Nelson by Serge Gainsbourg in my 20s and I just fell absolutely in love. I love all the music Serge made. I love the grooves. I love all the girls who he picked to be on the records. I mean, probably chosen because he liked pretty women as well, right? But I don't know – that's one of those things, isn't it? (Laughs) I mean, he was obviously a bit of a player, let's say, but I'm not particularly interested in that side of him, more just the music he made. I think he was a bit of a genius. Nowadays, of course, it's as much about the personality and the way that they choose to live, as well as their art, which can cause problems. I think pre-social media you could actually have some mystique.

What are the key themes on the album?

A lot of it's about a fresh start and letting go of stuff. I had a big relationship end, and I went through a period of self-reflection, and started kind of questioning what was going on inside? I kind of started again, and built myself up again – I did so much work on myself. I really felt like a brand new person afterwards. So, a lot of my songs like “Undo The Blue”, which, which is my latest single, is all about that thing of starting again and undoing the negative. I do find it it's really odd when I write, though. It's like kind of a button I push and it just all comes out – sometimes I don’t know what I'm going to write about at all, I'll just write, and then I'll read the page and it kind of tells me what I'm feeling, and I'll go, oh yeah, that is what's going on in my head”.

Undo the Blue, in my view, is a modern classic. It does nod heavily to classic and older sounds, though it sounds so modern and fresh because of the production and songwriting. It was a shame that this year-best album was not featured by bigger publications. As a result, some people have not heard Undo the Blue. The Afterword were among those to recognised the sublime brilliance and majesty of a phenomenal debut album:

“The first song Deep End has an incredible brass intro and becomes a driving, breathless opener in the style of Republica’s Ready To Go. It certainly got me interested. Iraina gives us a 90s vocal masterclass. Intense and dramatic. OK, I’m in.

Cannonball is more of the same putting me in mind of Garbage this time. I suspected this was where Iraina’s influence lies before I found out more about her. It’s an era that almost passed this 80s boy by but this song has that voice, guitars, organ, passion and plenty of hooks to drag me along.

Sugar High is a lovely shift in styles. Jazzy and dreamy. Iraina’s voice sounds amazing and my crazy brain is getting Olivia Newton John pre-Grease during the chorus. Imagine Olivia doing a Style Council or Blow Monkeys song and we’re there. The string arrangement is exquisite. This is absolutely lovely.

The title track is another smooth delicious piece of pop. I’m going back to Dusty now or Lenny Kravitz doing It Ain’t Over. In fact, such is the range displayed here there it goes from those unlikely sisters Swing Out and Shakespears. It has a fabulous crescendo moment, harmonies and swoon. Some song this.

Do It (You Stole The Rhythm) and we’re back in the 90s with a baggy rhythmed slightly underwhelming song only elevated by Iraina’s voice. Maybe it’s a grower, a slow burner lost in an inferno.

My Umbrella has more than enough hooks for any one song. It’s the Astrud Gilberto moment. Even my old hips are moving (in their own time but moving none the less). I need a hot day, a fast car and an open road to seal the deal on this song. Ooh it’s very good.

Shotgun could be the theme to a smart 60s / 70s detective thriller. It’s no Shaft but it has that smokey late, hot New York night vibe. If Netflix don’t start developing Shotgun on the back of this then they’re not really trying. If Regé-Jean Page doesn’t get Bond somebody send him this song.

What You Doin’? Annoys me in a good way. I’m failing because there’s a 70s glam song in there that wants its groove back and I can’t bloody get what song it is. Suzi Quatro maybe? Showaddwaddy? Can someone help? I am also afraid that What You Doin’? the monster earworrm it is will be rattling round my head at 2 am denying me sleep. Especially if I can’t find what it reminds me of.

Need Your Love is, surprise surprise, a love song with a feel of a Bond theme. A great showcase for Iraina’s vocal range but doesn’t really get going until a lovely spoken section. I will grow to love it I’m sure. Just needs more listens.

In a flash we are at the last song Take A Bow. Come on Iraina let’s finish on a high. She goes back to the 60s again. Join her and float on a gorgeous ride through the great chanteuse of our time. Pick out the voice of your choice it’s in there somewhere. Take A Bow Indeed.

What does it all *mean*?

I’d seen so much about this album on Twitter that it had become like white noise. I came to it with quite a bit of negativity. Come on then, prove you’ve worth all the fuss. I should have trusted Pete. This is something very special that I wouldn’t have listened to without the relentless plugging. Maybe this is the album that will prove to me that despite me being so entrenched musically there is other stuff out there for me. New stuff. You know that special place you always wanted to go but just couldn’t bring yourself to Dave? It’s right here now go and find some more. Cheers Pete. And Iraina obviously.

Goes well with…

Anything really. It’s the sort of album you could put on anywhere and it will lift yours and the mood of anyone listening. Dare I mention Sade here?”.

Undo the Blue was my favourite album of last year for a reason: every song is unique and has you completely gripped. Pete Paphides said Undo the Blue is an album with only singles on it. All the classic albums feel like every song could do well in the charts. That is the case with Undo the Blue. I am not sure whether Iraina Mancini is tempted to release one more single from the album – I know many would love to see a video for the stunning album closer, Take a Bow -, though I guess moving on and creating the blueprints for the second album are in her mind. Seriously, if you have not heard the wonderous and unforgettable Undo the Blue, then go get the vinyl, drop the needle and let it…

TAKE you somewhere blissful!

FEATURE: Spotlight: Maya Hawke

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Maya Hawke

_________

THERE are artists who…

PHOTO CREDIT: Heather Hazzan for Variety

are accused of being nepo babies or industries plants. That they are there because of their parents’ fame and influence. Maybe the industry has funded them and put money their way meaning they can get a head start. A cynical move to make a group or artist seem new and independent, when it fact they are already signed and getting support. This is something that is levied against quite a few different artists. The Last Dinner Party were accused of being industry plants. Even though her parents are actors Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, Maya Hawke is definitely not a nepo baby. Not having to rely on that link to her famed parents to get noticed in music. She is a genuine and talented artist who would have got in the industry regardless. Music has always been her passion. The New York-born actor and artist released her second studio album, Moss, in 2022. She is set to release Chaos Angel in May. I will come to some interview with Hawke. A couple of from last year/2022 and one that is very recent. An artist that people should know about and follow, I am excited to see where she takes her music career. I really love Moss, so I am excited to see what Chaos Angel offers. Here are more details about it:

“Maya Hawke is a musician, songwriter, actor and producer - She has released two lauded albums of music to date, Moss (2022) and Blush (2020), both of which showcase her natural gift for songwriting and storytelling, as well as a knack for striking visual presentation with sleeve designs of her own creation - "Therese," the lead single from Moss, garnered global attention with its mesmerizing Brady Corbet-directed video - and tens of millions of streams - and saw Maya make an impressive network TV performance debut on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

Now 25 years old, Maya's third album, Chaos Angel, takes the spare, viscerally honest songwriting she has made her name on and goes deeper and bolder. Both her most sonically sophisticated and thematically nuanced collection to date, it feels like a culmination. Across these 10 songs, Hawke catalogues upheavals, revelations, foibles, and broken promises, all while navigating the patterns we repeat while reaching towards growth, wandering astray, and finding our way back to some core understanding of ourselves.

Chaos Angel is also a document of Hawke coming more fully into her own as a musician. More adventurous in the studio after her previous two albums, Hawke leaned into her ambition. Many of these tracks are still anchored by acoustic guitar and Hawke's graceful yet conversational vocals, but their surroundings are more intricate and lush than ever before. She reconvened with longtime collaborators Benjamin Lazar Davis and Will Graefe, with Christian Lee Hutson serving as producer”.

I want to start out with a feature from The Line of Best Fit. They spoke with Maya Hawke in 2022 and asked her about some of her favourite songs. Those most important to her. I have chosen a few from the selection. Useful and interesting tracing some of the origins and influences in her music:

“The 24-year-old daughter of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke is an actor with chameleonic instinct, capable of channelling a certain charisma through a lens of vulnerability that belies her years.

She is Robin Buckley in Stranger Things, wry and whip-smart on the surface, but untangling the complexities of her sexuality beneath; she is ‘Flowerchild’, Linda Kasabian in Manson’s California in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; she is Jo March in Vanessa Caswill's Little Women, fiery and outspoken - and most recently, she is Eleanor Levetan, an inciter of chaos in the pastel-kissed world of Do Revenge. She is certainly more than a familiar surname.

Hawke’s mind whirrs at a pace that her words have no hope to match – though she is naturally observant, more prone to introspection and quiet pauses of thoughtfulness than her enthusiastic fizz would have you believe. Though the uninitiated may cynically assume that Hawke’s success was pre-ordained through pulled strings, the fact remains that this would soon fizzle were it not sustained by her talent. That, and a devotion to her craft; a sense of humility, of knowing that she is still, and always hopes to be, a student.

As Hawke’s career has gained momentum, she has become a figure of fascination – a ‘Someone’ with a capital S whose life, beyond her work, is deemed worthy of dissection. Reflecting on putting together her Nine Songs, she tells me, “I love doing this kind of thing. Any opportunity to talk about anything without having to talk too much about, like, ‘what you’re wearing’,” she laughs. “It’s nice to have these jumping off points that feel creative and connected to why you wanted to make art in the first place. It’s my privilege,” she adds, “So thank you.”

I catch Hawke at an interesting moment in her life. Everything is about to happen, and right now, she is standing on the edge of it all. Next year, Hawke is set to star in Bradley Cooper’s biographical film about Leonard Bernstein, Maestro, and Wes Anderson’s upcoming romantic dramedy, Asteroid City. “I’m in a beautiful moment of giving away a lot of hard work from the last two years of my life, and closing a chapter,” she tells me. “It’s so nice to give these things away to the world and share them.”

Among these gifts Hawke is leaving with us is her second record, Moss, following the release of her critically acclaimed 2020 debut, Blush. Many described Blush as a “coming-of-age record”, but that’s a chapter that Hawke still feels is being written. “We’re always coming of age to a new place until we die,” she observes. “We’re always changing and evolving. Moss is just as much a coming-of-age record – it’s just coming into a different moment.”

It feels apt, given Hawke’s gift for evocative imagery in her lyrics, that she would say: “You know when you’re playing tarot cards and you draw a death card, and tarot card readers say, ‘Don’t worry, it’s a great card?’ – well that’s how I feel about this record. It was a death card draw. It’s a good death, it’s a great death: a death that will lead to something new.”

Hawke assembled her Nine Songs choices based on retracing her steps. Each crystallises a moment in time from which there was no turning back; without these songs, we wouldn’t know the same person Hawke came to be. Her greatest enthusiasm, however, is reserved for an unexpected corner of music – one which she feels she could make a dozen playlists for, in itself: children’s music.

One of her earliest memories was listening to the likes of Woodie Guthrie’s Songs to Grow on for Mother and Child in the car. And when you listen to Hawke’s music now, that same luminosity, the finely-spun blend of rich, but simplistic language and sharp imagery, is common to both.

“The best children’s music is interesting to listen to, even as an adult, and that’s because it’s good storytelling,” she explains, having written her senior thesis in high school on the genre’s evolution. “It’s an interesting lesson in songwriting. The message is very clear, but if you go back and listen, there’s something powerful, moving and mysterious that lies beneath.”

“Extraordinary Machine” by Fiona Apple

I wanted to start with “Extraordinary Machine” because It's one of the first songs that was put on for me by my parents in the house that wasn't older music - that wasn't Elvis, and Johnny and Willie. This was a new voice. It felt confident. And feminine. And modern. It was rich and lyrically complex.

I was probably eight or nine years old. I was in my dad's house in Chelsea, and I was like, ‘What is this? Because I want to be an extraordinary machine! I want my brain to work that way.’ I certainly hadn’t been shopping for any news shoes; I hadn’t been spreading myself around. I was like, ‘What are those things? What do they mean?’

It made me want to write down all the words and dissect them, to figure out what the lyrics meant. There’s a lyric about being the youngest sibling; there’s a lyric about being a chaperone while wearing sheep’s clothes. I remember it turning my brain on in a big way. There was this voice in it - and I would really say ‘brain’ - inside that made me be like, ‘Who is that person, and how do I turn out like that?’

“Vincent” by Don McLean

This is more my mom’s influence, It’s another on the chapter of sadness with “Radio Cure”, but I was a little bit older. There’s this genre of music in my head that I know means something to some people, and that I know means something to me – and I don’t even really know if it’s true for this song or not – but I call it an ‘upstate feel’.

My mom had this beautiful, kind of ramshackle cottage out at the end of a long, winding road in Upstate New York. There’s something about “Vincent” that really evokes those long drives up that winding road. I’ve been revisiting this song a lot recently – it recalls this sense of being alone in nature.

It’s also ekphrastic, just like my own song, “Thérèse”. This is a song about Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night in many ways, and I wrote “Thérèse” about Thérèse Dreaming by Balthus. I think I was really influenced by the art of other people, so it’s a combination of those two things. One is that detail of the connective tissue to “Thérèse” and the way in which I’ve been inspired by stealing. I feel that stealing is an artist’s greatest tool, like being a thought thief who runs around finding things that inspire you and make you want to make art.

My favourite movies to watch are movies that make me want to write movies. My favourite music to listen to is music that makes me want to write music. It feels very natural to me: I’m lying on the grass, looking up at the sky and having this melancholy feeling of wanting the people you love to be safe.

BEST FIT: There are so many interesting elements to this song. I had no idea that Don McLean had written the lyrics on a paper bag that sold at auction for $1.5 million, or that this was played when Tupac was taken to hospital after he had been shot.

That’s so beautiful and fascinating. It sounds like a song I’d want to hear in the hospital. It’s comfortable with sadness, and I feel that way about this song and “Radio Cure”. Sometimes, there’s a certain kind of sadness that sets in where you want to escape it – and sometimes you just want permission to feel it. This song gives you that permission, I think.

“Hard Drive” by Evan Dando

This song became really important to me when I left drama school, I was living by myself in Brooklyn and trying to figure out who I was going to be as an adult. You break out of your youth - you have the “Fluorescent Adolescent” roar that comes with older adolescence, and then there’s this moment where you wonder who you are, what it all means, where it’s all going to go and how you want to be loved.

There’s a need to make space for yourself as a person in this world, and the lyrics of this song: “This is the town I’m living in / This is the street I’m walking down”; “This is the girl I’m marrying”, and “This is the face I make when I’m sad” – it was this sense of self-acceptance and self-actualisation in the world; claiming things as your own. Whether they’re big or small, good or bad, they’re yours. That always felt good to me.

The lyrics are so simple, but they kick me in my heart when I hear them. We’re just these big bundles of love and grief and we’re always changing. Sometimes I can be ecstatically happy and sometimes I can be so down. But I think figuring out how to accept yourself as a bundle of feelings is so powerful.

Moving from adolescence to adulthood is about coming to the realisation that even if you’re sad, you will be happy again; if you’re happy, you will be sad again – you can’t have one thing without the other.

A debate that applies to her music career as well as acting, the subject of being a nepo baby arose when Variety spoke with Maya and Ethan Hawke about them acting together. Rather than it being a case of Maya Hawke getting into acting because she has actor parents, she is a natural talent who found her path and forged success on her own terms:

“It’s a testament to her effortless, cool vibe that Maya can make a wonky thesis about a long-dead short-story writer seem like a great idea for a movie. She successfully pitched the passion project to her dad’s production company, Under the Influence; she felt that Ethan’s recent work as a producer and director of “The Good Lord Bird,” an offbeat look at abolitionist John Brown, as well as the Blaze Foley biopic “Blaze,” shared themes with O’Connor’s life story. Also, she admits, “I don’t know anyone else that interested in art, faith and America.”

Ethan was flattered that Maya thought of him. He was approaching 50 at the time and had his own reasons for taking on the film, beyond the chance to create art with his daughter. He envisioned the movie about O’Connor, a deeply religious Catholic, as a way to answer an ever-nagging question: Is human creativity an act of faith?

It would be easy to dismiss the Hawkes’ collaboration as an example of nepotism in an industry where who you know is more important than how talented you are. And both father and daughter are sensitive to the way that sort of thing can be characterized in today’s world. But Ethan reiterates that “Wildcat” was all Maya’s idea.

“Put simply, I’m a nepo dad!” Ethan jokes. “And I’m not embarrassed about it.” The look on Maya’s face suggests she’s instantly concerned about how that declaration will resonate.

She’s not wrong. The conversation about nepo babies — the children of celebrities and the advantages they enjoy — has been a recent obsession of the internet. When Anjelica and John Huston collaborated on “Prizzi’s Honors,” they didn’t have to endure the wrath of Twitter. In a time when simply pursuing the same career as your famous relatives is enough to provoke outrage, starring in a movie directed by your father is basically a declaration of war.

“I had moments of insecurity about it while we were shooting the movie,” admits Maya, who was also a producer. ”But the internet doesn’t have a lot of nuances. My dad has been a massive teacher for me, and we want to work together. We like being with each other”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Josefina Santos

I will finish off with a new interview from The Guardian. Forging her way with a daring new Folk album, there will be a lot of eyes on Chaos Angel. In the interview, Maya Hawke spoke about her acting career and shaking off those ‘nepo baby’ tags. She also discussed her upbringing and path into music:

“I think you probably can tell that I love this work and I’m so grateful to be getting to do it,” she adds. “I can believe anything I want to believe about me having found a way to be an artist even if I’d been adopted. But I don’t know – I’m so grateful for the world I grew up around, for the New York City theatre scene I was raised in, getting to go see plays and sit backstage, and to know about great directors and how I wanted to be.”

She says her upbringing was “rooted in poetry, and a constant conversation about what it means to make art”. Yesterday, Hawke received a phone call from her father “philosophising” about art and life. “It [was] about responding to when things get positive attention that are not your favourite things you’ve ever done, and your favourite things don’t get that much attention,” she says. “How do you not follow the bad wolf that leads you towards being likable? How do you stay true to yourself?”

PHOTO CREDIT: Josefina Santos

An individualistic streak surges through Chaos Angel, where the poetry of 70s folk rock is orbited by modern sounds – a vocodered sea shanty here, impudent brass toots there and an occasional beat switch that suggests the entire mixing desk has been plunged underwater. The record is produced by frequent Phoebe Bridgers collaborator Christian Lee Hutson, who is also Hawke’s boyfriend. Did they get together while making the record? “Not exactly,” she says. “It’s not a secret, but I think it’s a very odd thing about modern pop culture that people that have been dating for two weeks talk about their relationship to the public. It’s a bit unhinged.”

Chaos Angel is a little off the rails itself with its spectrum of sounds enlivened by a performer’s knack for personae. During recording sessions, Hawke tried her hand at different characters, like “whispery depressive” and “pop maniac”. A song titled Okay is a quietly devastating exploration of codependency inspired by Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence. At other times, Hawke’s airy, sure voice needs little else: the opener, Black Ice, recalls the hushed longing of cult songwriters such as Linda Perhacs or Kath Bloom. Talking about her new music gets her fired up. “I’m more excited to put this record out than I’ve been about anything in my life,” Hawke says decisively. “I think you have to narrow down your audience as a creative. If you’re trying to make art for everybody, you’re gonna make bad, neutral art.”

Growing up in New York, Hawke lived between her parents’ New York homes after they split when she was five. While her mother listened to pop radio in the car, her father’s CD collection was packed with Willie Nelson, Wilco and Patti Smith. It wasn’t uncommon for dad and daughter to write poetry, paint and play guitar together well into the night. Still, she was a kid growing up in the 00s. At nine, she saw her first concert. “Hannah Montana meets Miley Cyrus,” Hawke recalls. “She did half the show in the blond wig and half without”

An amazing young artist who should be on everyone’s radar, take out of the equation the fact that she is well-known because of her acting career. Music is definitely a big focus and passion. Maya Hawke is a phenomenal artist that is going to have a long career in music. Such a wonderful talent with a distinct voice and songwriting style, you need to go and pre-order Chaos Angel. This is an artist who is…

AMONG the very best out there.

FEATURE: Pretty/Unpretty: TLC’s FanMail at Twenty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Pretty/Unpretty

TLC’s FanMail at Twenty-Five

_________

ONE of the best albums…

IN THIS PHOTO: Rozonda ‘Chilli’ Thomas, Tionne ‘T-Boz’ Watkins and Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes of TLC at the 1999 Video Music Awards/PHOTO CREDIT: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

of the late-1990s, TLC’s FanMail was released on 23rd February, 1999. The title, it is said, relates to the fan mail that the trio were sent during their hiatus. Five years after the iconic CrazySexyCool, we got the magnificent FanMail. It debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling 318,000 copies in its first week of release. It was at number one for five weeks. I am going to get to features and reviews of the album. It is an album I remember buying and loving. Songs like No Scrubs and Unpretty were pivotal and adored by me and my friends. In the final year of high school, we got this incredible album from Tionne ‘T-Boz’ Watkins, Rozonda ‘Chilli’ Thomas and Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes. FanMail received eight nominations at the GRAMMY Awards, including Album of the Year. It won three. It was the group's final album released in Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes' lifetime. She tragically died in 2002; killed in a car crash prior to the release of their fourth studio album, 3D (2002). There are a few features that I need to get to. I will end with a review from NME from 1994. There are many reasons why FanMail is legendary. I will start with a 2019 article from Albumism. They spotlighted and celebrated FanMail on its twentieth anniversary:

“There may have never been an album that marked the beginning of a new musical era as succinctly as TLC’s FanMail. After a four-and-a-half year lay-off, America’s craziest, sexiest, coolest, and most successful R&B group helped craft a new blueprint for how to aurally captivate, visually dazzle, and personally engage millions with a groundbreaking LP.

The dynamic trio of Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins, Lisa “Left-Eye” Lopes, and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas who were originally fused and later nurtured under the warmth of the Peach State, fostered an unprecedented string of hits and albums sales with their first two long players, Ooooooohhh...On the TLC Tip (1992) and CrazySexyCool (1994). Released as the fourth and final single from the multi-platinum latter album in late 1995, “Diggin’ On You” extended the hot streak for TLC as their seventh top 10 single.

Maximizing their time during their hiatus to strategically select songs that spoke directly to TLC’s maturity, the ladies turned down several songs that proved to be hits for younger recording artists looking to establish themselves. “Where My Girls At?” was passed on to fellow trio 702 as the lead single for their self-titled sophomore LP, which was released later in 1999.  Likewise, “...Baby One More Time” was later used to launch the career of teenage pop sensation Britney Spears for her 1999 debut LP of the same name. Once TLC was finally primed for their third installment, their lead single was as edgy, empowering, and irresistible as any highlight of their acclaimed catalog to date.

Produced by Kevin “She’kspere” Briggs, who also co-wrote the song alongside Xscape members Kandi Burruss and Tameka “Tiny” Cottle, “No Scrubs” propelled TLC toward an even bolder and more unapologetic voice of womanhood. The song’s contentious lyrics led by Chilli shot down some notoriously clichéd pickup lines of the latter half of the 20th Century with hardline rejections like “no, I don't want your number / no, I don't want to give you mine / and no, I don't want to meet you nowhere / no, I don't want none of your time.”

Once T-Boz joined in for the chorus, young women instantly had an anthem to memorize, and guys over 18 who still claimed dibs on the shotgun seat were enflamed by the not-so-subtle jabs at their so-called masculinity. “I don't want no scrubs / a scrub is a guy that can't get no love from me / hangin' out the passenger side of his best friend's ride / trying to holla at me.”

Left Eye, who had always been the major creative force behind the group’s success, contributed to “No Scrubs” by providing a brilliant verse that transitioned smoothly from a spoken word poetry style intro into the hip-hop lyrics “So, let me give you something to think about / inundate your mind with intentions to turn you out / can't forget the focus on the picture in front of me / you as clear as DVD on digital TV screens / satisfy my appetite with something spectacular / check your vernacular, and then I get back to ya.”

The overall performance showed substantial artistic growth for a group that had already scored number one hit singles and achieved multi-platinum status. Aside from stirring up a reasonable amount of new debate material for the never-ending battle of the sexes and redefining the American deadbeat, “No Scrubs” landed as TLC’s third number one single, was nominated for the GRAMMY award in the Record of the Year category, and the Hype Williams directed video won MTV’s Best Group Video award.

Reuniting with long-time collaborator Dallas Austin who wrote and produced “Silly Ho” under his pseudonym Cyptron, the ladies continued with their demonstrative approach to female independence, proclaiming “not goin' let you catch me out / you should take a lesson from me / I ain't the one to be / depending on someone else / I can run a scam / before he can.”

“I’m Good at Being Bad” helped FanMail earn a parental advisory sticker for its unedited version. Produced by the legendary tag-team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, the song begins with an innocent instrumental to complement the lyrics delivered by Chilli, “As we walk hand in hand / just kickin' up sand / as the ocean laps at our feet / I'm in your arms / and all of your charms are for me.” The song picks up the pace as T-Boz and Left Eye join the fray, for their own expressions of new millennium feminism.

“Unpretty” slowed the pace down a few notches, embracing a poetic style of songwriting, while meshing Pop and Alternative Rock with the girls’ R&B roots. Across their acclaimed recording career, “Unpretty” sits atop a mountain of hits as the summit of TLC’s ability to connect with fans on a personal level. The heartfelt lyrics touched on themes of insecurity, peer pressure, and female agency. The coinciding video directed by veteran Paul Hunter effectively conveyed the same message visually and even included sign language to avoid communication barriers.

FanMail was timely for the closing of a decade and served as a remarkable proclamation for the voice of young women set to come of age in a new century. TLC used clever avenues to seize the anticipation of the approaching Y2K, with the album’s binary coded album cover and audio appearances by their computer modulated collaborator Vic-E. The ladies stuck to their brand of fun, while artistically expressing each growing pain they had encountered since their previous LP. With FanMail, TLC not only changed the look and sound of R&B at the time, they introduced a newfound depth to the genre, packaging all of it into a generous aural gift to the fans that made them the most successful American female group of the ‘90s”.

Moving things to Rolling Stone and their 2019 feature about FanMail. They highlight a feminist tour de force twenty years after its release. I have such fond memories of FanMail. It is an album that I have endless respect and love for. A legendary trio creating something astonishing and hugely inspiring:

“Nevertheless, instead of capitulating to the demands of the late Nineties pop machine, TLC decided to stick to their R&B roots, turning to both Austin and Babyface to create something more timelessly TLC. And while much of the first world was panicked about the impending doom of Y2K, the crew leaned into the looming techno-disaster, adapting their “New Jill Swing” to a more 808-infused hybrid sound — including a computerized vocaloid and honorary bandmate, who they fondly nicknamed Vic-E. What resulted was FanMail, a cyber-R&B masterpiece that would serve as a blueprint for a new, digitally-savvy generation of genre-defying musicians.

No song better encapsulated their future-facing transformation than the lead single “No Scrubs.” Co-written with Kandi Burruss, former member of girl group Xscape, the song started as a flippant jab at loose men who rove the streets, looking for women to hassle — but would swiftly became a millennial feminist anthem. “A scrub is a guy that can’t get no love from me,” sing the trio: “Hangin’ out the passenger side of his best friend’s ride/Trying to holla at me.”

“We got a Grammy for writing ‘No Scrubs,'” Burruss told Rolling Stone earlier this month. “It contributed to me getting Songwriter of the Year. I was the first woman to get Songwriter of the Year from ASCAP and ‘No Scrubs’ was part of the reason for me getting it. I couldn’t have asked for a better blessing of a song to have had in my catalog.”

“No Scrubs” was also the first song in which Chilli, who usually ceded the floor to T-Boz and Left Eye’s bad girl swagger, was able to take center stage as a vocalist — and a dissenting voice amid a culture that was all too permissive to sexual harassment. Almost right on schedule, an all-male group called Sporty Thievz led the misogynist backlash against “No Scrubs,” with their own lukewarm track, “No Pigeons.”

“We were cracking up when we heard Sporty Thieves’ [response track] ‘No Pigeons,'” Chilli told Billboard in a recent interview. “There’s so many songs that are negative towards women and you don’t hear a lot of females saying, ‘We’ve got to do an anti version of that one.’ So it’s funny that you have these guys that want to flip “No Scrubs” real quick. They can’t take the heat!”

Their 1994 breakthrough CrazySexyCool delved into the nuances of being liberated women: take their coolly, sexually dominant stance in “Red Light Special,” or their HIV-conscious megahit “Waterfalls,” which cautioned to choose your own adventure wisely — or in other words, by using a barrier method. But in 1999, Fanmail raised the bar to equally stress the need for protecting your heart: the song “Unpretty” was the brainchild of T-Boz, whose boyfriend at the time ghosted her while she was hospitalized with complications from sickle-cell anemia. A gentle, alt-rock reflection on the ways women struggle to embody an unattainable physical ideal — even Grammy-winning vocalists — “Unpretty” was adapted from her book of poems, titled Thoughts, which she penned while in and out of intensive care. “Why do I look to all these things/To keep you happy?” wrote T-Boz, “Maybe get rid of you/And then I’ll get back to me.”

The reception was greater than they ever could have imagined: Letters cascaded in from fans old and new, imparting words of support and stories of their own issues with body image. TLC would invite some of those fans to speak their truths live at the Lady of Soul Awards, where they would be honored with the Aretha Franklin Entertainer of the Year Award. Left Eye, typically accustomed to delivering hard bars, was relegated to perform “Unpretty” that night exclusively in American Sign Language — hinting at her increasing creative divergence from the band. (She barely got the chance to recoup her role in TLC in their following 2002 record, 3D, which she never finished recording; she died in a car wreck that year while on a healing retreat in Honduras.)

Twenty years following the release of their landmark album, TLC still receive fan mail to this very day: In January, it came in the form of a cover song by nerd rockers Weezer, who paid tribute to “No Scrubs” in their latest record, The Teal Album.

“When I heard it, I loved it!” Chilli told Rolling Stone last month. “It feels really good because when you’re in the studio working, you hope and pray that you make songs that have longevity. And we have, so that’s a blessing. I’m telling you, I wanna reach out to [Weezer] and try to make this performance happen”.

I want to go back to 2012. That is when Pitchfork wrote about FanMail. Fifteen years after its release, they revisited a huge commercial success. Despite it not being the best-reviewed album from TLC, FanMail was groundbreaking and history-making. It is an album that came after a difficult period. Pitchfork discussed the period between 1994’s CrazySexyCool and FanMail:

“When most people think TLC, their brains immediately go to the sounds and images of their 1994 R&B classic CrazySexyCool: "Waterfalls", silk pajamas, "Red Light Special". But, perhaps because I still have a very vivid memory of buying it in a New Jersey mall, my thumb obscuring the Parental Advisory sticker so my mom wouldn't see it, the TLC album I've found myself returning to the most in recent years is FanMail.

It was not the group's greatest success (coming off CrazySexyCool, the first-ever diamond-selling album by a female group, six million units in the U.S. is good-not-great), though FanMail did spawn the mega-hit "No Scrubs", the #1 single "Unpretty", and earned two Grammys. But this record doesn't seem as ingrained in the collective cultural memory of TLC. Maybe because it's something of an inconsistent hodgepodge, or because certain elements of its futuristic aesthetic have not aged particularly well. But when we talk about TLC's current influence on a whole crop of web-minded, Tumblr-savvy, android-obsessed artists, we don't seem to realize how much we're talking about FanMail-- a record that, almost a decade and a half after its release, still sounds hauntingly prescient, like a transmission from the future.

In the years between CrazySexyCool and FanMail, the TLC story got tumultuous. Lopes burned down her boyfriend Andre Rison's house and went to rehab, the group declared bankruptcy at the height of their success thanks to a profoundly shitty recording contract, and internal tensions became almost unbearable. Plenty of other things were going on between 1994 and 1999, behind bedroom doors and in front of flickering screens. Over that five-year span, I added a computer, email address, and an AIM screen name to my life, and by 1999 these things had begun to feel intricately interlaced with my personal identity.

Considering CrazySexyCool and FanMail back-to-back, you can hear these cultural changes take place. A skittish, glitchy album full of distractions, interruptions, and ruptures in consciousness, FanMail was one of the very first pop records to aestheticize the internet. And, like most first times, it was not without awkwardness. Its cover is swathed in not-so-subtle binary code accents and features virtual reality avatar portraits of the ladies. Its beats are gilded with the aged chirps of dial-up connections, and then there's the whole conceit of Vic-E (pronounced "Vicki"), the record's recurring android character who narrates interludes and-- in her shining moment-- raps an entire verse on the track "Silly Ho": "You know you can't get with this…/ Stuck on silly shit/ Boy you know you need to quit." On its surface, FanMail screams "Y2K."

But if you can get past that, the album grapples with something much deeper that reverberates throughout a lot of pop music today. Although the way the group's delight in singing about email, cyberspace, and "the future of music" captures a sense of emergent-technology wonder that's always a little embarrassing in hindsight, FanMail is not nearly as interested in what's gained by technology as it

And no song on the album captures that as masterfully as the title track. "Welcome, we have dedicated our entire album to any person who ever sent us fanmail," Vic-E drones over the song's intro, "TLC would like to thank you for your support. But just like you..."-- and here the human voices join in-- "... they get lonely too." If you unfold the booklet accompanying the FanMail CD, you'll see a poster listing the names of thousands of people who had sent the group fan letters, and in the foreground there's a large image of T-Boz, Left Eye, and Chilli made up to look like computer-generated androids themselves, steely and stoic.

As if to say, "this is your brain on the internet," the atmosphere of "FanMail" teems with disembodied voices and interruptions (shouts of "fanmail!" and "the letters!" nag like a backlog of unanswered messages), while T-Boz's gravelly alto lays out the verses: "I got an email today/ I kinda thought that you forgot about me/ So I wanna hit you back to say/ Just like you, I get lonely too”.

There are a couple of features I want to cover before getting to a review. Vibe took us inside a classic that was “A Futurist Prelude To Digital Era Intimacy”. Their 2019 feature revealed some interesting details and interpretations:

“FanMail, from the sound to the art direction, embodied a timely futuristic aesthetic, as everyone was obsessed with technology’s cultural takeover in the new millennium: remember Y2K hysteria, Napster mp3 file sharing, and the Dot.com boom? On the album’s cover, T-Boz, Chilli and Left Eye‘s faces appear as silver-faced avatars floating above an orbit. A code of numbers are printed across the cover, imagery often associated with The Matrix. (Although FanMail dropped a month before the film hit theaters.)

On the title track, listeners are greeted by Vic-E, the everpresent robotic voice narrating the album: “Just like you, they [TLC] get lonely, too.” She reassures listeners that fame doesn’t stop them from being human. The digitized voice is reminiscent of the “tour guide” on A Tribe Called Quest’s 1993 album Midnight Marauders. Yet, unlike Tribe, TLC collaborates with the robot, as it contributes background vocals throughout. Austin also sprinkled FanMail with samples of sounds — check “Communicate (Interlude)” and “LoveSick” for examples — he found on the Internet, movies, and devices like printers, he shared with MixOnline.

It was a smart move to modernize, as it had been five years since TLC released its best-selling 1994 album CrazySexyCool. The sultry mix presented a more mature and stripped back follow-up to the colorful, youthful angst of Ooooooohhh… On The TLC Tip. This five-year gap could have left the group’s fans uninterested, especially if they were releasing in today’s fast-paced consumption environment, in which stans demand new releases on social media after only a year or two. But the time away didn’t hinder TLC. Now 10 years in the game, they managed a successful return by dedicating this project to their fanbase.

“Left Eye came up with the title, and we made it come together creatively as a group, along with Dallas Austin,” T-Boz said in their May 1999 VIBE cover story. “It was like, Let’s write and sing one big fan letter. Let’s put fan names on everything – all the singles, the album cover, T-shirts, mugs. Just show our appreciation.”

Left Eye also chimed in with a transparent business savvy explanation. “Now we know that the way contracts are set up, it’s not really made for artists to get rich from selling records – that’s the company’s one shot to make money,” she explained. “The artist is supposed to use that as an outlet to do merchandising and other things that we never took advantage of because we were too busy sitting in bankruptcy court trying to get a settlement out of LaFace.”

That part. Although TLC were multi-platinum selling artists up until FanMail, they had faced a public financial battle with their management Pebbitone, Inc. and label, LaFace Records. This caused the delay between their sophomore and third efforts. In 1995, the group, who revealed they were “broke” at the 1996 Grammys, filed for bankruptcy in hopes to break their contract and renegotiate a new deal.

They were $3.5 million dollars in debt and earning an 8 percent royalty rate. In November 1996, they settled with Arista and BMG and LaFace for an 18 percent royalty rate. To add to the drama, there were talks of producer Dallas Austin leaving the project because of back-and-forths with TLC and L.A. Reid over the creative direction of the album, the 1999 VIBE cover story stated. Thankfully, the parties resolved their misunderstandings enough to complete one of the biggest albums of the decade.

On 17 tracks, TLC took on sexuality, insecurities, self-reliance, and vulnerability with resistant messaging, their tried and true winning formula. This energy paved the way for Destiny’s Child’s reign in the 2000s, and the transparency R&B singers like SZA, H.E.R. and Summer Walker carry on today. TLC’s defiance gave women of the ‘90s permission to be vocal about the spectrum of their emotions, from their sex drives on “I Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” to revenge cheating on “Creep.” FanMail brought more of those goods.

The most notable “No Scrubs,” also considered pop canon, is a scathing critique on men at bottom of the dating pool. “A scrub is a guy, who thinks he’s fly and is also known as a busta/ always talking about what he wants and just sits on his broke a**,” Chilli belts in opening lines. The no. 1 track became such a phenomenon that it inspired the petty male response, “No Pigeons” from Sporty Thievz, their biggest claim to fame. Former Xscape members Kandi Burruss and Tameka Dianne “Tiny” Harris penned it and Kevin “She’kspere” Briggs, also behind Destiny’s Child’s no. 1 song “Bills, Bills, Bills,” produced it.

TLC tapped the legendary Hype Williams for the “No Scrubs” visual. Instead of setting the video in a club where scrubs are likely inhabitants, the visual features the trio in outer-space suits floating through a futuristic setting no scrub could ever reach. Most notably Lopes, who in the video does martial arts while a drone films her, manages to keep the digital theme, even when dissing the guys. “Can’t forget the focus on the picture in front of me/You as clear as DVD on digital TV screens,” Lopes raps.

The wonky bop “Silly Ho” is another anti-playa anthem, in which TLC proclaim they aren’t the kind of women who are scheming for men’s pockets. “I can run a scam before he can/ I am better than a man/ I always keep my game all day,” they chant. TLC keeps demanding respect on the choppy “My Life,” their Janet Jackson Control moment, appropriate given their music industry woes.

TLC breaks from jittery beats and Vic-E assisted numbers for alternative pop, on the album’s second no. 1 hit single “Unpretty,” which tackles insecurities caused by a toxic partner’s body-shaming. T-Boz deads him by summoning self-love: “Maybe get rid of you/ And then I’ll get back to me, yeah.” The track was inspired by a poem T-Boz wrote, Dallas Austin told CNN in 2000. He also spoke on the songs’ folky essence. “I like a lot of alternative music, and when I saw the title, “Unpretty” reminded me of a song somebody like (alternative singer) Ani DiFranco would have (written). I just went at it,” he explained. The crew also gave us sensual beckoning on the mid-tempo groove “Come On Down,” penned by legendary pop songwriter Diane Warren.

The album ends with soulful bop “Don’t Pull Out on Me Yet,” but it’s “Communication (Interlude)” that feels like the proper conclusion. “There’s over a thousand ways/ To communicate in our world today/ And it’s a shame/ That we don’t connect,” they say in a spoken word that offers a foreshadowing to our present human condition. Loneliness is on the rise, and more screen time and less human interaction are being linked to growing depression among American adolescents. “So if you also feel the need/ For us to come together/ Will you communicate with me?” As technological advancements create the feeling of being in closer proximity to more people’s thoughts and happenings, it reminds us that these interactions can be fleeting and one-on-one intimacy with your chosen tribe could never become obsolete.

Although its 1999 original drop date has come and gone, in 2019, FanMail is still a fitting soundtrack for dating in the digital age. Whether they’re making their contact through the passenger sides of cars or down in the DMs, the personalities pointed out on the poignant album, are still walking amongst us, messing with our hearts one way or another. FanMail proved that TLC was more in tune with the future than their pop peers, and will more than likely continue to be”.

COMPLEX dove into FanMail on its fifteenth anniversary in 2012. Many do not know what was happening in the TLC camp. It was a turbulent and trio for the trio. It is amazing that such a cohesive and excellent album was made considering what was happening around them:

“Beneath all of FanMail's visionary veneer, though, TLC's essence shone, and that meant a lot of sensual, assertive songs about integrity and self-esteem. "No Scrubs," the album's lead single and an international smash hit still, was ushered in by a skit called "Whispering Playa." On it, a corny dude at a party tries to holler at the ladies, who respond with incredulous giggles. Its overall mien, a more mature transition from similar sentiments expressed on Oooh… on the TLC Tip, set a precedent for the bossy steezes of stars that marched in their confident footsteps, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Ciara, Minaj. And, well sure, "Cyptron" was doing his best Timbaland imitation on "Silly Ho" ("Are You That Somebody?" had swept the world off its feet in June of '98), but its message was one of total independence, and not playing one's self out to sit at the feet of a dude. (Even Vic-E wasn't having it, declaring "I'm OUT" on the bridge.)

Yet, they weren't all hard exterior: the popular, proto-"Pretty Hurts" ballad "Unpretty," written by T-Boz, detailed the decline of a woman's self-esteem, at the hands of a debilitating and emotionally abusive man. With the concept of fan-outreach, TLC was sincerely trying to touch all the bases, crafting fist-in-the-air woman-power anthems, as well as weepy, pillow-hugging singalongs.

Maybe too many of the latter, actually. FanMail came at a tumultuous time for TLC. It was their first album after filing for bankruptcy in '95 and a public beef with their label LaFace. More pressingly, it represented a rift that had developed within the group. Left Eye denounced much of their music via a VIBE Magazine cover story that also revealed Dallas Austin, their longtime producer and the father of Chilli's son, had almost walked off the project. On one hand, it's why FanMail is a strong step for TLC's independence: Then in their late 20s, the women were staking out on their own after being burned by bad management, and some of their choices, such as using producers other than Dallas Austin, weren't amenable to everyone in the group. On the other, it's why FanMail is in a bit of disarray, particularly in the album's ballad-heavy latter half, which was partly, according to Chilli, inspired by Shania Twain. (Bless Shania Twain and new directions, but at some point you sacrifice cohesion.) Left Eye told VIBE, "I cannot stand 100 percent behind this TLC project and the music that is supposed to represent me." (She later complained about the group turning down the song "Heartbreak Hotel," which ended up going platinum for Whitney Houston; it's also worth noting that Britney's "Baby One More Time" was offered to TLC first.)

With the perspective of history, FanMail's gleaming prescience is also slightly somber. Left Eye, never quite satisfied after its release, dropped her first solo album in 2001, a week before Aaliyah died. Eight months later, she, too was dead. The weightless beats that informed FanMail—no doubt stemming from Timbaland's influence—fell so far out of fashion they're coming back in style again only now. Drake covered "FanMail" as "I Get Lonely Too," transforming a populist song about unity and empathy into a navel-gazing, self-contained diary entry.

But on the other hand, this world we now live in is the FanMail dream realized. They can talk to their fans directly every day if they like, and Chilli often does, hitting Twitter for bouts of RTs and answering questions when she's in the mood. Cool T-Boz is characteristically less interactive, offering photos of her day, bon mots, or her opinions on current cultural happenings.

The FanMail concept was Left Eye's idea in the first place, though, and while the world she left behind remains only through relics, her bandmates could resurrect her through hologram if they so chose. (They won't. But here we are, the future.) But in a way we really have reached that utopia, talking to each other every single day, separated only by fiber-optics and our own imaginations.

"Communication is the key to life," declared Left Eye on her interlude. "Communication is the key to love. Communication is the key to us. There's over a thousand ways to communicate in our world today. And it's a shame that we don't connect”.

I am going to end with a review from NME. They shared their thoughts about one of the greatest albums of the 1990s. Twenty-five years after its release, FanMail still sounds like nothing else! I would urge anyone unfamiliar with this album to check it out. As a teenager when it came out, I was instantly struck and hooked! The more I listen to the album, the more that I get from it:

“TLC must find it consoling that they can slap stickers on their baby deer-eyed cyber sleeve saying The Biggest-Selling Female Trio Of All Time. In the deluge of midriff-thrusting, control-girls-on-a-sexy-urban-R&B-plus-rap-grit; tip, it's been somewhat eclipsed that they carved the template.

When T-Boz, Left Eye and Chilli strutted on to Babyface and LA Reid's Atlanta label in 1992 they gave definitive shape to female hip-hop attitude in pop. They wore the condoms, took baggy strides into videoland, trilled about AIDS'n'drugs ('Waterfalls') and topped out with an accidental black feminist distress flare when Left Eye burned down her sports star boyfriend's $2million mansion.

The phrase 'go girl' belongs to them, so it's fair enough that four years on from 'CrazySexyCool' they've softened a little and broadened out. 'Fanmail''s overarching 'cyber concept' pushes towards the kind of electronic funk that Prince used to excel at, but no amount of robot FX and virtual fourth members can disguise the solid pop core.

A posse of producers shamelessly boost harmonies and razor beats and the songwriting team cover the waterfront ruthlessly. The acoustics'n'tinkling of 'I Miss You So Much' are Celine Dion for the projects. 'Unpretty' rocks like Hanson. 'Shout' is a close cousin of 'When Doves Cry' and the very mellow interludes of 'Come On Down' and 'Dear Lie' drip with enough spare syrup to reinvent Five Star as street coolsters.

Elsewhere, however, the ruffness levels rise considerably as they contribute to pop's discourse on dating with a cheeky candour that Brit imitators could never ever muster. 'Silly Ho''s minimal funk lays down the law on not being "a chicken-head". The mandolin and beats marvel 'No Scrubs' applies vigorous elbow to men who think they're big, but really live with Mom ('a scrub'), 'I'm Good At Being Bad' blends superfly soul with Donna Summerisms and Left Eye's sly 'bad bitch' lewdness - "A good man is hard to find/Well actually a hard man is so good to find...".

The pop/sex on our own terms manifesto is given a final underscoring by the twinkling soul snog ballad finale 'Don't Pull Out On Me' which combines their trademark pliant, soft-focus purring with explicit, in-control instructions to the boys on how to do the late-night creep properly.

Maturity and cyber tips have not diminished them. Seven years on TLC are still showing the Honeyz, Saints and Spices how real grrrls do it.

8/10”.

On 23rd February, FanMail turns twenty-five. A classic marks its quarter-century. 1999 gave us so many classics. Right there with there with the best of them, TLC’s final album with Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes is a work of brilliance! I have very fond memories of it. I hope that TLC mark the twenty-fifth anniversary and recall their memories. Anyone who has not heard the album needs to…

LISTEN to it right away.