1996 revisited

12

age special

A BAND TO BLOW
YOUR MIND!

GRIMES

HER PUNK-ART RIOT

THE

INTERVIEW

MATT HEALY
GOES LOOKING
FOR GOD... AND
FINDS HIMSELF

JOHN LYDON

HIS RULES FOR LIFE!

PAGES OF
REVIEWS

ALL THE
MUSIC YOU
NEED THIS
MONTH

CHVRCHES

48-HOUR TOKYO TRIUMPH

THE STONES

KEITH: I BURNT DOWN THE

PLAYBOY MANSION!

PRIMAL
SCREAM

T H ELIRL
F U RY
S TO

MAY 2016
NE
PA G E TOW O
OF

THE
ROLLING
12 STONES
PAGE

Keith Richards talks us

through some of the rarities
and treasures to be found
at The Rolling Stones
Exhibitionism exhibition.

PAGE

42

THE
28 CULT
PAGE

COVER: AUSTIN HARGRAVE, JUSTIN THOMAS, TOM SHEEHAN PHOTOS THIS PAGE: REX, GETTY, ALEX LAKE, JUSTIN THOMAS, AUSTIN HARGRAVE, RACHAEL WRIGHT, ROSS HALFIN, GUY EPPEL

Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy

will address your enquiries
about them inventing The
Smiths and grunge. But the
question about Electric will
get short shrift.

OASIS

Q recalls the magic and

drama of the Gallaghers
Maine Road triumphs
including our chats with
fans and band.

CHVRCHES

Capturing triumph,
mania, indoor rollercoasters and a conquest
of stage fright as the trio
reach the Japanese leg
of their tour.

PAGE

54
PAGE

60

JOHN LYDON

The PiL mans rules for

life. Four decades after
punk, hes very much against anarchy
and very much in favour of jumping out
of planes if thats your bag.

PAGE

32

PARQUET
COURTS

COVER
STORY

THE 1975

Theyve made one of the years great

albums but it took the unravelling of
frontman Matt Healy to get there

PAGE

62

Melding anxiety
and exhaustion
with perky tunes,
Americas best
underground band
are definitely not
the slackers you
think they are.

M AY 2 O 1 6

MAY 2016
PA G E T W O
OF TWO

UNDERWORLD
PAGE

68

How two men have spent 20

years taking dance music
into uncharted frontiers
with a bond that will only
be broken by death.

Florence Welch:
taking it to church.

PAGE

74

PAGE

98

GRIMES

Claire Boucher
was a terrible
child, an asshole
who grew up to be
pops art-punk
outlier. And
she owes it all
well, a little bit of
it anyway to
Mariah Carey.

PAGE

80
14-PAGE SPECIAL!
With honesty,
humour and regrets,
Bobby Gillespie and
Andrew Innes
recount 30 years
of highs, lows and
landmark music.

FLORENCE + THE MACHINE Stripped

L IV E
back in a sacred setting for Warchild. p98

WOLF ALICE

L IV E
Its burgers all round as the
ascendant alt-rockers arrive in Europe. p100

PJ HARVEY

NEW
A global world view encourages
Polly Harveys most ambitious LP yet. p102

CATE LE BON

NEW
An absorbingly bonkers take
on post-punk from the Welsh singer-songwriter. p105

TELEMAN

NEW
The meek become heroes on
Londoners impressive second. p109

SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES

R E IS S U E
Confrontation, provocation and some great songs. p118

PAGE

128
PAGE

130
4

M AY 2 O 1 6

Q MAIL

One reader salutes Muses human side,

plus win tickets for The Isle Of Wight Festival.

NILE RODGERS

The disco legend ruminates on the coolest way to

die and that time he developed cocaine psychosis.

PHOTOS: TOM SHEEHAN, ANDREW WHITTON, ADAM LAWRENCE, TOM SHEEHAN, OLIVER HALFIN,

PRIMAL
SCREAM

THE WORLDS FINEST MUSIC GUIDE

The New Album - 1st April 2016

Limited Deluxe LP and CD Editions | LP | CD | DL
dominorecordco.com thelastshadowpuppets.com

EDITOR S LETTER

THERE ARE APPROXIMATELY

six-thousand words on Primal Scream

in this issue and not a single one is
wasted. Qs Simon Goddard sits down
with mainstays Bobby Gillespie and
Andrew Innes to dig through the bands
34-year career and their incredible tales
of triumph, misfire, ruin, redemption,
adventure, innovation, and some truly
brilliant records.
Stretched over 14 pages, its an incredible story and
one that The 1975s charismatic frontman Matt Healy might
be interested in. Gillespie worries that the Screams yarns
about narcotic misadventures and psychological derailments
detract from the music that theyve made, but theres no
doubt that parts of their legend are cautionary tales for an
ascendant rock musician.
An absorbing combination of talent, ambition and
soundbites, Healy is shaping himself into a great pop star
and hes already discovered that the pressures, pitfalls
and temptations of his chosen career can make things a bit
wobbly. Like Primal Scream have done more than once,
hes managed to steer himself away from the path to
oblivion and emerge with a vital, artful, inventive pop record.
His story is already compelling and heres hoping well all
still be here in three decades to review it.
Its impossible to predict which bands will still be creating
great music in 2046, but 15 new acts who are making the
best possible start are collated for you on the exclusive CD
with this issue. If you like what you hear, and were certain
you will, you can read more about each artist in our new
music special on page 20.
Enjoy the issue.

MATT MASON, SENIOR EDITOR (

Contributing Editors: Tom Doyle, Simon Goddard, John Harris, Dorian Lynskey, Sylvia Patterson, Peter Robinson

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M AY 2 O 1 6

THE RCA ALBUMS COLLECTION

STUNNING 60 CD BOX SET FEATURING STUDIO ALBUMS,
ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACKS AND LIVE ALBUMS
ALSO INCLUDES 300 PAGE HARDBACK BOOK WITH
PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

OUT FROM 19TH MARCH

EMOTIONAL RE

After 89 people were shot dead at an EAGLES OF DEATH METAL show at Le

Bataclan last year, the band return to Paris for a concert for fans and survivors.

ts 5.30pm outside Pariss

Olympia theatre, and six
armoured police vans
and scores of armed
constabulary guard the
streets as Eagles Of Death Metal prepare to
make their live return to the French capital.
On 13 November, 2015, 89 of their fans were
killed by terrorists midway through a show
across town at Le Bataclan.
Three months on, the band are back to
try and purge that evenings unspeakable
memories both for themselves, and for
approximately 1000 survivors of the atrocity,
whove received free tickets for tonights
comeback gig.
Feelings are already running high, as the
band, including frontman Jesse Hughes and
his childhood friend Josh Homme, who

M AY 2 O 1 6

performs occasionally as EODMs drummer,

meet several hundred survivors gathered
outside the venue. Homme wasnt behind
the kit at Le Bataclan but has come to lend
moral support to Hughes and the rest of the
band. For some minutes, Hughes proceeds
along the line of fans, hugging, kissing,
crying and laughing.
This is probably the most important
show Ill ever play, the singer informs Q
backstage 20 minutes or so later, his orange
shades misting up. Its weird, because
normally theyre not important, theyre
just fun. But it turns out, fun is important.
Those motherfuckers wanted to snuff
out rocknroll, and were not letting that
happen. He clears his throat of emotion.
Lets smoke some weed and get ready.
Before the terror attack of 13 November,

Hughes was little more than a cult figure,

known in rock circles as an unreconstructed
Californian rocker with the kind of lascivious
worldview thatd make KISSs Gene Simmons
blush. In a field of largely left-leaning
musicians, Hughes has stood out as a staunch
member of the NRA, a devout Christian
(hes even ordained as a minister), a
Republican and a supporter of Donald
Trumps bid to be President.
In EODMs first video interview 12
days after the massacre, however, he cut
a heart-wrenchingly shellshocked, pale
figure. Now that hes fully facing the world
again, hes clearly split between externalising
whats been bottled up inside him after that
horrific night, and attempting to regain his
customary swagger.
During our roller-coaster conversation he

THOSE MOTHERF**KERS WANTED

TO SNUFF OUT ROCKNROLL, AND
WERE NOT LETTING THAT HAPPEN.

JESSE HUGHES

(Clockwise from above) Eagles

Of Death Metal breathe a sigh
of relief at the gigs end; EODM
declare their return to Paris; Josh
Homme greets fans outside the
Olympia, Paris, 16 February, 2016.

sobs numerous times, wiping away tears from

behind his sunglasses. In the next breath, he
seems hellbent on breaking free of any image
of a tortured survivor. Earlier today, for
instance, he was given the freedom of the
city of Paris by mayor Anne Hidalgo.
Were Par-eejans now, he boasts,
proudly showing Q his medal. He brightens.
But that mayor was hot, man! I was flirtin
the fuck out of her!
On arrival in Paris, Hughes caused outrage
around the world, by speaking out against gun
control in a French TV interview. He argued
somewhat unbelievably, in his particular
circumstances that until nobody has
guns, everybody has to have them.
His comments have threatened to
overshadow coverage of tonights concert as
a triumph for survivors, and a tribute to the

fallen. Q has been warned against broaching

the subject by Hughess management, but
the man himself characteristically takes
matters into his own hands.
I dont think everybody should have
guns, he says, flatly, then adds in the mock
tone of a pistol-packing jock, especially
not, you know, the retarded. He laughs.
Kidding! The implication is: the experience
has been heavy, he screwed up, but he has
his views and dont expect an apology. He
quickly diverts the conversation to point
out that his knowledge of firearms helped
bring the Bataclan investigation forward.
It was initially believed that just three
terrorists had shot their way into the
venue with AK-47 rifles.
I kept telling them there werent just
AK-47s. I heard shotguns. I heard a 9mm

backstage. I knew as we were standing frozen

onstage that we were surrounded. The
French cops were like, Youve seen too
much CSI, go take a nap. Then, on the
second day after, they showed up at the
hotel. I thought, What the fuck? Did they
find my drugs? But the French captain was
holding a 9mm shell in his hand. He said, I
wanna know everything you remember.
During three days confined to their
hotel, Bono, who was also in Paris with
U2, reached out to him. Without a word,
Bono sent me a phone five hours after the
shooting started, so I could call my mom.
I called to say thanks, and the next three
or four days, he called me, to check on
me, and to pray with me.
Three weeks later, EODM briefly
joined U2 onstage at Pariss AccorHotels
Arena, but the process of reacquiring the
confidence to stand on their own stage
again has been a tortuous one. When
they decided to honour an annual New
Years Eve date at an LA burlesque bar,
Hughes says he had to be physically pushed
onstage by his girlfriend.
I had to stop myself from scanning the
crowd [for gunmen], he recalls. He quickly
spotted a fuck-ton of undercover LAPD
officers, and the Federal Marshall thats been
guarding me, and I felt OK again. He smiles,
and the bravado kicks in again. Then I saw a
hot set of tits, and everything else melted
right out my head, and I was back on point.
Inside the theatre, you gradually notice
an above-average presence of wheelchairs,
crutches and plastercasts. The reality
hits home of just how many of the
2800-strong crowd physically escaped
Le Bataclan. Yet the mood is jubilant,
life-affirming, with a terrible undertow
of grief. Theres much hugging, and, in
some quarters, copious drinking.
M AY 2 O 1 6

Back in the saddle: initial

nerves conquered, the
band get into their stride.

Youre champions: (below)

Jesse Hughes serenades the
Parisian faithful.

BACK TO LIFE
The survivors stories.

10

M AY 2 O 1 6

Gilou & Florence,

from Cherbourg
A policeman from
Cherbourg who
hung out with
Jesse pre-gig on
13 November,
Gilou has been in
touch ever since.
He got out of
Le Bataclan
unscathed after
10 agonising
minutes. We
want to stop with
this drama, finish
it here tonight,
he says. We look
for good vibes.

Brian Sanders
from London,
Maria and Pat
Moore, from
Southampton
Sanders had his
shoulder broken in
a stampede for the
exit at Le Bataclan.
When he lost
consciousness,
the Moores were
on hand to drag
him up a back
alleyway to safety.
We all had to
come back to
finish the gig,
says Sanders.

again. Their rescheduled tour rolls through

Europe, South and North America, right up
to early June, when the festival season kicks
in. Rarely has business as usual from
a band, whatever their views, been so
necessary, or heroic. ANDREW PERRY

DAVID WOLFF-PATRICK

basis that it was fucking with me,

and all you lovely people. Later on,
inger straps on a guitar painted with the
e young Scottish woman explains how,
French Tricolore, and soon decamps to the
at Le Bataclan, she and her friends took a
balcony to play a lengthy solo up there.
wrong exit, and ended up underneath the
Youre not survivors of the Bataclan
stage for three hours.
any more, he tells the crowd, to almost
And the cellar had no alcohol in it, she
delirious cheering, youre champions
jokes, putting a brave front on the terrible
of the Bataclan.
things they mustve heard and felt. It was
Afterwards, Hughes receives guests
the wrong turn that saved our lives.
backstage. He talks to one wheelchair-bound
Even before the Olympias house lights
young woman, accompanied by the surgeon
go down, theres an anticipatory roar unlike
whos been remodelling her leg. Theres a
any Q has heard before. When EODM
policeman, Gilou, with whom he hung out
appear, a wave of euphoria sweeps over, as if
with on the afternoon of Le Bataclan, and who
by a collective will to make the nightmare
helped him get his voice heard in the ensuing
finally end here.
investigation. Hughes hugs him, and chats
Do we love rocknroll and having a good
intently. He looks completely overwhelmed.
time? Hughes testifies be
nights later from Zagreb,
then screams, Give amen
s revelries continued
gonna stop us giving amen
el pool. Then I went
For the first few numb
and slept for 18 hours.
the band are ashen-faced,
ole three months had
ragged, and Hughess voic
n my shoulders in a way
is hoarse its palpably a
nt acknowledging, and
triumph of the will just for
use of the show we played,
them to continue playing.
, I was finally able to sleep
After 30 minutes their mo
Now, he concludes,
suddenly returns for an in
rock band again.
highly-charged show. Mid
It seems unlikely that
Free man in
Hughes smashes a white h
gles Of Death Metal can
Paris: Hughes
bodied Hagstrm guitar, o
er be just a rock band
can smile again.

ODD COUPLING

Ex-Tory MP Louise Mensch has revealed she used

to date Noel Gallagher in the 90s. But as you can
see, pop has thrown up some far weirder hook-ups
REY AND
N MANSON
-focus Cathy to his
Heathcliff, deathchanteuse Lana Del
d Marilyn Manson
tedly had a six-month
onship following the
Music Awards in
n in 2012. In 2014,
air appeared in a
oversial video in
Del Rey acted out a
ene. The video was
pulled and Manson
d himself from it,
otage of him was
ith footage of her to
ect collaboration.
t have to worry
g each other
res.
ip: Six months

CHER

Beauty and
the beats:
Flav and
Brigitte.

nova with Top Gun,

uise briefly dated
here was a 16-year
most enough time
for her to fit in previous marriages to Sonny
Bono in the 1960s (11 years) and Gregg
Allman in the 1970s (a whopping nine days);
but one thing in their favour was them
being around the same height. There is a
fantastic photo of them together where he,
in a tuxedo, looks like haughty ventriloquists
dummy Lord Charles and she, in a frightwig,
looks like Jareth in Labyrinth. How it didnt
work out is anyones guess.
Date of relationship: A few months in 1985.

WORDS: EAMONN FORDE. PHOTOS: PHOTOSHOT, ALAMY, REX, PRESS ASSOCIATION, ALPHA PRESS

BRIGITTE NIELSEN
Gnome-like hype man for Public Enemy,
Flavor Flav and Danish model/actress/singer/
Sylvester Stallones ex Brigitte Nielsen
had a long history together on reality TV.
Despite the fact she loomed over him like a
skyscraper beside a pop-up tent, they got
together during 2004s The Surreal Life,
transitioning into their
own show the next year,
the poignantly named
Strange Love. Inevitably,
a love life played out in
front of the cameras was
like dropping a lit match
onto a Texaco forecourt
and it all blew apart
by seasons end. Yo!
Bum flush that show.
Date of relationship:
Lord Cha
Between July 2004
rl
Jareth: a es and
and April 2005.
ka Tom
Cruise an

d Cher, 19

COURTNEY LOVE AND

STEVE COOGAN
Knowing me, comedic actor
and ex-hedonist Steve Coogan,
knowing you, Courtney Love,
former Mrs Kurt Cobain,
lead singer of Hole and lively
personality ah-ha! The baffling
coupling began while they were
staying in the same hotel in LA but
the wheels quickly flew off, with
rumours suggesting Love was
85.

:
The ex factor
Sinitta and
.
Brad Pitt, 1988

pregnant and Coogan was the father,

a conceptual situation refuted by him as
nonsense. She claimed they were just good
friends. Its unclear if one of their dates
involved a trip to a Norfolk owl sanctuary.
Date of relationship: Two weeks in 2005.

BRAD PITT AND SINITTA

Eighties Simon Cowell protge Sinittas hits
included the era-undefining So Macho, doing
the heavy lifting for tabloid headline writers
when she hooked up with non-ugly actor
Brad Pitt, then four years away from his
big break in Thelma And Louise. He was
beautiful with the most amazing body,
she said in 2011 of Pitt. No stranger to
physical appreciation, in 2009 she appeared
on The X Factor as a guest judge wearing
four palm leaves, looking like a victim of
deforestation. Too early for the gossip mag
relationship portmanteau craze, they luckily
avoided being called SinPitta.
Date of relationship: Between 1987
and 1989.

LEMBIT PIK AND

GABRIELA IRIMIA
We are The Cheeky Girls, you are the
former Lib Dem MP for Montgomeryshire?
Twin sisters Gabriela and Monica were the
comedy turn on 2002s Popstars: The
Rivals like a Transylvanian Jedward. Touch
my bum, they warbled. This is life. Like a
siren call, pik wa
(the one on the rig
when they both ap
Channel 5s oxymo
All Star Talent Sho
2006, he 41 and sh
They got engaged i
April 2008 but by J
had split, the orbit
of their talents too
to be compatible.
Date of
Too good to
relationship:
last: Cheeky
September 2006
and Lembit.
until July 2008.

THE ROLLING STONES OUTSIDE THEIR SHARED EDITH GROVE FLAT 1962

KR: It was a hovel. A hovel on the first floor.

The kitchen, well you didnt go in there, that
was worse than the bathroom. It was pretty
much, you know, what four young guys can
do to a joint in a very short amount of time.
Washing and stuff if it was dirty it just went
into a corner and piled up because we were
too busy avidly learning how to be blues
players and that was all we had time for.
12

M AY 2 0 1 6

Fungi used to grow there. In fact, we had

names for the fungi, you know. This is all
over the place. I doubt actually that in these
days it would be called habitable but the
landlord, he didnt give a damn as long
as we paid the rent, which was handy. It
probably shouldve been condemned.
I mean, Im surprised the house is still
standing. It was a pigsty, basically.

I LOOK AT MICK AND MY

MIND GOES: ILL STRANGLE
HIM TAKE HIS RECORDS!

KEITH RICHARDS
exclusively spills the
beans on just some of the
rare and never-beforeseen items on show at the
Stones new exhibition.

BLUE PLAQUE, COMMEMORATING KEITH RICHARDS AND

MICK JAGGER MEETING AT DARTFORD STATION 1961

PHILIP TOWNSEND, DARTFORD MESSENGER

Keith Richards: It was a normal days slog to art school for

me. I jump in this carriage and sitting next to me is Mick who is
an old school friend of mine but we hadnt really had any
contact throughout puberty. I notice that under his arm hes
got two records. He has The Best Of Muddy Waters a Chess
record from America, not an English reprint and a Chess
original, Rockin At The Hops by Chuck Berry. Now Im
looking at this guy and for a weird moment my mind goes: Ill
strangle him take the records! It was a moment of shock to
find out that youre sitting with a guy youve known as a kid
and to find out youre interested in exactly the same music
and that you should find each other on a train in Dartford.
It was amazing, because nobody had those records. We get
to talking, we found out we like just about everybody the same
but we wanted to know more, especially about the blues. So it
kind of kicked off from there. I get off at Sidcup and then Mick
went on to London. It was from that connection we decided to
hook up. I thought, If youve got two records on a train, what
have you got at home? Mick did it through mail order, to Chess
Records. Simple, but it never occurred to me to write to Chess
Records and say, Please send me So I was very impressed
by the mans organisational skills, even at that time.
M AY 2 0 1 6

13

AFTER ID
TAKEN ENOUGH
ACID AND
FINISHED
PAINTING MY
BOOTS, OK,
WHATS NEXT?
THE GUITAR.

A hell of a trip: Jagger

and Richards, playing his
customised guitar, Olympic
Studios, London, 1968.

KEITHS CUSTOM
PAINTED LES PAUL

KR: I painted that. I was bored, wa

go to jail [the band were facing prison
the Redlands drug bust in 1967]. Cou
dob dob dobs. That picture was a he
trip. I started off with a pair of shoe
then went on to the guitar. I did it fi
pair of white boots I had. After Id ta
enough acid and finished them, OK
whats next? The guitar. A hell of a t

KEITHS CASSETTE PLAYER

You can watch The Rolling

Stones live whenever you want
with Sky Arts on demand.

The Rolling Stones:

Live At The Marquee

The Stones perform at Londons

legendary Marquee club in March 1971,
showcasing tracks from their thenupcoming Sticky Fingers album.

The band conclude their 1981 US tour in

Hampton, Virginia, performing hits such
as You Cant Always Get What You Want
and Brown Sugar.

The Rolling Stones:

Ladies And Gentlemen

Concert film capturing the Stones at

the top of their game during two
sensational gigs in Texas while on their
1972 Exile On Main St tour.

MIRRORPIX, GETTY, PHOTOSHOT

The Rolling Stones At

Hampton Coliseum 1981

KR: The cassette machine was a very

handy little tool. I wrote Satisfaction
on that. I was lying in bed with a guitar
just plonking about and I fell asleep. I
had the machine set up by the bed.
Cut to wake-up time. I glanced at the
machine and I noticed that the tape
had run to the end. I thought, Maybe I
hit the button in my sleep but I
dont remember getting that frantic. I
pushed it all the way to the start,
pushed play and sure enough I had
woken up in the middle of the night.
Its the most bizarre version of
Satisfaction youll ever hear I cant
get no satisfaction, dun, dun, dun,
dun a moment of silence and 45
minutes of me snoring.

Unisex appeal:
har
Ric ds with Anita
Pallenberg, wearing
his satin shirt,1969.

KEITHS SATIN SHIRT AND SUEDE TROUSERS

KR: The reason I look like I do is I steal most of these clothes from my old ladies. Anita
[Pallenberg] in those days, we just used to buy something and say not for one or the other
because itll fit either of us. Style is unconscious. Its like that other word cool. If you wan
to be cool, if you have to think about it, then you aint. Also, Ive got a frame that fits just
about anything. Even if its too big it looks good. Otherwise, like I say, I dont think about

RECORDING BEGGARS
BANQUET, OLYMPIC STUDIOS 1968

KR: [Beggars Banquet producer] Jimmy

Miller came over the Stones horizon at just
the right time. The psychedelia had gone and
we wanted to make a really good record.
Their Satanic Majesties Request [1967
album] I consider that a year off. The
Beatles went that way too. They made a
better hash of it than we did but it was acid
year and nobody quite knew where the
fairies were. The band was ready to grow up.
Beggars Banquet is what came out of that.
Jimmy Miller was the catalyst. I enjoyed
working with Jimmy very much, a very good
friend of mine. And we made some great
records together. The Stones at that time
were sort of fragmented. Wed pretty much
wasted ourselves, wed been on the road for
four, five years, about 300 days a year. We
were frazzled at the time. And then it was,
Have fun, take another tab, you know. But
Jimmy pulled the reins back for the Stones.

KEITH AND BOBBY KEYS

KR: I first met Bobby Keys [above in 1971,

being carried] in 1964 in Texas at this gig, the
Teen Fair. This is our first time in Texas and
also on the bill is Bobby Vee and his band
which had Bobby as sax player. We didnt see
each other for years until about 68 when
Mick and I had written a couple of songs that
required horns. Bobby and I were both born
on 18 December 1943. I found my Texan
brother, who is far more outrageous than me
half the stories about me, Bobby made up.
We nearly burnt down the Playboy
Mansion. Hugh Hefner had invited the
Stones to stay at the Chicago Playboy
Mansion around 72. Theres all these
bunnies all over the place dont throw that

lot in front of the Stones, you know. We had

a tour doctor we used to love to raid. Wed
get him stoned and take his bag. Bobby and
I stashed ourselves in this john and were
trying out everything from the doctors bag.
Somewhere in [the toilet] a fire started.
Theres bells ringing and people running
down the corridor. As we left the bathroom,
it burst into flames. I had to pick up Bobby
next morning he comes zooming out of the
room with a Stetson on, a pair of underpants
and his boots and his saxophone. He says,
We got to get out of here, weve got to leave!
When Bobby says run, you run, you know.
 The Rolling Stones Exhibitionism opens at
The Saatchi Gallery, London, on 5 April.
M AY 2 0 1 6

15

was saved by newly-invented drugs. Regularly

off-school, he educated himself via books and
music, becoming a beatnik mod in the 60s.
He dismisses the 70s as the ugliest period
ever, sweaty polyester and godawful food, his
unproductive junkie 80s life
wasnt poetic, I was always ill
and felt he couldnt fit in with
the Britpop hoo-ha of the 90s
I couldnt wear a tracksuit.
As he grazes through his
feast he becomes increasingly,
fearlessly un-PC. Hes a climate
change sceptic, applauds the
extreme materialism of hiphop (Solid-gold muscle cars,
gerrit now while youre young,
dudes!), and is not a fan of TV
baker Paul Hollywood. Men
cant bake, he baulks, Im not
having baked goods from a man! Global
politics dont concern him, Im more
interested in council chisellers than Barack
Obama. Nor do the planets humanitarian
disasters. People are too moral, he says.
They worry about people living thousands of
miles away. That isnt healthy. Nobody can
save the world, have you seen the size of the
fucker!? Were better off, he reckons,
celebrating our luck. Every day I thank God
I was born English. Two hours in, with
a chauffeured car now waiting outside,
he ponders another bottle of wine? We
settle for another glass and pudding instead.
Ill try that bergamot spoooonge pudding,
he savours, seemingly happy to stay here all
day. Things couldnt have gone better for
somebody like me, he beams, unfeasibly,
a happy man whos thus far avoided the
alarmingly busy entertainers Grim Reaper
of 2016. I laugh because it isnt me. All my
life people have told me I aint got long for
this world. But Im stronger than I look.
He fancies living to 113, only sorry hell
miss his obituaries.
The lights went out over Europe, he
declares, now making one up. Boo-hoo-hoo.
Therell never be another. A certain flinty
integrity, had the former John Cooper Clarke.
There were more people there than at
Woodstock, women threw themselves onto
me coffin, like an ayatollah of punk!
He finally heads for home, cackling
towards his car, English poetrys invincible,
singular Dr Vibes. SYLVIA PATTERSON

PAUL
HOLLYWOOD?
IM NOT
HAVING BAKED
GOODS FROM
A MAN!
Lets
Do Lunch
With...

JOHN COOPER
CLARKE

Dont let the punk poet laureates stick-thin

frame fool you, he eats like a horse.

16

M AY 2 0 1 6

the chef and even has a cocktail named after

him there HIX is packed. Its so loud were
leaning in, hair touching, his laugh revealing
several gold teeth after his shite ones were
fixed two decades go.
After extended periods in the wilderness,
at 67 Cooper Clarke is now a permanently
busy man. He is finally being paid,
promoting his irreverently rollicking
3CD/DVD career retrospective Anthologia
with a UK seaside tour this spring, inspired by
last years National Trust-commissioned
Nations Ode To The Coast poem.
As the food arrives his face lights up,
Great times, cheers! An honorary Doctor Of
Arts since 2013, Dr John Cooper Clarke is a
magnificently genial fellow. Born in Salford
and now a 27-year resident of Essex, he was
supposed to die as a kid from tuberculosis but
CAN I
YOUR
TAKE
, MR
R
E
ORD
e?
Clark

Favourite restaurant?
Dan Tanas, Santa Monica
Boulevard, LA. A proper
family-run Italian restau
Most hated foodstuf
Tripe. We had it regula
Manchester in the 50s.
Dream dining compa
My family. Were round

table, talking about whats on telly.

The Simpsons, Family Guy, Seinfeld,
rasier, The Sopranos, American
Dad, Dads Army
Death Row dinner?
Something that would make
you a bit drowsy. A steak the
ze of a toilet seat and a gallon of
ret. See yer in Hell, warden!

ILLUSTRATION: WELOVEYOYO.COM

rom looking at John Cooper

Clarkes scarecrow-like
physique youd imagine that
he subsists solely on a diet of
ciggies and the occasional
Wotsit. In fact, the sharply-dressed punk-poet
eats like a lord. In London Sohos HIX
restaurant, his order is substantial: brille fish,
chips, creamed spinach, salad, baked celeriac
and a bottle of white wine. The celebrated
Salford bard is known for many things.
Theres his peerless wordplay, the heroin
addiction that stole his 80s, his resurrection
in the noughties which saw his poetry
included on the GCSE syllabus and inspired
a young Alex Turner to write, not to mention
a sideline advertising Sugar Puffs. A hearty
appetite, however, isnt one of them.
I dont get any exercise whatsoever,
its just quality food, he insists of his
permanently whittled frame, folding away
the prescription glasses he placed over his
prescription shades to read the menu.
Im dead fussy. My body is a temple.
A temple of fookin doom. Eheheheh!
Cooper Clarke has a dastardly and acutely
infectious laugh, his speaking voice the
beautifully enunciated, adenoidal Mancunian
timbre of his unique performance poetry. A
long-time favourite of his he is friends with

Book
Now

The ng
i
l
l
o
R
s
e
n
o
St

ry
e
l
l
A
G
i
S a a t c h London
016
2
p
e
S
4
5 Apr Media Partners

We need to talk
about Kevin: Dexys
(from left, Lucy
Morgan, Sean Read
and Rowland) in
The Premises,
Hackney, London.

L
COUNTRY H T

Kevin Rowland and DEXYS have readied an album

of traditional Irish songs, country soul and pop
classics. Theyre not cover versions though, right?

18

M AY 2 0 1 6

framed specs is describing the genesis of

Dexys new record, Let The Record Show:
Dexys Do Irish And Country Soul, which, as
its title suggests, centres around a selection
of his favourite old airs from the Emerald Isle
and beyond. Three years in the making, the
original idea for the album dates back to
1985, when Dexys released their now
revered, but then much misunderstood,
third LP, Dont Stand Me Down.
I was going to do an album called Irish,
with songs like Carrickfergus, Ill Take You
Home Again, Kathleen, Women Of Ireland,
but we broke up not long after, the singer,
now 62, explains. Im second-generation
Irish and those songs are a deep, deep part of

ANDREW COTTERILL

n an airy upstairs lounge at

The Premises studio in
Hackney, Dexys leader Kevin
Rowland is marvelling at his
mothers gift for intuition.
Its so weird, he recalls with a laugh.
I love my family dearly and see them a lot,
but I never tell them anything about what
Im doing, otherwise theyll drive me mad.
Then one day my mum said, You should do
some Irish songs, no one would expect that
from you now. Like Carrickfergus or The
Town I Loved So Well. I said, Mum, youre
so on it! I didnt say any more
Rowland resplendent today in checked
woollen trousers, French beret and heavy-

me. There werent that many records in the

house when I was growing up, so I only ever
heard them when family and friends sang
them, unaccompanied. My uncles worked
on building sites but sang beautifully! When
I went to Ireland with Dexys in 1980,
I got hold of the actual records and I was
disappointed they sounded so cheap
and corny. So I wanted to bring out the
real emotion in them.
Today, Rowland is flanked by the latest
key figures in Dexys ever-shifting line-up:
multi-instrumentalist Sean Read and
violinist Lucy Morgan. Both were involved in
the creation and live performances of 2012s
warmly received One Day Im Going To Soar,
the first album to appear under the Dexys
banner in 27 years. The idea to revive the
Irish album, he says, hit him like a bolt
from the blue soon after theyd finished
that record, only this time he wanted to add

interpretations we dont
describe them as covers, he
says flintily of vintage pop
songs that remain close to his
TITLE: Let The Record
heart. These include the Bee
Show: Dexys Do Irish
Gees To Love Somebody, Rod
And Country Soul
Stewarts You Wear It Well and
RECORDED: The
Joni Mitchells Both Sides Now.
Premises, Hackney,
I associate You Wear It
London
Well with finishing a summer
TRACKS: Women Of
job at Butlins in 1972, that endIreland, Carrickfergus,
of-summer melancholy, he
The Town I Loved So
says. I did wonder how all
Well, Ill Take You Home
these songs would flow
Again, Kathleen, To Love
together, but it works. Follow
Somebody, Both Sides
Now, You Wear It Well,
your intuition and something
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
good tends to happen.
OUT: 3 June
Of course, this isnt the first
FACT: Women Of Ireland
time Rowland has recorded
features an appearance
a covers record: in 1999,
by Helen OHara, Dexys
he released the much-maligned
violinist and Rowlands
(but again critically
partner in the 80s.
reappraised) solo album, My
Beauty, famously showing the
singer wearing womens lingerie on the
cover. Q asks if Do Irish And Country Soul
should be seen as its follow-up. I dont
see any parallels, he replies. It was a long
time ago and I was a different person then.
I havent listened to it for yonks. Thinking
about it in terms of this record doesnt
interest me.
This isnt a stop-gap, he adds. Ive
put my heart and soul into this record.
Ive taken as much care with these songs
as I do with my own.
Given Rowlands long-held reputation as
an arch-perfectionist, its an approach the
world and his ever-intuitive mother would
have probably guessed at. PAT GILBERT

MUST KNOW

IM SECONDGENERATION
IRISH AND THOSE
SONGS ARE A DEEP
PART OF ME.
KEVIN ROWLAND

If the cap fits

Rowland: follow your
intuition and something
good tends to happen.

INADDINGTHEECHOPIPELINE
AND REVERB
AS WE SPEAK

WHO:
GUNS N ROSES

With the bands

classic lineup now back
together and
headlining this
years Coachella festival, guitarist Slash
is reportedly in the studio working on
new material for the band.
DUE: TBC

WHO: RICHARD
ASHCROFT

The ex-Verve
singer is set to
release his new
solo LP, These
People. Were
in a very nihilistic age but I also wanna
possibly project something that gives
us a sense of hope, says Ashcroft.
DUE: 20 May

WHO: BEYONC

Following
hit single
Formation,
it is reported
Beyonc is
readying the
release of a new solo LP next month.
There are also rumours that her Jay Z
collaboration will be out later this year.
DUE: April TBC

WHO: BRITNEY
SPEARS

According to
her manager,
Spearss new
album is 80
per cent done.
This is almost like Britney meets
The Weeknd. Its a lot of really cool
stuff, reports Larry Rudolph.
DUE: TBC

WHO: SLAVES

The Tunbridge
Wells punk
duo are busy
working on the
follow-up to
2015s Mercurynominated Are You Satisfied? album.
They describe the as-yet-untitled new
record as heavy, dirty and fun.
DUE: TBC
M AY 2 0 1 6

19

ON YOUR

From ramshackle Spanish indie-punk to Brazilian

psychedelic jams via dystopian electronica and warped
ghost pop, Q has hand-picked some of the best new
music on the planet for your listening pleasure. Come in
and enjoy 15 tracks of free music amazingness
The liquid dream-pop of
Easier Said is an altogether
more floaty affair, though;
all head-in-the-clouds vocals
and cascading guitar lines.
For fans of: Real Estate,
Tame Impala, Lush

PALEHOUND
MOLLY

Twenty-one-year-old Boston
singer Ellen Kempner first
emerged in 2013 with wonky
lo-fi EP Bent Nail. Since then
shes beefed up her sound into
delightfully gutsy fuzz-pop.
Taken from last years debutproper Dry Food, Molly begins as
a tightly knotted ball of postpunk before unspooling into a
sunshine pop burst of a chorus.
For fans of: Courtney
Barnett, Smith Westerns,
The Lemonheads
I Composed by Ellen Kempner. Published by
Palehound. P & C 2015 Heavenly Recordings,
under exclusive licence to [PIAS]. Licensed
courtesy of Heavenly Recordings / [PIAS].
Available on Dry Food.

SUNFLOWER
BEAN
EASIER SAID

Much of Sunflower Beans debut,

Human Ceremony, found the
New York trio tunnelling under
the middle ground between
Tame Impalas modern-day
psych-pop and the heads-down
riffing of early Black Sabbath.
20

M AY 2 0 1 6

HINDS
SAN DIEGO

Taken from Hinds debut LP

Leave Me Alone, San Diego is a
charming clatter that sounds
like its slept in its clothes and
jump-started its morning brain
with a blast of The Modern
Lovers. Formed by singing
guitarists Carlotta Cosials
and Ana Garca Perotte, the
Madrid four-piece were
initially called Deers before a
similarly named band forced a
change. Their identity, though
ramshackle grrrl-gang
garage-rock remains intact.
For fans of: The Strokes,
The Slits, The Modern Lovers
How annoying was it
to have to change your
bands name?
Carlotta Cosials: It was

seriously the worst moment

of the band. All the work
had been done with that
[name]. We couldnt believe
it when we got the email
we thought it was a joke.
Is San Diego about the city?
This is actually about a friend
of mine who was heartbroken
and was in the sort of moment
when you are at rock bottom
but still want to party a lot.
Our songs have this mix of
optimism and reality because
we are not one person writing
in a room, in bed, crying
writing the songs together
is [like] talking to a friend.
Was there one record
that inspired you to
form a band?
We loved The Strokes like
so, so much. We loved [their
2003 album] Room On Fire.

Its a masterpiece. And also

Mac DeMarco. I used to
listen to a lot of 60s and
70s classics and garage,
a lot of Velvet Underground,
Jonathan Richman & The
Modern Lovers, The Rolling
Stones, The Beatles and
Jimi Hendrix.
What is it like being on the
road with Hinds?
Today, were staying in a
hostel sharing a bunk bed,
no hot water. We are doing
a million photo shoots and
we are doing them with
unwashed hair. Pop star
glamour? No, this is
rocknroll, this is punk,
this is unhealthy. No luxury.

I Written by A. Perrote, C. Cosials,

A. Martin, A. Grimbergen. Published
by Copyright Control . P & C 2015.
Licensed courtesy of Lucky Number Music
Limited . hindsband.com/luckynumbermusic.
com. Available on Hinds debut album
Leave Me Alone out now.

SIMON SARIN

*DUE TO LICENSING AND DISTRIBUTION ISSUES, THE COVER-MOUNTED CD IS NOT AVAILABLE FOR OVERSEAS. DO WHAT YOU CAN TO CHECK THEM OUT THOUGH!

I Written by Sunflower Bean. Published

by Sunflower Bean Publishing. P & C 2015.
Licensed courtesy of Fat Possum Records. www.
fatpossum.com. Available on Fat Possum Records.

instrumental track San Lorenzo

gently strolls along at its own
leisurely pace, pleasantly lost
in a hazy fug of a groove.
For fans of: Allah-Las, The
Growlers, Os Mutantes

Garner by the NYPD, I Have

Been To The Mountain burns
with an understandable ire,
Morbys Bob Dylan-like
sermonising augmented by a
pulsating bass groove, gospel
backing vocals and stabs of
mariachi brass.
For fans of: Cass McCombs,
Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan

I Written by Almeida/Ferraz. Published by

Bogarim Songs/Loose Diamonds Music
Publishing (BMI). P & C 2015. Licensed
courtesy of Other Music Recording Co. www.
othermusicrecordingco.com. Available now.

I Written by Kevin Morby. Published by New

England Rose Music (BMI), administered by
Domino Pub Co of America Inc. P & C 2015.
Licensed courtesy of Dead Oceans. Available
on Singing Saw out 15 April 2016.

BOOGARINS
SAN LORENZO

Over two albums, Brazilian

psych-rock outfit Boogarins have
mixed 60s pop, Tropicalia and
free-wheeling psychedelia to
intoxicating effect. Laid-back

THOMAS
COHEN
BLOOM FOREVER

When art-rockers S.C.U.M

disbanded in 2013, singer
Thomas Cohen was set free,
going off on an opulent
tangent as he wrote the songs
that would become his solo
debut. The death of his wife
Peaches Geldof in 2014 casts
a long shadow over the Bloom
Forever LP, though the title
track written in a hospital
waiting room after the birth
of their youngest son, Phaedra
represents the languid
calm before that storm.
For fans of: Suede,
Morrissey, Tim Buckley
This is quite a change from
S.C.U.M, isnt it?
Thomas Cohen: There is a
huge stylistic change, which is
a conscious thing, but thats
also down to the fact that now
all of the music comes from
me, rather than just the lyrics
and vocals. I wanted to make
something that was quite
orchestral without there
being orchestration. Not
orchestral in the sense of
Bach but something like
George Harrisons All
Things Must Pass album.
Given the tabloid interest in
your life, did you worry that
releasing an album would
leave you more exposed?
No that had already been
forced upon me long before
I made the record. I am sure
the media will take it and use
it, but thats up to them.

KEVIN
MORBY
I HAVE BEEN TO
THE MOUNTAIN

Inspired by the 2014 killing of

unarmed African-American Eric

I WANTED TO MAKE
SOMETHING THAT WAS
QUITE ORCHESTRAL
WITHOUT THERE BEING
ORCHESTRATION.
THOMAS COHEN

Whats next?
I am going to San Francisco
to make my next video I am
doing it half there and half in
[South East London suburb]
Eltham. Thats the look I am
going for, and the sound I went
for as well. I am already writing
my next record. The musicians
I love Townes Van Zandt,
Lou Reed, Tim Buckley
just kept making records.
And that is my ambition.
I Composed by Sveinn Jnsson / Thomas
Cohen. Published by 37 Adventures. P & C
2016 Thomas Cohen. Licensed courtesy of
Stolen Recordings / [PIAS]. Available on
Bloom Forever, out 6 May 2016.

YAK
SMILE

Wolverhampton/New Zealand
trio Yak made their name from
ferocious live shows where setlists were abandoned and singer
Oli Burslem hurled instruments
into the crowd. Smile shows they
can write some killer tunes, too.
If Nick Cave had scored Sam
Peckinpahs blood-splattered
Western, The Wild Bunch, it
would have sounded like this.
For fans of: The Birthday
Party, The Eighties Matchbox
B-Line Disaster, The Jon Spencer
Blues Explosion
I Written by Oliver Burslem, Andy Jones,
Elliot Rawson. Published by Truth+Justice
c/o Universal. P & C 2015 Yak, under exclusive
licence to Kobalt Label Services Limited.
Licensed courtesy of Yak, under exclusive
licence to Kobalt Label Services.
www.facebook.com/yakyakyak. Available
on 13 May 2016 Digital, CD, Vinyl.

PIXX
A WAY TO
SAY GOODBYE

The unearthly ghost-pop

alter ego of unlikely BRIT
School graduate Hannah
Rodgers (I got in because
someone else dropped out,
I think, she tells Q), Pixx
has joined fellow traveller
Grimes on 4AD. Folk tendrils
weave their way into the
19-year-old Rodgerss lightly
anaesthetised dancefloor
reveries, with the wide-eyed
A Way To Say Goodbye
exemplifying Pixxs elegantly
twisted trip-hop update.
For fans of: Cocteau Twins,
Grimes, Daughter
What can you tell us about
A Way To Say Goodbye?
Hannah Rodgers: I wrote
it about two years ago. I was
listening to this Cocteau Twins
song called Alice on repeat for
about two days and I started
to make up my own words.
The little phrase, I miss
the lonesomeness I miss,
comes from that. I ended
up making my own
little song from that one
little line.

When did you start

writing songs?
I grew up listening to Bob
Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Donovan,
Nick Drake, Anne Briggs lots
of folky artists. I had a period
when I was about 14 to 16 when
I was churning songs out and
then I went to the BRIT School
and I met people who had loads
of different musical tastes.
Thats when I started listening
to things like Cocteau Twins
and Aphex Twin.
How do those two things
feed into your music?
The only thing thats folk
about it is the very strippedback versions of the songs that
I write, but then I go into the
studio and mould them into
something more uplifting. I live
in Surrey, in Chipstead. Its
leafy and green here and quite
quiet. Im not much of a city
girl, really. I had a weekend job
as a florist for a few years. It was
just nice to be surrounded by
these beautiful flowers and it
was really exciting when the
deliveries came in and there
were ones I had never seen
before exotic things.

I Written by Hannah Rodgers / Simon Byrt.

Published by Copyright Control / Distiller
Music. P & C 2015 4AD Limited.
Licensed courtesy of 4AD Limited.
www.4AD.com. Available on Fall In
[BAD 3524].

ONDEADWAVES
BLACKBIRD

London duo onDeadWaves

debut single Blackbird is a
none-more-black plume of
breathy, noir-ish Americana that
makes Lana Del Rey sound like
Selena Gomez. A smouldering
blend of Edgar Allan Poe
imagery, David Lynch and
Chris Isaaks guitar twang.
For fans of: Mazzy Star,
Lana Del Rey, The xx
I Written by onDeadWaves (Polly
Scattergood, James Chapman). Published by
Mute Song/Copyright Control. P & C 2015.
Licensed courtesy of Mute Artists Ltd.
www.ondeadwaves.com. Available now.

NZCA
LINES
TWO HEARTS

Originally the solo project of

illustration graduate, touring
Metronomy guitarist and
French disco obsessive
Michael Lovett, NZCA Lines
are now completed by former
Ash guitarist Charlotte
Hatherley and Hot Chip
associate Sarah Jones. Two
Hearts, stand-out of second
album, Infinite Summer, fuses
lovelorn vocals with the kind
of bassline that demands
everyone involved should
really be wearing a robot
helmet. As if that wasnt
irresistible enough, it also
comes with an apocalyptic
sci-fi concept attached.
For fans of: Daft Punk,
Hot Chip, Scritti Politti.

Can you describe the

concept behind your
album, Infinite Summer?
Michael Lovett: The
overarching theme is of Earth
with an expanding sun, the
atmosphere stripped away
from one side of it and
preserved on the other. It was
influenced by science fiction
I was reading at the time.
Which sci-fi?
The kind that architecture
students would read! Fake
mythology, speculative fiction,
such as Roadside Picnic by the
Strugatsky Brothers and JG
Ballards The Drowned World.
How does Two Hearts fit in?
It was originally called CairoAthens because thats the
imaginary city on the album.
Its a place of excess, people
trying to escape into partying
in the face of the impending

destruction of the planet. It

ended up a lot more wistful
than it was meant to be. I was
in a long-distance relationship
still am, in fact and I guess
that informed the lyrics a bit.
Do you always make a
point of wearing white?
Weve been wearing white
clothes onstage for a while.
Sarah already had this costume
which her fashion designer
friend made her and I asked
her to make one for me, which
also has this material on it, so
when you flash a bright light
onto it, its high-vis. Whites
always futuristic, isnt it? And
its the hardest colour to keep
clean so thats even more
futuristic, as you need special
technology to not ruin it.
I Written by Michael Lovett / Charlie March.
Published by Copyright Control. P & C 2016
Memphis Industries Ltd. Licensed courtesy of
Memphis Industries Ltd. www.nzca-lines.com.
Available on Infinite Summer.

POLIA
WEDDING

Rather than a lovey-dovey ode to

tying the knot, Wedding is about
the relationship between the
drug trade and the growing
militarisation of the police in
America. A highlight of the
Minneapolis acts third
album, United Crushers, its
angst-ridden electro-pop and
thundering rhythms crackle
with paranoid dread.
For fans of: School Of Seven
Bells, The Cure

I Written by Leaneagh / Olson. Published by

This is Polia / Two Packs of Camel Wides .
P & C 2016. Licensed courtesy of Memphis
Industries Ltd. www.thisispolica.com.
Available on United Crushers.

THE THEME IS EARTH

WITH AN EXPANDING
SUN, THE ATMOSPHERE
STRIPPED AWAY
FROM ONE SIDE OF IT.
MICHAEL LOVETT NZCA LINES

GWENNO
CHWYLDRO

Formerly a member of all-girl

Spector-philes The Pipettes,
Cardiffs Gwenno Saunders has
swapped the handclaps and
polka-dots for cosmic Krautpop.
Chwyldro is taken from last
years excellent Y Dydd Olaf
a Welsh language concept album
based on a 70s dystopian sci-fi
novel. Futuristic dystopias are
the new black, clearly.
For fans of: Stereolab, Neu!,
Jane Weaver
I Composed by Gwenno Saunders. Published
by Frith Street / Strictly Confidential. P & C
2015 Heavenly Recordings, under exclusive
licence to [PIAS]. Licensed courtesy of
Heavenly Recordings / [PIAS].
www.gwenno.info. Available on Y Dydd Olaf.

M AY 2 0 1 6

23

MOTHERS
COPPER
MINES

WILD
NOTHING
REICHPOP

I Written by Jack Tatum. Published by Copyright

Control. P & C 2016. Licensed courtesy of Bella
Union / [PIAS]. www.wildnothingmusic.com.
Available on Life Of Pause.

24

M AY 2 0 1 6

You trained as a visual

artist how did that
affect your music?
Kristine Leschper: I was
working on my thesis when
I started to write the songs on
our album: the title of my
thesis show was Too Small
For Eyes, which is also the
name of the first track. Some
of those lyrics are about
hating your body, not
knowing what you want or
who you are, and trying to

Why Mothers?
I was making a lot of work
about animals nesting
behaviour I had a pet rabbit
and thought it was interesting
that the female rabbits, when
they get pregnant, will start
tearing their fur out with their
teeth and use it to make a nest
for their babies. I was reading
about the sacrifices animals
make when having kids and
it made me relate songwriting
to motherhood. You are
creating a vessel in which
your stuff lies and you have
to let it go when you finish.
Whats Copper Mines
about?
Its centred around this idea
of feeling really far away from
someone who is sort of
unattainable. Its also talking
about not knowing if youre
good enough for someone
and being aware of your
weaknesses in that way.
I Written by Kristine Leschper, Matthew
Anderegg, Drew Kirby, McKendrick
Bearden. Published by Copyright Control.
P & C 2014. Licensed courtesy of Wichita
Recordings. mothersathens.com. Available
on When You Walk A Long Distance
You Are Tired.

MONEY
ILL BE
THE NIGHT

Despite its title and

preoccupation with death,
Mancunian combo Moneys
second album, Suicide Songs,
released earlier this year, was a
strangely life-affirming affair,
its musings on mortality
underpinned by a euphoric,
widescreen sound. A teary-eyed
but impassioned hymnal, Ill Be
The Night is a fine example of
their intense, spiritual howl.
For fans of: WU LYF, The Verve,
Arcade Fire
I Written by MONEY / Jamie Lee. Published
by Global. P & C 2015. Licensed courtesy of Bella
Union / [PIAS]. www.moneybandofficial.com.
Available on Suicide Songs.

WORDS: VICTORIA SEGAL/CHRIS CATCHPOLE

What better way to acknowledge

a songs debt to avant-garde
composer Steve Reich than by
sticking his name in the title?
Taken from the Virginians
third album, Life Of Pause,
Reichpop opens with a
melodically complex tessellation
of glockenspiel arpeggios
before building into smooth,
new wave pop. Trading
standards would approve.
For fans of: Talking Heads,
Steve Reich, St. Vincent

The twisting Copper Mines,

a track from Mothers debut
LP When You Walk A Long
Distance You Are Tired,
highlights the Georgia outfits
experimental mettle. Kristine
Leschpers unpasteurised
voice and personal lyrics
early Cat Power with hints
of Patti Smith might
demand attention, but postrock topspin helps Mother
scatter the conventions
of confessional singersongwriting in exciting
new directions.
For fans of: Throwing
Muses, Sharon Van Etten,
Deerhunter

figure that out. My thesis was

about boy scouts and studying
this idea of a bunch of boys
being together all the time
and how it can affect ideas
of masculinity.

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Lonely arts: John Lennon

and Ringo Starr shooting
the Sgt. Pepper sleeve.

Art upon
your sleeve

Sunday Night Music Club host Danielle Perry looks

for the hidden symbolism in some record covers.

spent a dreamy hour in

Londons National Portrait
Gallery recently with my
own personal, qualified art
historian my mum. She
bought a huge additional
experience to my time in
there. Instead of just staring
ahead comparing the
painting talents of all those greats
to my own scrapings at A Level,
I learned about the symbolism
in each painting. For example, if
you see a lily in certain Victorian
paintings, youre actually seeing
more than a flower. It could be
interpreted as purity, virginity or
even majesty. Knowing this, you
start reading into the character in
the painting, then the work

begins to open up to your own

interpretation. Nice.
It tugged on my psyche about
art and music, how much theyre
interlinked. Musicians and artists
have been teaming up on album
covers for years Peter Blakes
cover of Sgt. Peppers Lonely
Hearts Club Ban
was so detailed
and thought
out that it
had its own
explanation in
the album cover
notes. Warhol
collaborated
with the
The Velvet
Underground

FURTHER
LISTENING...

PHIL COLLINS TAKE A LOOK

AT ME NOW
Absolute 80s, 20 March, 9-10pm
New interview with Sarah Champion,
as the ex-Genesis mans classic solo
album Face Value is reissued.

26

M AY 2 0 1 6

JAMES LIVE IN SESSION

Absolute Radio, 27 March, 9-10pm
The Madchester veterans play songs
from their new LP Girl At The End Of
The World and chat to Danielle.

Michael Jacksons
Dangerous: Illuminating.

THE 100 GREATEST ALBUMS

OF ALL TIME
Absolute Radio, 28 March, 9am-5pm
Throughout Easter Monday, Andy
Bush, Leona Graham and
Chris Martin will be
counting down the 100
Greatest Albums Of All
Time, as voted for by
Absolute Radio listeners,
and playing key tracks
from those LPs.

So much so that conspiracy

theories reach far and wide
regarding some sleeves. Google
Abbey Road Paul Is Dead and
youll see what I mean. Michael
Jacksons Dangerous has its own
mini World Wide Web dedicated
to theorising and interpreting.
Designed by artist Mark Ryden,
a thousand symbols could be
read into this cover: the upsidedown globe, a figure looking
much like PT Barnum, MJ
looking through a mask theyve
all been read as signs of Jackson
commenting on the Illuminati.
Even in the streaming age,
bands still see the artwork as
a vital part of the package.
Bernard Sumner told me recently
that he was thrilled to work
alongside Peter Saville again on
the artwork of the latest New
Order record Music Complete.
They concentrated on the design
looking good not just on vinyl
but also on a backlit phone
screen. How times have changed.
Wouldnt it be great to have a
permanent gallery of our own to
show all these masterpieces sideby-side? Maybe with a listening
post too for that multi-sensory
experience. Now theres an idea
for the next Mayor of London.
 Listen to The Sunday Night
Music Club from 8pm every week
on Absolute Radio
NOEL GALLAGHER ON
ABSOLUTE RADIO
Absolute Radio 90s, 28 March,
9-11pm
The Chief takes over
Noel
the studio controls,
Gallagher:
playing whatever he
at the
likes and saying
controls.
whatever he likes.
Another chance to
hear this frankly
hilarious show.

PHOTOSHOT

ABSOLUTE RADIO ICONS:

STEVIE NICKS
Absolute Radio 70s, 20 March, 7-8pm
The Fleetwood Mac singersongwriter and solo artist hosts
her own show and tells the stories
behind her best-known songs.

e, and Banksy
ink Tank .
urite sleeves is
xperiences
a colourful,
n into what
to theres
ing about
Likewise, Bjrks Vespertine
is so delicate and clean the
exact sound of the record
delicate perfection. Its a
wonderful fusion.
For me, the strange covers
are the ones where the art
doesnt fit the music in any way.
Im just going to leave the cover
of Led Zeppelin III here with you.
That, to me, makes no sense.
Neither does the artwork for
Spiritualizeds Sweet Heart,
Sweet Light: Huh? inside a
green octagon. Music of such
depth iconified by what looks like
a toothpaste brand.
Does it matter though? Does
ruin the album
or you? Or do you
nd up liking the
rtwork if you
ove the music?
There is still
symbolism
within cover art.

TOO MUCH INFORMATION?

REX

The bafing release strategy of Kanye Wests The Life Of Pablo has called into
question what an album even is these d
D i L k h had enough...

There are many

ways to release
an album these
days but lets
concentrate
on two which
propose radically
different ways forward for major
artists. Well call one the
Beyonc: meticulous secret
planning leading to a knockout
punch from out of the blue. The
other is the Kanye and its not
for everybody. It goes like this:
(1) Announce the album a year
before its ready. (2) Change the
title three or four times. (3) Ditch
the warm-up singles even though
they feature Sia, Kendrick Lamar
and Paul McCartney. (4) Make an
unbelievable prat of yourself on
Twitter. (5) Unveil the nine-track
album via a grandiose playback at
Madison Square Garden. (6)
Postpone the release while you
expand it to 18 songs, reinstating
some of those dropped singles.
(7) Finally release it,
but only via Tidal,
a streaming service
which hefty swathes
of your audience
dont subscribe to.
(8) Prevent anyone
from buying it.
Whether the birth
of The Life Of Pablo
was a deliberate mess,
mirroring the musics
collision of the sacred
and profane, or an
accidental one, it was
certainly a mess.
Next to Yeezus or
My Beautiful Dark
Twisted Fantasy,
TLOP feels less
like a cohere
statement th
a data dump
so peculiarly
sequenced th
you could
stick it on
shuffle
without

The expansive
Kanye West:
is there no end
to his talent?

it refers to the
Madison Square
Garden playback,
Kanye starts
ad-libbing: This is
the bonus track,
even though there
are three more to go.
At least on my digital
copy there are.
Perhaps the physical
version, which should
definitely, probably,
possibly be out by the
time you read this,
ifferent
again.
Works in progress:
(from the top) albums
by PJ Harvey, Grimes,
Joanna Newsom, and
the exhaustive 1965-66
Bob Dylan boxset.

IM NOT SURE
I WANT TO KNOW
HOW THE SAUSAGE
IS MADE BEFORE
IVE HAD A CHANCE
TO EAT IT.
The most difficult question
in Brian Enos famous box of
creativity-prompting Oblique
Strategies cards is: Is it
finished? Its hard to let go of an
album. This month, Grimes tells
Q that she could have worked on
Art Angels forever; Joanna
Newsom mixed and mastered
last years Divers 11 times before
she was satisfied. Only Kanye has
turned this perfectionist fiddling
into a theatrical performance.
In doing so, he calls into question
what the album format means.
Even though the ease of releasing

exploratory singles, EPs and

mixtapes has diminished the
long-players supremacy, were
still accustomed to albums being
concrete artefacts declarations
of where an artist is at. Kanye has
thrown this assumption into flux.
The boxset industry depends
on the fact that an album is the
final stop in a long series of
alternative, not-quite-there-yet
albums. But we usually only hear
the demos long after the finished
album has imprinted itself on our
brains, providing a fixed point
from which to assess the couldhave-beens. What Kanye has
done is a little like if Bob Dylan
had released his gargantuan
1965-1966 boxset before
Highway 61 Revisited. Some of
the white noise around TLOP is
down to a slew of leaked demos,
so you could argue weve entered
an era when rough drafts will
emerge whether the artist likes it
or not, but Im not sure I want to
know how the sausage is made
before Ive had a chance to eat it.
Only three years ago, Beyonc
and Bowies jack-in-the-box
comebacks seemed to herald the
return of surprises, but the public
evolution of The Life Of Pablo
has had the opposite effect. PJ
Harveys new album, The Hope
Six Demolition Project, has also
been so extensively previewed in
public, via printed lyrics and
public studio sessions, that the
finished item inspires a sense of
dj vu. Such transparency is
fascinating for obsessive fans
but exhausting for listeners
who dont want new albums to
unspool in a stream of data. It
also pulls back the curtain on the
creative process too early. Artists
currently seem torn between
creating as much mystique as
humanly possible or none at all.
On 24 February, Kanye
threw yet another curveball,
tweeting: New album coming
this summer. Frankly, Im not
sure I have the energy.
M AY 2 O 1 6

27

Interrogate
the stars.
You could
win 25!

The Cult

KEEPERS OF THE ROCK FLAME

DISCUSS GOTH,
MORRISSEY, MARR AND HOW THEY INVENTED GRUNGE (SORT OF).

WORDS PAUL STOKES PHOTOGRAPHS ALEX LAKE

ith bishops
and knights
pitted in combat,
rumoured
origins in sixthcentury India
plus the moment
upon reaching
the other side
when a lowly
pawn can be
suddenly reborn
as an all-powerful queen, chess feels
like a good fit for Ian Astbury.
The shamanic frontman of The
Cult is not only famously open to
mystic philosophies, but also a student
of martial arts. However, as chessmen
whizz through the air in the lounge of
Londons The Gore hotel, it becomes
apparent that neither he nor his Cult
co-pilot, straight-talking guitarist
Billy Duffy are grandmasters-in-themaking, not that Astbury hasnt tried.
My brother tried to teach me
chess, but he started using these crazy
Russian moves so I never took to it, he
explains. Tarot cards yes, chess no.
With a history like The Cults,
you can see why the cards would be
more useful. Formed in punks wake,
Astbury and Duffy emerged into the
early-80s goth scene before cranking
up to stadium rock level via the albums
Love and Electric in the middle of the
decade. Remaining a transatlantic rock
juggernaut albeit with the duo being
joined by an oft-changing line-up of
backing musicians The Cult split at
the start of this century as the pair
explored other projects; most notably

28

M AY 2 0 1 6

Astbury found
himself sitting in for
hero Jim Morrison
in a revived line-up
of The Doors in
2002. With the
LA-dwelling duo
firmly reunited as
The Cult since 2005,
and the release of
10th studio album
Hidden City earlier
this year, the cards
have been looking
good for The Cult,
not that Astbury
is ready to relax.
We were called
national treasures in
an article the other
day, he grimaces.
No! No! No! Id rather
be a national disgrace than a
national treasure! And with that
another pawn flies our way.
Well, if chess isnt the way to
test Astbury and Duffys wits,
what better than a round of Cash
For Questions? Cheque, mate
You changed your name from
Death Cult after releasing an EP
and a single. Did it take you that
long to consider how being called
Death Cult might have limited
your commercial ambitions?
Penny Tanner, Hulme
Billy Duffy: We wrote our first songs
in the spring of 1983 and went out as
Death Cult because Ian had been in
Southern Death Cult, so it was an

fterthought: Lets call it Death

Cult, play some gigs, write some
ongs. Once wed established
he band, we thought: Oh,
were called the Death Cult!
The goth thing was becoming
people covering themselves in
alcum powder, looking like the
Sandemans Port guy, so it felt
time to move on. Jools Holland
announced our name change
live on [early-80s music show]
The Tube.

Whats in
a name?
(above) Death
Cult in 1983;
(below) this
is what goths
used to be
like, kids.

You both played in amateur

football team Hollywood
United. Whats been
your most star-filled XI?
Luke Davidson, via Q Mail
BD: We did play, but theyre
not going now. At its peak,
there was the [Without A Trace] actor
Anthony LaPaglia, Vinnie Jones, Steve
Jones [Sex Pistols], Vivian Campbell
from Def Leppard, us two
Ian Astbury: We had pick-up games
too. There was one that happened
with Michel Platini and Eric Cantona
because they were in town.
BD: Football is far more serious now
in LA because of the MLS [Major
League Soccer, a professional soccer
league]. I was in the supermarket
the other day and Stevie Gerrard
was at the next checkout!
Can you handle yourselves?
Ever been in a bar fight?
Theo Lyons, via Q Mail
BD: Ian is more of a brawler
han me!

Strictly a draughts man,

then: Ian Astbury (left)
and Billy Duffy, The
Gore hotel, London,
23 February, 2016.

WE WERE CALLED NATIONAL TREASURES

THE OTHER DAY. NO! NO! NO! WED RATHER BE
A NATIONAL DISGRACE! IAN ASTBURY

IA: Its more down to the way I look.

Going out in a full Mariachi suit in
Leicester Square at three in the
morning attracts the wrong kind of
attention. Being a punk in the North
or Glasgow is the same. Its sexual
tension. When guys grow up repressed
and dont know how to express
themselves, they pick on the kid who
looks a bit different. After eight guys
beat you within an inch of your life and
throw you in front of a bus which
happened to me in Glasgow when
I was 17 you learn to defend yourself,
so I studied martial arts.

30

M AY 2 0 1 6

Country, who were there, had the

same management as us, so we got an
in. Ian was interviewed on TV
IA: Someone from the BBC grabbed
me and the next thing I was sat in a box
between Bob Geldolf and Billy
Connolly while Queen were onstage.
Amazing. Backstage, I was blown
away too. Roger Daltrey asked me
what I thought of The Whos set
then I got the Tube home.
Ian, you supposedly had a
religious experience when you
first heard The Doors The End.
the band,
erton
nd with The
were profound.
ly intense,
al experience.
regret making
c? It was a
but in some
destroyed
nd you were.
Phillips,
tish Town
What?! Thats
dumbass
uestion!
D: Youve got
m mad now!

IA: We went to New York in 1986

to work with Rick Rubin and the Def
Jam family at Electric Lady Studios.
Do we regret that? Of course not!
BD: It was good to shed the band we
were, that band wouldnt have lasted.
We didnt consciously abandon, in that
persons words, the band we were,
but when youre creative youve got to
follow where it leads you and that led
us to New York and a longer career
than playing goth clubs in England.
Ever had a near-death experience?
Connor Wilkinson, via Q Mail
IA: [Laughs] Which one? The
Himalayas was the most memorable.
A white-out snowstorm and
hyperthermia while we walked 5km to
a village! I was crossing into Tibet on
foot from Nepal and this weather front
hit us, so we had to get out of the truck
and walk a trail. It was a 2000-ft drop
on one side, avalanche the other. Ive
been run over twice as well. Box ticked.
Billy, you introduced Johnny Marr
to playing guitar and played with
Morrissey in Ed Banger And The
Nosebleeds. What was Morrissey
like as a teenager, and if the three
of you had formed a band what
would it have sounded like?
Nathan Edwards, Halifax
BD: I believe I introduced Johnny to

FAME FLYNET PICTURES, PHOTOSHOT, ALAMY, NIELS VAN IPEREN

You claimed to have

the Tube home after
went as a guest to Li
Aid. Couldnt they ha
stumped up for a cab
Colin Jenkins, Leeds
IA: I did. I was staying
Brixton at the time and
was the quickest way h
There was no limo, I ju
walked out of the stad
like everyone else.
BD: To contextualise t
we were in the studio d
Love while She Sells
Sanctuary was a hit an
our producer Steve Br
who said: Why arent
playing Live Aid? Big

Hardcore
pawn: (above)
some epic
manspreading
from Astbury
as the band
deal with your
dumbass
questions;
(below)
Morrissey
and Marr
a Billy Duffy
matchmaking
hit.

CASH FOR
QUESTIONS
Sells Sanctuary was a Top 40 radio hit
in Seattle, while Love was a formative
album there and we all know what
came out of Seattle. We came along
and said: We love post-punk music
Joy Division, Public Image Ltd. But we
also love Zeppelin and The Doors.
It was a fusion they related to. Theres
a song on Love called Nirvana and
people have intimated to me that
everyone was at that show
Ian, is it true you own Robert
Duvalls yellow
eckerchief from
Apocalypse Now?
Do you have any
other memorabilia?
Terry Black, via Q Mail
IA: No, but I do have a
helmet signed by Martin
Sheen that says: Never
get out of the boat.
BD: That became a bit of a
catchphrase in the band

I BELIEVE I INTRODUCED JOHNNY MARR

TO MORRISSEY AT A PATTI SMITH GIG
IN MANCHESTER. BILLY DUFFY
Morrissey at a Patti Smith gig in
Manchester. Morrissey and I were just
really young in that band, teenage
fanboys into the New York Dolls. He
wanted to be David Johansen and I
wanted to be Johnny Thunders! What
would a band have been like with the
three of us? Johnny is an amazing
guitar player when it comes to chords,
Im more of a riffer, so we could
probably co-inhabit a band. After 40
years of knowing each other, we finally
played together recently, so that would
work. As for Mozzer, I dont know, I
havent seen him in so many years
Ian, youve had your own clothing
line, can you give us a style secret?
Lisa Goodson, Tring
IA: Wear black! [Laughs]
Whats the longest you two have
gone without talking to each other?
Oliver OShea, via Q Mail
BD: It was the [early-90s] Ceremony
tour! We did about eight million
gigs on that tour and never spoke.
We only saw one another onstage!
How do you think the world
will end?
James Woodward, Leytonstone
IA: Thats a tough one, were beginning
to knock on the glass ceiling right now
environmentally, but I think humans
will work it out, I honestly do. Our
spiritual lives are a mess too. People
are dropping out psychotropics,
psychotherapy, the need for external
validation, social media. Cracks
are appearing but I think certain

patriarchs and matriarchs will come

into the culture, excite peoples
imaginations and reignite peoples
passions for living. So Im optimistic
we can go in the right direction.
What do you think about the
Guns N Roses reunion? Are
you still in touch with them?
Henry Parker, Nuneaton
BD: I am, I speak to certain members
of the band, consider them friends and
have done since we played together in
87. I think theyll be good on these
dates because theyre the real deal. Axl
Rose is a bona fide rock star and these
days there arent any. People want a bit
of escapism and passion! Theres a lot
of over-intellectualisation of music.
Just because youve got a computer
and an app doesnt mean you should
be writing music, not if you dont live
the life. So I hope it works out because
whats good for Guns N Roses is good
for rock.
Ian, you used to follow Crass
around as a teenager. Have you
ever met any bands whove done
that with The Cult?
Paul Garside, Worthing
BD: Pearl Jam are Cult fan
watch their movie, Pearl Ja
Twenty, the opening scene
them trying to get into a Cu
gig in Seattle when they we
called Mother Love Bone.
IA: Its quite poignant beca
theres definitely tissue
connecting The Cult going
Seattle in 85 and that scen

(Top left) Billy

Duffy and Ian
Astbury with
Cult fans
Pearl Jam,
1994; (top
right) Carlos
Tevez, the
coiner of the
new Cult LP
title, Hidden
City (above)
or Ciudad
Oculta for
our Spanish
readers;
(below)
Martin Sheen,
purveyor of
Apocalypse
Now
memorabilia.

Did Carlos Tevez inspire the title

of your new album?
Hugh Wellstone, Newcastle
IA: Cool question! Tevez was playing
for Juventus, scored, threw his shirt
up and underneath it said: Ciudad
Oculta, Hidden City in Spanish. It
really struck me because it wasnt
cynical he was just shouting out to
his old neighbourhood in Buenos
Aires. It was a beautiful, soulful thing.
Is it true [ex-drummer] Les Warner
was offered a pay-off of 2000
and a drum kit on being kicked
out of the band?
Marcus Edward, via Twitter
BD: I cant remember. What I would
say about Les Warner is that he was
only the second best drummer we
auditioned, but luckily he had hair.
IA: There was a guy in a jumpsuit who
played really well but he was bald.
BD: He played great but he just looked
shit, bless him. So we hired the second
best drummer. That was a mistake.
Is the Wolf Child alive and well?
Sharon Matthews, via Q Mail
Always will be.
next months
ions feature,
c.com, follow
n Twitter or
(facebook.com/
5 for each question
question gets
please email to
your money.
M AY 2 0 1 6

31

COVER STORY: THE 1975

Full-throated drama: The 1975
(from left, Ross MacDonald,
Adam Hann, George Daniel
and Matt Healy), W Hotel,
Los Angeles, 23 February, 2016.

THE
YE
OF
LIVING

ANG R

PHOTOGRAPHS: AUSTIN HARGRAVE

He grew up the son of

famous parents, so Matt
Healy thought he knew
what the limelight could do
to people. But then his band
The 1975 smashed the top
of the charts with their debut
album and he discovered he
was a sex symbol with a taste
for the good times and
everything unravelled. On the
eve of their momentous follow-up,
Healy invites Laura Barton into
their inner sanctum.

OUSLY

COVER STORY: THE 1975

FOR A
MOMENT
OR TWO,
MATTHEW
HEALYS
hand rests upon my shoulder. We are in the
basement of his managers office, listening
to a playback of The 1975s new album,
and somewhere between a hairdressers
appointment and soundcheck at
Hammersmith Apollo, Healy has come
to join us.
He rattles down the stairs, reaches across
to embrace his press officer, fills the room
with a bright kind of energy: a flash of wild
hair and warm enthusiasm. And all the while
his hand stays right there on my shoulder,
resting. Its not that its creepy, or sleazy,
simply that it strikes me as an unexpectedly
familiar gesture towards someone he has
never met before.
But familiarity is a crucial component
of The 1975. Over the past four years,
Healy and his band George Daniel (drums),
Adam Hann (guitar) and Ross MacDonald
(bass) have built a devoted following based
on the fierce sense of close proximity
between themselves and their largely
teen female following.
G G G

heres an intimacy to their

music, too in the confessional
lyrics that paint Healy as a
flawed yet endearing figure,
but also in the many different
musical genres that nestle up
togeth
rt pop nuzzling stadium indie
wrappe
nd art rock, in a great tangle of
musica
. We create, they often say,
in the
consume by which they
mean they are cultural magpies, part of a
generation whose listening habits might flit
happily from Peter Gabriel to The Weeknd
to Michael Jackson and 90s R&B. And
while it is an approach that baffled many
critics of their self-titled debut, the records
34

M AY 2 0 1 6

commercial success flying to Number 1 in

the first week of release rather suggested
the band might know better.
Their second album, then, arrives
with more fanfare as well as more critical
anticipation: I Like It When You Sleep, For
You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It,
is an ambitious, 17-song epic, full of musical
bombast, Scritti Politti vocals, John Hughes
references, and tales of new-found fame,
dating American superstars and druginduced mental aberrations. This time, it has
already garnered the approval of several
broadsheet critics as well as the hipster
publications that once spurned them.
Healy himself makes for a quite
fascinating subject a proper British pop star,
of the sort we havent seen in some time.
He is equal parts ambition and self-reflection,
26 years old and given to speaking of himself
as an artist, making references to his
William Burroughs tattoos and misquoting
Keats. His fans are largely teenage girls,
lit up with all the particular devotion that
a handsome young man with literary leanings
and fine cheekbones can conjure.
But more interestingly, he has also
enchanted a bevy of the countrys middleaged male music critics, greeting them
on first-name terms and giving the kind of
frank and filterless interviews a journalist
dreams of. All of which might be testament
to his talent, or a lack of guile, or in another
light could be viewed as a quite spectacular
charm offensive.
And so in the days between our first and
second meetings, as I listen to his music and
watch him onstage and read all about him in
his lyrics and interviews, I think back often to
that hand on the shoulder, and I wonder if as
much as he wants to be a pop star, a respected
musician and notable lyricist, Healys

Can you spot the lead singer

in this band? Healy turns
on the charisma, LA, 2016.

principal ambition might be to woo the

whole world.
A few days later, we are sitting in a
conference room at the Brighton Centre,
drinking red wine beneath the uncomfortable
glare of the strip lights and talking about
women. It was never important for us to be
a band that young girls like, Healy insists.
But I always thought that I love girlie things,
I love teen movies, I love the music that is
imbued with that. So Im not surprised we
make music for women, because its very lush
and nice, isnt it? His eyes skate lightly
around the room. But Ive always been
fascinated by women, in this divine sense,
he adds. Women pull me closer to God than
anything else. But you cant say something
like that without sounding like a sleazy dick.
Im intrigued to hear about Healys

relationship with women. There are, after all,

so many of them around him: tonight The
1975 will play to a hall dominated by highpitched, half-dressed girls who squeal
ecstatically with every angular stage gesture
he makes. Later, I watch their mothers
waiting for them after the show, studying the
flush-faced crowd spilling out of the venue,
eyes searching for their daughters.

$
|

IM VERY PRECIOUS ABOUT

WORDS LIKE DEPRESSION.
BECAUSE WHEN YOU SEE IT, ITS
REALLY VICIOUS. ITS AS REAL
AS LESIONS ON YOUR FACE.

ut while his songs do deal

with the predictable subjects
of sex, girlfriends, and
fleeting romances, there is
room too, on this new album,
for a more mature view of
womanhood: the death of his grandmother,
for instance, and perhaps most interestingly,

his mothers post-natal depression, both

of which suggest an unusually sensitive
relationship with the females in his life.
Ive always really wanted women around,
Ive always trusted women, he says now,
pulling his sleeves over his knuckles. I was
always obsessed by my mums friends. Im

not necessarily a mummys boy, but Ive

always been comforted by the women in my
life. He sips his wine and thinks some more.
But I think Ive always really struggled to
have platonic relationships with women,
he says. Because once I get close to
women Im I dont know, it gets really
M AY 2 0 1 6

35

complicated for me. And it

what it is? he asks,
doesnt even have to be based
folding his limbs in
on attractiveness its once I
around himself.
get close to somebody. I find it
When I was about 17
really confusing with women.
my mum still drank,
There was always a certain
and we were at the
amount of confusion. He
house, and wed all
grew up, he says, with a love
had a drink, and we
of womens clothes and a
started talking about
childhood desire to be
stuff, and she got
Whitney Houston, and only
really, really upset,
truly figured out he was
and she said to me,
straight when he was 16
Dyou know that when
in part, he explains,
you were one and half, for
because he was raised
two months I would come
with a liberal attitude to
into your room every
sexuality by his parents,
night and lie down on the
the Auf Wiedersehen, Pet
loor while you were
Two from 75: (top) their
actor Tim Healy and his
sleep and try and love
eponymous debut and
(above) this years I Like
mother, the actress
you? Now, the reason that
It When You Sleep, For
Denise Welch.
that resonated with me so
You Are So Beautiful
It is his song about
much was because me and my
Welch that makes for the most
mum are so close. And were
arresting track on the new LP. His
so openly close we say, I love you in every
mothers struggles with mental illness
phone call, because we know that theres a
and alcohol abuse have been well-charted
chance that it could go Healy looks
in the national press, and She Lays Down
suddenly tearful. It gets me a bit worked
tackles the period not long after Healys
up, he says gently.
birth when she experienced particularly
Healy grew up in Northumberland,
severe depression.
later moving to Wilmslow in Cheshire,
Im very precious about words and
where he met Daniel, Hann and MacDonald
concepts like depression, he says firmly.
at school and soon formed a band. They
Because when you see it, its really vicious.
practised in each others houses, played
Its so real. Its as real as lesions on your
small-town gigs, and, after a number of other
face. He pauses. Dyou want me to tell you
incarnations, named themselves after a line

Healy saw scrawled in the back of a collection

of Jack Kerouacs poetry: 1 June, The 1975.
For 10 years, as they tried and failed to
attract attention and a record deal, they
worked on developing a sound, one fuelled
by a curious collection of influences, from
the Pink Panther to Donny Hathaway, Prince
to Back To The Future. We didnt have an
image, he says. We dont know how to
look stylish, but we were very music-y.
With time, the image came too, but lest
anyone is distracted by four pretty boys with
a dazzling neon stage show, Healy is quick to
insist that musical infatuation is still at the
heart of the band.
When Im listening to music, when Im
playing music, Im not thinking about other
people, Im like turned on, he says. The
reason why Im doing this, even though it
gets wrapped up in all these glamorous
things, fringe things, is because that moment
where I believe that I get it or I feel it, thats it
for me, its almost like a sexual, like a carnal
thing. Its not tinged with anything.

5
|

G G G

till, the glamorous, fringe

things persist; the things of
gossip columns and internet
speculation. Aside from his
mother and grandmother, the
other notable female figure
looming over the new LP is Taylor Swift, who
Healy briefly dated, and who is rumoured to
be the subject of Shes American.

BOY TOMAN...
From not-quite obscure beginnings to global pop star in the making

36

M AY 2 0 1 6

RACHAEL WRIGHT, MIRRORPIX, REX, SCOPEFEATURES

Growing pains:
(clockwise from above)
with parents Denise
Welch and Tim Healy,
1993; early musical
stirrings; in full-on rock
star mode, 2013; early
adventures in hair, 2010;
with brother Louis, 2001.

COVER STORY: THE 1975

He is quick to set the episode in context.
I dont do anything else, he says. I dont do
anything else, right, so it doesnt leave a lot of
room for me going out, or shagging someone.
So the one time I did have a flirtation with a
girl it ends up going everywhere I mean,
I got on E! News and people were like, Whos
Matt Healy? so that was cool. But I didnt
make a big deal out of it myself. Its not really
anything to talk about, because if she wasnt
Taylor Swift we wouldnt be talking about
her. She wasnt a big impact on my life.
Its just interesting to me how interested
the world is about Taylor Swift.
And it is strange, he explains, to date in
the limelight. I feel like Im not very good
at relationships, he says, and talks of the
jumble of feelings insecurity, selfobsession, a fear of misrepresentation, that
make him baulk at the idea of coupledom.
Is it, I wonder, a fear of losing himself?
Yeah, he nods. Absolutely. And the reason
I mention that is because if I had [properly]
gone out with Taylor Swift I wouldve been,
Fucking hell! I am NOT being Taylor Swifts
boyfriend. You know, FUCK. THAT. Thats
also a man thing, a de-masculinating,
emasculating thing.

+|

G G G

f the Taylor Swift incident represents

the fun, indulgent side of touring
their first record, other tracks, such as
Lostmyhead and Please Be Naked,
document a darker time for the band.
I kind of had this identity crisisslash-breakdown, is how Healy puts it now.
This is an analysis from other people. I was
thinking I was alright, as you do. But I just
went a bit left. I was buying into my own selfconstructed mythology, into this Pied Piper,
Edward Scissorhands thing. I was fantasising
about being fucking Burroughs or Kerouac.

I WAS FANTASISING
ABOUT BEING
KEROUAC.
LIKE, AM I POET?
CAN I DO LOADS
OF DRUGS? THESE
ARE THE DRUGS
ALL MY HEROES
DID. I BECAME
A CLICH.

M AY 2 0 1 6

37

COVER STORY: THE 1975

Like, Am I poet? Can I do loads of drugs?
Every night? Oh, those drugs look a bit
better. Oh, Ive heard about these drugs.
These are the drugs that all my heroes did.
I just became a clich. And because of the
stimulation that I desired I just went on
a bit of a clichd spiral and I started making
weird creative calls.

|6

A day beside the seaside: (from top)

a pre-gig kickabout backstage in
Brighton; the band keep the frontman
grounded; devoted fans fly the flag.

ht. I felt
d.
d is a word
o use a lot, in the
hion of a recent
I was walking
n Goldhawk
d, he recalls of
e first time he felt
I was smoking
oint, as I always
am, and I had
one of those
moments, where

its almost a physical sensation of feeling

alive, a really warm feeling. And I realised
that drugs are always going to be there,
theyre not going anywhere, I can always do
them, but I can only do this now: I can have a
beautiful relationship with my best mate at
the creative peak of our lives. I can have all of
these amazing real experiences that dont
need to be heightened or dampened by
anything. And that is indefinite. So theres no
time for that kind of indulgence any more.
The booze, the drugs, the need for
stimulation and adoration and affection is all,
he believes, to do with the constant search
for God, for the lack of God within me.
Thats what it is. Its the God-shaped hole.
And Id say everyones got a God-shaped
hole, but mines infected, mine itches,
mine is always there. Its always niggling
at me. Ive looked for God in women never
in a misogynistic way, or in a purely sexual
way, I just have an obsession with women.
Im looking for God in everything. Thats
what everything is, isnt it? Religion,
music, art, its all a form of losing yourself,
thats all it is.

ALEX LAKE

M AY 2 0 1 6

Rhythm and blues:

The 1975, Brighton Centre,
26 November, 2015.

G G G

here was increasingly

erratic behaviour, his plan for
a solo record based on the
Burroughs book Queer, and
then a full-blown onstage
meltdown in Boston, when
Healy, three sheets, a bottle of wine and
several substances to the wind, faced the
crowd and thought, Right, dyou want a
show? and I just went full-on.
It wasnt just the drugs and the booze, he
says. It was the peculiar pressure exerted by
suddenly finding yourself to be very famous.
Because if youve never
been adored before,
and youre not like
somebody whose band
breaks when theyre 17
I was 20-fucking-four
before anybody paid me
any fucking attention,
when that happens,
and then youre an
ambassador for a
generation that youve
just kind of left, then
he trails off. I felt like
the most popular,
loneliest
the worl
It wa
ate and
best frie
back in.
I fel
tly out of control, as wed
always b
he biggest influence in each
others lives, admits Daniel. But we
were under a lot of pressure and I dont think
we believed in ou l
h
i
It was an odd tim
Very, very qu
behaviour, starte
our relationship
Wed been in a b
together since w
And girlfriends o
have jokingly sai
You two might
as well go out
because were
subservient
to your
relationship.
I love George
like a husband.
And those are
Healy gives it
the only things
the full tousle.
that keep bands
38

together when theres this mutual

understanding of having each others back.
But that changed for the first time ever.
Because I was off fucking getting high. And
George, he just got so upset that I would lie to
him. Because Id never lied to him before.
And there was this real, visceral reality that
came over me where I just kind of got my

ou dont mind if I have a

ciggie, do you? It is
January, and we are sitting
one late afternoon in
Healys living room in East
London. He bought the
house in the summer without ever having
seen it in person, and since his return from
tour in December he has been decorating,
filling it with mid-century furniture,
vintage Olivetti typewriters, a stuffed
magpie. He shows me a first edition of
Truman Capotes In Cold Blood on the
mantelpiece and a stack of the magazine
High Times from 1975 on a coffee table,
both given to him by fans.
There is a restlessness to him today,
driven in part by the imminent release of
I Like It When You Sleep Im trying not
to think too much about [the new record
coming out] because it would start dampening
my freedom, he says, and pauses. I have a
fear of maybe my openness being perceived
as gratuitous or contrived.
He wonders how people perceive him
and his band. Were not the leftist kind

WHEN IM
PLAYING
MUSIC,
IM NOT
THINKING
ABOUT OTHER
PEOPLE. IM
TURNED ON.
of band, he says. Were on the radio a lot.
And when you dont know anything about
our band, and you dont know the depth,
and you have somebody like me, who you
just think is a pop star, talking in the way
I talk about this kind of thing, you could just
think, Hes pretentious.

There were certain reviews for the first

record that niggle him still.
I felt misrepresented and I felt like Id
been written off and patronised, thats what
it was, he says. The Independent wrote it
off as Simon Cowells version of indie, and
it kind of upset me because I knew where
I wanted to be, culturally, do you know what
I mean? I knew what worlds I would ideally
position myself in.
He thinks a lot about the big albums of the
1980s, the records he heard growing up that
seemed to have a boldness and a stateliness
that he doesnt see in music now.
I mean, look at So by Peter Gabriel,
he says, its a pop record, right, because
its got Big Time and Sledgehammer on it,
but its also got Dont Give Up on it. And
I think there hasnt been an environment for
those records to happen again because they
take a lot of confidence. If you want to make
something that has that amount of grandeur,
it has to have a lot of self-belief and it has to
have a humanity to it.
He has a lot of self-belief, a desire for
recognition and the furious urge to
M AY 2 0 1 6

39

COVER STORY: THE 1975

connect. It doesnt bother me when
people recognise me, he says, because
it makes me feel connected to the world.
I always used to have to have the telly on
if I was at home, because I liked the idea
of somebody else watching that as well
Id see a unity there.

G G G

e tells me about a time

not so very long ago
when he returned home,
and walking through
central Manchester felt
a sudden desire to visit
the area around Urbis,
where he had hung out in his teens when
I was like a mosher and see if anyone
recognised him. And I felt a bit wanky
because Id done it on purpose I undid a
button and I think I was probably just being
as Matt Healy as I could possibly be. They
recognised him immediately, of course. It
was mental, he says. And thats one of the
kind of things I do to validate myself.

IM LOOKING
FOR GOD IN
EVERYTHING.
THATS WHAT
EVERYTHING
IS, ISNT IT?
RELIGION,
MUSIC, ART,
ITS ALL
A FORM
OF LOSING
YOURSELF.

He remembers the first time he ever felt

that kind of validation: when he was 13 years
old, watching Green Day at Newcastle Arena,
and got invited up onstage to play bass.
I was a tiny little kid, and this roadie
threw me onto the stage, they taught me
the bassline, and then I turned around and
it was like 10,000 people he remembers.
And, afterwards, Billie Joe [Armstrong,
frontman] comes and gives me a hug and
kisses me on the head, and then I ran back
down to the crowd to see my mates. And
I think that the attention that I had around
me after that was the only thing I could
focus on. Everyone wanted to congratulate
me or back-pat me. And I signed an
autograph for a girl, a young girl whod
just seen me play. And I just thought at the
time, This feels right, this feels appropriate,
I like this.
Healy grins, half-laughs at himself. I think
of his hand on my shoulder, and in this new
light it looks quite different: a connection,
a validation, an invitation to those he meets
to come and share the stage.

Getting his kicks

where he can:
Healy, Brighton
Centre, 2015.

ALEX LAKE

PLEASE SEE THE1975.COM FOR ALL TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR PURCHASE AND DELIVERY. ALL TRANSACTIONS ARE HANDLED BY UNIVERSAL MUSIC DIRECT LTD, NOT Q MAGAZINE.
ALL ENQUIRIES CONCERNING ORDERS SHOULD BE DIRECTED TO CUSTOMER.SERVICES@DIGITALSTORES.CO.UK. SADLY, ROSES NOT INCLUDED AS PART OF THIS PACKAGE.

PRESENTS

THE 1975
COLLECTORS
EDITION!
Get your hands on an exclusive forfans-only set featuring a 7-inch single
and a bespoke issue of Q magazine!
Q and The 1975 have teamed up to
bring you a hugely limited-edition
package that celebrates the release of
their epic, chart-denting new album,
I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are
So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It.
The package itself features a
beautifully produced one-sided
7-inch single on clear vinyl featuring
A Change Of Heart. This 45 is housed
in a specially produced, heavyweight
white sleeve embossed with the bands
logo. The set also includes a special

edition of Q that features an exclusive

coverline-free cover designed by the
band themselves.
There are a mere 5000 copies of
this 7-inch-and-magazine extravaganza
up for sale, meaning that this copy of
Q is indeed one of the rarest in the
magazines entire history.
The entire package wont be
available in the shops. It costs just
9.99 and is only available via The
1975s own website. Log on now
and grab a set while you can!

Order exclusively at: www.the1975.com/store

Available
from
15 March!

I am the cosmos: Noel Gallagher

welcomes the multitudes to Oasiss
triumphant homecoming, Maine
Road, Manchester, 28 April, 1996.

OASIS AT MAINE ROAD:

20TH ANNIVERSARY

Twenty years ago, OASIS sold out two

nights at Maine Road, then home to
their beloved Manchester City. At the
time, bands didnt sell out football
stadiums but the Gallagher brothers
were busy changing everybodys
expectations. Over the next 12 pages,
Q revisits their power and glory...
PHOTOGRAPHS JILL FURMANOVSKY

JILL FURMANOVSKY/ROCKARCHIVE.COM

Despite being a religious experience for all present,

it may not have been the glorious homecoming for
the band that many imagined writes John Harris, who
witnessed the event from the very-expensive seats.
he Gallagher brothers always had a
complicated relationship with the
city that spawned them. Our
home town, for the last two years,
has not wanted to know, Noel
told me in April 1994. We were
going round Manchester saying,
Were the greatest, come and
see us. He then feigned a bored
drawl, in imitation of Mancunian
indifference. Nah youre shit. And now weve
got this review or that review, its like, Youre our
lads! Youre our lads from Manchester! Come and
play for us! And its like, Fuck off, you knobhead.
Im sorry the first gig we sold out was in
London. Were not regionalists. Were not
ambassadors for Manchester.
On one level, this was sensible PR, apart
from anything else. Manchester had recently
fallen from its fashionable perch as Happy
Mondays had come to grief and The Stone
Roses had disappeared, so to arrive in the
public domain singing, Manchester, la la la would not have been the
cleverest move. But there were also deeper factors at work not least,
the citys early-90s reputation for gangland nastiness. In late 1995,
Noel explained his decision to leave the city in simple enough terms:
I was sick and tired of young crackheads coming up to me in clubs,
sticking a screwdriver in my back, and saying, Were doing the
merchandising on your next tour.
In that sense, it was probably telling that in April 1995, Oasiss first
arena gig had taken place just across the Pennines, in Sheffield. But by
the following year, the Gallaghers love/hate view of their birthplace
was starting to tilt in a more positive direction, as perhaps evidenced
by a new song called Round Are Way, released at the end of October
1995. Now, it sounds as close to a fond remembrance of Manchester
as Noel has ever written, full of lovely detail, an appealing sense of
mischief, and a palpable sense of place dole cheques flopping
through letterboxes, school forever skived, and the inevitable
references to the Beautiful Game, or the Burnage version of it:
Its 25-a-side and before its dark/Theres gonna be a loser/
And you know the next goal wins.
His and Liams love of Manchester City who, far from their

hugely-bankrolled modern incarnation, were

then an apparently cursed club, about to be
relegated to Division One had always been
a constant. And with (Whats The Story)
Morning Glory? confirmed as a phenomenon
as much as a long-playing record and America
apparently conquered, the time was right for
something that would symbolise the fact that
Oasis had now left everybody else standing.
Ergo, a pair of shows, on 27 and 28 April, 1996
(a Saturday and Sunday), which were two
things at once: Oasiss first stadium gigs,
and a spectacular Mancunian homecoming.
It was a funny time of year to choose, not
least on account of the North Wests famously
inclement weather. But the timing was perfect
not just because of the dizzying upward
curve they were gliding along, but the ongoing
quality of the music they were putting out,
on single after single. In October 1995,
Wonderwalls supporting features had
included not just Round Are Way, but a
jaw-dropping ballad titled The Masterplan.
Three months later, Dont Look Back In Anger
was packaged up with an eye-wateringly great
cover of Slades 1973 smash Cum On The Feel
The Noize. All three of these songs sat at
the core of Maine Roads delights: the latter,
in fact, was the deliriously-received showstopper on both nights (watched by its
co-author Noddy Holder, who could
probably not believe what he was seeing).
What else stuck out? I went on the Sunday,
and I vividly recall Noel coming onstage and
doing a series of We are not worthy bows to the adoring crowd, and
then reaching for the Union Jack guitar that had made its public debut
a few months before on Top Of The Pops. The version of Acquiesce
once the instrumental The Swamp Song was out of the way, the real
opener was so full of verve and confidence that on the pitch, the
people at the back jumped up and down as frantically as those mere
inches from the barrier in front of the stage. And, as darkness fell at
around nine oclock, I remember the lovely view from Level 6 of the

Small faces: Oasiss dressing room IDs for the gigs, which saw the likes of David Beckham, Angus Deayton and the Brookside cast in attendance.
44

M AY 2 0 1 6

OASIS AT MAINE ROAD:

20TH ANNIVERSARY

(Above, from left) Paul Guigsy

McGuigan, Noel Gallagher, Liam
Gallagher, Alan White and Paul
Bonehead Arthurs; (below)
coaches carrying just some of the
40,000 fans arrive at Maine Road;
(left) tickets for the gig, which
were going for 300 from touts.

OASIS AT MAINE ROAD:

20TH ANNIVERSARY

Someone had
threatened to kidnap
Liam. The security
was really tight at
the Maine Road gig.
Paul Bonehead Arthurs

Round our way: (above) Liam

and Noel play their biggest gig to
date, 27 April, 1996; (below) the
bill for the two concerts, with
Ocean Colour Scene and Manic
Street Preachers in support.

Kippax Street stand, of the South side of the city and the hills beyond,
with the band and 40,000 fans in the foreground: not, it has to be said,
the kind of scene one tended to associate with British groups on
independent labels. It was some token of the magic at work that
even Roll With It sounded good.
The support acts were Ocean Colour Scene and Manic Street
Preachers, who had just released A Design For Life. The guest list
had a pronounced Northern bias, and suggests in retrospect that the
supermodels and jetsetters who arrived en masse when Oasis played
Knebworth were yet to get interested. A lot of footballers were in
attendance, from Manchester United as much as their underachieving
rivals (witness the presence of David Beckham and Ryan Giggs). Most
of the younger cast of Channel 4s Brookside turned up. The snooker
genius Alex Hurricane Higgins was there, clad in a baseball cap. So
too were an assortment of other notables, from John Squire to Angus
46

M AY 2 0 1 6

Have I Got News For You Deayton, though I didnt see him. All of us
made merry in some style: speaking for myself, after four years spent
watching guitar groups in less-than-luxurious surroundings, I am not
sure I had ever been to a gig before at which I had a ticket for a VIP
area, let alone one with drinks tokens and a buffet.
On the Saturday night, Liam said a few enlightening words to the
writer Keith Cameron. I havent had the chance to really appreciate
any of this its just been non-stop. We did Earls Court, then the next
day, we were in Germany playing to 300 people. I thought, What the
fucks all this about? Today was something else, just cos it was the
place I used to come every Saturday, watch big Joe Corrigan [imposing
City goalkeeper, at the club between 1967 and 1983] and the rest of it,
and now its us. Its like yes, thank you.
If that sounded like the stuff of triumph and wonderment, there
were also darker vibes swirling around, though few of us knew. Five

years later, Paul Bonehead Arthurs would tell me that the nefarious
grimness that had pushed Noel away from his home turf was still
there, festering in the middle distance. Someone had threatened to
kidnap Liam. And knowing the mentality of some of the gangsters in
Manchester I could imagine it, he said. The security was really,
really tight at that gig. People were controlling corridors, constantly.
According to a subsequent report in the Daily Mirror, on the first
night, Liam dramatically dedicated Supersonic to the kidnappers
who say theyre going to hold me for ransom. Unfortunately, the
footage proves he did nothing of the kind.
One hesitates to make light of such stories but in any case, you
need only watch the footage of Maine Road and imagine the unlikely
spectacle of the younger Gallagher being snatched to come to the
inevitable conclusion: that if any hoods had somehow got him,
he would have blasted his way out of captivity within seconds.
M AY 2 0 1 6

47

At the end,
there was kids
on the roof,
helicopters over
the gig. It was
like Vietnam.
Proper mega.
Noel Gallagher

Were not ambassadors for

Manchester: an initially
ambivalent Noel gets in the right
mood, Maine Road, 28 April, 1996.

OASIS AT MAINE ROAD:

20TH ANNIVERSARY

Theyve
taken
over the
world.
Sylvia Patterson spent the show moving among the
crowd, interviewing those in the throng about their
high times at Maine Road. But it was her interviews
with the brothers Gallagher in later years that cast
enlightening perspective upon the event.

Sorry, son, your names

not on the list: Noel greets
one of Oasiss younger fans
before the gig, Maine Road.

gigantic, silvery, glittering half moon rose

over Maine Road that night, a moon
made even more glittering, surely, by
an increasingly evident inkling:
was everyone here on drugs?
Would you like to see my drugs set
list? So a 22-year-old called Mike had
chirped that afternoon, here with his
five mates, calling themselves The
Euston Posse. From a jeans pocket
he unfolded a piece of paper, featuring
meticulous vertical columns
numbering the narcotic bounty
ahead, columns titled BAG, PILLS, WEED. Generously, he
proffered his ready-rolled spliff prison fag anyone? while
contemplating the dominant mood of this era-defining event.
Its just like a big holiday, a festival, he beamed. Theyre just
that brilliant that theyve taken over the world, simple as that.
Euphoria. Laughing. Friendship. Freedom. Live Forever.
Those were the tangible elements crackling through the

OASIS AT MAINE ROAD:

20TH ANNIVERSARY

Where were you while we

were getting high? An allegedly
refreshed crowd arrive at
Manchester Citys ground
for the festivities, 27 April, 1996.

atmosphere inside the Man City FC mothership. Six months after

(Whats The Story) Morning Glory? was released, two months
after Dont Look Back In Anger went to Number 1 in the UK, the
40,000-capacity stadium was a gigantic Oasis theme-park sparkling
in the dazzling springtime sun-shee-iiine. Oasis were now, as Liam
Gallagher would surmise in the future, the best soap on TV, the
biggest band in Britain defined by rocknrolls glorious chaos, the
Gallagher brothers argy-bargy now at cartoon levels in the newly
pop culture-trawling tabloid newspapers.
Lads like Mike were everywhere, seemingly impersonating
Bonehead (checked shirt, cropped hair, loose jeans) though actual
kids were also everywhere: seven-year-olds with their Oasis T-shirted
mums or perched on 30-year-old dads bouncing shoulders. The
merchandise bootleggers were also everywhere, selling posters,
badges, tour guides and stickers, while tickets from touts at 2.12pm
were selling for 300. One enterprising 11-year-old (!) called Simon
was selling stickers for one pound! Er 50p then?
As the crowds crammed in, communal singing spontaneously
erupted as star-shaped tambourines shimmied overhead. Worra life
it would beeee came roaring across the pitch as Digsys Dinner

flared up, these could be the best days of our liiiiiiives!

Simultaneously, wags blared a homage to Blurs Country House:
Lives in an arse! Very big arse! In the countreeee!
By evening, the 60-strong St Johns Ambulance team were edgy.
Of course Im worried, baulked one. Have you seen the state of
some them!?
No wonder everyone was on drugs: queues for pints at the stadium
bars were 16 people deep while the food on offer was several
generations away from the organic boarnkale burger of our boho
festival future, a selection of crisps, chocolate, chips, pasties and
sausage rolls beamed from the 1970s. The atmosphere, nonetheless,
was spectacularly genial, with two shaven-headed Mancunian
hardmen seen giving a homeless man panhandling outside an
entrance one of their cans of Carlsberg Special Brew.
Here you go, mate, have one on us, they said, and then
handed over another, to his already unsteady one-legged pal.
Ive never seen Oasis, said a wobbling Christie from Liverpool,
and this is just the best thing Ive ever been to, the atmospheres
incredible, all these people in a right state crash into you and theyve
just got massive smiles on their faces and just go, Sorry, like!
M AY 2 0 1 6

51

OASIS AT MAINE ROAD:

20TH ANNIVERSARY
Brilliant! I went to Spike Island and this is miles better already.
And Liam can sing.
As the band strolled on to a roar you could surely hear on the half
moon beaming overhead, the Oasis theme park seemed to literally
levitate at the oncoming surge of colossal communal song because
we neeeed each other! We belieeeeve in one another! By the shows
end, four lads dangled off the mile-high roof (approx height) of the
North Stand and thus causing the nights lone security incident.
Streaming out with the crowd afterwards, a consensus emerged:
brilliant, the best thing Ive ever been to in my life, better than
sex. A bloke on his mates shoulders with his 3 Oasis poster
unfurling into his now-blind mates face, botched his attempt at
a solo I Am The Walrus: Coo-choo-coo-too!
Me, Id gone all spiritual with emotional thoughts bubbling up on
musics almighty power to connect, on how we truly live forever inside
each others souls. Spiritual? scoffed a lad called Jamie. Bollocks!
Its about real life, that lot are real kids from the street, singing and
talking about reality! And Noel wrote Live Forever, added his chum
Helen, about his mum! There was one lone voice of dissent. Very
good but disappointing,
announced a check-shirted
lad called Steve. They
didnt play Slide Away, the
best thing theyve ever done.
Champagne Supernova was
far too fast and an hour and
halfs not long enough. Maine
Road, their own town, I
thought theyd do something
special, but that was what
they do every night anywhere,
knowhatImean? Hes an
Oasis virgin, he knows
nothing! interjected his
mate Pete, Ive been to
seven Oasis gigs now and
that was a classic!
Five years later in 2001,
Noel Gallagher sat in a
photographic studio in
North London creating his
own captions for a photo celebration of Oasiss greatest moments. He
selected the famed black-and-white Maine Road image where we see
him from behind, standing mid-stage having just walked on, arms out
at either side like Christ The Redeemer on the mountain peak in Rio,
surveying the ecstatic crowd. His caption: I AM THE COSMOS.
Great picture, he smiled. Thats what it felt like. The cosmos! At
that point, its better than the gig, cos you havent played a note. If you
look, everyones got their fucking arms in the air and thats a proper
celebration. At the end of that gig there was kids on the roof, helicopters
over the gig, it was like fucking Vietnam, it was mega, proper mega.
Six years on from then, in 2007, Liam Gallagher also looked back
at Maine Road, remembering the unexpected place he found himself
that night, aged 23, long after the show: back in his childhood
bedroom in Burnage which still housed his and Noels single beds.
I was still living at me mams house that day, he told me in 2007.
I come back home, sitting on me bed, that same bed. Fucking hell,
just played that gig, that was insane, man.
This real kid from the street, singing about reality, was already
redefining what his version of reality could be.
And the next day [after the shows] I moved down to London, Liam
carried on. Moved in with Patsy [Kensit]. Moved out of me mams
house into a fucking million-pound house in St Johns Wood. And I
havent been back since, yknowhatImean? Why would you go back
there, man? Reality, man, fuck that!
Oasis, after all, were always about escape.

The next
day, I moved
down to
London. And
I havent
been back
since.
Liam Gallagher

52

M AY 2 0 1 6

And its good night from

them: Noel and Liam playing
the second of their two gigs,
Manchester, 28 April, 1996.

M AY 2 0 1 6

53

CHVRCHES

HIGH
ANXIETY
Lauren Mayberry found that the bigger
Chvrches got, the more stressed she became.
And they were getting very big. Niall Doherty
meets the band on tour in Tokyo to see how she
chose to fight rather than flight.
PHOTOGRAPHS: RACHAEL WRIGHT

Big city, bright lights:

Chvrches (from left,
Iain Cook, Lauren
Mayberry, Martin Doherty),
Shibuya Crossing, Tokyo,
17 February, 2016.

CHVRCHES

Tokyo story: (clockwise from top left)

Martin Doherty hits the button marked
epic; Lauren Mayberry backstage at
Akasaka Blitz; performing a meet and
greet before the gig; Laurens drum solo
kicks off; Iain Cook goes all Eric Clapton.

n March 2014, Chvrches

played their biggest
headline show to date
at Londons Forum but
their singer Lauren
Mayberry felt like she
was hardly there at all.
What should have been
a victory parade for the
synth-pop trio was turning into a nightmare for their
frontwoman. Her performance anxiety had grown so
bad that she was taking hypertension medication to
get through gigs. Watching her bandmates Iain Cook
and Martin Doherty celebrate afterwards, Mayberry felt detached
from everything. The shows were getting bigger but she was spending
most of the time annoyed at herself for not enjoying the experience.
If this was going to be her life now, she thought to herself, she had to
find a way to stop herself sleepwalking through it all.
Two years later, Mayberry is sitting in a bar in Shibuya, Tokyo.
Chvrches are here as part of a world tour to support their second
album, Every Open Eye, which was released last September. The
28-year-old once thought that the fretting part of her personality was
something that happened in adulthood but she recently realised its
been there all along. I used to think that being that emotionally aware
was a bad thing, she says, but ultimately its what makes me good
at what I do now, a good writer and an observant person. After
beginning as a home studio electro experiment, Mayberry, Cook and

56

M AY 2 0 1 6

Dohertys band is a crossover success story that has gone largely

under the radar. The punchy anthems of their 2013 debut The Bones
Of What You Believe sold more than half a million copies and its
follow-up is on course to do the same.
Last night, the band attended a Chvrches Night organised by
their Japanese fans where they were mobbed and shrieked at. Their
fans here seem mesmerised by Mayberry. Ever since the singer posted
a cat video on Vine two years ago, they like to give her feline-related
presents. At one point in the evening, a very excited attendee simply
said the word cat over and over into her face. The fans here are
pretty rabid, says Mayberry. Here and America are probably where
it feels like weve connected the best. Mayberry thinks people
are drawn in by Chvrches authenticity. They can smell something
thats disingenuous, she says.

Mayberry was brought up in Thornhill, a village just outside of

Sterling, about 40 minutes from Glasgow. Her father is an engineer
and her mum a school teacher. Her childhood was spent playing in
fields and making lots of noise on instruments, which was fine
because nobody lived near enough to complain. She wrote her first
song when she was eight years old. It was a spoken-word piece about
bums and farts. I was like, Dad! Come and listen to this!
I dont know if toilet humour will ever leave me, and
Im OK with that, she says. As she grew older,
she found herself worrying about really
strange existential kid crap that doesnt
need to be thought about. She
remembers a time when her dad found a
caterpillar in the garden. When he put it
into her hand, she had a fright and
dropped it. You shouldnt drop that,
you should be nice to animals, her
father told her gently. For days
afterwards, she worried about the
caterpillar. She cried about the
caterpillar. Her mother used to tell her
to stop worrying about everything.
In 2013, Mayberry wrote an article for
LAUREN
The Guardian about online misogyny and
how casual sexism had become the norm.
Mayberry, a former law student and freelance
journalist, intended to spark a debate for change but
she spent much of the aftermath feeling like she was
constantly defending herself. Around the same time, she had read
live reviews that were less than complimentary about her stage
presence and the panic attacks about performing had begun.

The biggest problem is that I went from a band that played half-empty
clubs nobody gave a shit about to this, she says. She doesnt read
reviews any more. In the downtime between the bands two
LPs, Mayberry read books about body language and
how it can influence your mind into thinking that
youre confident. Now before every show,
I feel like Im not constantly worrying about
every single thing Im doing, she says.
I can look at the front row and not
completely panic, which is nice.
Mayberry is entertaining company.
She is smart and funny, and speaks
at an alarmingly fast pace, often
accompanying sentences with
illuminating hand gestures that look
like shes filing away the conversation
as its happening. Combined with her
elfin-like features, shes like the sort of
sardonic cartoon character that couldve
MAYBERRY
been on MTV in the late 90s. She thinks that
everyone is motivated by the fact they are
silently terrified theyre going to die and that
a lot of people feel very isolated and alone a lot of
the time cos ultimately life is quite a lonely experience.
She delivers heavy statements with either a knowing giggle, or by
talking even faster. We head back to the hotel where a car is waiting to
take Mayberry and her bandmates to Akasaka Blitz, tonights venue.

A LOT OF
PEOPLE FEEL
VERY ISOLATED
AND ALONE A LOT
OF THE TIME, COS
ULTIMATELY LIFE
IS QUITE A LONELY
EXPERIENCE.

M AY 2 0 1 6

57

Guess it beats the

Trocadero... Chvrches
discover the delights of the
Joypolis theme park, Tokyo.

Theres already some fans waiting when Chvrches arrive. One

bursts into tears when Doherty gives her a hug and Cook looks on with
a bemused smile, like he still doesnt quite believe they are waiting
there for his band. At 41, hes the oldest of the three. Hes been around
the block and wasnt expecting another go. I was done with bands!
he says, sitting in the bands dressing room 10 minutes later. Cooks
post-rock quartet Aereogramme fizzled out after four records and he
envisaged a future working from his studio, writing music for film and
TV. One of his final commissions before Chvrches took off
was composing the music for the third series of Beano
spin-off Dennis The Menace And Gnasher.
Cook says the chemistry between the
three was apparent from the off. It was
something none of us had experienced
before, that buzz. This just fell into our
laps in a way and it was like, Oh, heres
a chance to do something that might
actually mean something to people.
At least one of his old bandmates
got to share the moment with him
Aereogramme bassist Campbell
McNeil is Chvrches co-manager.

NOW IM
NOT WORRYING
ABOUT EVERY
SINGLE THING. I CAN
LOOK AT THE
FRONT ROW
AND NOT PANIC.

saying yes to every big gig theyre being

offered. Despite the fact hes clearly
enjoying the bands success, there is
also a little bit of a Im too old for this
shit air about him. He still shakes his
head at the madness of their touring
orn and raised in
schedule for the first album, when they
Falkirk, Cook has the
played 365 gigs in two years. Maybe
LAUREN
vibe of a lenient youth
I dont have the energy those two have,
MAYBERRY
worker. Hes affable and
he says, perhaps only half-joking.
relaxed and its easy to
Before the show, the trio attend a FANCLVB
imagine how he might put the
meet and greet in the venue foyer. These happen
other two at ease. He says hes the calmest of the trio. He
before every Chvrches show. Fans sign up online through
thinks Mayberry is very wise (I learn a lot from her, even though
the bands website and come along (for free) to get their picture
shes 13 years my junior) and Doherty is the fiery, passionate one.
taken and have things autographed. Its Japanese tradition to shower
Cook is the member who puts up a stop sign when the other two are
groups with gifts, and todays presents include chopsticks, drawings,

58

M AY 2 0 1 6

CHVRCHES
goodie bags, a cat eye-patch and a cat puppet.
who set about trying to trick the singer into
Doherty goes comedy camp when he realises
being in a band with them. I thought she
that last night he accidentally told a fan about
had the most exciting voice Id heard, he
a festival theyre playing that hasnt been
says, tucking into some sushi.
announced yet (oh, keep that to yourself!)
Each member of Chvrches thought their
moment in music had passed. Heres your
hen Doherty started
and Mayberry is the star host, putting nervous
guide to their failed band CV.
playing guitar as a
fans at ease. She appears to be in her element.
teenager, his goal
An hour later, shes even more of a
was to headline the
commanding presence onstage. Its hard to
LAUREN MAYBERRY
Barrowland in Glasgow.
connect her bouncing across the stage to the
Age: 28
Hes since done that a
anxiety-ridden performer she was describing
Previous bands:
Boyfriend/Girlfriend,
number of times it was absolutely insane,
earlier. During the propulsive We Sink, she
Blue Sky Archives
and really emotional and in April his band
pumps her fists in the air and leads the crowd
What went wrong? Blue Sky Archives
will play the citys
into a singalong. Apart from the moment when
were still going when Chvrches
13,000-capacity SSE
it gets so dark onstage that Cook cant actually
formed. Cook was producing
Hydro. Its just fucking
see any of his instruments, Chvrches live show
their EP when he and Doherty
mad, innit? Its never
is a slick operation. They may not look like a
had the idea to steal their
singer. At the time, Mayberry
gonna be normal, he
regular band, with their wonky age ranges and
was working as a film and TV
says. A few drinks later,
disparate dress senses, but they do resemble
production assistant. By that
he heads up to the
a gang. Dohertys dancing is also quite
point, I was like, Its probably
balcony overlooking
something. His main move could be called
not on the cards for me, she
the restaurant to take
Fighting With Ghosts and another, Shaking
says. Sometimes I can be
a photo. Returning to
Off The Wasp.
a bit of a pessimist.
the table, he decides
Afterwards, Mayberry and Cook head back
IAIN COOK
ping-pong will have to wait. The bands
to the hotel for an early night. Doherty, 33,
Age: 41
schedule is non-stop and hes not sure he
comes across as the sort of person who is
Previous bands:
can fit in another hangover in the morning.
saving up all his early nights for when hes an
Aereogramme, The
Its time for bed.
old man. Hes shaken off his sake hangover
Unwinding Hours
The next evening, Doherty has arranged
from the night before and hes ready to go
What went wrong? After releasing
four albums, Cooks post-rock outfit
a visit for the band and crew to Joypolis, a
again. Do you like ping-pong? he enquires.
Aereogramme split. He
giant indoor theme park with a roller-coaster
He likes ping-pong, and hes
followed it with a project with
and enough arcade games to make you feel
found a club with lots of pingtheir singer Craig B, but he
like youre in Tron. Doherty has been looking
pong tables that he wants to
assumed his time in bands was
forward to this for a while. His bandmates
go to later. First, though, he
done. With Aereogramme,
dont look too sure what theyre doing here,
leads everyone to dinner at
the sense of hope and selfbelief was slowly eroded and
but Doherty has given them the hard sell
Gonpachi, the restaurant
eventually crushed by peoples
and theyre intrigued to see what the fuss is
that inspired the scene in
ndifference, he says. I didnt
about. Its only open for two and a half more
Kill Bill where Uma Thurman
want to have to do that again.
hours! he says as they enter the building.
wipes out half of Japan.
ts quite crippling at times.
Mayberry decides it isnt for her and we
Doherty has a big day of
head to a nearby restaurant. She has been
promo ahead of him tomorrow, so hes laying
MARTIN DOHERTY
Age: 33
going through the fan mail from last nights
off sake and sticking to beer, although he
Previous bands: Julia
show at 100 letters, its their biggest bounty
revises this later when he decides that a few
Thirteen, Aereogramme,
yet. She responds to each individually but
mojitos cant do too much harm. Hes a
The Twilight Sad
shes not sure how much longer she can
friendly presence. He has a bit of Glaswegian
What went wrong? Dohertys school band,
keep that up. She recently moved to New
spikiness about him too. He grew up in Faifley,
Julia Thirteen, became a staple on Glasgows
York and is trying to persuade her bandmates
a super working-class area, rough as hell, big
rock scene but when they split he thought itd
be easier to tag along with his friends groups.
that the mail should be sent to Glasgow
drugs problem, wanting to be a footballer. He
I saw being in other peoples bands as a
rather than to her in the US.
played at school and amateur level as a centre
route to touring and being in music without
She is happier than she was two years ago,
forward, and moved into music when he
taking the crap chute of investing everything
and shes learned to separate
realised he wasnt going to make it. He had
you have in a band.
band-me and real-life-me, cos
been in a few bands by the time he met
But then I got sick of
then when you take a kicking it
Cook, who was his lecturer on a music and
playing other peoples
songs. I was gonna
doesnt feel so personal.
computers course at the University Of
quit music and
Things like creating FANCLVB
Glasgow (its not like he was a hundred years
go back to uni.
have made her feel better, as
old or whatever, but hed graduated and was a
well as her ongoing
superstar of the course so they asked him
involvement in TYCI (it stands
back, he says). The two became friends and
for Tuck Your Cunt In), an arts
began swapping demos back and forth. He thinks Cook is a genius,
and music collective based in
although is frustrated by his bandmates refusal to let him wear
Glasgow promoting all things femme. Mayberry launched it in 2012
shorts onstage. Even if its like 40 degrees and youre in Australia,
when she realised there were a lot of female musicians in Glasgow
Iains like, No shorts! he says.
without a network to meet like-minded people. Thats been a really
He was ready to ditch music altogether to do something where he
positive thing for me, she says. Shes ready to call it a night. There is
could get paid well before a pep talk from Campbell McNeil prompted
fan mail to answer and cat drawings to reply to. Lauren Mayberry is
him to go into the studio with Cook. After hearing what Mayberrys
learning to enjoy it all. She cleared her head, she figured it out.
voice sounded like over their electronic compositions, it was Doherty

DONT STOP
BELIEVING

M AY 2 0 1 6

59

ANARCHY
SEEMS TO BE
AN ACT OF
JEALOUSY. ID
PUT IT WITH
THE SEVEN
DEADLY SINS.

Ex-Sex Pistol and PiL

frontman John Lydon:
I dont make music for
personal gratification. I do it
just because Im alive.

JOHN
LYDON

Donald Trump:
a humourless,
morose angry f**k,
according to Mr Lydon.

The punk provocateurs golden rules for life.

1
2

DONT LIMIT YOURSELF

My golden rules!? God, where do I begin? Well, my first rule
is: I hate lists that limit my expectations in life [laughs]!

KEEP RELIGION OUT OF SCHOOLS

In a list of importance, religion comes in at Number 2

because of all the trouble its been causing throughout
the centuries. I dont want to see religion taught in schools ever
again. Nobody has the right, whatever their religion, to impose
their beliefs on me or anybody else that thinks differently to them.
And, of course, that leads us down the merry road of a womans
right to choose and no man has got the right to poke his knob in
there [uncontrollable giggles] you know, hes done his business
now fuck off! Its her whos gotta live with it!

GOVERNMENTS MUST BE TRANSPARENT

I think any government in the modern age that requires any

type of secrecy isnt a government at all. Its a kind of
backwards dwarfism that is keeping us firmly locked in feudalism,
hatred and wars. And its very fun to watch the so-called opposition
[Democratic Presidential nominee] Bernie Sanders, who seems like a
typical Labour MP, sort of like Tony Benns grubby cousin, having a go
at the American system. Jeremy Corbyn is even more extreme and
excessive and highly amusing but impractical. Theyre like a Students
Union discussion group thats gone too far down a loser, dead end
because its not open-minded and is completely absorbed in the
philosophy and dictates of this new religion called politics. That sort
of extreme politics is hateful because its not transparent and offers
no solution. Its my way or the highway well, fuck off both of you!

WORDS: SIMON McEWEN PHOTOS: ROSS HALFIN, GETTY

ALWAYS BE HONEST TO YOUR WIFE

Ive been married for 40 years and the secret to a successful

marriage is honesty and openness. You have to know each
others thoughts so they become so well aligned that you have respect
for each other and theres no need for lies. Commitment is something
you shouldnt do lightly, but once youve done it, its there forever.

BE PREPARED TO PUT YOUR HEAD ON THE BLOCK

Only go into making music if you really, really love it and

really want to do it. If your motivation is just wanting to be
a pop star then forget it because thats the kiss of death. The other
way is hard slog being prepared to put your head on the chopping
block on a daily basis because you will be judged harshly and wrongly
almost continuously but in your heart and soul you know youre right.

DONT BE NOSEY

Social media is a very, very silly thing. I think its evil the way
people anonymously poke their noses into other peoples
private lives. Who is shagging who is no business of mine! I suppose
its some kind of subterfuge for people who dont have sex lives of
their own so they deal with it vicariously through the shenanigans of
others. And thats very dismal indeed. Its like youre depriving
yourself of your own existence and theres a system called social
media thats helping you do that. How insane! But there we go.

HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOUR

Ive got this thing that I dont trust people who dont have
a sense of humour. And I look at the Republicans here in
the States at the moment and its one bunch of morose, angry fucks.
I watched Donald Trump make a speech the other night and the
first eight minutes was him just praising himself! At no point did he
mention anything about his policies or what the future holds for the
rest of us. A politician to me is someone who volunteers to do good for
others. It should not be a career. I bloody well hope he doesnt get in!

DONT ACT YOUR AGE

I really like the people in America. Theyre very outwards,

open-minded, fun-loving and adventurous. Theres none of
this act your age stuff here and I really appreciate that. An example
is 85-plus-year-olds bungee jumping out of aeroplanes on a regular
basis. Would I do that? Do what thou wilt! Without the rest of the
[English writer/magician, Aleister] Crowley sentiments [laughs]!

ANARCHY DOES NOT RULE

Im not an anarchist because I think thats just mind games

and its destructive because it offers no viable alternative.
Anarchy seems now to be an act of jealousy. I would put anarchy in
with the seven deadly sins. Ive never appreciated destruction for its
own sake. Im somehow just looking for common sense in life.

10

HEAVEN IS HERE ON EARTH

I dont make music for personal gratification, I do it just

because Im alive. Owing to childhood illnesses, Im very
grateful. So anything that gets me out and about and expressing my
own individuality to me is something that I respect fully. Do I fear
death? I dont know what it is, except it is the end. That Bob Marley
line [from Get Up, Stand Up]: If you know what life is worth/You will
look for yours on Earth always meant a lot to me. Thats absolutely it.
Heaven is here on Earth. Thank you! Peace.
M AY 2 0 1 6

61

BROOKLYNS PARQUET COURTS SOUND A BIT LIKE PAVEMENT

AND LOOK LIKE THEY COULD WORK BEHIND THE COUNTER IN HIGH
FIDELITY, BUT THATS WHERE THE SIMILARITIES TO 90S-STYLE
DRIFTERS ENDS. WERE ALL BUSTING OUR ASSES, THEY TELL
CHRIS CATCHPOLE, AS HE MEETS AMERICAS BEST UNDERGROUND
BAND IN THEIR NATURAL HABITAT (A BASEMENT IN WILLIAMSBURG).
hat, you might wonder, while watching
The Royal Tenenbaums or Fantastic Mr
Fox, would an indie band created by film
director Wes Anderson be like? Theyd be
deadpan, quirkily neurotic and probably a
little socially awkward. One of them might
even have a Steve Zissou-style hat.
Brooklyns Parquet Courts, hyperbright and earnestly sarcastic, are about
as close to that band as it is possible to imagine. Come join
them as they rest with a beer and some Thai food before a
secret show in Williamsburg, ahead of their forthcoming fifth
album, Human Performance. They make for intense company.
Wearing a woolly beanie and boots in concession to the
piles of snow shovelled up outside, singer-guitarist Andrew
Savage does the lions share of the talking, theorising and
brow-furrowing, frowning intently while detailing his
opinions on the band, their music and the role of DIY punk
culture in contemporary America. Across the table from him,

co-frontman Austin Browns thoughts are more liable to

wander off on tangents from Led Zeppelins studio equipment
and minor seventh chords to 90s skate punks NOFX and
the vagaries of Premier League football. A fan of epic drama
Game Of Thrones and like the rest of the band Manchester
United, Browns flights of fancy might well be due to the
fact that he has several impacted wisdom teeth being removed
the following morning and has been washing down a plethora
of painkillers for it.
While affable bassist Sean Yeaton barks the occasional
interjection, Savages curly-haired younger brother Max
sits smiling politely. A former baseball prodigy who until
recently juggled completing degrees in mathematics and
mandarin with drumming for the band, he will utter no
more than four words over the course of two hours.
Intelligent and a little prickly at times, Parquet Courts
take everything surrounding their band incredibly seriously.
Its a wilfulness that has translated into a reputation for
being difficult in the past.

PHOTOGRAPHS GUY EPPEL

PARQUET COURTS

Just chillin... Parquet

Courts (from left, Sean
Yeaton, Austin Brown,
Max Savage, Andrew
Savage), Brooklyn, New
York, 27 January, 2016.

PARQUET COURTS
There were moments where I thought we were being really
funny in interviews, then people would come back with: difficult,
assholes, contrarians, notes Andrew Savage. I thought we were
all having a good time!
There were also rumours that you insisted on taking acid
before every gig
Oh yeah, weve got to do that now, guys. Quick, were late, he
adds, dryly.
We made the mistake of dispelling that rumour, chips in
Austin Brown. Feel free to start it up again. Were not worried
about getting arrested.

ack in 2012, Parquet Courts burst out of New Yorks

DIY punk scene with their second, self-recorded album,
Light Up Gold. A gloriously scuffed-round-the-edges
blast that detailed the frustrations of being overeducated,
underpaid and under-stimulated on the streets of NYC,
it catapulted them from playing puke-filled basements
to appearing on prime-time talk shows and saw the band
hailed as the newest addition to the citys illustrious
history of super-hip guitar groups. The albums passing
similarity to Pavement and its pothead anthem Stoned And Starving
also meant that the term slacker would frequently crop up any time
they were mentioned.
In a world where many acts online presence is a blizzard of
Instagram posts, Facebook updates and Twitter Q&As, Parquet
Courts shun social media as a matter of
principle. In a rare concession to the
digital age they do have their own
WordPress site where they post fliers
for gigs, mixtapes and tour dates.
Scroll through the entries and you
can also find a meticulously curated
list detailing every time the word has
been used in reference to the band.
The sort of bed-headed slackers
youd meet at a 90s college party
New York slacker-rock four-piece
Parquet Courts are probably too
stoned to care effortless cool
and slacker-culled lackadaisy

Excluding a multitude of side-projects, Parquet Courts have

released four studio albums, two EPs and one live album since
2011. In the two instances where Yeaton and Max Savage were
unable to attend recording sessions due to parenting and college
commitments respectively, Brown and Andrew Savage went ahead
without them and billed the resulting records (2013s Tally All The
Things That You Broke and Content Nausea in 2014) as Parkay
Quarts. They dont seem like a band that sits around smoking
weed and playing computer games all day long.
It was really bewildering being called slackers, grumbles Savage.
We were all busting our asses in this band. Im always busy, I do visual
art, I do Parquet Courts, I do a label, everybody had bands outside this
band and is so goddamn busy. Its weird to hear someone calling you
the exact opposite.
Free time is a rare thing. Light Up Gold was recorded in just
three days while the band called in sick off work. The studio was so
close to Yeatons office that the bassist had to hide until he knew
his colleagues had gone home for the day for fear of being spotted.
Human Performance, however, is the first time they afforded
themselves a decent stint in a recording studio. True, while they
may talk of having infinite amounts of time, three weeks in Upstate
New York plus two short sessions dotted around summer touring
commitments is hardly a Chinese Democracy-style extravagance.
By being able to experiment a little rather than just getting songs
down on tape, theyve created a record thats leaps and bounds ahead
of the punk rattle of previous albums.
Coming just four months after the largely
instrumental EP, Monastic Living, a record that
sounds like something Brian Eno and John Cale
might have cooked up if they were trying to out
obtuse one another, Human Performance fizzes
with neat pop songs. There are echoes of the sweet
melancholy of The Velvet Undergrounds third
album, mid-60s Rolling Stones, Marquee Moons
exploratory guitar duels and the narky new wave
punch of early Elvis Costello. There are even some
bongos on it at one point.
Its relaxed eclecticism and bouncing melodies
are in sharp contrast with the lyrics. Words chiefly
deal with the none-too-cheery topics of anxiety,
panic attacks and agoraphobia (Browns songs)
or loneliness, heartache and an inability to
function as a normal human being (Savages).
A lot of the stuff is about being isolated and
lonely and exhausted and anxious all of the bad
shit, notes Brown. I would sit down and write
lyrics and would be like, OK, what am I thinking
about? And rarely was it something like, Im
super happy right now! It just wasnt where I was
coming from.
Its not all glum, insists Savage, for whom
making a downer of a record was the last thing he
intended. I made a mixtape before which was one
side of sad songs that make you feel happy and the
other side sad songs that make you feel sad

WE MADE THE MISTAKE

OF DISPELLING THE
RUMOUR THAT WE TOOK
ACID BEFORE EVERY GIG.
FEEL FREE TO START IT
UP AGAIN. WERE NOT
WORRIED ABOUT
GETTING ARRESTED.
AUSTIN BROWN

64

M AY 2 0 1 6

REX

Austin Brown limbers

up backstage at Babys
All Right, Williamsburg.

hough Parquet Courts consider

themselves a New York band, with
the exception of Boston-native
Yeaton, theyre originally from Texas.
Andrew and Max Savage grew up in
Dallas while Brown was born in
Beaumont, the television setting for
True Detectives child-murdering
occultists. Its not somewhere he
has particularly fond memories of.

Getting cosy in
their Williamsburg
rehearsal space.

Its AWFUL, states the guitarist, emphatically. The head

of the Ku Klux Klan lives near there. Growing up in a shitty small
town, Browns only escape came from discovering punk bands
and live music scenes happening elsewhere in the state online.
Beaumont has, like, a mall and thats it. There were shows sometimes
but they were super sketchy. Not in a cool, punk sketchy way it was
country sketchy. It was redneck.
Savage interjects. People have this idea that Texas is some strange
foreign country. That theres some sort of romantic amazingness about
it or that its completely terrible. Its a lot of everything. Thats one of
the things that pisses me off when you tell someone whos never been
to Texas that youre from Texas. They always go, Oh yeah, I hear
Austins really great. Oh yeah, Austin is the only good place in Texas,

PCS
WORLD
THESE ARE A FEW

OF PARQUET COURTS
FAVOURITE THINGS.
MANCHESTER
UNITED
Human Performances
cover art contains a
hidden reference to
the former giants of
English football, while a book

of artwork the band

collaborated on with fellow
punk rockers PC Worship
featured a made-up quote on
the back attributed to striker
Robin Van Persie. Should
the club appoint Mourinho?
wonders Andrew Savage.
I have no idea, Austin is the
one who actually follows the
sport. Me, I just like the
scarves and listening to
people argue about it.
CHILDRENS
BOOKS
The father of a young
child with another on the way,

right? Or you tell someone that youre from Texas and they look at you
like youre from Mars: Oh, what was that like? Did you have a horse?
If Browns salvation came via the internet, Savages took the more
old-school format of mail order fanzines. Sending off for cult punk
magazine Maximum Rocknroll as a teenager, it opened up a universe
of underground punk scenes and a staunchly do-it-yourself ethos that
has informed pretty much everything Parquet Courts does.
A one-man cottage industry, Savage met Yeaton while booking
bands from his living room in Texas (hed previously met Brown at the
University of North Texas Knights Of The Round Turntable vinyl
appreciation club). He runs his own record label, Dull Tools, for which
he posts releases to fans and put out the bands cassette-only debut,
American Specialities, in 2011. Enjoying a sideline as a painter, he

bassist Sean Yeaton

has written two as-yetunpublished childrens
books in rare moments of
downtime; The Hungry
Possum and Bear With Me.
Brown: He read The
Hungry Possum
to me the other
night, its great!
FRED DURST
To stave off tour
boredom Yeaton
occasionally
films Brown
doing a weather
forecast. At the

Reading Festival last year

they roped the Limp Bizkit
frontman (below) into doing
one. Whats the weather
like, Fred? asks Yeaton.
Nipplely, Durst replies.
JOEY PIZZA SLICE
Keeping one foot
in the DIY punk
world, the
band released
a split seveninch last year
with deranged
cassette player
recording artist
Joey Pizza Slice

(who also trades under the

names Citizen Slice and Son
Of Salami), covering his song
Pretty Girls Is A Motherfucker.
Slices original is so lo-fi
it makes Daniel Johnston
sound like Justin Bieber.
WINGS
Not Maccas other band but
the 90s Cheers tie-in TV
series. Parquet Courts may
disavow Facebook, but Yeaton
does have his own personal
page. Its one that, for some
reason, he almost entirely
devotes to posting episodes
of the sitcom on.
M AY 2 0 1 6

65

PARQUET COURTS
also designs the artwork and fliers for both Parquet
Courts and the acts on Dull Tools. You get the impression
he would be personally stacking their new album in record
shops given the chance.
Coming home from school and getting my first issue of
Maximum Rocknroll in the mail was a moment that changed
my life, recalls Savage. The influence of it rivals anything. Its
why on all our records we have a physical mailing address that
you can send in to. I dont like social media. Twitter, Facebook,
that doesnt appeal to me, but writing in the mail does because
when I was a kid I got obsessed with this idea that I could send a
five dollar bill to somebody and two weeks to two months later
Id get a seven-inch back. It became my window to the world.

ver since Dull Tools couldnt physically press

enough copies of Light Up Gold to satiate demand,
Parquet Courts have struggled with the dilemma
of being an independent DIY punk band who are
internationally popular and signed to a proper
record label. An obvious manifestation being the
increasing number of jock types down the front
of shows bellowing for Stoned And Starving.
There were a lot of uneasy moments and it
took me a long time to be able to deal with them, ruminates
Savage. Yes, in theory theres exposure and stuff like that
but also when you cast a wide net you bring in some pretty
strange fish. Seeing people that in my mind and this is me
being judgmental I might call frat boys coming in to a show
was a bit of a problem, because coming from a punk
background you want to be accepting but also you kind
of learn to be repulsed by that sort of person
At the end of the day were the ones making the music,
adds Brown. So if Fratboy Joe likes it, well, maybe that means
we wrote a good song.

top) American
Specialities (2011);
Light Up Gold
(2012); Tally All
The Things That
You Broke (2013);
Sunbathing Animal
(2014); Content
Nausea (2014);
Monastic Living
(2015); Human
Performance (2016);
(right) Guys? The
gates, like, open...
66

M AY 2 0 1 6

Given that theyre about to put out an album filled with

them, its a quandary that looks set to be exacerbated.
I really dont know how much wider Parquet Courts
audience can get, thinks Savage. From where I see it,
there is the underground scene, where we come from.
Then theres the space that Parquet Courts occupies,
which sort of includes underground bands, indie bands, etc.
And then it just jumps up to bands like Green Day and Foo
Fighters. I cant imagine a band as strange as us existing in
that stratosphere.
With a capacity of fewer than 300, Babys All Right in
Williamsburg is the sort of venue Parquet Courts outgrew
around the time they decided it was no longer prudent to say
yes to every single offer to play a show. Yeaton recalls them
playing a basement in Kansas around the same time they
were being interviewed by Time magazine in 2012 where
cats were defecating everywhere and the walls were smeared
with bloody handprints. The toilets were blocked with
blood and hair, he says. We were billed as the wrong band,
no one cared. I dont even think I had an amp.
As midnight approaches the place starts to fill up with
identikit versions of Brooklyn hipster types. Theres soon
so many bobble hats and spectacles in the room its like an
inverse Wheres Wally? illustration. The band hurtle through
a selection of brand new songs. Then, new material out the
way, they jump into an impromptu version of Stoned And
Starving and the place erupts into a skinny-limbed slam pit.
Backstage afterwards as the rest of the band mingle with
friends, Savage stands at the back with a face like thunder.
Turns out he loved it, though. It was great, he states. It felt
like being a comic workshopping new material.
Since Savages sense of humour has backfired so many
times in the past, stand-up comedian might be one side-line
too many.

THERE IS THE
UNDERGROUND
SCENE THEN
THERES US AND
THEN IT JUMPS UP
TO BANDS LIKE FOO
FIGHTERS. I CANT
IMAGINE A BAND AS
STRANGE AS US
EXISTING IN THAT
STRATOSPHERE.
ANDREW SAVAGE

MISHKA SHUBALY

A F R O C E LT S O U N D S Y S T E M

Cowards Path

Forever a favourite, sublime!



If you ever considered committing suicide at happy hour,
Mishka Shubaly is the songwriter for you

 

The gruff and rough-voiced Shubaly is a chronicler of mankind's
darkest impulses and failures, a guy with a ticket to hell and back

    

Misanthropy in the UK May 2016

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21 Manchester, Ruby Lounge 22 London, 100 Club
24 Guildford, The Row Barge 25 Sheffield, The Greystones
26 Chelmsford, Asylum

www.invisiblehands.co.uk www.mishkashubaly.com

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The odd couple:

Underworlds Rick Smith
(left) and Karl Hyde,
Essex, 22 February, 2016.

Its a proper partnership were

friends and were partners and
were collaborators. Karl Hyde

Celebrating the wildcards whove inspired cult worship

PORTRAITS ADAM LAWRENCE

Theyve spent two decades successfully outrunning

the shadow of their 1996 megahit Born Slippy, taking
dance music places many feared to tread. Rupert Howe
visits Underworlds Karl Hyde and Rick Smith in
their Essex studio on the eve of the duos magnificent
ninth album to hear how they crafted a career by only
looking forward and why only death will part them.
ackstage at Bristols
Colston Hall, white
towel slung round
his shoulders, a rapt,
wondering look steals
over the face of
Underworlds frontman
Karl Hyde. Hes reflecting not on the
ecstatically received set which just closed out
the BBC 6 Music Festivals Saturday night,
but a visit to a guitar shop earlier in the day.
Packed floor to ceiling with rare and quirky
instruments, Hyde found himself marvelling
at the sheer variety only to be informed by
the emporiums idiosyncratic owner that
none of them were actually for sale.
Yet for those who witnessed the
preceding 90-minute sound-and-light
spectacular, which featured Underworld
co-founder Rick Smith on mixing desk,
long-time collaborator Darren Price on
laptops and Hyde himself armed with
nothing more than a microphone and
some surprisingly elastic dance moves, his
continued fascination with these rocknroll
relics might seem odd. Oh, I could see us
getting the guitars out again, he grins.
I mean, we can do what we like, cant we?
Well, yes. Even back in the early 90s,
when Hyde would appear onstage wielding
a Letraset-stickered Les Paul, Underworld

were an anomaly among electronic acts

who were supposed to be realising the
Kraftwerkian dream of replacing instruments
with computers and performers with robots.
Instead they suggested that the individualist
ethos of alternative rock and communal
celebration of rave could be allies rather
than opposites and made two landmark,
genre-defying albums 1994s
dubnobasswithmyheadman and 1996s
Second Toughest In The Infants to prove it.
Both were recently given the full deluxe
reissue treatment and last year Hyde and
Smith enshrined dubnobasss classic status
by performing the album live in its entirety at
such august venues as the Royal Festival Hall.
But typically, when Q arrives at their studio in
the North Essex countryside the following
week, Hyde and Smith are more concerned
with the here and now, running through a
new set for an upcoming silent show in
Tokyo at which they will perform atop a high
rise to an audience wearing headphones.
As in Bristol, at least half the songs will be
taken from their first new album in six years,
Barbara Barbara, We Face A Shining Future.
Inspired by a comment made by Rick Smiths
father shortly before his death, the title might
be up there with their most cryptic, but
musically it finds the duo at their elusive best,
weaving Hydes inimitable poetics through

stomping techno glam, brooding tech-house

and atmospheric chill-out. Their own
management has hailed it as the sound of a
band revitalised a description Smith is
still not entirely comfortable with.
Thats one of those double-edged
words, isnt it? he says, after retiring to the
relative quiet of their one-table-and-a-gasfire office. Is it supposed to mean
everything was bollocks before? That wed
completely lost the plot? But the experience
[of making an album] was still fresh for us.
Across the table, Karl Hyde nods
agreement. The best thing that happened
was that we didnt stop being together, he
says. Its a proper partnership were friends
and were partners and were collaborators.
ith his bleach-blond
crop and skinny jeans,
Hyde certainly looks
fresh and could pass for
a good decade younger
than his 58 years. Smith,
two years Hydes junior,
is more sober, almost professorial in his
rimless glasses. Yet theres a warmth and
rapport between the two which reflects a
friendship cemented in late-70s Cardiff
when Hyde was a Worcester-born art
graduate experimenting with audio-visual
installations and Smith an electronics
student from Ammanford, South Wales.
Frustrated with his course, on which hed
hoped to build his own synthesizer, Smiths
latent musical ambitions were awakened
when he caught a performance by Hydes
gang of new wave wannabes, The Screen
Gemz. They did this gig on the roof of
the student union, he says. The sun
was out, people were loafing about and
they looked kind of weird. But I thought,
That looks good fun!
Smith joined up soon afterwards and
while the creative rapport with Hyde was

M AY 2 0 1 6

69

UNDERWORLD
immediate, success proved elusive.
The Screen Gemz morphed into Freur,
a synth-pop outfit whose name was written
as a hieroglyphic squiggle, but after scoring
a minor hit in New Zealand with a song
called Doot-Doot, they too folded in 1986.
Undeterred, a year later Underworld Mk 1
rose from Freurs ashes with hopes of
crossing over as an INXS-type pop-rock act.
Two albums for celebrated US label Sire
Records vanished without trace before a
support slot on Eurythmics 1989 North
American tour compounded their misery.
Two days in, it was like, This is
hideous! grimaces Smith. The dream was
shattered. Big stages, audiences miles away
who just want Annie [Lennox] to come on
By the end of the tour it was very grim.
Dispirited, Smith returned to England
while Hyde stayed on in America, eventually
landing a gig playing guitar in Debbie Harrys
band. Musically, it wasnt the challenge he
wanted, but taking inspiration from Lou
Reed and the playwright Sam Shepards
Motel Chronicles he began carrying a pen and
notebook, jotting down short, fragmentary
observations on the streets in New York.

When Hyde finally caught up with Smith

again in Essex, where the latter had moved a
few years previously, they were both broke
and without management or a record label.
Yet it was during these dark days that
ideas for a new direction began to take root.
Smith was already experimenting with a
rudimentary home studio in the spare room
of his terraced house in Romford, inspired by
acid house records hed been hearing since
his return and tales of free-spirited, allnight rave parties passed on by his brotherin-law. Hed come back with amazing stories
of what a great time theyd had, says Smith.
Back in the
bad hair
day: (right)
Freur in 1984;
(below)
getting down
and dirty
with now
departed
member
Darren
Emerson
(left), 1996.

So I thought, I need to find a DJ, somebody

I can learn from. Id dabbled trying to make
acid house-type records and they werent any
good, so I asked my brother-in-law and he
said, Well, theres this young guy
The young guy turned out to be
18-year-old Essex native Darren Emerson,
a runner on the London stock exchange by
day and rising star on the club circuit by
night. Darren was a really good DJ, says
Smith, and he had eclectic taste. All three
of us had. We had to accommodate each
other, but something from everyone got
brought to the mix.
Hyde and Smith may have
been a good decade older than
most acid house converts, but
they were equally electrified
by the scenes energy and
inclusiveness, even if they
had little interest in the
drugs creating the loved-up
atmosphere. Gosh, no!
exclaims Smith when asked
if he ever took ecstasy at the
London clubs where hed go to
hear Emerson DJ, while Hyde
spent much of the 90s battling
alcoholism which, coupled with undiagnosed
synaesthesia, made him feel too fragile to
want to add any extra chemicals to the mix.
heir timing, though, was
spot-on. Dance music
was evolving rapidly,
thanks to the rise of
DJs such as Andrew
Weatherall and Justin
Robertson who blended
percussive techno with funk, dub and eclectic
samples. Yet even by the standards of
early-90s dance productions, Underworlds
second coming showed a protean, fluid
invention, drawing on Smiths production
skill and feel for atmosphere, Hydes
fragmented notebook poetry and Emersons
ability to read the dancefloor. The group
themselves were convinced they were on to
something, but negotiations with record
labels for a projected album showed some in
the music industry had yet to catch up.
There were tracks off dubnobass which
our first manager took to record companies

THE BEST OF

UNDE ORL

From oddly coiffed beginnings in

Freur to their 90s imperial phase
and on to the revitalised present.
70

M AY 2 0 1 6

Freur
Doot-Doot
(12-inch mix) (1983)

Underworld prehistory,
though Karl Hyde and
Rick Smiths quirky
synth-pop near-hit
has since been
reclaimed as a lost
Balearic curio.

Lemon Interupt
Dirty (1992)

The early Darren

Emerson-era
instrumental which
was to become
dubnobasss Dirty Epic,
all blown-out drums,
ecstatic pianos and
scuzzy guitar licks.

Underworld
Rez (1993)

Dazzling first 12-inch of

Underworlds second
coming which orbits
around a hypnotically
strobing synth riff.
So good they re-did it,
with vocals, as Cowgirl
for dubnobass.

Underworld
Mmm
Skyscraper I Love
You (1994)
From dubnobass, with
shades of Pink Floyd,
an epic prog house trip
round Elvis, porn dogs
and other fragments of
Karl Hydes imagination.

CAMERA PRESS, GETTY, VICTOR FRANKOWSKI

Night of the living bassheads:

(above) Underworld perform
1994s dubnobasswithmyheadman
(pictured right), Royal Festival
Hall, London, 11 October, 2014.

To us, dance music was all about moving

on, challenging yourself and not just
repeating a winning formula. Karl Hyde

Underworld
Tongue (1994)

Proof Underworld
could do more than
just pummelling
house beats, layering
shimmering echoes
of Brian Eno and
English folk songs
over ambient house.

Underworld
Born Slippy.
NUXX (1996)

Trainspotting made
it a hit, but this was
already one of 90s
dance musics most
compelling statements:
urgent, edgy and,
ultimately, uplifting.

Underworld
Pearls Girl (1996)

Always alive to the

shifting sounds of UK
club culture, their
typically dynamic take
on drumnbass, from
Second Toughest In
The Infants, fizzes with
a feral, urban energy.

Underworld
Jumbo (1999)

Sleek, almost motorik

fusion of European
techno and blissful,
soundtrack-inspired
atmospherics, from
Beaucoup Fish. Still a
centrepiece of their
live set today.

guitar blues, while on

tracks such as Mmm
Skyscraper I Love You
and Dirty Epic, Hyde
gave voice to the
leeting sensations of
life in a fast-evolving
digital age. Even the sleeve art had a radical
edge, a typographic mash-up orchestrated by
London design collective Tomato, of which
Hyde and Smith were founding members.
Rising to Number 12 in the UK album
chart, the LPs success took everyone by
surprise. Yet it was the cultural rather than
commercial impact which most pleased Karl
Hyde, who fondly remembers performing
tracks from dubnobass at a Brixton
Academy all-nighter and witnessing indie
kids and acid ravers lose it in unison. It was
one of those records that enabled different

Underworld
Crocodile (2007)

Loose-limbed bass and

Karl Hyde at his most
starry-eyed combine
on this Oblivion With
Bells track, to conjure
visions of Talking Heads
on the midnight train
to Romford.

10

Underworld
If Rah (2016)

Refreshed after a
six-year absence,
the low-slung, elastic
groove and Born
Slippy-like Luna
luna luna luna refrain
are unmistakably
Underworld.

M AY 2 0 1 6

71

UNDERWORLD

United, we sit: Smith

and Hyde show off
their al fresco office.

them. There were big expectations of us,

says Hyde. After Kurt Cobain died [in
1994] people were asking, What will
take the place of grunge? There was
this moment where it was like, British
techno will come in and save the day!
As if Underworld were going to become
the worlds first stadium-techno band.
And we were like, Please, no!
erhaps as a result,
1999s Beaucoup
Fish was widely seen
as a creative plateau.
Even though it was
their biggest-selling
album to date, soon
afterwards Darren Emerson announced
that he was leaving. Ostensibly he wanted
to return to DJing full-time, though theres
more than a hint of musical differences
behind his exit. I genuinely never knew
why he left, says Smith. I didnt want
him to go. I think pressure was at the heart
of it, but it was quite shocking.
But even with Emerson gone, Smith
refused to agree to a divorce. Rick has
always said, Were not splitting up and
thats a fantastic thing, says Hyde. Its a
bit like marriage weve made vows!
Four more LPs were to follow, each
marking a subtle reconfiguration of the
classic Underworld sound, and they built a
formidable reputation as a live act. In fact,
over the past decade both Hyde and Smith
have been more industrious than ever.
Smith has continued to work closely with
Danny Boyle, creating a score for Boyles
stage production of Frankenstein at the
National Theatre before being taken on as
musical director for the 2012 Olympics.
Hyde, meanwhile, started a parallel career
as a solo artist, resulting in 2013s offbeat
solo album Edgeland and two world
music-inspired collaborative works
created with Brian Eno, Someday World
and High Life.
As for Underworld, it remains what it
was in the early 90s whatever Hyde and
Smith want it to be. Someone told us the
other day that were like outsiders who
get invited in occasionally and thats
how it feels, says Hyde. If theres any
expectation on us now, its not a heavy
one. Its that we should be enjoying
ourselves and making things we love to
make. Thats of greater value to us.
With that, their manager enters the
room and tells them its time to go their
separate ways. Its a temporary split
Hyde has an afternoon meeting while
Smiths technical know-how is required
in the studio. But sometimes even the
longest-serving duo in British dance
music need a little time on their own.

Rick always said,

Were not splitting
up and thats
a fantastic thing.
Its like marriage
weve made
vows! Karl Hyde

factions to meet and agree on something,

he says. It was like a bridge.
The peak came in 1996 following the
release of Danny Boyles adaptation of
Trainspotting. Having chanced on their
single Born Slippy in HMV, Boyle included
the B-side version the one with the .NUXX
suffix a computer error had added to the
original file in the films climactic scene.
I remember Danny [Boyle] asked if he could
use our music, says Smith. But the requests
were always, Nightclub: gun scene, which
made us angry because dance music gave
first chart hit and was only kept off the top
such a welcoming feeling we never saw a
spot by the Fugees cover of Killing Me Softly.
fight in a club. But then he showed us 15
We fought its re-release, laughs Hyde.
minutes [of Trainspotting] and we were like,
We thought it was cheesy. Born Slippy had
You can do whatever you want!
already been our best-selling 12-inch, so we
For many, Born Slippy.NUXX is
were like, Fantastic, lets move on! To us,
Underworld the pounding, accelerating
dance music was all about moving on,
rhythm perfectly matched to
challenging yourself and not just
The original 1995
Hydes now-infamous Lager
repeating a winning formula.
version of Born
lager lager lager refrain,
But while 1996s kaleidoscopic
Slippy, which was
originally intended as a
follow-up to dubnobass,
reissued in 1996.
scathing evocation of a
Second Toughest In The
drunken night out in Soho
Infants, cemented their
with, among others, the
position as UK dance musics
comedian Bill Bailey. But
most forward-thinking
despite its grimy subject
outfit, by the close of the
matter, the tracks
decade they found that rather
re-release in July 1996
than changing the world, the
gave Underworld their
world was changing around
72

M AY 2 0 1 6

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GRIMES

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Deer, oh deer: Grimes, aka

Claire Boucher, backstage,
Astra Kulturhaus, Berlin,
17 February, 2016.

uring November last year, on

the night before the release of
her fourth album, Art Angels,
Claire Boucher sobbed. I was
pretty sure it was going to be a
huge bomb and everyone was
going to hate it, she says now.
What actually happened was
the exact opposite: Art Angels,
a misfit pop epic, was almost
universally hailed as one of the
best albums of the year. But on
that night Boucher, aka Grimes,
was in a strange position. She was not exactly
famous but, within a certain orbit, she was
the iconic figure that people had been waiting
for. Shes a studio auteur who combines
DIY ethics with pop aesthetics; an
idiosyncratic fashion magnet celebrated
by Karl Lagerfeld and Alexander Wang; a
distinctive visual artist who designs album
sleeves and comic-book covers; and a social
justice activist whos clued-up on gender and
environmental issues. In the Venn diagram of
alternative culture in the 2010s, Boucher
commands the centre. It has its downside.
Boucher released her breakthrough
third album, the eerily infectious Visions,
in January 2012, just as the music media
was enthusiastically embracing clickbait.
Social-media messages that Boucher
In living colour:
performing
at Astra
Kulturhaus,
Berlin, 2016.

intended for only her fans became news

stories, which snowballed into controversies.
It reached the point where, without a new
album to reveal, her online personality
seemed bigger than her music. It was
definitely stressful, she says forcefully.
And not expected.
Boucher is perching on a couch in her
dressing room at the Astra Kulturhaus in
Friedrichshain, a partly gentrified Berlin
neighbourhood that has, like Grimes,
retained its jagged edges. You can see why
fashion photographers adore her: she has
the rare ability to make anything look cool.
Today the 27-year-old Canadian is wearing
a sweater that forms a smiley face out of
a rainbow and two peace signs and a fandesigned black satin jacket with GRIMES
spelled out in red rhinestones on the back.
Her ever-changing hair is a of brown, blonde
and pink.
With her slight but strong frame, youthful
features and quick-fire intellect, Boucher can
seem both frail and formidable. She talks fast,
racing ahead and then doubling back to
qualify what shes just said. She edits herself
transparently, telling you when shes not
telling you something. You sense a battle
between her natural candour and a newfound
caution, as if shes imagining how a quote
might mutate into a troublesome headline.
I knew I had to make another record,
she says, because there was so much
bullshit out there.
y voice is pretty fucked,
Grimes tells a practically
empty Astra Kulturhaus. Its
soundcheck time and shes
meticulously honing the vocal
mix. Too quiet? Too dry?
More reverb? You suspect she
could go on for hours.
Boucher is militant about
doing everything herself.

f the
o
t
s
o
M
is
h
t
n
o
songs are
record songs.
g
ventin nting
e
And v are
songs the
y
usuall nd
i
best k s.
g
of son
76

M AY 2 0 1 6

Apart from guest vocals by Janelle Mone and

Taiwanese rapper Aristophanes and mixing
by Mark Spike Stent, she wrote, performed,
produced and engineered every note on Art
Angels. She often gets invited to appear on
other peoples records but wont put her
name to anything she hasnt written. Its both
an artistic choice and a culturally loaded one:
as one of pops few female auteurs, she wants
to forestall any doubt about her abilities.
I feel it would undermine everything I say
or do, she says.
This is why shes uneasy about
considering herself a pop star. Its the
suggestion that I dont write my music,
she says. By my definition, pop music
includes the Ramones and David Bowie and
Radiohead, but for younger kids pop music
means American Top 40. Im just trying to
distance myself from the idea that thats what
Grimes is trying to be. That doesnt mean
that I hate it but its not how I function. (She
often talks about Grimes in the third person,
as if its a project rather than an alias.)
Boucher has a vexed relationship with
pop. As a surly teenager, she favoured music

GRIMES

A stage shes going through:

Grimes performs in between
apologising to her German fans.

by angry, noisy men: Korn,

a song for Rihanna the story
Nine Inch Nails, System
wrote itself: DIY underdog
Of A Down. I think I was
goes mainstream. The
very sexist as a teenager,
story, she says adamantly,
actually. I was so aggro
was really fucked up.
about not listening to the
Shes still signed to
radio. I just hated pop
hallowed indie label 4AD
music. So when she finally
because they let me do
changed her mind she
whatever I want.
credits her dad with
Boucher has become
insisting she hear Mariah
a role model for young
Carey during a crosswomen who want to
country road trip Top 40
maintain control in a
pop felt exotically new.
male-dominated world
Little did she know it
but when she starts to
would prove controversial.
talk about patronising,
She was savaged on Twitter
lecherous men in recording
I regret being an asshole:
when she dared to play
studios, she stops herself.
Grimes the wild child years.
Carey and Taylor Swift at
Actually, Im not going to
one of music platform Boiler Rooms
go into this fucking tirade. I hate it when
bleeding-edge DJ sessions in 2013.
everythings about feminism, blah blah.
If I play pop music Im just trash but
It doesnt need to be. I dont want to be a
if other people I wont name do it theyre
victim. I feel like so much press focuses on,
transgressive, she says, still aggrieved.
Oh, its so hard and youre always fighting,
So when she joined Jay Zs management
and thats probably a deterrent for a lot of
company Roc Nation and tried writing
women. Because its also not that hard.

She sighs. Its more like Im disappointed

that Im often underestimated.
Boucher is trying to wean herself off
tirades. A 2013 Tumblr essay of hers about
sexism in the music industry went viral,
attracting so much attention that she deleted
it, along with all of her previous posts, and
complained: my Tumblr is not a news
source. When that post also became
news, she deleted that too.
You cant have any kind of a complex
opinion in public, she says matter-of-factly.
It just doesnt work. In order to make
drama, websites will pull a quote out of
context and make you look bad, so theres
just no point in trying to say something
with any complexity, basically.
Presumably there are many things
shed like to talk about?
Oh, all the time, yeah. Theres a lot, but
I just have to give up on it, because it usually
ends up being more destructive to try.
These days, Boucher mostly sticks to
posting uncontentious photographs and
YouTube links. Shes been cowed into
hiding how interesting she really is.
M AY 2 0 1 6

77

oucher has a lot of tattoos and she

keeps adding more. On the couch,
she bares the inside of her right
forearm to reveal the latest:
a crucifix which looks like its
been daubed in black paint.
Her years at Catholic school
clearly left an imprint.
I like Catholicism a lot,
she says. Im not super-overtly
religious, but I just think its gorgeous. Its
kind of evil, too, but I kind of like that its evil.
I think about it a lot. It definitely informs a lot
of my work. Growing up thinking Hell exists
and there are demons everywhere is
something of a formative experience.
Boucher was born and raised in
Vancouver in a high-powered family: her
father was a biotech executive and her
mother a crown prosecutor. They taught
Boucher and her four brothers to value
academic and athletic excellence. Boucher
studied ballet and got good grades for several
years before mounting an almighty rebellion
in high school, shaving her head, smoking
weed and hanging with the outcast crew.
I was a terrible, terrible child, she says.
I was charged with assault at one point, I did
tons of drugs, I was really, really bad. I just got
it together for Grade 12. From Grade 8 to 11,
I was, like, a total piece of shit. She laughs.
I totally regret being an asshole in high
school. I honestly think I was just bored.
Most of her friends were in bands but
Boucher preferred to draw manga-inspired
illustrations. She didnt start making music
until she moved to Montreal to study, among
other things, electro-acoustics at McGill
University. I was constantly around it,
she says. Its the worst thing to say,
but I basically started making music just
because all my friends were doing it.
The plethora of underground venues and
cheap apartments in Montreals Mile End
district made for a lively art-rock scene which
also spawned Purity Ring and Majical Cloudz.
Boucher hung around an art space called Lab
Synthse and developed her GarageBand
skills. Had I not had access to a laptop and
free recording software, theres no way I
would have been a musician, she says.
Had I come up 10 years earlier, I would have
had a different job. She started playing
shows for, like, five people in a shitty
warehouse. Truly terrible shows. I would
usually cry and run offstage.
In 2010, she released her first two albums,
Geidi Primes and Halfaxa, and dropped out
of McGill, to her parents horror. Oh, they
hated it. They were really pissed. I had to
get on the cover of a magazine before they
understood. Its obviously very upsetting if
your child is suddenly dropping out of school,
not working and being crazy.
She thought of herself less as a singer than
as a Svengali producer whose only client was
78

M AY 2 0 1 6

sa
a
w
I

e,
terribl child.
e
terribl harged
c
I was ssault
with a point,
at one ns
o
I did t s,
g
of dru eally,
r
I was bad.
really

GRIMES
herself: Phil Spector and The Ronettes
rolled into one. All my friends had
their own projects, so they didnt
want to work with me, she says. I tried
producing for other artists but Im so
bad at compromising and most of the
people that I like making music with are
also very bad at compromising.
Under deadline pressure, Boucher
made Visions, her first album for 4AD, in
a manic three-week blur, reconciling her
goth roots and lo-fi milieu with her new
Top 40 infatuation. Everyone around
me was like, Rihanna? I dont even
know any Rihanna songs. So I was on
this total roll where I felt super-separate
from everyone else.
Visions made Grimes popular on a
scale she never expected. There was a
lot of catching up that was very public,
she says. In the middle of 2013, burnt
out by touring and media attention, she
sacked her manager, purged her Tumblr and
experimented with writing for other people,
making the EDM-influenced Go for Rihanna
with her friend Mike Blood Diamonds
Tucker. After it was rejected, she released
her own version on SoundCloud, leading to
claims she was selling out. It was worth it,
though. I learned probably more during that
time than Ive ever learned, she says.
She retreated to rural Canada with her

In the top tier: (from left) Katy Perry, Grimes

and Rihanna, who she wrote Go for, LA, 2014.

boyfriend James Brooks (who makes music

as Default Genders), writing several songs
which she later scrapped. Only when the
couple moved to Los Angeles was she finally
able to begin Art Angels in earnest. I wanted
to start afresh. People were giving me a lot of
shit about getting it done. Everyone was like,
Put out an album, put out an album, and I
was like, No ones going to like this, but Im

CLAIRES ACCESSORIES

Her top trash-talkers and art angels

ONDA
OUSEY
Shes like me in
the sense that shes
in a mans world
and gets shit for
doing stuff her
male counterparts
do. Everyone in
UFC [Ultimate
Fighting
Championship] talks shit but
if she talks shit, shes a bitch
and everybody hates her.
I appreciate her existence.

AI WEIWEI

CORBIS, GETTY

I wanted to
start afresh:
Grimes looks
to the future,
Berlin, 2016.

Ai Weiwei is amazing, just

because he doesnt seem to
give a shit at all, even about
his personal safety. I think
hes probably one of the most
transgressive artists of
our generation.
Everything he
does is really
important and
very visible.

BURIAL
Burial is a really
big influence

on me because its essentially

dance music but he doesnt
party. Its really evocative, sad
music but its really physically
satisfying. Thats rad, those
two things co-existing. Im
always trying to go for that.

MARGARET ATWOOD
I just finished The
Handmaids Tale. I thought it
was a really scary book but
gorgeously written. A lot of
the sentences in it would be
good lyrics. Its extremely
poetic but matter-of-fact,
which is a hard balance.

ANDR 3000
When I first heard OutKasts
[Andr 3000, below] Bombs
Over Baghdad, I was aghast,
like, Holy fuck, Ive never
heard anything like
this! And I really
respect artists
who disappear.
If youre not
making your best
work, its good
to go away and
come back.

starting again, which was obviously

very stressful for everyone besides me.
Art Angels is Grimes kaleidoscopic
vision of pop music, swivelling through
K-pop, trance, Nine Inch Nails, Cyndi
Lauper, Dixie Chicks, Paramore and
Enya, striking a perfect balance of light
and darkness. Her lyrics are sometimes
obliquely political and often furious: the
single Flesh Without Blood is a blistering
attack on a former friend. Im not on
speaking terms with them but I feel like
they know, she says. Most of the songs
on this record are venting songs. Venting
songs are usually the best kind of songs.
She talks about crying from
exhaustion while working solitary
16-hour shifts in her unairconditioned
home studio, reworking songs until the
very last minute. She still feels that the
album isnt quite finished. I probably
would have worked on it forever, she says.
But for all the technical graft and know-how
that went into Art Angels, Boucher thinks
she owes the album to more ethereal forces,
hence the title. Its just this weird, intangible
thing that seems like its a gift or like its
coming from outside yourself, she says. Im
always chasing the voices of inspiration.
hat evening at the Astra
Kulturhaus, Grimes live show
resembles a feminist remake of an
early-90s rave PA. Flanked by two
dancers and the singer HANA,
Boucher is both the charismatic
frontwoman and the synthprodding gearhead. Whats
surprising is how anxious she
seems between songs. A cleanliving vegan, her only vice is one whisky
before each show, to steady her nerves.
Shes constantly apologising for her voice,
for performing the kind of controversial
Go, for not speaking German even though
the crowd worships her anyway.
In Mile Ends punk-minded scene
Boucher was the pop outlier; in the world of
pop she looks very much like the punk misfit.
She wants to keep moving and subverting
what you think you know about her. Her
future plans include a more stripped-down
album, film projects, political activism and
something that sounds expensive. It
depends how much money I can make
this year, she says bluntly.
Boucher seems so smart, curious
and driven, in such unconventional ways,
that theres no telling what shell do next.
Hopefully, one day she will have sufficiently
recovered from her online baptism of fire to
say what shes really thinking.
Oh yeah, she says with a wolfish
grin. Maybe 20 years from now Ill be a
bigger bitch. Once I retire Ill be talking
shit everywhere!
M AY 2 0 1 6

79

Just What Is
It That You
Want To
Do?

Higher than the sun:

(from left) Phillip Toby
Tomanov, Robert Throb
Young, Andrew Innes,
Bobby Gillespie and Martin
Duffy, New York, 1992.

GRANT FLEMING

PRIMAL
SCREAM
wanted to be
free. And they
wanted to get loaded.
Simon Goddard meets
Bobby Gillespie and
Andrew Innes to hear amazing,
unexpurgated tales of rocknroll survival
in extremely trying circumstances.

Part 1:

he smiles. We had an urge to make music but

we didnt know how to write songs. I called it
Primal Scream because that was literally what
we did. And its a cool name. Its one of the great
rocknroll names.
What began in a scout hall off Brownlie Street
in 1982 would become one of the most bizarre
and fascinating evolutions in music, shedding so
many skins that, today, many of those line-ups
cast aside seem the unrecognisable shrivels of a
different band. Primal Scream started as an
experiment, says Gillespie, and to me the band
remains that. Were an ongoing art experiment.
Thats the best way I can explain it.
Even before gaining fans in their first public
guise peddling meadow-skipping indie pop on
Creation Records the label set up by Gillespies
school friend and next-street neighbour Alan
McGee his destiny, and Primal Screams, would
twice be tested off-centre of stage. First in The
I used to do this. DUM-DUM-THUMP, DA DUM-DUM
Wake, a doomy Factory Records band formed by ex-Altered Images
THUMP! Or sometimes this one. THUMP DER-DUMguitarist Gerard Caesar McInulty, who roped him in as their AWOL
DUM, THUMP DER-DUM-DUM! Kinda more tribal.
bassists emergency replacement supporting New Order at Bristols
This morning Bobby Gillespie was on Chris Evanss
Trinity Hall in February 1982. Without any equipment of his own,
Radio 2 Breakfast Show (average audience: 9 million)
Gillespie nervously asked Pete Hook if he could
his. Hooky
playing songs from Primal Screams new album,
went, FOOK OFF! he laughs. Then a second
ourse you can.
Chaosmosis, alongside Michelle Collins, David Baddiel
What a beautiful guy. My first gig a
playing my heros actual bass
and Matt LeBlanc or as he calls him some guy from Friends. Not
from the Love Will Tear Us Apart
tood there, head down,
that Gillespie knows what Friends is. Because I havent watched TV
shitting ma fucking self, man!
in 30 years. But five hours later finds him slapping rhythms on a table
Abandoning The Wake, just as Gillespies own band found their
opposite Q in his labels Marylebone offices, re-enacting the bands
identity in his new sky blue Vox Phantom, Beatties Byrdsy 12-string
origins near Glasgows Hampden Park stadium in a breezeblock scout
pluckings and a wild rhythm section including the crucial addition
hall (average audience: zero). There, the 19-year-old Gillespie and his
of his other best friend and neighbour Robert Throb Young on bass,
friend Jim Beattie, whose mum kept the keys, would sneak in on an
fate intervened again. My teenage punk dream come true, swoons
evening, Gillespie on dustbin lids, Beattie on guitar and fuzzbox,
Gillespie of his year stood hitting snare and floor tom with feedbackspending the next few hours shrieking blue murder.
worshipping riot-magnets The Jesus And Mary Chain. You can see
Sometimes Id climb inside the ventilator shaft and play it with my
me in early Mary Chain photos and Im laughing. Im
tely
fists, he adds, going on to describe their ironic cover version of Chics
smashed on speed and vodka, but Im so happy. It wa
eing in the
Good Times, Beattie using a copy of PiLs Metal Box as a drum while
Pistols. I got my first passport because of the Mary Chain. I remember
Gillespie supplied a comically depressed vocal. Just taking the piss,
going to the passport office with [bassist] Douglas Hart, then going for
a cup of tea afterwards. And Douglas saying,
Its just like The Beatles. Were gonna
get leather trousers, were gonna tour
Germany, and when we get back well be
rocknroll stars. I was all wide-eyed and,
Dyou really think so? And he was right!
I loved being in that band like youll
never believe.
Gillespie hadnt foreseen that his
concurrent fringe-floppings in Primal
Scream would ever be a problem. And
then [singer] Jim Reid rang me up and said,
You cant be in two bands, you have to
make a choice. In retrospect it might look
like I made the right one but at the time it
was very, very hard. I knew the Mary Chain
were better than Primal Scream by 10
universes. But I also knew I wasnt a
drummer and I had to express myself in
other ways. And I believed Primal Scream
might, one day, be good in the future. But
even after I left, it wasnt easy. I even went
to see them at Barrowlands, he chuckles,
Shouldnt you be at school, Bobby?
stood with everyone else in the crowd
Gillespie (far left) gets his musical
when a year before Id been onstage.
start in The Wake, Glasgow, 1982.
Suddenly thinking, Aww, shit!

IN THE
BEGINNING:
1982-1989

M AY 2 0 1 6

PAUL SLATTERY, MIKE LAYE, PAUL GROOVY, PHOTOSHOT

82

WE DIDNT
KNOW HOW TO
WRITE SONGS.
I CALLED IT
PRIMAL SCREAM
BECAUSE THAT
WAS LITERALLY
WHAT WE DID.
Bobby Gillespie
Movin on up: (clockwise, from below) Gillespie
drums for The Jesus And Mary Chain, London,
1984; in Portugal to film the video for the Mary
Chains Some Candy Talking, 1986; an early Primal
Scream flyer from 1983; playing his first ever gig
as Primal Scream, with Jim Beattie, London, 1983.

atching Gillespies callow progress from the

wings was another of his and McGees old
friends, guitarist Andrew Innes, who first
led the Creation bosss exodus from
Glasgow to London. Today he meets Q in a
North London pub, a genial pixie-like Scot
wearing a Lennon cap and Ramones man-bag, first setting the record
straight that, contrary to McGees 2013 autobiography Creation
Stories, hes still in possession of both his kidneys. Aye, he chortles,
though theyve taken a pounding.
It was McGees idea to add the more musically experienced
Innes to Primal Scream, who by 1987 were wasting Smiths producer
Stephen Streets time and McGees money in a fruitless residency at
Rockfield Studios in Wales. That first album was worse than any trip
to the dentist, and it lasted three weeks, says Innes. When I got there

I realised that all their songs were in the wrong key for Bobs vocals.
When I told them they said, Whats a key? Their drummer couldnt
keep time. It was fundamental, basic stuff. Eventually finished
without Street, 1987s atypical debut Sonic Flower Groove pitched
Primal Scream as a gently psychedelic beat group. Except, as
M AY 2 0 1 6

83

Ah, happy memories:

Gillespie with the Primals
debut 1987 album, Sonic
Flower Groove.

THAT FIRST
ALBUM WAS
WORSE THAN
ANY TRIP TO
THE DENTIST,
AND IT LASTED
THREE WEEKS.
Andrew Innes
Gillespie understates, it wasnt very sexy; a shortfall even its sleeve
featuring his leather chaps from a gay sex shop couldnt fix.
The albums failure prompted Beatties exit, as it did the Screams
next shift from capricious jangly indie to rambunctious garage punk
coinciding with Gillespie and Youngs move south to Brighton. There,
alienated by the local indie nights, they started their own at the
seafront Escape Club, calling it Slut. We had this fucking cool poster
of Brian Jones in his Nazi uniform, says Gillespie. Only Brighton was
a fairly radical leftist town back then, so feminists would go around
ripping them down because it said SLUT in massive letters.
84

M AY 2 0 1 6

Between the liberal-baiting dramas of Slut, Gillespie with Innes

and Throb, both now on guitars, wrote Primal Screams eponymous
second LP as a trio, their heads in a sand of 60s Red Bird compilations
and Johnny Thunders. To me, its our girl-group punk record,
says Innes, agreeing that its reputation as tuneless sweaty metal is
inaccurate. Half of it was ballads. But even McGee didnt like the
album, and he put it out. He used to despair of it. Nobody liked it.
Somebody did, though. One Audrey Witherspoon by pen-name:
a fanzine writer and club DJ from Windsor who was about to change
Primal Screams lives. And with it, the future sound of music.

Part 2:

TOM SHEEHAN, CHRIS CLUNN

REVOLUTIONARY
SCREAMADELICA:
1989-1992
Even before recording
1989s universally
ignored Primal Scream
album, the rhythm of
their destiny was already
bothering Gillespies
eardrums, not that
hed listen. Wed have parties in
Brighton, he reminisces. Wed be
taking speed or magic mushrooms
with super lager, getting wasted,
playing New York Dolls on the stereo.
Alan and [press officer] Jeff Barrett
would be there on Ecstasy, but we
never knew what that was, and theyd
be freaking out listening to the Dolls,
having a really bad trip. Then theyd
put on this weird electronic music
with black girls singing and wed go,
What the fuck is this SHIT? Turn it
OFF! It got really aggressive. And
this went on all night.
Gillespie hadnt yet tried Ecstasy.
In 1988, one 25 tab was the best part
of a weeks dole. Ecstasy was a rich
mans drug, he nods. McGee, on the
other hand, was enjoying the advance
from a major deal with Creations The
House Of Love and the freedom of
newly divorced life in Manchester,
taking to The Haiendas E-popping
acid house party like a game of
Hungry Hippos. Alan was constantly
proselytising about acid house and Ecstasy, says Gillespie. Hed be,
Youve GOT to listen to this music. He wouldnt stop.
In a concerted effort at pharmaceutical baptism, on Sunday,
4 December, 1988, McGee took Gillespie and his girlfriend to see
Happy Mondays play Brightons Zap Club. After buying supplies from
Shaun Ryder backstage, McGee gave Gillespie his first E. I took it, and
it never worked, he laughs. I just remember sitting with Alan in a
cold flat thinking, So, whens it gonna start? The drugs didnt work.
But then Alan started throwing these parties at the Creation offices in
Hackney where hed go, Open your mouth, then throw some Ecstasy
down, blaring Ten City on the stereo. Then we started going to the
clubs and suddenly I got it. What I loved was that it was underground,
outlaw, illicit, dangerous, sexy, and the mainstream never knew about
it. And the music was futuristic and new and had nothing to do with
rock. It was fucking everything I was waiting for. The first time since
punk there was youth culture in Britain that really was revolutionary.

he chances of
Gillespie ever
bridging the chasm
between the new
repetitive tempos of
his nightlife and the
Screams smoking-Marshallstack ruckus seemed slim.
But unbeknownst to him,
working the decks of one of
his favourite haunts, Shoom,
the Kensington club whose
original smiley face flyer
became the emblem of acid
house, was that solitary fan
of their second album.
To look at Andrew
Weatherall in 1989, maybe
that wasnt surprising.
Weatherall had long hair
and tattoos, describes Innes.
And he loved Thin Lizzy.
Thats how we bonded. He
was the only DJ who remotely
liked us, and he totally
understood where we were
coming from. Initially
coerced by Barrett to write a
favourable Audrey
Witherspoon review of a gig
in Exeter, Weatheralls
kindred rocknroll spirit
solicited their offer to apply
his DJ skills to a remix B-side
of their next single. It helped
that it was Weatheralls
favourite on the album, the
cheaters soul plea Im Losing
More Than Ill Ever Have.
The funny thing is
herall hadnt done a
emix by himself
before, says Innes.
Coming together:
He loved the song so
(above) the band in
1990, with Andrew
much that his first
Weatherall (bottom
attempt was too
right), the man
espectful. Im always
who turned Im
uoted
as telling him,
Losing More Than
st fucking destroy it.
Ill Ever Have
at, really, was the gist.
(right) into Loaded.
d then he realised.
The scene of destruction was a lean-to shed against a Greek caf
a short walk from Blackhorse Road station in Walthamstow. Bark
Studios, grins Innes. It used to have an advert in the back of the
papers, Londons Cheapest 24-track. Typical Creation Records.
Engineering the session for Weatherall and Innes was Brian
OShaughnessy, whose claim to pop fame was the voice of Scotty on
The Firms 1987 novelty Number 1 Star Trekkin. He used to say,
Im the little potato in the video, says Innes. Lovely guy. His one
treat was a wee half of cider at the end of the day that he kept in the
fridge. If you ever drank it, and sometimes, speeding or whatever,
we might, he went fucking mad.
M AY 2 0 1 6

85

ACID HOUSE WAS

UNDERGROUND,
OUTL
,
DAN
SEXY,
MAINSTREAM
NEVER KNEW
ANYTHING
ABOUT IT. IT WAS
EVERYTHING I WAS
WAITING FOR.
Bobby Gillespie

Now were talking:

Gillespie shows
off his bands 1991
breakthrough
masterpiece,
Screamadelica.

Gillespie knew that he wanted dialogue on the remix, having

already experimented with samples three years earlier: buried in
the outro of their 1986 B-side Spirea X is an uncredited snippet of
Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. But for the Weatherall
track he was torn between two choices, bringing both to the session.
One was a bootleg video of Roger Cormans 1966 biker film The Wild
Angels starring Peter Fonda. Innes had to drag his VHS recorder from
his flat in Bethnal Green to the studio where, without a monitor, they
lined up the chosen scene from the LED counter. The other possible
sample, Gillespie refuses to name. It was from an album and weve
never used it to this day, but nor has anybody else. We may yet.
Weatherall was given the casting vote, plumping for Fondas speech
from The Wild Angels as the stronger of Gillespies contenders. In

Scr

ol

A HISTORY OF
PRIMAL SCREAM
IN 20 SONGS
86

M AY 2 0 1 6

doing so, he inadvertently supplied the records title: We wanna be

free to do what we wanna do And we wanna get loaded.
Loaded struck a joyous musical co-ordinate where the longitude of
punk rebellion intersected the latitude of acid house utopia, the dream
collision of rocknroll and clubland that Gillespie and Innes had been
praying for. Completed in the last weeks of the 1980s, it sounded like
nothing of its time, even if its step-down melody did ring ancient bells
of The Rolling Stones Sympathy For The Devil. The latter wasnt lost
on the humid masses at Ladbroke Groves Subterania, the first to hear
Loaded at the end of Weatheralls DJ set the week before Christmas
1989. I was there wandering along the balcony, watching the
dancefloor below, says Innes. Right away, 500 people started
punching the air going, [the Stones] Wooh! Wooh! People were

VELOCITY
GIRL

(B-side of Crystal
Crescent, 1986)
The indie-schmindie
Scream Mk 1s finest
82 seconds. The Stone
Roses famously pinched
Gillespies vocal melody
for Made Of Stone.

SO SAD
ABOUT US

(B-side of Imperial, 1987)

Atmospheric Who
cover, its stripped-down
country slide-guitar
arrangement awakes
the dirtier, Stonesier
Scream to come.

IM LOSING
MORE THAN ILL
EVER HAVE

(Primal Scream, 1989)

Standout soul ballad
from unpopular second
album. Somewhere
within its epic outro
the genie of Loaded
begs to be released.

surrounding Weatherall afterwards going crazy. Martin

Fry from ABC was there and came straight up to me and
said, Is this your record? Its fucking unbelievable! So
I knew straightaway. When I got home to my flat I rang
up Bob and told him, I think weve got a hit.
They had. Flipped to the A-side, within a month of its
February 1990 release, its Top 20 success ushered Primal
Screams primetime TV debut. Our first Top Of The
Pops we all took Ecstasy, says Gillespie. We thought,
Its Loaded, so obviously weve gotta be loaded. Classic
Creation, we had to get the Tube there. After wed
finished, the rest of the band fucked off
and I was left in the studio. I remember
running down this BBC corridor trying to
get out of the building and I was so out of
it I smashed into a glass door. Inspiral
Carpets were watching me from the other
side and came over to help me back up.
Then I kept running and ended up on the
street outside thinking, Where am I?

TOM SHEEHAN, GRANT FLEMING

here Gillespie
was at the start
of 1990 was
alien territory.
For the first
time in the
bands existence, Primal Scream were
loved by the general public. With the
possible exception of the late Errol
Brown who tried to sue for Loadeds
dead-ringer of a shared hook with Hot
Chocolates 1971 single You Couldve
Been A Lady. As the old saying goes,
where theres a hit theres a writ, notes Innes. Gillespie also
remembers an embarrassed encounter with Soul II Souls Jazzie B.
I was like this, he laughs, hands over his face, cos we nicked his beat
for Loaded. Well, Nellee Hoopers beat.
An increased budget for their next single meant swapping the
shed in Walthamstow for the spacious Jam Studios, a short walk
from Finsbury Park station. A beautiful stucco-fronted villa,
recalls Innes of their home for the duration of sessions that became
1991s Screamadelica, adding that, contrary to myth, the Sgt Pepper
of the E generation wasnt the product of non-stop revelry. McGee
exaggerates that we only worked Tuesdays. If that had been the case
wed never have got it done. It was a party but after, not in, the studio.
Proceedings got off to a comically chaotic start nevertheless. The
first week at Jam, McGees Creation partner Richard Green rang up to
check their progress only to be told that, alas, the band couldnt come
to the phone because they were comatose on the studio floor. The
drummer turned up with some crazy drug, explains Gillespie. He
chopped it up and said, Snort this. I said, What is it? And he goes, It
doesnt matter, Keith Moon used to take it. And him, me, Throb and
4

LOADED

(Screamadelica, 1991)
A genuine revolution
when it first appeared
in February 1990.
The moment Primal
Scream turned from
black and white to
Technicolor.

HIGHER THAN
THE SUN

(Screamadelica, 1991)
The euphoria of
Ecstasy made into
music not as a
thumping floor-filler
but a transcendental
electronic hymn
of pure bliss.

I was Screamlagged:
(above) on tour in Japan,
October, 1991; (left)
filming the video for
Come Together, 1990.

Innes all took it and just went DOOF!

straight down. We were out for the count
for hours. Ive still no idea what it was.
Keith Moondust was the first of
many setbacks making August 1990s
Come Together, from arguments over
the respective mixes by Weatherall and
Terry Farley to the sleeve, designed by
Lawrence, the singer from Creation
indie spooks Felt under his chosen alias,
the Shanghai Packaging Company.
I hated it, groans Gillespie. I told
McGee to bin it, and he said, We cant,
weve pressed up 100,000. Crap sleeve
or not, the single was another hit: radio
opting for the Farley version while
Weatheralls blissed-out gospel mix ignited the clubs. Once again,
Innes witnessed its unveiling at a rave in the unlikely setting of the
Queen Mothers Windsor estate. Weatherall used to throw some
great parties on the reservoir there. Ive no idea how he hired it.
But that was the first time he played Come Together and instantly
everybody started holding hands. It was an amazing reaction.
Gillespie was much prouder of their next single, June 1991s
Higher Than The Sun, a love song to Ecstasy right down to the run-out
groove message: I get mine for 15s, referring to the 15 discount
price he paid for 20 Es. We released that as a statement, knowing it
wouldnt be a hit, he says. Its a piece of art.
The album almost finished, in a last farcical twist the entire
contents of Jam studios were stolen overnight by its debt-ridden
owner. Unbelievable, laughs Innes. They nicked everything. Mixing
desk, lightbulbs, wiring, and the tapes of the last song, which we had to
redo. I think it was Im Coming Down. Which is pretty fitting.
Just as the Sex Pistols Never Mind The Bollocks arrived in October
1977 as punk was dying an epitaph for the zeitgeist it defined so too
Screamadelica encapsulated a moment in British youth culture that,
6

OVIN ON UP

Screamadelica, 1991)
Arguably the best,
narguably the best
oved of the Screams
many Stones-isms.
The Hallelujah Chorus
meets Bo Diddley
n Exile On Main St.

ROCKS

(Give Out But Dont

Give Up, 1994)
Love it or loathe it, with
the Screams salute to
wild living (those, er,
strip joints full of
hunchbacks included)
they fashioned an
enduring party anthem.

M AY 2 0 1 6

87

by its release in September 1991, was over. In the enduringly divine

vibes of Primal Screams third LP, it got the send-off it deserved.
By the end of 91, all the light had started to disappear, says
Gillespie. Amongst my circle, it went from Ecstasy to coke to heroin.
From all that joy and optimism to negation. We were like that [raises
hand to ceiling], then we were like that [drops it below his knees]. It was
money and drugs. The fucking clich. Same as every band.
The depressing change in the bands literal chemistry was painfully
evident when this magazine reported on the Screamadelica tour at
Glasgow Barrowlands on 13 October, 1991. Promised an interview by
Creation publicist Laurence Verfaille, journalist Miranda Sawyer was
taken into their indiscreet dressing room Babylon. We were nave,
says Gillespie, who can quote her subsequent Q report listing their
backstage drugs menu word perfect. She mentioned methadone
and wrote a soporific heroin substitute in brackets. By the time
Sawyer finally got her interview the following morning, Gillespie had
been up all night, taking speed in this flat full of students, trying to
freak them out, playing Junkyard by The Birthday Party at full blast.
The finished piece as printed in the December 1991 issue of Q painted
a comic, if explicit, portrait of a man seemingly glugging down a
Class-A plughole, describing his band as quite heroin-y and singing
f Japanese crystal meth.
ecollection is that,
n back from Japan, he
a casualty of fatigue than
as worse than jetlagged.
amlagged!
madelica would go on to
lion copies, winning the
al Mercury Music Prize
Gillespie didnt attend
mony at the Savoy, but
he after-party at the flat
ons Tim Abbot shared
Duran Duran guitarist
Taylor. He lived in a
t, says Innes. It had a
f map of the world on the
and when you pressed a
ton all the capital cities lit
I remember thinking, So
s is what Rio buys you.
is notorious Screamlore,
mewhere between the
avoy, the Milk Bar in Soho
nd Duran towers the band
ost their 20,000 prize
cheque. At least they could
Its chaosmosis! Celebrating their
phone up the next day for
1992 Mercury Music Prize win in
a new one. A remedy not
inimitably messy style, featuring
so easily repeated when,
Martin Duffy (middle pic) holding
he
years to come, Primal
the soon-to-go-missing cheque.
eam lost their minds.
8

TRAINSPOTTING
(Vanishing Point, 1997)
Written for the 1996
film soundtrack, an
eerie eight-minute Lalo
Schifrin-goes-dub
groove announcing
the Scream reborn,
yet again.

KOWALSKI

(Vanishing Point, 1997)

Only the Scream could
think of releasing this
twisted non-song as a
single. Only Creation
would let them.
A vindicating Top 10
hit for both.

10

Part 3:

B
A
TH

M AY 2 0 1 6

199 -2013

HOW DOES
IT FEEL TO
BELONG?

(B-side of Star, 1997)

Painfully introspective
Velvetsy guitar ballad.
My life is full of dirt,
croaks Gillespie, who
wishes hed included this

on Vanishing Point.

88

...

11

MBV ARKESTRA

(XTRMNTR, 2000)
First issued as a chartineligible EP in 1998,
in experimental terms
Kevin Shieldss free-jazz
remix of Vanishing
Points If They Move,
Kill Em is a career high.

12

SWASTIKA EYES

(XTRMNTR, 2000)
Parasitic, youre
syphilitic! Gillespies
violent take on Moroder
disco where I Feel Love
becomes a scathing antiauthority I Feel Hate.

GRANT FLEMING, NEAL COOPER, PENNIE SMITH

IT WENT FROM
ECSTASY TO COKE
TO HEROIN. SAME
#5'8'4;$#0&q
$QDD[)KNNGURKG

pointless cover versions. Wed start about midnight,

playing absolute rubbish, says Innes. The myth I know
is that McGee rang us one day and said, Youve got a
great song called Rocks. And I went, Have we? I didnt
Totally trucked: (main
know what he was talking about.
picture and right) Gillespie
McGee and our manager thought if they booked a
drinks in the rocknroll
studio
wed have to write songs, Gillespie elaborates.
vibes out in the US, 1993.
And, of course, all we did was wait for Liam [Maher]
from Flowered Up to come along with the heroin and
In the summer of 1992, Bobby Gillespie was still living in
the crack, or the cocaine so they could make crack. We had Jimmy
Brighton, trying to marshal Primal Scream into writing
Miller, the Stones producer, working with us. Jimmy lasted about a
the follow-up to Screamadelica at a local studio without
week and then he was on smack as well. Then we stopped working
success. Nobody turned up, he says. And when people
with Jimmy and Hugo Nicolson came in to engineer and he lost his
did turn up it was when they knew a certain guy would
mind too. Surrendering all hope, the Scream charitably donated their
come and hed sell most of the band heroin there. Hed tell
remaining prepaid studio time to their friends, Flowered Up. We
me to wait in the corner and when done selling the heroin
couldnt get it together so we offered it to them, but they couldnt get
hed come over and sell me speed. Wed do the drugs and go into the
it together either, laughs Innes. That sums up the times perfectly.
studio and jam for 20 minutes. Then all the London guys would say
y the spring of 1993, the Scream had somehow managed
they had to get back. Throb only lived 10 minutes away, but hed say,
to scrape together enough material for the bones of a
Im splitting too. So Id lock up the studio by myself, on speed, and
fourth album. Their best bet was Rocks, its chorus
walk through the lanes in Brighton, going to second-hand stores, then
popping into Gillespies head one summers night walking
back to my house and play records. We did that for a whole summer.
along Western Road in Brighton with his girlfriend, later
McGees solution to the Screams grim junkie torpor was to pen
mutating from Throbs original AC/DC style riff into a
them in the capital nearer to Creation HQ, booking the Roundhouse
stomping thumbs-in-belthooks boogie. McGee had already earmarked
Studio, situated in an office block beside the iconic Chalk Farm venue.
it a hit, before throwing caution and Creation budget to the wind,
A fatal mistake, says Andrew Innes. We had nothing to offer.
allowing them to follow their Muscle Shoals Southern soul dream and
It was a total waste of money. In London, the drug-taking only
record the album in Memphis. The flawed logic was that in Tennessee
increased, the futile Roundhouse residency eventually dubbed
theyd be unable to score drugs. The first American we met off the
The Brownhouse as, according to McGee, the bands productivity
plane was a guy at the car hire wearing a High Times cap, says Innes.
amounted to smoking heroin, watching The Simpsons and recording

13

KILL ALL HIPPIES

(XTRMNTR, 2000)
Their best dialogue
sample after Loaded,
Linda Manzs punk
preachings from Dennis
Hoppers Out Of The
Blue inspires a fierce
hip-hop war march.

14

RISE

(Evil Heat, 2002)

Renamed from Bomb
The Pentagon after
9/11, a bass-ripping
monster achieving
Gillespies brief to Kevin
Shields of PiL meets
The Plastic Ono Band.

15

SOME VELVET
MORNING

(Evil Heat, 2002)

Gillespie duets with
Kate Moss. I wanted it
like Serge Gainsbourg
and Jane Birkin, he
says. Only Moss is more
like Serge Gainsbourg.
A real libertine.

16

COUNTRY GIRL

(Riot City Blues, 2006)

Proving Rocks was
no fluke, another
back-to-basics
rocknroll stomper.
Reaching Number 5,
the Screams highest
charting single to date.

M AY 2 0 1 6

89

The agony and the ecstasy:

(from left) filming the video
for Kowalski, 1997; Innes
and Gillespie, onstage in
Birmingham, 2011; in 1999,
with Mani (third left) and
Kevin Shields (right).

I HATED MYSELF. I HATED

THE BAND. I HATED
THE MUSIC WE WERE
PLAYING. I JUST REMEMBER
THINKING: WHATS
THE F**KING POINT?
Bobby Gillespie

We all walked in and went, Ach, hell be

The Guy. And if hes not The Guy hell
certainly know somebody who is.
When youre in that world it doesnt
take long to spot like-minded souls.
The band were familiar with Memphis
from a previous visit recording 1992s
Dixie-Narco EP, already making the
acquaintance of photographer William
Eggleston whose 1980 image of a palm tree
and neon confederate flag would grace
the new album sleeve. He was a total
rocknroll character, says Gillespie. He
used to walk around Memphis in an SS uniform in the 1960s. When we
met him he said, Yall those guys that shit onstage? For some reason
he thought we were [scatological punk] GG Allin. Then he played us
Robert B
on his piano. His wife was in a negligee out cold on
the sofa
joking hed put Dilaudid in her pudding. It was
total Te
liams Southern gothic. At one point he was
walking
ing an American Civil War rifle with a bayonet
on it. The guys a fucking legend, man.
Their Memphis summer of 93 was rich in similar incidents. One
working demo was allegedly ruined when Throb spilt a bottle of Jack
Daniels on the master tape. Away from the studio, Innes was ejected
from the grounds of Graceland for vomiting on the lawn: as he told the
man handling security, First time since the King! Yeah, thats true,
Innes confirms. But its always funny being in Primal Scream.
It might be quite dark humour but, generally, it is a laugh.
Indicative of the Screams black comedy, one afternoon Gillespie
and Innes found themselves buckled with hysterics at the expense of a
life-threatening injury to keyboard player Martin Duffy. Throb and
Duffy had been partying in New York, says Gillespie. They were
meant to be back in Memphis to hear some mixes when the phone goes.
And its Throb, screaming, DUFFYS BEEN SHOT IN THE ARSE!
And of course we start laughing. Then Throb goes mental, yelling,
ITS NOT FUCKING FUNNY! HES BLEEDING TO DEATH!

(Riot City Blues, 2006)

A harmonica-wailing
country gospel vibe
drives Gillespies
serenade to
redemption most
likely his own
imminent sobriety.

90

M AY 2 0 1 6

18

HE GLORY
OF LOVE

(Beautiful Future, 2008)

The going-clean Gillespie
lost his focus and with
it the Screams mojo,
this being the tuneful
best of an otherwise
forgettable album.

19

2013

(More Light, 2013)

The welcome return
of Angry Bobby, as
coached by producer
David Holmes, surfing a
nine-minute psychedelic
post-punk state of the
nation dirge.

20

AUTUMN IN
PARADISE

(Chaosmosis, 2016)
The Primal Scream of
now: all pristine pop
melodies with an older,
wiser Gillespie weeping
for (rather than raging
at) the worlds ills.

TOM SHEEHAN, ANDREW CATLIN, REX, CAMERA PRESS

17

SOMETIMES I
FEEL SO LONELY

The truth, as subsequently pieced together, was that Duffy had

visited a friends apartment where he fell off a ladder, breaking a glass
coffee table. Nobody realised hed sliced his backside until hours later,
sat in a bar with Throb and manager Alex Nightingale, when a stranger
politely informed them, Your friend is bleeding all over the floor.
Rushed to hospital by ambulance, with Duffy unable to explain the
suspicious wound, medics called the police. Throb and Nightingale
still had it in their heads that they had to get Duffy back to Memphis to
hear the mixes, continues Gillespie. So they took him from the
hospital, still in his gown, and tried to get on a plane at JFK. The gate
security took one look at them and went, No fucking way! Then they
started screaming at the airport staff and got thrown out. And thats
when Throb rang us up, fucking deranged.
Doomed to immediate obsolescence in the Britpop spring of 1994,
Give Out But Dont Give Up betrayed the chaos of its creation:
a pittance of good tunes lost in rock clichs and some jarring funk
workouts notable only for the prestigious stamp of producer George
Clinton. As McGee predicted, Rocks was a hit, so too the similar
barroom boot-scooter Jailbird. It was petty commercial compensation
for an album that took two giant backward steps after the brave new
leap of Screamadelica. By the time Gillespie realised the errors of his
bands thinking, or lack of it, it was too late. Suddenly, I was
depressed, he says. It had gotten to the point where if we went on

I was having problems and invited me

for lunch and when I got there he said,
Youre staying with me. I had to go to
his place in Wales to come off drugs
because I was pretty gone. It wasnt a
breakdown. I just needed some rest.
As it turned out, the casualty of
Primal Scream wasnt Gillespie but
their seemingly invincible rocknroll
wildman Throb. By 2002s Evil Heat,
his studio contribution was already erratic. Though he relished their
garage-rock flashback with 2006s Riot City Blues, it would be his last
with the band. Eight years later, on 9 September, 2014, he was found
dead at his Hove home, aged 49. Gillespie still finds it difficult to talk
about the childhood friend they lost to substance abuse, respectfully
asking Qs tape to be turned off for a few minutes. So does Innes,
visibly saddened. Its tragic, and it still hurts, Innes says. If you want
to know what happened, just Google addiction, because he was a
classic case. But he was an incredible musician, and we had the best
times. The summer before he died, we had a day out in Brighton with
Duffy. The three of us went searching for the Primal Scream star on the
Walk Of Fame by the marina, but someone had nicked it. We had a
great laugh. Those are my memories of Robert.

tour again, this guys gonna kill himself, this guys gonna have a
breakdown, this guys gonna leave his wife. It just seemed to make
people go crazy. I hated myself. I hated the band. I hated the music we
were playing. I just remember thinking, Whats the fucking point?

he salvation of Primal Scream was their lease of Das

Bunker, a studio in Primrose Hill where the group, now
reduced to Gillespie, Innes, Duffy and the musically vital if
increasingly unreliable Throb found the will, as Gillespie
puts it, to deconstruct the band and start from nothing.
It helped that hed escaped his misery in Brighton, moving
to a nearby flat in NW3, nourishing his muse on dub reggae, free jazz,
Krautrock and underground hip-hop, all elements craftily combined
on 1997s triumphant Vanishing Point. Arguably their best album, in
direct contrast to its predecessor its genre-clashing experimentalism
showed up the lagging Britpop generation as tired and regressive.
I remember Liam [Gallagher] didnt like it, laughs Gillespie. Hed
be round our studio going, Whatve you fookin gone all scary for?
Vanishing Point also boasted the invigorating late addition of Mani,
fresh from the wreckage of The Stone Roses at Reading 96, the
vivacious bassist cajoling a cautious Gillespie to go back on the road.
By the time My Bloody Valentine guitarist Kevin Shields jumped aboard
for 2000s savage XTRMNTR, Primal Scream were, in Gillespies
opinion, the best fucking live band in the world. Sadly, the strains of
Gillespies resumed touring lifestyle were already crying for help in his
disturbed shouts of Sick! Fuck! closing the XTRMNTR track Pills.
The songs target: himself. That was written after being in Japan on
the ice, freebasing crystal meth. You take it and you feel like Robocop,
like you could take on a whole battalion of police. The comedown is
you feel like youve been kicked in by 20 people. The worst feeling in
the world. Psychically and physically I was in a really bad place.
Back in London, Gillespies worsening behaviour worried the
newly-sober McGee into an act of intervention. Q asks if Gillespie
would classify his experience as a nervous breakdown?
No, he says after careful thought. I had to get out of a
relationship and I was doing a HELL of a lot of drugs. McGee could see

illespie himself finally sobered up in 2008, the year

of Manis last Scream album before his summons
to reunite the Roses. Neither Gillespie nor Innes
rouse much enthusiasm discussing the polished
but hollow Beautiful Future, the former blaming
record company politics and his own askew focus at
the outset of recovery. I finally stopped taking drugs and drinking, so
it was a difficult period for me, says Gillespie. The ideas werent fully
realised. But youve got to make those records to get to the next stage.
Youve got to make Dirty Work to get to Steel Wheels?
Aye!
Thankfully, their decision to revisit Screamadelica for a
20th-anniversary tour in 2011 helped rekindle their fire, keenly felt on
2013s More Light, a welcome return to their best experimental form
under the inspired production of David Holmes. Touring the LP saw
them play a rapturous show at Londons Roundhouse, next door to
the scene of their narcotic oblivion two decades earlier. The distance:
only a couple of yards. The journey between: the stuff of legend.

Jukebox judge and jury:

with 1997s emphatic
return to form,
Vanishing Point.
M AY 2 0 1 6

91

Part 4:

certain people around the band who delighted in that behaviour

and kind of promoted it at the expense of the music. And Im to
blame as well. Talking about drugs and all that shit. I probably
shouldnt have done.
Even if he yet struggles to be photographed without looking like a
man just sentenced to life in Shawshank, throughout his many hours
with Q Gillespie has been gracious, repeatedly funny and enthrallingly
candid company. Only once does he bristle, just slightly, when asked if
given his very open comments about being at war with myself hes
ever sought professional counselling?
I dont want to talk about this in an interview, he says with a
shake of the head, hastily adding that he believes in free mental health
care for all. But, no, I dont see anyone. I mean, I have. Of course
when you quit taking drugs, youve got to try everything, and it was
helpful. But not any more.

HERE
&
T
NOW

92

M AY 2 0 1 6

TOM SHEEHAN, BBC

aken at face value, the lyrics of Chaosmosis, the

Screams new, largely electronic pop album co-produced
by Swedens Bjrn Yttling with cameos from Sky Ferreira
and Haim, might suggest Gillespie is still battling his
demons. But when Q speculates it sounds like a midlife
crisis disco album, the husband and father of two is quick
to laugh off any autobiographical specifics. Im happily married!
So what accounts for its many narratives of emotional separation
and loneliness?
Im a 50-year-old guy. Ive lived, yknow? he reasons. I dont
write love songs. Theyre all dislocated. So Im using the form of a
It was the same beat in the Mary Chain. DA DUM-DUMlove song writing about the inability to make a connection with
THUMP! And were back in Marylebone, February 2016,
another human being. You want to love and be loved, but everybody
the 53-year-old Bobby Gillespie drumming on the table
has such great difficulty achieving that. So theyre not teen romance
top in a nostalgic reverie. Its the end of Qs long week
songs. Its more the pain of, How do you make this work? I dunno
living through Primal Screams past and two things
if people are even meant to live together. We have relationships,
become clear. One is that Gillespie is still their biggest fan,
we start families, we do all these different social things to give
raving about their 1997 single Star featuring Augustus
meaning to our lives. But sometimes it seems completely meaningless,
Pablo on melodica like a giddy teenager. Even the B-sides on that
no matter how hard you try.
single, he enthuses, recommending Q Googles the song Jesus, a Lou
A lot of the songs seem to be about self-acceptance, particularly
Reedish makeover of Give Out But Dont Give Ups Ill Be There For
the pensive folk ballad Private Wars. At this age in your life, do you
You. How we shouldve done that song in the first place, he says.
know who you are?
Throbs playing on that, man. Pure talent. Just beautiful.
Yeah, he ponders. I think I know who I am. In the last eight
The other is that, for the same reason, Gillespie doesnt appreciate
years Ive definitely grown up a little bit. My wife would disagree.
the infamous tales of the Brownhouse, bleeding bum-cheeks and
But, yeah, Im kinda alright. Ive still got a lot of the same, inabilities.
his millennial meltdown all unavoidable in telling the incredible
Im a dissociated person. I dissociated really young to protect myself,
story of Primal Scream detracting from the music he loves. I do get
and I never really came back. Its kinda helped protect me but at the
frustrated, he sighs. All the crazy nonsense, it overrides the art. But I
same time its kept me from really involving myself in life. And I think
think sometimes weve only got ourselves to blame. In the past we had
taking drugs further dissociated me and thats part of the reason
I loved them. But, nah. Ive kind of accepted that
I am the way I am. Im alright, yknow?
Now in his fourth decade with Primal
Scream, Gillespies faith in rocknroll is clearly
undiminished. Midway through our first
interview in his publicists office he takes
a break to inspect a coffee-table book of
Stones photographs, cooing over the young
Keith Richardss footwear, ever the starry-eyed
apostle. Remembering the morning Bowie died,
he says he ran downstairs and played Rebel
Rebel full blast, tears streaming down his face.
Thinking about everything he and his band
have survived, Q wants to ask if giving his
whole life to rocknroll has been worth it?
Only we never quite get to finish the question. At
Youve given your life to rocknroll Gillespie
Rise and shine! A clearly delighted
raises his right fist aloft with a victorious shake
Scream team join Chris Evans
and holds it there, laughing through the daftest
(centre) and some guy from
smile his face can muster. Like he says, as did
Friends (far right) at Radio 2.
Marc Bolan: Bobbys alright.

You hum it, son, Ill play it:

the Scream frontman with
Chaosmosis, his bands latest
LP, The Boogaloo, Highgate,
London, 22 February, 2016.

ALL THE CRAZY NONSENSE,

IT OVERRIDES THE ART. BUT
I THINK SOMETIMES WEVE
ONLY GOT OURSELVES TO
BLAME. AND IM TO BLAME
AS WELL. Bobby Gillespie

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& e Wo
Be rld
st M s B
usi igge
c G st
uid
e

The
100 WOLF ALICE

London alt-rockers defy their

underdogs status and come
out on top in Cologne.

102 PJ
HARVEY

115 M83

The French electropop auteurs

magnifique new LP.

Polly Harveys new

LP is her most
ambitious yet. But
would you want to
listen to it?

SIMON SARIN

HOW WE REVIEW
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M AY 2 0 1 6

97

LIVE
Take me to church:
Florence Welch greets
the faithful, St John at
Hackney, 26 February, 2016.

PREACHING
TO THE
CONVERTED
Even at a stripped-down show in
a church, euphoria takes over.

FLORENCE
+ THE MACHINE
ST JOHN AT HACKNEY, LONDON,
FRIDAY, 26 FEBRUARY, 2016
####

gig in a church seems

like the perfect setting
for Florence + The
Machine to take stock,
midway through the
mammoth tour to support third album
How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful.
They have had 12 months defined by
random acts of God.
For someone whose songs take
shape from the shards of emotional
fragility, Florence Welch has no doubt
enjoyed the irony of how the success
of How Big was propelled by broken
bones. First, a fractured foot sustained
onstage at Coachella in April forced
her to approach a series of comeback
shows from a whole new angle Welch
was laid bare without the comfort
blanket of theatrical dancing to hide
behind, but it threw everything into
sharp focus. By the time her band
arrived at Glastonbury in June, where
they were promoted to headliners
because of Dave Grohls broken leg,
they were in the form of their lives.
It was a triumphant headline set.
Florences big moment had arrived.
It is a mark of how far Welch has
come since her 2009 debut that the
intimacy of this 1400-capacity show
for War Child, taking place in a striking
Grade II-listed church in East London,
freaks her out a little at first. Its quite
odd doing smaller shows; I feel really
anxious, she says after the gentle
opening triumvirate of Cosmic Love,
St Jude and Drumming Song. Its an
acoustic, stripped-down set-up and
Welch spends the first few songs trying
to find her way into it. The period
when the band played venues this size
were a bit of a boozy haze for Welch,
she explains. Someone shouts out,

OLIVER HALFIN

Her songs get to

shine in a quietly
dramatic way.

Setlist
Cosmic Love
St Jude
Drumming
Song
Queen Of
Peace
Third Eye
Only If For
A Night
Heartlines
Silver Springs
Long & Lost
Sweet Nothing
What Kind
Of Man
Ship To Wreck
Caught
Shake It Out
Dog Days
Are Over

ITS QUITE ODD DOING SMALLER SHOWS.

I FEEL REALLY ANXIOUS. FLORENCE WELCH
Give her a shot! and she immediately
darts back, You dont wanna do that!
During Third Eye, which is retooled
as Sigur Rs-style atmospheric folk,
she seems shy as she tries to interact
with the crowd. But then something
happens. Welch beautifully holds
onto a note towards the end of the
song and the crowd roar in awe.
Everything from that moment on
is a reminder that there are more to
these songs than arena-rock bluster
and Welchs near-histrionic holler.
Removed of their gale-force delivery,
they get to shine in a quietly dramatic
way that they dont on the Pyramid
Stage at Glastonbury. Only If For
A Night seems even more stirring
reduced to its bare bones and a breezy
take on Fleetwood Macs Silver Springs
holds the crowd in a collective sway.
Song-by-song, band and audience
slowly forget that theyre in a church
and get into the Friday night spirit.
Heartlines prompts a mass singalong

House of the
holy: St John
at Hackney
gets ready.

Shine a light:
Florences flock
in full effect.

and Sweet Nothing, her throbbing

collaboration with Calvin Harris, is
redone as a stark ballad that gets one
of the biggest cheers of the night.
Welch makes constant reference
to her dad throughout, and he laughs
along from the balcony looking down
onto the stage. She explains how he
was fired from tour-managing the
band after handing them the gig profits
to spend on booze and kebabs. The
song introductions all have a similar
theme. This ones not super positive,
but it has a happy ending, she says
before, this next one is also super
sad before another: My dad is always
asking me why I didnt write happier
songs cos it reflects badly on him, she
laughs, looking towards the balcony.
The best Florence + The Machine
songs bury the melancholy in waves of
euphoria though, and the run of tracks
that lead the gig to its conclusion are
transfixing. Ship To Wreck is a break
from the nights restraint and her lungbursting vocal is unleashed, while
Shake It Out is met with piercing
screams as Welch plays choir master
during the chorus. Dog Days Are Over,
dedicated to her dad, is played like its
a full electric version, the band
squeezing the most out of their
acoustic instruments, and then theyre
gone. Theres 10 minutes of we want
more! chanting, but no encore.
Next for the band is a tour of South
America and the States in the run-up
to their massive Hyde Park show in
the summer. It promises to be another
high for a group whose every
achievement is outdoing the last.
Florence + The Machine get better and
better. Amen to that. NIALL DOHERTY
M AY 2 0 1 6

99

LIVE

LEADERS OF
THEPA
London alt-rockers heady ascent
continues on the continent.

WOLF ALICE

CLUB BAHNHOF, COLOGNE

FRIDAY, 12 FEBRUARY, 2016
####
olf Alice recently took
some of their fans on
an outing. A crowd had
gathered outside the
quartets tourbus in
Amsterdam and frontwoman Ellie
Rowsell who reckons that all her
productivity revolves around lunch
led the throng to McDonalds. Sitting
backstage at Club Bahnhof, located in
the graffiti-clad district of Ehrenfeld
in Cologne, Rowsells bandmates
are keen to stress that their fast-food
fix was followed by some cultural
sightseeing. Drummer Joel Amey says
a visit to the Van Gogh Museum ended

100

M AY 2 0 1 6

in disappointment. Sunflowers was

the painting we paid 14 to see, and
it wasnt there! he says. Midway
through a lengthy tour, the band have
got used to finding ways to entertain
themselves. Situated among old
railway arches, tonights venue has the
feel of an industrial rave setting, but
the backstage quarters are more like
a Euro Airbnb. There are plenty of
showers, sofas and Nutella. Following
a breakthrough year in 2015, theres a
contented air to the four-piece as they
stretch across their dressing room.
It was back in 2012 that Rowsell
and guitarist Joff Oddie beefed up
their acoustic duo with the addition
of Amey formerly of Guildford
synth-poppers Mafia Lights and his
pal Theo Ellis on bass. They honed
their blend of grunge rock and swirling

Complete underdogs:
(from left) Theo Ellis,
Joff Oddie, Ellie Rowsell
and Joel Amey.

Acceptable in the 90s:

the band give their
shoes a good gaze.

WOLF ALICES MIX OF PUNKISH ROCK AND QUIET

CONTEMPLATION HAS CONNECTED ON A BIG SCALE.

SIMON SARIN

Alice in wunderbar:
Ellie Rowsell, Cologne,
12 February, 2016.

Cocteau Twins-y atmospherics on the

road and by the time they released
their first two EPs, they were at the
forefront of a wave of new guitar bands
including Swim Deep and Peace. Like
those groups, they appeal to both 90s
revivalists and teens swayed by their
mix of poppy hooks and noise. Their
debut album entered the charts at
Number 2 last summer and was
nominated for a Mercury Music
Prize, but the band had no idea of the
mainstream impact they would make.
Im not saying we ever expected
to be nominated for a Mercury, but
being on an independent label [London
imprint Dirty Hit] and making the kind
of music we do, its less strange to us
than the Radio 1 stuff, says Amey. The
drummer seems to revel in the groups
status as complete underdogs.

During near-constant touring over

the past three years, theyve bonded
over YouTube skits and B-movies.
Their latest obsession is Brit horrorcomedy Cockneys Vs Zombies, which
Amey promises is better than it
sounds. Their tourbus soundtrack
favourites have been Kurt Viles Smoke
Ring For My Halo and Pixies rarities,
although a slightly unexpected
highlight also sticks out for Rowsell.
On our American tour we listened to
Pinks Missundaztood, and realised it
was really good, she says. The band
arent unanimous. Some of the words
were a bit debatable, she concedes.
Like that analogy about her family
being as hard as the Vietnam War.
It probably wasnt.
A couple of hours later, theyre
playing to a crowd ranging from teens
brandishing Rough Trade tote bags to
curious fans a couple of generations
older. On more ambient offerings such
as 90 Mile Beach and Silk, Rowsell
tempers her fragile, almost choral
singing with distortion, while on
Swallowtail Amey contributes a
haunting, folksy vocal. Youre A Germ
and The Wonderwhy come armed
with an onslaught of crunching guitars,
shouty group vocals and synchronised
headbanging. She, from their 2013 EP
Blush, is a highlight, combining all the
best bits of their sound, from pounding
drums and defiant shredding to
Garbage-style muted sections. Ellis
hypes up the crowd on the heavier

Setlist
Your Loves
Whore
Freazy
Bros
Lisbon
90 Mile Beach
Silk
The
Wonderwhy
Storms

Dont fret: Rowsell

shreds for Britain.

Youre A Germ
Swallowtail
Fluffy
She
Moaning
Lisa Smile
Turn To Dust
Blush
Giant Peach

numbers but they seem more politely

captivated than willing to form a circle
pit. They remain in this impressed
stupor as the band bring the set to a
close with the thrashing Giant Peach.
After the show, theres no time to
sample Colognes nightlife. Instead,
they rush through signing autographs
and head to their tourbus. Theyre on
an early morning flight back to the
UK. From there, its on to LA for the
Grammys, where theyre up for Best
Rock Performance, and then back
home for a full-scale British tour. Wolf
Alices mix of punkish rock and quiet
contemplation has connected on a big
scale and you can see why a legion of
fans have signed up to offer their
devotion. After all, they do throw
in the odd free cheeseburger now
and then. HANNAH J DAVIES
M AY 2 0 1 6

101

UNITED STAND
A staggering, vibrant achievement centred
around a critique of US government policy.

PJ HARVEY

THE HOPE SIX

DEMOLITION
PROJECT

ISLAND, OUT 15 APRIL

PJ Harvey has
always operated
on a political frequency, its just those
politics have tended towards the
personal or sexual (most obviously in
the reworked feminism of her first two
albums, Dry and Rid Of Me). Over the
past five years though, as shes entered
her 40s, that focus has suddenly
widened and shes begun instead to
engage with more global concerns.
Following Let England Shakes
exploration of World War I and its
legacy, Harveys ninth studio album
again uses military conflict as its
starting point before then panning
out to tackle a whole swathe of
contemporary woes both political
and social. For Let England Shake,
Harvey travelled to Gallipoli. Here the
inspiration arrived via trips to Kosovo,
Afghanistan and Washington DC.
The Hope Six Demolition Project is
certainly Harveys most ambitious
album to date. On it, she attempts a
wide-ranging analysis of the effects of
Western decision-making on disparate
lives around the world, in the process
offering vivid individual snapshots
alongside a more general commentary
about the failures of, specifically, US
policy. Harvey is also trying to convey
these ideas in a palatable way. Thats to
say, by making a record you might
actually want to listen to.
That she triumphs at both is a
testament to just what a uniquely
substantial artist shes become.
Produced by her usual lieutenants,
John Parish and Flood, this is a record
as rich and diverse as any in her career,
a fact somewhat aided by the unusual
conditions in which it was made. The LP
was partly recorded during a residency
at a purpose-built studio in Somerset
House, a kind of art installation where
members of the public could watch the
sessions unfold via a one-way mirror.
Not that this led to any selfconsciousness from those involved.
Instead, the record is consistently
confident, varied and inventive. Its
interspersed with guests (Jamaican
poet Linton Kwesi Johnson crops up
on The Ministry Of Defence), static
snatches of field recordings made
by Harveys visual collaborator, war
102

M AY 2 0 1 6

photographer Seamus Murphy, and the

odd unexpected sample (The Ministry
Of Social Affairs starts with a snatch of
Thats What They Want by 50s blues
musician Jerry Boogie McCain).
Musically, the default setting here
recalls her 1995 album To Bring You My
Love a kind of Bad Seeds rattle that
blends spirituals and the blues and is
particularly potent on the chain gang
choirs of River Anacostia and Chain
Of Keys. Its often given additional
power by brass or dips into something
approaching dub. Thats not to say that
the record is difficult, its highly melodic
and has moments of genuine brightness
(the comparatively jaunty Near The
Memorials To Vietnam And Lincoln,
for instance, or the ethereal drone that
underpins the closer, Dollar, Dollar).
That variation and accessibility
helps leaven the consistently weighty
subject matter. The album title refers to
the much criticised HOPE VI initiative in
the US that aims to revitalise the worst
housing projects but often ends up
simply displacing the residents. Its
dealt with witheringly on the opening
track The Community Of Hope
(OK now, this is just drug town/Just
zombies/But thats just life Theyre
going to put Walmart here). River
Anacostia, meanwhile, deals with the
highly polluted waterway that runs into
Washington DC (flowing with the
poisons/From the naval yards).
The thrust seems to be that the US
is gradually destroying itself and the
world around it. Much of the rest of
the album is scattered with vivid
portraits of the suffering thats
entailed. I saw a displaced family eat
out of a horses hoof (A Line In The
Sand); an amputee and a pregnant
hound/Sit by the young men with
withered arms (The Ministry Of Social
Affairs); a face pock-marked and
hollow/Hes saying dollar, dollar
(Dollar, Dollar).
Those images keep on coming
and the cumulative effect is almost
overwhelming. Harveys greatest
achievement here though is to stay
on her feet and steer a course through
the misfortune. What could have
been hectoring is instead illuminating
and involving. The end result is a
heavyweight tour de force, and Polly
Harveys most fully-realised album to
date.
JAMES OLDHAM
Download: River Anacostia | Dollar,
Dollar | The Ministry Of Social Affairs

THIS IS HARVEYS
MOST AMBITIOUS
ALBUM TO DATE
A HEAVYWEIGHT
TOUR DE FORCE.

Three other
British political
albums

Manic Street
Preachers
This Is My
Truth Tell
Me Yours
COLUMBIA, 1998

With its title

taken from a
speech by
Aneurin Bevan,
this was the
Manics at
their peak,
disseminating a
deeper, socialist
message.

####

M.I.A.
Arular
XL, 2005

On her debut,
M.I.A.s fizzing,
confrontational
car crash of
musical styles
was allied to a
fierce political
consciousness
rooted in her
Sri Lankan
ancestry.

####

Sleaford Mods
Austerity Dogs
HARBINGER
SOUNDS, 2013

Consistently confident,
varied and inventive:
PJ Harvey hits peak form.

Local rather
than global in
scope, Sleaford
Mods debut
saw frontman
Jason
Williamson
pour out a
torrent of bile
about life in
an austeritychoked Britain.

###

M AY 2 0 1 6

103

NEW ALBUMS
FATIMA AL QADIRI

The originator of
a folk-influenced take on
electronica inspired
by both 70s singersongwriters and Scots
ambient duo Boards Of
Canada, UK producer Stephen Wilkinson
perfected his brambly tangle of looped
guitars and wonky breakbeats on 2009s
Ambivalence Avenue. Hes since tweaked
the formula with varying degrees of success,
so while his seventh studio album again
references the natural world it draws sonic
inspiration from classic-era Sly Stone,
chillwave electronics and the lounge-jazz
themes of long-gone US comedy shows
such as Taxi apparently a touchstone from
Wilkinsons childhood. It proves a subtle
but notably effective shift, Raxeira
channelling Metronomys hazy pop, Town
& Countrys left-field funk echoing West
Coast bass maverick Thundercat and
Gotye collaboration The Way You Talk
basking in a radiant pop glow. Altogether,
as lovely as its title suggests.
RUPERT HOWE
Download: Petals | The Way You Talk |
Gasoline & Mirrors

BRUTE

HYPERDUB, OUT NOW

Degree-level dubstep evokes sinister,

shadowy dystopias.
Cerebral even by the
standards of her label
Hyperdub founder
Steve Goodman has a
PhD in philosophy for
Kuwait-born, Brooklynbased producer Fatima Al Qadiri music is
about more than just the manipulation of
sound. So its almost inevitable that her
follow-up to 2014s China-themed Asiatisch
should be another concept album, this
time one intended to critique state authority
and modern law enforcement through
fractured electronica, ominous string tones
and the odd wailing police siren. This rarely
makes for easy listening, with tracks such
as Breach exuding a Robocop-like menace
and Curfew riven by abrasive bass drones,
though the albums second half is notably
more harmonious with Oubliettes
undulating synth riff and the haunting
strings of Fragmentation adding melodic
colour to the forbidding ideological
framework.
RUPERT HOWE
Download: Breach | Oubliette |
Fragmentation

BLACK MOUNTAIN
IV

JAGJAGUWAR, OUT 1 APRIL

AUTOLUX

PUSSYS DEAD

30TH CENTURY, OUT 1 APRIL

Slow-moving Californians rev up for

another trip.
Its so sad to be happy all
the time, sighs Eugene
Goreshter on this
albums opening track,
Selectallcopy, voicing the
droopy, dream-state
alienation that clings to his bands songs like
a duvet. This is only Autoluxs third album
since their 2004 debut Future Perfect, the
Los Angeles trio apparently needing a long
hibernation inside their heads before they
visit the world again. The spirit of The
Flaming Lips and MGMT envelopes
Anonymous and Listen To The Order, while
FKA twigs/Beyonc associate Boots makes
his production presence felt on the sonar
beats of Soft Scene. Yet while Hamster Suite
is sweetly whimsical (the sun is a wheel/
The day is a cage), the high proportion of
psychedelic plods make this record feel
like a missed opportunity elegantly wasted,
but wasted all the same.
VICTORIA SEGAL
Download: Selectallcopy | Soft Scene |
Hamster Suite

BIBIO

A MINERAL LOVE
WARP, OUT 1 APRIL

Folktronicas guiding light gets his

vintage groove on.
104

M AY 2 0 1 6

Black Mountain:
from Sabbath
riffs to Led
Zep drums...

Canadian quintets logically titled

fourth album.
Over three albums and
12 years, Black Mountain
have eased their way out
of the Canadian indierock cul-de-sac to the
point where the great
leap forwards (albeit not necessarily one
into the 21st century) beckons. If theyre
undone by anything, its their puppy-like,
kids-in-a-sweet-shop enthusiasm for their
prowess. They go from Black Sabbath riffs
to Led Zeppelin drums, but its via some
single-note plonk which nods to Laurie
Andersons O Superman, synthesized
lushness, ghostly handclaps, plus Amber
Webbers unapologetically ethereal vocals:
and thats only on the lengthy opener
Mothers Of The Sun. Elsewhere, Line Them
All Up lines up 70s guitar and keyboards and
while the atmospheric squall of (Over &
Over) The Chain offers a slightly more

contemporary approach, the closing Space

To Bakersfield re-casts them as a Pink Floyd
tribute act.
JOHN AIZLEWOOD
Download: Mothers Of The Sun |
Line Them All Up | Cemetery Breeding

BLEACHED

WELCOME THE WORMS

DEAD OCEANS, OUT 1 APRIL

Raucous LA pop-punk trio get

philosophical on their second LP.
When an albums
exhilarating first single is
also its opening track,
you may wonder if its
being front-loaded
intentionally. Keep On
Keepin On, all driving riffs and girl-group
hooks, kicks off this second LP from LA
pop-punk group Bleached in real style,
but thankfully theres more good stuff to
come. The fire dies down as the album
progresses, but the infectious melodies
remain, the band questioning who they are,
how they fit into the world and whether
drugs can help figure it all out. Youre left
with the sense that these songs would be
best experienced in a sweaty dive bar,
surrounded by people pondering those
exact same things.
KATE SOLOMON
Download: Keep On Keepin On |
Wednesday Night Melody | Trying To
Lose Myself Again

BOMBINO
AZEL

PARTISAN, OUT 1 APRIL

Niger guitar hero makes his best yet,

with help from Dirty Projectors man.
Since 1999, Bombino has
been recording desert
blues that combine the
traditions of the Tuareg
people of the Sahara
with electric guitars.
Its trancey, mysterious, and not the sort
of world music that comes with fusty
authenticity and hemp clothing. Bombinos
2013 breakthrough Nomad was produced
by the Black Keys Dan Auerbach it
established him as a legitimate guitar
hero who could conjure the spooky majesty
of Led Zeppelins Kashmir. Azel, produced
by David Longstreth from New York
experimentalists Dirty Projectors, is even
richer, with a touch of what Bombino
himself calls Tuareggae. Songs such as
Timtar (Memories) have a bounce that
suits their swirling sound, while Iyat Ninhay/
Jaguar (A Great Desert I Saw) has a groove
that underpins some seriously heavy guitar
jams. Its complex music but with enough
of a melodic charm to hook you in, easy to
appreciate but hard to fully grasp.
ROBERT LEVINE
Download: Akhar Zaman (This
Moment) | Timtar (Memories) | Iyat
Ninhay/Jaguar (A Great Desert I Saw)

LE BON STITCHES MUNDANE

MINUTIAE INTO PATCHWORKS
OF NONSENSICAL IMAGERY.

Double take: Cate Le Bon

is defiantly idiosyncratic
on her new LP.

PINCER MOVEMENT
Welsh singer-songwriter ups the odd stakes
on eccentric, post-punk-inected third LP.

CATE
LE BON

CRAB DAY
TURNSTILE,
OUT 15 APRIL

After several years pottering around

indies more oddball fringes, Cardiff
singer Cate Le Bons third album
Mug Museum was one of 2013s
unexpected highlights. It was a gently
off-kilter collision of lilting melodies
and Stereolab-like grooves with a
mannered vocal enunciation that saw
her likened to a Welsh Nico.
Crab Day is a more manic and
unusual creature than its predecessor,
its arty nobbles and pointy bits
protruding more prominently through
the wonky pop shell. Though an LA
resident for the past three years, like
Robert Wyatt, Le Bons eccentricities
have a peculiar Britishness to them.
While the album has a post-punk
angularity about it in places, its post-

punk as reimagined by Bagpuss

creator Oliver Postgate. Songs such
as Find Me and Yellow Blinds, Cream
Shadows have a charming homemade feel to their lopsided gearshifts,
jerky movements and quirky
surrealism. In a similar way to her
former mentor Gruff Rhys, Le Bon
stitches mundane minutiae into
patchworks of nonsensical imagery.
I want to be a 10-pin bowl! she
barks on Wonderful, a song that
sounds like Madness Driving In My
Car careering down a hill into a hay
bale, elsewhere professing that love
is not love when its a coat hanger
and titling one rickety piano ditty
Im A Dirty Attic.
Its defiantly idiosyncratic and at
times genuinely bonkers, yet despite
that, Crab Day never once feels
wilfully obtuse or that dreaded word
kooky. ###
CHRIS CATCHPOLE
Download: Crab Day | Wonderful |
Yellow Blinds, Cream Shadows

Chris Catchpole talks

to Cate Le Bon about
life on the West Coast and
her surreal new record.
You recorded this
album in LA
Ive been living in Los
Angeles for the last three
years. I moved here to
make Mug Museum, then
stayed for a nice change
of scenery. When we were
talking about making this
record we found this
incredible studio an hour
north of San Francisco in
the country by the ocean.
We were all staying in
this beautiful house
surrounded by all this
wildlife, deers in the
garden and vultures
on the roof.
Mug Museum was
probably your most
pop-oriented album.
The energy on this
record is very
different though.
I dont really have that
many intentions when Im
going in to making a
record; its nice to just
have the freedom to be
spontaneous. With this

record there was a lot

more abandon. The album
was written in a very short
amount of time. I was kind
of disillusioned with music
but it manifested itself
in a really positive, Fuck it
way. I just made a record
that excited me. It just
seemed to come together
accidentally on purpose.
When it was over it was
like, Oh my God, what just
happened?! It was fun!
Theres a lot of surreal
imagery in the lyrics;
its quite cut-and-paste
in places.
Before I was going in
for a vocal take I didnt
have any lyrics, so Id be
up until six or seven in
the morning the night
before. Everything just
seems like nonsense
but subconsciously within
all of that it means
something. The intention
is to be abstract and have
the appearance of being
nonsensical, haha!

M AY 2 0 1 6

105

NEW ALBUMS
JOE BONAMASSA
BLUES OF DESPERATION

PROVOGUE/ MASCOT, OUT 25 MARCH

Post-millennial blues giants 12th.

NY blues guitarist Joe
Bonamassa has been
doing it forever. A former
child prodigy who later
played with Eric Clapton,
the 38-year-olds
punishing gig schedule and past 11 albums
suggest he rarely sees the outside of the
studio or tourbus. The end results usually
justify the toil. Recorded in just five days,
Blues Of Desperation rarely deviates from
the burnished hard rock-meets-raw blues
template last explored on 2014s Different
Shades Of Blue. But everything comes
spiced with clever melodic tics: from This
Trains dogged honky-tonk rhythm to
The Valley Runs Lows gospel-pop chorus
via the title tracks Led Zeppelin-style bump
and grind. Bedroom guitarists everywhere,
meanwhile, should brace themselves for No
Good Place For The Lonely, a song whose
grand-finale solo will have them sobbing
with envy and admiration. ####
MARK BLAKE
Download: This Train | Drive | No Good
Place For The Lonely

Boogie Nights? Never

heard of it! The Last
Shadow Puppets (from left,
Miles Kane and Alex Turner).

STRINGS ATTACHED

The bromance is back on with a sumptuous second effort.

THE LAST
SHADOW
PUPPETS

EVERYTHING YOUVE
COME TO EXPECT
DOMINO, OUT 1 APRIL

The first single from The Last Shadow Puppets

second album is somewhat unrepresentative.
Released amid images of homoerotic bromance
between LSP members Alex Turner and Miles
Kane, Bad Habits filthy-dirty vocal distortion
(Bad habits!, Sick puppy!) and general
rock-animal demeanour should not be taken as
indicative of a radical repositioning of their
parallel project.
For Turner, 2008s The Age Of The
Understatement was a watershed moment,
its opulent string arrangements unlocking a
more impressionistic, poetic lyricism, after the
concrete observations of early Arctic Monkeys.
Bad Habits, largely thanks to Owen Palletts
insane orchestral convolutions, implies that
Everything Youve Come To Expect will soldier

106

M AY 2 0 1 6

boldly beyond the Monkeys 2013 blockbuster,

AM, into some future-R&B netherworld of
sweaty LA sex-pit gyrations and gimp-mask sin.
Instead, the duo wander on a little from
...Understatements Kane-inspired 60s-pop
melodrama template, but not too far. Second
up, Miracle Aligner, has a silkily orgasmic
quality, soon nudged into Richard Hawley
territory by Kanes reverb-guitar twangings.
In Aviation and The Element Of Surprise,
theres a pristine, bouncy Smiths vibe, with
value-added violins, but the mood turns darker
after Bad Habits midway through: Sweet
Dreams, TN rides on the Bolero-esque riff from
Roy Orbisons Running Scared, as Turner
emotes wildly about his lovesickness, while
The Dream Synopsis signs off on a serious
bummer, like Paul McCartney with his thumbs
pointing downwards for a change, a melodic
strum concerning bitter self-doubt. As such,
this outings a little harder to love than its
predecessor, but the highlights are definitely
worth the wait. ###
ANDREW PERRY
Download: Bad Habits | Sweet Dreams, TN |
Aviation

THE BOXER REBELLION

OCEAN BY OCEAN
AMPLIFY, OUT 29 APRIL

British-American quartet go epic.

For four albums, The
Boxer Rebellion have
aspired to mainstream
crossover, but despite
UK and US cultdom its
never quite happened.
Fifth time around, theyve jettisoned
guitarist Todd Howe, gone for gigantic (think
a less dark National) and when it ends with
Nathan Nicholson repeatedly crooning,
I choose to be happy on the closing Let It
Go (not that one), theres both emotional
and career uplift. Its lavishly layered, but
with a running time of under 40 minutes,
its a flab-free exercise and at their very
best, on the lovely Pull Yourself Together
and the appositely titled Big Ideas, theres a
near-gospel undertow. If Ocean By Ocean
doesnt break The Boxer Rebellion, it might
be their greatest failure. ####
JOHN AIZLEWOOD
Download: Pull Yourself Together | Let
It Go | Big Ideas | Redemption

CHARLES BRADLEY
CHANGES

DUNHAM, OUT 1 APRIL

Better-late-than-never soul voice returns.

Florida-born Bradley had
his life changed by seeing
James Brown live at the
Harlem Apollo in 1962,
when he was just 14. And
though he didnt release

an album until 2011, hes still paying the

Godfather back. Here he continues to
transmit the sounds of classic soul and funk,
his screams and exhortations think steak
rubbed on a cheese grater filled with raw
church feel as he pleads, yearns and emotes
expertly arranged songs of pain, love and
struggle. An inescapable sense of conviction
makes it transcend nostalgia: a devastating
take on Black Sabbaths Changes concerns
the loss of his mother (even the video will
knock the most flint hearted out), for
example, while Change For The World
articulates spiritual, apocalyptic dread.
But be careful it might just restore your
faith in music. 
IAN HARRISON
Download: Changes | Aint It A Sin |
Change For The World

CHEAP TRICK

BANG ZOOM CRAZY HELLO

BIG MACHINE, OUT 1 APRIL

Seventeenth time around for US

power-pop trailblazers.
Revered by groups
ranging from the
Ramones to Mtley Cre
to Nirvana, Cheap Trick
were big in mid-70s
America and Japan, but
never truly cracked the UK. Album number
17 is unlikely to change that. But the
Rockford, Illinois bands usual amalgam of
60s Britpop and US radio-rock gloss has
rarely sounded so vital. Robin Zanders
John Lennon-mimicking whine and guitarist
Rick Nielsens garage-rock riffs coalesce
perfectly on No Direction Homes singsong
chorus, Blood Red Lips T.Rex-soundalike
stomp and a suitably haughty take on Bryan
Ferrys cover of Dobie Grays The In Crowd.
Really, Cheap Trick have been making the
same album since 1977. Even if it doesnt
match the career highs of 78s Heaven
Tonight or their breakthrough Cheap Trick
At Budokan, Bang Zoom Crazy Hello is
their best version this century. 
MARK BLAKE
Download: No Direction Home | When
I Wake Up Tomorrow | Blood Red Lips

THE DANDY WARHOLS

DISTORTLAND

GETTY

DINE ALONE, OUT 8 APRIL

Portland boho survivors ninth.

The Dandy Warhols have
always worked hard to
preserve their image as
hipster bohemians. Its
probably for that very
reason that this ninth
album was recorded on an 80s cassette
player in frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylors
basement. Distortland continues TaylorTaylors more ruminative songwriting
a feature of their last album, 2012s This
Machine but theres also an electronic
undercurrent to the Low-era Bowie-meetsindie-techno chug of Simper Fidelis and

even surf-psych on Pope Reverend Jim,

while closer The Grow Up Song is a Post-it
note to himself that cynicism alone is never
enough. Its these elements that still keep
The Dandy Warhols several steps ahead of
being the last swingers in town. 
ANDY FYFE
Download: Search Party | Semper
Fidelis | Give

DEFTONES
GORE

WARNERS, OUT 8 APRIL

Sacramento alt-metallers rewrite their

own rule book.
Deftones 2012 album
Koi No Yokan was an
accomplished album
rather than a great one,
refining their sound
rather than pushing it to
new places. Gore rectifies that. Deftones still
marry controlled aggression and soaring
melodies brilliantly, but here they also find
time to reference Nirvanas In Utero
playbook on Xenons fuzzy intro, or else fully
submerge themselves in the serene postrock waters theyve previously dipped toes
into. Its a beautifully dark album, too.
While the death of their bassist Chi Cheng
isnt referenced explicitly, the loss feels
expressed musically. Gore sounds both
haunting and haunted especially as Alice In
Chains Jerry Cantrell delivers a mournful
solo on Phantom Bride before the song
implodes. Its a breathtaking moment on an
album full of them. 
GEORGE GARNER
Download: Phantom Bride | Doomed
User | Geometric Headdress

THE DRONES

FEELIN KINDA FREE

TROPICAL F*&K STORM, OUT 18 MARCH

Alt-Antipodeans unearth brilliance

among the rubble.
Challenging themselves
and their audiences since
1997 and now led by sole
remaining original
member Gareth
Liddiard, The Drones are
firmly in the tradition of Captain Beefheart
and quirky, angular, intense Australians
such as The Moodists and The Middle East.
Festooned with awards, 2013s I See
Seaweed marked a genuine domestic
breakthrough. Its successor displays the
same mix of awkwardness Then They
Came For Me witters like Nick Cave at
his most indulgent (and magnificent),
Tailwind begins with a Krautian drone
before embracing kiddie vocals and the
tick-tock of Ultravoxs Vienna, while
Boredom talks about the Caliphate before
going funky. Its a mess, but its never less
than an absorbing one. 
JOHN AIZLEWOOD
Download: Tailwind | Shutdown SETI |
Boredom

Tyler The Creator:

hes a funny guy.

EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY

Teleman: so mildmanner
ey
make H
p look
like Mt
e.

THE WILDERNESS

BELLA UNION, OUT 1 APRIL

THE FEELING
THE FEELING
BMG, OUT NOW

T
C
E

Downwards-spiral-arresting fifth.
The Feeling rode in on
the coat-tails of the
Guilty Pleasures fad of
the noughties and made
two sterling albums.
Rather than them losing
the plot afterwards, the plot left them
marooned in a world of diminishing returns
for their trademark sound. The sombre
2013 break-up album Boy Cried Wolf
showcased their weaknesses instead of the
wry warmth that remains their greatest
strength. Here, theyve rediscovered what
made them so likeable in the first place and
they sound all the better for it. Dan Gillespie
Sells is at his sharpest and most mischievous
on the gleefully cutting Spiralling (as in
spiralling out of love) and the ode to onenight-stands, Shadow Boxer, but theres real
meat in Repeat To Fade. Maybe, just maybe,
its not over yet. ###
JOHN AIZLEWOOD
Download: Repeat To Fade | Spiralling |
Sleep Tight

FEMME

DEBUTANTE

TAPE MUSIC, OUT 15 APRIL

Nigel Godrich pals hook-laden debut.

It seems unfeasibly hard
for artists these days to
make a pop album that
doesnt lose it halfway
through. Even the
biggest hit-makers with

teams of songwriting savants struggle to

keep it up for a full 13 tracks. But FEMME
(alt-pop alter ego of Laura Bettinson from
Nigel Godrichs Ultrasta project) has given it
a decent stab on her first solo record. With
huge hooks, the record is bubbling over
with humour and just the right amount
of longing. Songs are short, shimmering
tableaux of heartache and understated
fuck yous, each one a potentially great
single: Romeo could be a new girls-on-tour
anthem, while cheating friends and
industry dickheads get a talking to on
Double Trouble and Dumb Blonde
respectively. The music lacks the spark
that the vocals provide but Debutante
stays on track from start to finish. ###
KATE SOLOMON
Download: Fever Boy | Romeo | Gold |
Light Me Up

FUTURE OF THE LEFT

THE PEACE AND TRUCE OF

FUTURE OF THE LEFT
PRESCRIPTIONS, OUT 8 APRIL

Tyne-Taff berserkers dont know

whether to scream or swallow.
Andrew Falkous is angry.
Genuinely furious at
being force-fed the
worst dregs of popular
culture, Human
Centipede-style. And,
like others who share his disproportionate,
disappointed rage Half Man Half Biscuit,
The Fall, Sleaford Mods hes hilarious with
it. On Future Of The Lefts fifth studio
album, the Cardiff-based Geordie seems
fixated on food (there are repeated
references to gammon, gruel, curry and
fry-ups), and that obsession is fed through
FOTLs intelligent math-screamo blender.
The result is unusually heavy, even by FOTL

REX

Here comes the sun:

Balearic beats are
more widespread
than ever.

Texan post-rock veterans mellow o

For more than a de
Explosions In The S
have made guitar-h
music that ebbs and
flows like experimental
electronic music. Their
songs take their time if there were a Slow
Music movement, to go with Slow Food, this
is the band for it. The Wilderness is quieter
and prettier than anything theyve done
before, with more complexity and less
catharsis. The Ecstatics unfolds deliberately,
with more blips and bloops than the band
has ever used, while Infinite Orbit repeats a
rhythm as the rest of the instrumentation
evolves. Colors In Space stays atmospheric
for four minutes its beautiful but just
this side of boring before drums break in,
then gradually fade to the level of the other
instruments before the song ends in a
chaotic cacophony. All told, the grand old
men of post-rock still rock. ####
ROBERT LEVINE
Download: The Ecstatics | Logic Of A
Dream | Infinite Orbit | Colors In Space

BLESSED ARE
THE MEEK
Unassuming London quartet
quietly strike gold.

TELEMAN

BRILLIANT SANITY

MOSHI MOSHI, OUT 8 APRIL

standards, rumbling like a cement mixer

filled with anvils, but the loud-quiet-loud
dynamic always allows the listener to pick
out perplexing zingers such as: In a former
life he was Ron Perlmans gas tank/Till he
leaked all over the morning on In A Former
Life and, Add another finger to your English
breakfast/You Army Surplus motherfucker
on Eating For None.
SIMON PRICE
Download: Miners Gruel | Eating For
None | White Privilege Blues

GET WELL SOON

LOVE

CAROLINE, OUT NOW

Brooding German Anglophile

singer-songwriter goes pop.
Konstantin Gropper
has been composing
albums of reflective indie
rock and TV and film
soundtracks since 2005.
Get Well Soon is his alterego/pop side project. Love, the successor to
2012s The Scarlet Beast O Seven Heads,
finds Gropper reimagining himself as an
arch storyteller in the Neil Hannon tradition.
It works, too. Its A Tender Maze and Eulogys
dainty melodies and knowing lyrics evoke
Hannons Divine Comedy, but also pop
melancholists Prefab Sprout. In contrast, Its
Love sees Gropper gloomily holding forth
about bloody knickers and a kick in the
balls over blaring brass and strings. The
lovelorn-poet shtick does wear thin and
some of Love suggests a painstaking
homage to Groppers record collection
rather than a work of true originality.
But it was fun while it lasted.
MARK BLAKE
Download: Its A Tender Maze | Eulogy |
Its Love

GUERILLA TOSS
ERASER STARGAZER
DFA, OUT NOW

Hectic Bostonian post-punk blitzkrieg.

This rowdy East Coast
cabal are out to agitate
rather than braindetonate. Any listener
having a bad day might
feel like theyd forgotten
the chippie had come round to fix the
shelves, thus reactivating a headache last
sparked at an anarcho-dance rehearsal
room, circa 1993. After the initial pain,
one can come to relish the punch that
Guerilla Toss pack. Theres a polyrhythmic
coherence to the percussive battery,
Captain Beefheart-style guitar scraping
and way-out-there bass pulses, which
merits actual dancing. In that light, Kassie
Carlsons abstract, riot grrrl yelping
becomes tolerable. Eraser Stargazer will
be anathema to many, but its twitchy
29 minutes carry fabulous voltage.
ANDREW PERRY
Download: Grass Shack | Perfume |
Diamond Girls

HAELOS

Four tearaways from the

wrong side of the tracks,
Teleman set about writing
their own entry into the
rocknroll rulebook while
making their second album. Explaining its creation,
they recently wrote that in our rehearsal room, we
had a white board and for each song wed put the
chords up on it. Weve got different colour pens and
stuff You can just taste the carnage, cant you?
But the fact that Teleman are so mild-mannered
they make Hot Chip look like Mtley Cre suits them
just fine. Its for that reason that theyve been able
to arrive at this wonderful second album without
anyone paying much attention to them. Three of the
quartet were previously in wonky mid-noughties
indie-poppers Pete And The Pirates and here a
near-decades worth of arsing around without really
getting anywhere reaches brilliant fruition.
Its a record that combines its creators love of pop
hooks, 70s rock that does the bare minimum of rocking
and intricate Krautrock grooves with a heavy dusting
of suburban melancholia. I could just lie here and
fantasise that nothing is going to change sings
Tommy Sanders on the gentle bounce of English
Architecture, a song whose wistful nostalgia sums up
Brilliant Sanitys charm. Elsewhere, Fall In Time has a
playful Supergrass-style stomp, Drop Out is the sort of
thing Graham Coxon was after when he wanted Blur to
sound like Pavement and the wiry guitars of Dsseldorf
provide a bittersweet update on what people danced to
at indie discos in 2005. There is nothing new here but
Teleman make it sound like their own. They may be
more likely to retune your television than chuck it out
of the nearest window, but this excellent follow-up
more than makes up for their lack of rocknroll
credentials.
NIALL DOHERTY
Download: Fall In Time | Dsseldorf | Drop Out |
English Architecture

FULL CIRCLE

MATADOR, OUT 18 MARCH

Electro-pop threesomes debut

falls short.
London trio Haelos
had music bloggers
enthusing when they
uploaded their first track
to SoundCloud in late
2014. With its dreamy
boy-girl harmonies and pulsing aquatic
beats, Dust had an otherworldliness that
wouldnt be out of place in a soft-focus

sequence at the end of an indie drama as

the main character comes to some kind of
emotional realisation. The bands trip-hoppy
debut is more of the same: Full Circle pushes
along, each track a soothing house party
wind-down. Put 11 of them together and it
gets tiresome there are only so many ways
to do deep, woozy bass overlaid with gentle
harmonies and a clipped beat, and Haelos
exhaust them around track seven.
KATE SOLOMON
Download: Dust | Separate Lives
M AY 2 0 1 6

109

EGO TRIP

Yeezy nds it hard to let go

on sprawling seventh album.

KANYE WEST

THE LIFE OF PABLO

G.O.O.D. MUSIC/DEF JAM,
OUT NOW

In January, Kanye
West issued one of
his more moderate
statements of recent months: So happy to
be finished with the best album of all time.
Alongside heralding Bill Cosbys innocence
and protecting his honour (and area)
against ex-girlfriend Amber Rose, it almost
seems sensible. Yet if best was always
going to be contentious, even the idea of an
album has seemed uncertain since The
Life Of Pablos unveiling at the Yeezy Season
3 fashion event. Far from using this odd
happening to draw a line under the creative
process, West spent the following days
adding tracks and altering them (Ima fix
Wolves), holding back the release, then
claiming the songs would only be available
on Tidal. If he were still fiddling with The Life
Of Pablo in 2020 and the original tracks had
been replaced by a low, distressed hum and
samples of Rihanna coughing, it wouldnt
be entirely surprising.
For some, this mayhem is the mark of a
true genius in a thrilling state of creative flux;
for others, its the crazed arrogance of a
reality-challenged megalomaniac. What
matters, though, is that West and his
collaborators still manage to make
something compelling from his highly
specific ber-celebrity circumstances,
transforming his superstar whining and
boasting into something that sounds so
much bigger. Even when he does something
that should just demand mockery like
comparing himself and wife Kim to Joseph
and Mary on the eerily paranoid Wolves, it
exerts the same strange fascination of
anything wildly distorted and out of scale, a
lurid Jeff Koons sculpture in a hall of mirrors.
There is much here that is dazzlingly
smart and agile the elastic sample of Sister
Nancys Bam Bam in Famous, for example, or
the bilious verbal purge of No More Parties
In LA, super-charged by Kendrick Lamar.
Despite the assertion that Ive been out
of my mind a long time, the Yeezus-scary
Feedback provides a rare moment where
he looks outside of his own spoilt head:
hands up, then the cops shot us. Despite
the embarrassment of riches, though,
theres also a lot of plain old embarrassment
those now-notorious lines about Taylor
Swift on Famous, for example. West might
have claimed that The Life Of Pablo is a
gospel record (a credible declaration on the

110

M AY 2 0 1 6

Kanye West:
still manages to
make something
compelling from
his ber-celebrity
circumstances.

KANYE TRANSFORMS HIS

SUPERSTAR WHINING
INTO SOMETHING BIGGER.
melting God dream of Ultralight Beam),
but its a space where nothing is sacred.
Its misogyny is so blatant its almost
pathological, grimly unsurprising yet still
depressing, symptomatic of a worldview
where everything, everyone, is a commodity.
Behind the brashness, though, come
the intriguing signs of restlessness and
agitation. The hollow echoes of the guiltladen Real Friends almost manage to make

the sad superstar seem universal When

was the last time I remembered a birthday?
while FML, bleakly enhanced by The
Weeknd, mentions Lexapro and an ominous
episode. Even the lightest moment is
oddly compromised, as West assumes the
voice of a fan missing his earlier work on the
heavy meta of I Love Kanye. He repeats his
name over and over until it almost loses
meaning: I even had the pink polo/I thought
I was Kanye, he says. Even in character, its
strikingly peculiar who does he think he is
now? The obvious answer, given the albums
title, is someone between St Paul and
Picasso, monumental, undeniable,
untouchable. Underneath, however, you
suspect its not just The Life Of Pablo thats
subject to change.
VICTORIA SEGAL
Download: Famous | Feedback | FML

NEW ALBUMS
BEN HARPER & THE
INNOCENT CRIMINALS

An album informed by
both 15th-century choral
music and the impact of
modern technology
might sound intimidating
and it is. The heavy
conceptual fog and atmospheric
disturbance that comes with Tim Heckers
eighth LP is, however, also wholly absorbing,
his layering of electronic and classical music
weighted with meaning yet light as dust.
Recorded in Reykjavik with the Icelandic
Choir Ensemble, Love Streams doesnt quite
have the same stone-cold chill of 2011s
Ravedeath, 1972 or 2013s Virgins, but its
beauty remains deceptive. Voices flicker
through Violet Monumental I, human traces
that are vulnerable and easily manipulated,
while the sudden abrasions of Live Leak
Instrumental or Castrati Stack suggest
theres something truly harrowing waiting
on the horizon. That you are compelled to
stay listening to see what it might be is proof
of this records eerie power.
VICTORIA SEGAL
Download: Live Leak Instrumental |
Violet Monumental I | Castrati Stack

CALL IT WHAT IT IS

STAX/CAROLINE, OUT 8 APRIL

All aboard Ben Harpers DeLorean

for an 80s trip Back To The Future
Even respected rootsy
musicians go gooey over
the hits of their teenage
years. Reuniting his rock
band The Innocent
Criminals after eight
years, Ben Harper here affectionately
echoes some Reagan-era biggies from Joan
Jetts bubblegum rock in When Sex Was
Dirty and Pink Balloon to Men At Work in
Finding Our Way, while the title track
updates Marvin Gayes classic Inner City
Blues. In between, can we hear Eddy Grant,
The Police and Tom Petty And The
Heartbreakers through the wall? Sounds like
it. On catchily carpentered songs where
even the upbeat numbers have a wistful
ring, Harper and his Crims stamp their
inspirations with an unfussy roots-rock live
band sound, but, in all, the work of a solid
pro rather than gripped by genius.
MAT SNOW
Download: Pink Balloon | When Sex
Was Dirty | Call It What It Is

KONONO NO.1

KONONO NO.1 MEETS BATIDA

CRAMMED DISCS, OUT 1 APRIL

THE HEAVY

HURT & THE MERCILESS

COUNTER, OUT 1 APRIL

Been a long time since they

rocknrolled.
Its taken Bath four-piece
The Heavy almost as
long to record this album
as it took them to whip
out their previous three.
In the intervening four
years everything in their neo-soul world
has changed, and nothing. Separations,
divorce, remarriage and kids all feed
into 12 tracks of disastrous love, welcome
redemption and rekindled fire, but not
everything works. The stray cat strut
of A Ghost You Cant Forget, for instance, is
so shoddy that it doesnt belong on a cruise
ship, while Iggy Pops lawyers might be
having a word about Last Confessions
similarities to Lust For Life. But when it
fires the Zeppelin-meets-Motown grind
of Slave To Your Love or Since You Been
Gones bold-as-brass Stax, for instance
Hurt & The Merciless testifies like James
Brown on a mountain top.
ANDY FYFE
Download: Since You Been Gone |
What Happened To The Love? |
Slave To Your Love

TIM HECKER
LOVE STREAMS
4AD, OUT 8 APRIL

Canadian electronic composer

continues his sacred/profane crossover.

The Heavy:
testifying like
James Brown on
a mountain top.

Congolese DIYers team up with Lisbonbased producer to celebrate their 50th.

For a band who formed a
half-century ago playing
rudimentary junkyard
instruments, Kinshasas
Konono No.1 have come
a spectacularly long way.
Collaborations with Bjrk and Herbie
Hancock, the latter earning them a Grammy,
plus performances at Coachella and Matt
Groenings All Tomorrows Parties have
sealed this unique collectives status as joyful
noisemakers, heralded by experimental
rockers and avant-garde electronicists alike.
For their fifth studio LP, a collaboration with
Angola-born and Lisbon-raised producer
Batida, the No.1ers frenzied, hypnotic
soundwhirl of old is leavened by the addition
of precision-tooled beats and a shiny topcoat production. It works magnificently on
the propulsive Yambadi Mama (imagine
Jamie xxs steelpan sound transplanted to an
African carnival), yet less so when the

motorik thumb pianos are left virtually

unaccompanied (Um Nzonzing). But heres
raising a glass to the next 50 years!
SIMON McEWEN
Download: Nlele Kalusimbiko |
Yambadi Mama | Nzonzing Famlia

ASH KOOSHA
I AKA I

NINJA TUNE, OUT 1 APRIL

Exiled Iranian composer conjures

digital wonders.
A former student of the
Tehran Conservatory Of
Music, Ashkan
Kooshanejads
subsequent career has
proved radically
unconventional. His early rock band Font
were arrested in 2007 for playing to an
illegally mixed audience of men and
women, while, as half of electro-pop duo
Take It Easy Hospital he was the subject of a
documentary on Iranian underground music
called No One Knows About Persian Cats.
Having since sought asylum in the UK hes
now based in London, creating mindbending sound experiments which blend
glitchy electronica with fragments of Persian
classical music. At times reminiscent of
Flying Lotus and Kanye West collaborator
Arca, the fierce intensity of Otes digital
blurts, Mudafossils amorphous throb and
Too Manys fractal melodies show
Kooshanejad mapping fascinating new
dimensions of his own.
RUPERT HOWE
Download: Eluded | Mudafossil |
Too Many

RAY LAMONTAGNE
OUROBOROS
RCA, OUT NOW

Once-grizzled troubadours sixth and

smoothest album.
When Ray LaMontagne
landed from seemingly
nowhere with 2004s
breakthrough hit
Trouble, his taciturn,
backwoodsman
poet-with-sandpaper vocals approach
marked him as a great American eccentric.
Twelve years on, and hes clearly a keeper.
Produced by My Morning Jackets Jim Jones,
Ouroboros finds his vocals smoothed to a
croon, apart from the near-a cappella coda
to the closing Wouldnt It Make A Lovely
Photograph. Instead, LaMontagne has
plumped for warm backdrops with a
spiritual undertow and occasional fierce
guitars. While his left-field turn may sharply
contrast with what he initially promised,
hes sacrificed none of his mystery. With
this near-perfect marriage of beauty and
bravery, were getting close to major talent
territory.
JOHN AIZLEWOOD
Download: Another Day | Wouldnt
It Make A Lovely Photograph
M AY 2 0 1 6

111

NEW ALBUMS
MALAWI MOUSE BOYS
FOREVER IS 4 U
IRL, OUT 8 APRIL

Not the biggest band in the world.

But their sound moves mountains.
Asked to design the polar
opposite of Taylor Swift,
youd come up with
Malawi Mouse Boys.
Theyre a four-piece
from one of the poorest
countries in Africa who make their own
instruments skiffle-style and are so called
because they earned a living selling mouse
kebabs to travellers through their village.
But its their tunes and singing rather
than backstory that have made them
world music stars; if you are moved by the
sound of love and devotion propelled
straight to the heart with the least possible
technological intervention, then the bands
third album will inspire pleasure rather than
dutiful observance of global awareness.
When Joseph Nekwankwa breaks down
in tears singing Umasiye Wanga (My
Loneliness) about the mother he lost
as a child, its a catharsis that elevates
beyond his own. 
MAT SNOW
Download: Ambuye Konzeni (He Made
Me) | Ndatopa Nawe (Im Tired of You) |
Ndikukondani (I Love You)

ANNA MEREDITH
VARMINTS

MOSHI MOSHI, OUT NOW

Critter suite: Scottish composers

diverse opener.
Theres no such thing as
boring in the wonderful
world of Anna Meredith:
in her career so far, she
has created music for
nursery children, a piece
to be played on an MRI scanner and the
planets first beatbox-and-orchestra
concerto. Her body percussion piece
HandsFree was performed at the Proms, yet
she fits just as well on an indie label, home to
the galloping, joyful inventiveness of her first
album. While there are moments on the
smaller scale the Saint Etienne-style vocals
of Something Helpful, for example, or
Blackfriars emotional workout Varmints
really flies when Meredith unleashes the
full might of her compositional powers.
The duelling brass of Nautilus sounds like
massing Martian armies, while R-Type
occupies previously uncharted territory
between prog, metal and happy hardcore.
Visceral, cerebral, utterly lovable. 
VICTORIA SEGAL
Download: Nautilus | R-Type | Shill

MING CITY ROCKERS

LEMON

MAD MONKEY, OUT 25 MARCH

Anachronistic, Albini-produced thrills

from Lincs upstarts.
112

M AY 2 0 1 6

It can all be a bit hazy and formless, but

when sweeping the sky for sounds on the
ominous prog-drift of Body Studies or
bathing in the light cast by Loveless on Deu,
Colleran shows his skill at controlling the
most nebulous sounds. 
VICTORIA SEGAL
Download: Deu | Eva | Body Studies

They come from the

wrong place (the
Humberside port of
Immingham instead of
the Lower East Side),
theyre born into the
wrong time (right now instead of the early
noughties or late 70s), but you can hear all
the fucks Ming City Rockers give on Lemon.
Precisely zero, that is. The second LP from
the big-haired, skinny-tied garage rockers,
recorded in Chicago by Steve Albini, feels
like sticking your finger into an electric
socket. Ten of its 11 tracks (the only misfire
being the reggae-lite of Trying To Find
Pixies) pack addictive pop-punk melodies,
channelling the spirit of Ramones and New
York Dolls and howled with abandon by kohleyed Clancey Jones. MCR might be Britains
most rocknroll band in the purest sense,
concerned only with the reckless pursuit
of youthful kicks. An exhilarating jolt of
unadulterated adrenalin. 
SIMON PRICE
Download: Christine | Im Not The
One | How Do You Like Them Apples?

AIDAN MOFFAT

WHERE YOURE MEANT TO BE

KISS MY BEARD/ BETTER DAYS, OUT 25 MARCH

Modernised Scotfolk, live near

Loch Ness.
Budokan, Hammersmith
Odeon or Madison
Square Garden are
among musics favoured
tabernacles in which to
make live albums. But
while filming a folkloric pop travel doc in
2014, Falkirks Aidan Moffat knew the village
hall of Drumnadrochit in the Highlands was
the place for him and his band to record
his trad.arr versions of Scottish folk songs.
The intimate setting suits rough-edged,
drink-sodden entertainments which are
ideal for the smashed, as gleeful debauchery
see Im A Rover and the depraved The Ball
Of Kerrymuir sit alongside the sobering
struggle and tragedy of Abduction Lullaby
and Jock McGraw, the latter concerning a
serviceman suffering from PTSD. Purists
may bristle at his irreverent modifications,
but consider these old songs community
spirit well served. 
IAN HARRISON
Download: Im A Rover | Jock McGraw |
Im A Working Man

MMOTHS

LUNEWORKS

BECAUSE MUSIC/OYAE, OUT NOW

Dublin producer makes celestial debut.

His first album was
recorded on a laptop in a
friends spare bedroom
in LA, but Jack Colleran
could easily have got
away with weaving a less
prosaic story around these songs, one that
involves NASA-level recording equipment,
perhaps, or extra-terrestrial static and
signals. For Luneworks is properly
atmospheric, not just capable of shifting the
mood of a room with its electronic pulses,
echoes and sighs, but also music that might
be crafted from dust clouds, ozone and
distant particles of My Bloody Valentine.

MOGWAI
ATOMIC

ROCK ACTION, OUT 1 APRIL

Anna Meredith:
visceral, cerebral,
utterly lovable.

Glaswegian post-rock veterans opt

for the nuclear option.
Ideally suited to
soundtrack work,
Mogwais atmospheric
post-rock has previously
complemented the likes
of Zidane: A 21st Century
Portrait and Les Revenants. A documentary
about the nuclear age, Mark Cousinss
Atomic: Living In Dread And Promise was
shown last year on BBC Four and its weighty
subject matter proved a good fit with the
Glaswegians by turns thoughtful and
powerful score, now reworked for this
album. From Pripyat, named after the town
nearest to the Chernobyl power plant and
with a suitably ominous riff, to Tzar (taking
its title from the largest weapon ever
detonated, and a triumph of slow-build
guitar crescendos), there is a sense of
history throughout. There are nods, too, to
the bands own past: the chord progression
of opener Ether offers a muted echo of early
career highlight Mogwai Fear Satan. 
PHIL MONGREDIEN
Download: Ether | Tzar | Weak Force

Pet Shop Boys (from

left, Chris Lowe and Neil
Tennant): providing
uplift in abundance.

MULL HISTORICAL SOCIETY

DEAR SATELLITE

XTRA MILE, OUT 8 APRIL

First album in five years from newly

minted novelist.
Awards and next-bigthing predictions flew
at Colin MacIntyre
(aka Mull Historical
Society) 15 years
ago when he released
a debut album of quirky pop songs about
call centres and cornershop owners
battling supermarkets. His eccentricities
soon gave way to more expansive plans but
hes remained a cult figure all the same.
Taking a detour to write his first novel
(published last year) after 2012s underrated
City Awakenings, his musical journey
now continues more widescreen than
ever. The big indie-rock of Sleepy Hollow is
beaten in the chirpy stakes only by the
vaguely Afrobeat of This Little Sister,
while MacIntyres melancholy of old takes
on Titantic proportions for the pleading
Why Do They Go So Soon. Dear Satellite
certainly deserves to stay afloat much
longer than his previous albums.
ANDY FYFE
Download: Build Another Brick |
Sleepy Hollow | The Ballad Of Ivor
Punch

ANIMAL MAGIC

A rich vein of form continues for the pop-dance veterans.

PET SHOP BOYS

SUPER

X2, OUT 1 APRIL

A group since 1981,

Pet Shop Boys have
fared well over
decades of brainsingeing change:
every one of their 12 original albums has been
a Top 10 hit, the tourings always worldwide,
and, most importantly, theyve sustained
creatively. Produced like its predecessor by
Stuart Price, Super is the second instalment in
whats planned as a purely electronic trilogy.
Talk of themed album sequences suggests
singer Neil Tennants formative Kraftwerk
and Bowie obsessions, and as with those
giants, its the narrative conceits that complete
the picture here. Delivered as ever in Tennants
quietly intense, enunciated confidences that
verge on the embarrassed, here are songs that
only the Pet Shop Boys could record. The Pop

Kids is a melancholy portrait of nostalgia

for 90s clubbing and lost love, while Sad Robot
World and Say It To Me add disquiet with
technology and its freezing effect on closeness,
even that of androids. Yet the cod-classical
lament of The Dictator Decides, a showtune
from some deranged musical about Kim
Jong-uns North Korea, perversely sees
light in the darkness and finds humanity in
the seemingly inhuman.
Theres also uplift in abundance, as tracks
including Groovy, Burn and Undertow satisfy
the dancefloor imperative in manifold house,
techno and Eurodisco formulations. Another
outstanding example of this is the brisk Pazzo!,
which possibly contains nods to New Orders
Tutti Frutti and Blue Monday, comes in at
under three minutes and finds Tennant
asking, do you want it? If he means serious
content delivered in appealing pop form like
this, yes please.
IAN HARRISON
Download: The Pop Kids | Burn | Pazzo!

M AY 2 0 1 6

113

PARQUET COURTS

es tend
he sites
ips, a bias
s
ooklynb
nton,
who for this follow-up
t

HUMAN PERFORMANCE
ROUGH TRADE, OUT 8 APRIL

The Clash: Combat

Rock tidied up
after Sandinista!.

NYC alt-rockers great leap forward.

With The Strokes
terminally out of
commission, theres a
clear vacancy for an
ber-cool New York
band of the Velvet
Underground/Sonic Youth lineage. We need
await its filling no longer, as Brooklyns
Parquet Courts have delivered a fifth fulllength album that ticks every box on the
application form. Where previous outings
had an abrasively thrown-together edge,
Human Performance is more thought-out,
all about proper, often Velvets-inspired
songs: a scorching Lou Reed riff propels
Dusts hilarious motivational anthem (dust
is everywhere sweep!), while One Man,
No City concludes with a scrabbly guitar solo
right off Venus In Furs. There are other
flavours (notably, Hex Enduction Hour-era
Fall), but cohering it all is a fierce emotional
purpose to the lyrics particularly those
where singer/guitarist Andrew Savage mines
his romantic/existential problems. It should
all hoik these Courts a fair few rungs up the
ladder. ####
ANDREW PERRY
Download: Dust | One Man, No City |
Human Performance

PRINCE RAMA
XTREME NOW

PAW TRACKS, OUT NOW

Psych-rock siblings continue to

operate from the shadows.
Its to be hoped that the
good people at Paw
Tracks think to include
the press release in
the physical copies
of Xtreme Now. Its a
work of genius, whose talk of imaginary
Estonian black metal communes and
recurring problems with time-dilation
lend the Larson sisters dark, yet gloriously
effervescent, electro-pop another layer of
lunacy. Theres form here, as last time the
siblings had a record out Takara Larson was
attacked by raccoons in Central Park and
made the evening news. Those distractions
aside, this is a fine record, with Bahia and
Slip Into Nevermore echoing spectral New
York art-rock, Now Is The Time Of Emotions
motorik throb and Fake Till You Feels
and Would You Die To Be Adoreds loving
wallow in spidery 80s goth. ###
ROB FITZPATRICK
Download: Bahia | Slip Into Nevermore
| Now Is The Time Of Emotion

THE RANGE
POTENTIAL

DOMINO, OUT 25 MARCH

US producer finds that theres gold

beyond Vevo.

3
n
t
h
m
immediacy to the shimmery synths and
midtempo, R&B-inspired beats of his
melodious electronica. And while Hintons
selections vary wildly in style Copper Wire
reworks a freestyle by a 13-year-old grime
MC, Florida features a bedroom cover of
Ariana Grandes Youll Never Know and 1804
morphs a Jamaican dancehall wannabes
patois the production is both fluid and
empathic. Hes even alive to accusations of
exploitation, offering his finds a share of
royalties and roles in a documentary film
due later this year. ####
RUPERT HOWE
Download: Copper Wire | Florida | 1804

RNDM

GHOST RIDING

DINE ALONE, OUT NOW

Second outing from Pearl Jam bassists

alt-rock trio.
Given how doggedly
Pearl Jam have had to
fight to stay together
during their 25-year
career, its somewhat
remarkable to consider
just how many talented side-projects theyve
spawned. Among others, theres been Eddie
Vedders campfire solo ventures, guitarist
Stone Gossards soulful offerings with Brad,
plus Mike McCreadys supergroup Mad
Season wrangling with the spectre of drug
addiction. Comparatively, PJ bassist Jeff
Aments RNDM have flown under the radar
since forming in 2012 yet undeservingly
so. Their second album, Ghost Riding,
reveals a band capable of balancing uplifting,
chameleonic alt-rock and introspection
every bit as gracefully as The Eels on
Kingdom In The Sky. The title track alone
a string-assisted reflection on youth
surrendered to time confirms this branch
of Pearl Jams extended musical tree
deserves your attention. ####
GEORGE GARNER
Download: Stronger Man | Ghost Riding
| Kingdom In The Sky
Prince Rama: dark, yet
gloriously effervescent.

BACK TO
THE FUTURE
Riviera-based reveries from
nostalgic electro-pop auteur.

M83
JUNK

NAIVE, OUT 8 APRIL

M83s Anthony Gonzalez:

hes found the reverse gear
on the time machine.

SEPTEMBER GIRLS

ALLEN STONE

FORTUNA POP!, OUT 8 APRIL

ATO, OUT 1 APRIL

PHOTOSHOT

AGE OF INDIGNATION

Irish outfit take on The Man.

In an age of depressingly
little political dissent,
despite the almost
limitless potential for it,
its refreshing to see
Dublin five-piece
September Girls daring to challenge the
status quo. Their second album takes on
Roman Catholic sexism, the 1916 Easter
Rising and social media trolls, although
it can be quite easy to miss their messages,
delivered as they are in a dead-eyed,
deadpan manner and buried beneath
pummelling rhythms and darkly discordant
guitars imagine Savages if theyd spent
their formative years listening to goth
bands instead of post-punk. At its best,
theirs makes for a thrilling sound, as on
lengthy opener Ghost, which picks up
in intensity as it goes along. However,
spread across a whole 40 minutes,
there is too little variety on show and the
lack of breathing space is more likely to
induce mild claustrophobia than any
genuine excitement. 
PHIL MONGREDIEN
Download: Ghost | John Of Gods |
Catholic Guilt | Love No One

RADIUS

Son of a preacher mans third album.

Unashamedly upholding
the tradition of politically
charged, super-smooth
soul established by
Marvin Gaye, Curtis
Mayfield and Stevie
Wonder, Seattle-based Allen Stone is
perhaps a tad too soulful, too politically
charged and too traditional to break
through in these hip-hop-centred times.
Its certainly a situation that Fake Future,
a whine about modern technology (and
the second track on this, his third album),
is hardly going to help. Stone is joined
throughout by the Swede Magnus Tingsek,
whos in need of a similar break. The results
are a little more Jamiroquai and a little less
aggressive than his previous efforts, but
American Privilege, Barbwire and Perfect
World keep the thoughtful flags flying and
hes spine-tingling on Where Youre At.
Theres nothing here to suggest Stones
lucks about to change, but Radius maintains
his position as leader of the contemporary
soul pack. 
JOHN AIZLEWOOD
Download: American Privilege | Where
Youre At | Barbwire

Hard to believe now, but

there was a time before
Daft Punks Homework,
before tienne de
Crcys Super Discount,
before Airs Moon Safari
when received wisdom, among the constabulary of
cool, was that the French couldnt be trusted with pop.
In the two decades since, it often feels as though its
only the French you CAN trust with it.
Perhaps they have an unfair advantage, precisely
because theyre unencumbered by tight-arsed AngloSaxon notions of cool. Such was the laissez-faire
climate into which Antibes-born Anthony Gonzalez
launched M83 in 2001, and steadily built a reputation
for stunningly maximalist electronic future-pop.
However, in the five-year gap since the shimmering
glass mountains of Hurry Up, Were Dreaming,
somethings happened: hes found the reverse gear
on the time machine.
And, like a true Frenchman, he shows no interest in
dredging the past for the umpteenth reiteration of the
cool canon. Instead, Junk a knowingly provocative
title digs up, and digs, middle-of-the-roaders such as
Air Supply, Rupert Holmes, The Korgis, even Bucks
Fizz. Not for Guilty Pleasures LOLs, but for their
genuinely unearthly strangeness and Proustian power.
The bittersweet nostalgia it evokes is overpowering.
Go!, featuring a delicious Steve Vai guitar, comes
beamed from the hyper-80s inside Gonzalezs head
(as opposed to the real one). FM ballad For The Kids
intertwines call-centre sax with the lovely, lazy Karen
Carpenter vocals of Susanne Sundfr, and is only
outdone by the sheer jouissance of Mai Lan on Laser
Gun. Atlantique Sud, all Instagram grain and flecks,
could be the emotional theme from a 1974 coming-ofage movie, and the sweepingly romantic instrumental
Moon Crystal sounds like a piece of library music which
would be given a title like, well, Moon Crystal.
Immaculately named closing track Sunday Night
1987 says it all: Lost memory/Coming back/Remember
the sun/Remember the colours/To your heart, its
summer Its reminiscent of the scene in Limmys
Show! where the comedian tries to buy a train ticket to
revisit the teenage holiday in a faded photograph in his
hand, and every bit as heartbreaking.
Junk is deeply uncool, uncoolly deep, and utterly
magnifique. 
SIMON PRICE
Download: Laser Gun | For The Kids | Go!

M AY 2 0 1 6

115

SURGICAL METH MACHINE

SURGICAL METH MACHINE
NUCLEAR BLAST, OUT 15 APRIL

Ministry mainman Al Jourgenson

returns even more brutal than ever.
Surgical Meth Machine
is the new vehicle for
Ministry frontman Al
Jourgenson after he
finally retired his longrunning, infamous
industrial-electro outfit in 2013 following
the death of guitarist Mike Scaccia from
a heart attack at just 47. Given that
Jourgenson has always operated at the
outer edges of good taste (side-projects
named Revolting Cocks and Buck Satan,
multiple songs about heroin abuse, etc),
the news that Surgical Meth Machine are
not a real commercial project makes
you wonder just how far hes gone this
time. The answer arrives on first track Im
Sensitive, an insanely brutal jackhammer
metal assault about how Jourgenson deals
with social media comments about him
(I dont fucking care!). The rest of the
album is similarly dark and pummelling,
making it tough to digest in one sitting.
For all that though, its good to have
Jourgenson back. ###
JAMES OLDHAM
Download: Im Sensitive | Rich People
Problems | Smash And Grab

SUUNS

HOLD/STILL

SECRETLY CANADIAN, OUT 15 APRIL

White Denim: a fun

record by a fun band.

Canadian quartet forget tunes on

heavy-going third.
After two albums
recorded in their home
city on which abstract
dissonance and
conventional songs
made for strange but
happy bedfellows, Montreal-based fourpiece Suuns hooked up with St Vincent
producer John Congleton in Dallas for
their third. Throughout, the debt they
owe to post-punk and early electronica is
pronounced: the pulsing bassline and
Ben Shemies heavily treated and halfspoken vocals on album centrepiece

Careful evoke Wires Heartbeat, albeit more

discordantly, while the stuttering Resistance
struggles to get out of Warm Leatherettes
shadow. The results are mixed, though:
UN-NO and particularly Translate find
them at their most engaging. But too many
of the remaining songs sound more like
sketches than fully realised songs. Nobody
Can Save Me Now isnt the only time they
take the experimentation too far, its
disparate elements failing to coalesce
into anything thats worth listening to a
second time. ##
PHIL MONGREDIEN
Download: Translate | UN-NO

MUST BUYThe essential new albums of the last few months

UNDERWORLD
BARBARA, BARBARA, WE FACE A

IGGY
POP
POST POP DEPRESSION

Kark Hyde and

Rick Smith restate
their currency in
electrifying fashion
here, blending rock
and danceoor electronics with
hypnotic precision. The grand old
men of rave have got their mojo back.

Iggy recorded this

brilliantly unsettling
album (his 17th)
in the desert with
Josh Homme, the
QOTSA frontman providing a steely
presence throughout as Iggy deals
with his legacy via unearthly laments,
haunted visions and thwarted lust.

SHINING FUTURE CAROLINE

116

M AY 2 0 1 6

CAROLINE

LPSLEY
LONG WAY HOME

XL

Holly Lpsley
Fletchers hushed
ambient pop pitches
the Southport teen
halfway between
Lorde and Ellie Goulding neither
individualist nor mainstreamer,
but instead navigating her own
gently unconventional middle path.

DJ VADIM

DUBCATCHER II WICKED MY YOUT

SOULCATCHER, OUT NOW

Hip-hop/reggae-friendly head-nodder
keeps the nocturnal vibe locked.
In case youd been led
to believe that there
are no proper careers
left in independent
music, the ninth solo
album from Leningrad/
Kingston-Upon-Thames finest turntablist
proves otherwise. A subtle clue in the title
indicates that this is a dancehall and reggae

ANDERSON
.PAAK
MALIBU
STEEL WOOL/OBE

He was the breakout

star of Dr Dres
Compton, but Paaks
major-label debut is
more a soul album
than a rap one. Rich and dazzling, it
brings to mind Frank Ocean, Erykah
Badu, even Stevie Wonder, and
marks the arrival of a serious talent.

DOMINANT
JEANS
Good-time Austin rockers
revert back to basics.

WHITE DENIM
STIFF

DOWNTOWN/SONY RED,
OUT 25 MARCH

album, but Vadim has avoided many of the

obvious tropes that idea would suggest.
Instead, he creates an edgier, more abstract,
altogether itchier work. While genre
totems such as Max Romeo, Tippa Irie and
General Levy all appear, Vadim keeps the
surprises coming with unexpected noises,
arrangements and tempo changes. Whats
great though is how, despite all this, the
1am-in-the-basement vibe never departs.
Heres to album 10.
ROB FITZPATRICK
Download: Sometimes | Call On Me |
Good Vibes

WINTERSLEEP

THE GREAT DETACHMENT

DINE ALONE, OUT NOW

Nova Scotia trio take it to the limit.

Always sonically
ambitious, Wintersleep
have never managed to
turn that drive into much
success outside of
Canada. Their sixth
album pushes their sound to a kind of
ultimate state, taking U2s early gallop,
harnessing it to My Morning Jackets cosmic
rock and then ramping it up way beyond 11.
As gruesome as that may sound to some,
Wintersleep have a secret weapon in the

fight against bombastic rock: singer/lyricist

Paul Murphy has an ear unusually tuned
towards introspection and melancholy,
which should be at odds with the music.
Instead, the two level themselves out to
create an arena-sized intimacy that lifts
both your feet and the hairs on the back of
your neck.
ANDY FYFE
Download: Amerika | Santa Fe | Love Lies

YEASAYER

AMEN & GOODBYE

MUTE, OUT 1 APRIL

Brooklyn art-rockers return refreshed.

Following the lukewarm
reception to 2012s
minimalist Fragrant
World album, Brooklyn
art-rock trio Yeasayer
retreated from the firing
line claiming psychological exhaustion. As
a result, four years later, its all change. On a
new label, and working with a producer for
the first time (Joey Waronker of Beck fame),
Amen & Goodbye is an all-on-black attempt
to rediscover their mojo. By and large, its
successful. First single I Am Chemistry
a shape-shifting collage of electronic prog
and childlike backing vocals from Suzzy
Roche of The Roches showcases a desire

Over the past decade,

Austins White Denim
have taken their basic
rocknroll template and
reconfigured it into
something much more sophisticated. Their last album
2013s impressive Corsicana Lemonade (made with
Wilcos Jeff Tweedy) completed their journey from
art-punk trio to a vaguely psych, roots-rock outfit.
Album six, though, sees them attempting to skirt
back in the opposite direction. Forced to rejig their
line-up after drummer Joshua Block and guitarist
Austin Jenkins bailed after the last record to pursue
other production ventures (leaving just two original
members singer/guitarist James Petralli and bassist
Steve Terebecki), theres definitely an air of
retrenchment about this back-to-basics affair.
Its billed by the band as a record made entirely in
the old way (ie, they recorded it live), but thats not to
say its a total reversion to the primitive state. For a
start, its produced by Ethan Johns (the go-to guy
for a certain brand of stripped-back gravitas) and the
inclusion of a Red Krayola sample on the first track Had 2
Know (Personal) shows not all sophistication has been
lost. However, the vibe is definitely uncomplicated.
The opening three-song salvo of Had 2 Know
(Personal), Ha Ha Ha Ha (Yeah) and Holda You (Im
Psycho) gives you a pretty good lie of the land, as well
as indicating their love of brackets. An exhilarating,
hyper-direct blast, it maps out the intersection where
The Black Crowes meet The Black Lips. Things do
stretch out a little from there the Beatles-echoing
Theres A Brain In My Head in particular is likeably woozy
but not by much. Ultimately, this is a fun record by a
fun band. Not a bad thing by any means, but a little
more salt in the soup would have been welcome.
JAMES OLDHAM
Download: Holda You (Im Psycho) | Theres A Brain In
My Head | Had 2 Know (Personal)

to stretch themselves thats backed up

throughout. Highlights include the burbling,
Eno-inspired pop of Silly Me and the New
Order-echoing closer Cold Night. The only
minor caveat is that in the search for sonic
and lyrical transcendence, the band give
off the slight air of a Christian rock project.
Its not a deal-breaker, though.
JAMES OLDHAM
Download: Silly Me | Prophecy Gun |
Cold Night
M AY 2 0 1 6

117

REISSUES

WAIL OF A TIME

Goth rockers compiled from commercial

peak to subsequent meltdown.

SIOUXSIE
AND THE BANSHEES
CLASSIC ALBUM SELECTION
VOLUME TWO

UMC, OUT 22 APRIL

Siouxsie Sioux
was along for
the ride the day
the Sex Pistols
made their
infamous
sweary
appearance on
the Today show in 1976. After the
Pistols on-screen explosion of dirty
bastards and fucking rotters,
Siouxsie was discovered with guitarist
Steve Jones in a Thames TV office
taking calls from irate viewers.
Getting hold of all the ringing phones
and saying, This is Thames. Get off the
phone you stupid old
prat, recalled the
Pistols manager
Malcolm McLaren.
A similar flair for
confrontation ran
through Siouxsie And
The Banshees best
music. These six
albums from 1984 to
95 (now in a fancy
box but missing the
extras included in the
2014 reissues) prove
the Banshees would
never go quietly or
adhere to some strict
edict laid down in the
punk era. They kept on changing and
kept on challenging. There are many
pearls here, but, to reference
Siouxsies enduring lyrical fascination
with the power of water, sometimes
you have to dive deep to find them.
Hyaena arrived in 1984 premiered
the previous autumn by the Banshees
biggest UK hit, Dear Prudence, and
with departing guitarist John McGeoch
understudied by The Cures Robert
Smith. Its fractured but ambitious,
with the gorgeous orchestral overture
Dazzle and the watery Swimming
Horses trailering a bigger-sounding,
artier version of the Banshees.
On one level, the follow-up, 86s
Tinderbox, was a reaction to all that
artiness and a return to the barbed
simplicity of their early work. On
another, Cities In Dust, a hit single
inspired by the volcanic destruction
of Pompeii, sounds like the start of

something new: the Banshees taking

their obsessions with impending
doom and Armageddon for a spin
on the dancefloor.
How frustrating, then, that they
followed it up with 1987s Through The
Looking Glass, an album of covers of
Roxy Music, John Cale and, best of all,
The Jungle Books snaky signature
tune Trust In Me. Its good but feels
like too much of a stopgap.
It was three years after Cities In
Dust before the Banshees picked up
anywhere close to where theyd left
off. Peepshow (1988) was an
audacious fusion of hip-hop, funk and
pop, and the best album here. Its
flagship single, Peek-A-Boo, with its
distorted electro-rhythms and gypsy
accordion, had been in development
since the Through The Looking Glass
sessions. Its so
strange and timeless
it could have been
recorded last week.
By the time the
Banshees regrouped
for 91s Superstition,
their offstage
relationships had left
a wound. Siouxsie
and drummer Budgie
were a couple, but
she and co-founder/
bassist Steve Severin
were at loggerheads
over everything.
The sublime single
Kiss Them For Me
and The Ghost In You are the pearls
on an album of sleek Stephen
Hague-produced electro-pop.
Theres a sense now of a group past
their prime, but it ended too abruptly
with 95s The Rapture. A fortnight
after release, the Banshees were
unceremoniously dumped by their
record label, and split the following
year. That they promoted The Rapture
single, a sweet pop song titled O Baby,
with a video featuring scenes from
an icky American kiddies beauty
pageant, suggested a continued
willingness to challenge and provoke.
It was more than 20 years since shed
upset Little England on the Today
show. Reassuringly, confrontation
was still on Siouxsie Siouxs agenda
right to the end. ####
MARK BLAKE
Download: Dazzle | Cities In Dust |
Peek-A-Boo | The Killing Jar

118

M AY 2 0 1 6

Siouxsie And The Banshees

(from left, Budgie, Steve
Severin, Siouxsie Sioux,
Robert Smith) in 1984: they
kept on changing and kept
on challenging.

TOM SHEEHAN

THEY WOULD NEVER

GO QUIETLY
OR ADHERE TO
SOME STRICT EDICT
LAID DOWN IN
THE PUNK ERA.

A-HA
Crossing
over to
the other
side
Three more key LPs
by genre-busting
80s alt-titans.

Echo & The

Bunnymen
Ocean Rain
KOROVA, 1984

The Killing
Moons parent
album found the
Liverpudlian neopsychedelicists
playing with
a 35-piece
orchestra, and
sounding like
a post-punk
Sgt Pepper.

PiL
Album

VIRGIN, 1986

John Lydon
stunned punk
diehards by
hiring jazzbo
producer Bill
Laswell and bighaired guitarist
Steve Vai for this
explosive study
in thumping
metal and
mutant funk.

Depeche Mode
Music For
The Masses
MUTE, 1987

On which the
chirpy Basildon
electro-poppers
first explored
their dark side.
Full of bleaksounding synths,
black moods and
the first whiff of
druggy S&M.

TIME AND AGAIN: THE ULTIMATE A-HA

RHINO, OUT 18 MARCH

Take them on: Norwegian pop idols

greatest hits.
Their life as mid-80s
heartthrobs might
disqualify them from
completely cashing
in on the current love of
all things stark and
Scandinavian, but Oslo trio A-ha were
never strangers to a touch of Nordic noir.
This two-disc compilation, drawn from
their 10 studio albums and a clutch of
remixes, shows there was always more to
them than singer Morten Harkets
cheekbones and a novelty animated
video. While there are issues with dated
production and spreading AOR gloop,
their best songs The Sun Always
Shines On TV, Hunting High And Low
generate a wintry melancholy that in
different, less Euro-pop hands, would
probably have been viewed as modishly
gloomy synth-pop classics. With 1987s
The Living Daylights, they even managed
a decent James Bond theme a mark of
rare class.
VICTORIA SEGAL
Download: Take On Me | The Sun
Always Shines On TV | Hunting High
And Low

KARL BARTOS
COMMUNICATION

TROCADERO, OUT 25 MARCH

Ex-Kraftwerk percussionists 2003

solo debut.
Karl Bartos has a history
of living in the future.
Public perception of
Kraftwerk may be
reduced to that of
the Ralf und Florian
show, but between 1975 and 1990
electronic percussionist Bartoss
contribution was significant, co-writing
The Model among other classics. His
2003 solo debut LP was overshadowed,
ironically, by Kraftwerk themselves
making a comeback with their Tour
de France soundtrack album, but
Communication was as future-focused
as anything by his former band. Lyrics such
as the camera is going to be your best
friend foresaw the approaching age
of Instagrammed breakfasts and selfie
sticks at the Holocaust memorial. That
said, much of it sounds hackneyed: Warhols
15 minutes of fame dictum and lists of
futuristic buzzwords repeated in a vocoder
monotone. It works best, and worst, when it
completes the circle of influence: Electronic
Apeman could be a Conchords piss-take of
the Kraftwerk-influenced Daft Punk, while
standout track Life recalls the equally
indebted New Order.
SIMON PRICE
Download: Ultraviolet | Life | Im The
Message
M AY 2 0 1 6

119

BATTLES

EP C/B ##
MIRRORED ####
GLOSS DROP ###
WARP, OUT 1 APRIL

LIGHTNING BOLT
The godfathers of thrash metal remaster their
highly inuential rst two albums.

METALLICA
KILL EM ALL ####

RIDE THE LIGHTNING #####

BLACKENED, OUT 15 APRIL

Now 35 years and 110 million record sales into

their career, its almost inconceivable to
consider how Metallicas success was forged
by a debut so unapologetically preoccupied
with just one thing: speed.
Heavy metals governing pace was
hardly slow when Kill Em All emerged
in 1983 listen to Iron Maidens 1980 debut for
proof. Yet so extravagantly fast did Metallica
strike with songs such as Hit The Lights and
Whiplash, their debut not only set them apart,
it marked an epochal moment in which America
put its authoritative stamp on the thrash genre.

120

M AY 2 0 1 6

Oh-so bullishly, Kill Em All established its

prerequisites as speed, aggression, power
and more speed. As this reissue confirms, its
in distilling that spirit, not perfecting it, that
its importance ultimately resides.
Its interesting to contemplate where
Metallica would have ended up had their
talents been yoked to velocity alone. Instead,
1984s Ride The Lightning revealed a band
able to temper their own innate ferocity.
Suddenly acoustic guitars were permitted on
crunching songs such as Fade To Black.
Elsewhere, guitar solos were free to strive for
melodic grace instead of frenetic squalls.
The extras assembled for these
remastered, multi-format reissues include
live/unheard recordings, a DVD and rare
photos. At the centre of it all, though, is a
reminder that Ride The Lightning stands not
only as Metallicas finest album creating a
template they would subsequently refine,
revoke and reinstate but also the very pillar
upon which much of modern metal is built.
GEORGE GARNER
Download: Whiplash | Fade To Black |
Creeping Death

LARRY LEVAN
GENIUS OF TIME
UMC, OUT 25 MARCH

Brooklyn DJ legends remixes

and productions.
A visionary DJ who
soundtracked pregentrification NY
nightlife at the citys
Paradise Garage
latterly on a diet of
smack and angel dust Larry Levans early
death of heart failure in 1992 saw him
become an anointed figure in the history
of clubbing. Rather than approximating
one of his eclectic, soulful live mixes, this
two-disc set illuminates his art via remixes
and production work. Featuring Grace
Jones, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Smokey
Robinson and more, these classily torrid
disco and R&B tracks (more than half of
which come from the period 1981 to 1983)
sound sufficiently dated to seem cutting
edge in 2016, and the DJs spacey, groovefixated skills ensure vintage cuts such as the
Peech Boys Dont Make Me Wait or Gwen
Guthries Padlock remain potent cues to
enter the poly-pharmad, gospel-savvy
dancefloor of your choice. ####
IAN HARRISON
Download: Peech Boys Dont
Make Me Wait (Extended Version) |
Gwen Guthrie Padlock (Larry
Levan Mix) | Loose Joints Tell You
(Today) (Larry Levan Mix)

GETTY

Metallica (from left, Cliff

Burton, Lars Ulrich, James
Hetfield, Kirk Hammett) in 1985:
speed, aggression, power

NY prog squad reissue first three

releases on vinyl.
John Bonham-like
Battles drummer
John Stanier is known
for the ridiculously high
placing of his ride
cymbal, to make sure he
only uses it when he absolutely needs to.
This approach of doing things the hard way
has also informed the music his groups
made since forming in 2002. The early
math-rock-jazz instrumentals with Aphex
Twin-style numeric titles collected on 2006s
comp EP C/B are stern indeed, and its
possible the name of the skittering,
discordant Dance is ironical. The sharp and
nuanced Mirrored (2007) was a distinct
advance, with the dynamic rocking and
swinging vocalese of the mighty Atlas in
particular allowing greater access into
their world of restless-leg art-prog. The
drift to lucidity continued with 2011s
primary-coloured Gloss Drop sung
by Kazu Makino, Sweetie & Shag is practically
pop but without losing the groups
essential, questing bloody-mindedness.
IAN HARRISON
Download: Dance | Atlas | Sweetie
& Shag

REISSUES
THE LONG RYDERS
FINAL WILD SONGS
CHERRY RED, OUT NOW

Americas greatest country-punk

band celebrated.
The Long Ryders original
career lasted from just
1983 to 87. Overseen
by Kentucky-born
bandleader Sid Griffin,
their singular fusion of
country and garage rock was briefly tipped
for world stardom. But it never happened.
This four-disc career resum includes every
studio album, plus EPs, demos and live
recordings. The debut EP 10/5/60 and its
psych-punk number Join My Gang was a
great calling card. But the second album,
84s State Of Our Union, with the
whipsmart Lights Of Downtown and their
signature song Looking For Lewis And Clark,
nudges everything else here. The Long
Ryders limitations became apparent the
closer you get to the end. But this is a
welcome reminder of a band who helped
invent the alt-country genre, but didnt live
long enough to reap any rewards. ####
MARK BLAKE
Download: Join My Gang | MasonDixon Line | Looking For Lewis
And Clark

JOHN MILES
MILES HIGH

CHERRY RED, OUT NOW

From 1981: his fifth solo album.

In years past John Miles
had hit big with Music. In
years to come he would
become Tina Turners
gum-chewing guitarist.
Somewhere in between
was the Number 96 hit, Miles High, and it was
like punk never happened. A flat, alreadydated self-production hardly helped matters
and the toe-curling Reggae Man (Nothing
to say/Gets through the day/Sleepin till
late) surely raised eyebrows, even in 1981.
Elsewhere, Miless songs remained strong
and he always had an ear for a walloping, bigchorused AOR tune. As a result, Peaceful
Waters, Turn Yourself Loose and Out Of The
Cradle (But Still Rockin) were anthemic,
wind-in-the-hair scarf-wavers, albeit more

LOST
TREASURE
Jack Bevan,
Foals

M66 than Route 66. Next time around, the

spiky Play On would solve the production
problem, but, as he surely knew, Miless
solo moment had already passed. ##
JOHN AIZLEWOOD
Download: Peaceful Waters | Turn
Yourself Loose | Out Of The Cradle
(But Still Rockin)

THE MONOCHROME SET

VOLUME, CONTRAST, BRILLIANCE

UNRELEASED & RARE VOL.2
TAPETE, OUT 25 MARCH

Various
Artists
I Am The
Center: Private
Issue New
Age Music
In America
1950-1990
LIGHT IN THE
ATTIC, 2013

This
compilation has
got me into so
much music
thats new
to me. I really
love New Age
music, but my
girlfriend refers
to it as hipster
massage music.
Its nice, after
touring and
playing quite
aggressive
music, to go
back to the
calm stuff.

London art cults open tape chest,

78-91.
How can anyone
go through life without
the dear, cuddly
Monochrome Set?
wrote Morrissey to his
Glasgow penpal in 1981.
Soon after, Mozzer began his rise to fame,
but the dear, cuddly Monochrome Sets
refined and recondite output was too arch
for broad consumption. Despite variable
sound quality, this demo collection gives a
good indication of their vision. Evolution is
apparent compare 78s punky I Wanna Be
Your Man to 1985s twanging c-bomb
dropper Whoops! What A Palaver and the
Blue yster Cult-like rock of 1991s Black
Are The Flowers but singer Bids debonair
tones and barbed lyrics, and a literary/
cinematic quality, prevail throughout. Like
the frustrated plan to get Kenneth Williams
to record the bands song The Ruling Class,
a sense of what if persists, but the
ventures still a noble one. ###
IAN HARRISON
Download: I Wanna Be Your Man |
Whoops! What A Palaver | Black
Are The Flowers

EDDI READER

THE BEST OF EDDI READER

REVEAL, OUT NOW

Scots singer-songwriter compiled.

Seldom has there been
a bigger mismatch
between backstory and
voice than Eddi Reader.
Raised one of seven
in a Glasgow tenement,

this former busker is today a Twitterstorming Scots separatist. Yet she sings
with the trilling innocence of a robin. On this
set, which includes Fairground Attractions
1988 folk-pop Number 1 Perfect, Reader
radiates sweetness and light, finding
sunshine even in Amy Winehouses
Love Is A Losing Game. Technically flawless
and a shrewd judge of song quality, Reader
shrinks from expressing inconsolable
loss; not just unbowed but unscarred,
when she sings sad, its not the end of
the world. However, the world loves
above all a voice that can consolingly
embrace lifes dark nights of the soul. This
well-paced 30-track collection enjoyably
summarises a singer just one rung below
truly great. ####
MAT SNOW
Download: Snowflakes In The Sun |
Love Is A Losing Game | Whispers

REXY

RUNNING OUT OF TIME

LUCKY NUMBER, OUT 18 MARCH

Long-lost curiosity from the cellars

of synth-pop.
With the barrels of
junk-shop glam and yacht
rock all but scraped
clean, crate-digging
collectors in search of
illicit retro kicks have
turned to charity shop synth-pop. Take,
for example, the solitary album by Rexy,
the duo formed when Eurythmics
keyboardist Vic Martin met fashion student
Rex Nayman at London new romantic
hotspot the Blitz. Released by small-time
Kingston label Alien in 1981, its chiefly
known for disco instrumental Nervoso,
first unearthed by Joey Negro on his
Under The Influence mixtape, but that
tracks atypical. Running Out Of Times
haphazard charm is all about the
juxtaposition of Martins simultaneously
slick and cheap light entertainment
melodies with Naymans jaded, deadpan
observations about police cadets and
shopping. Its like having the prizes on
Sale Of The Century described to you by
Poly Styrene. ###
SIMON PRICE
Download: In The Force | Nervoso |
Johnny B Goode

MUST BUYThe essential reissues of the last few months

BOWIE AT THE BEEB PARLOPHONE/BBC

DAVID BOWIE

MICHAEL
JACKSON
OFF THE WALL

THE
BLUETONES
EXPECTING TO FLY

AFRICAN
HEAD CHARGE
MY LIFE IN A HOLE IN THE GROUND

This four-disc vinyl

LP version of 2000s
BBC sessions box
oers a noisy,
accelerated journey
through Bowieworld between 68
and 72. Performed by a band who
know the clocks ticking, this is Bowie
at his raw and unpolished best.

Jackos brilliant,
exciting, innovative
fth solo LP was the
one that made him a
star in his own right.
Packed with memorable songs, it was
a musical and artistic statement that
captured the mood of the times
and, best of all, you could dance to it.

The Britpop quartets

chart-topping debut
about break-ups in
the suburbs now
features a wealth of
unreleased material that will delight
completists. But its the frazzled
yet cocksure atmosphere of the
original album which stays with you.

ON U SOUND

EPIC

3 LOOP MUSIC

The rst album of

tripped-out Afro-dub
by Adrian Sherwoods
On-U Sound posse
conjures images of
late-night basement parties and reams
of King Size Rizlas. In other words,
its essential listening for bass-heads.

M AY 2 0 1 6

121

ENTERTAINMENT
A tribute
to enduring
friendship:
Blur get the
documentary
treatment
again.

DVD

BLUR:NEW
WORLDTOWERS
CERT 15, AVAILABLE ON
VIMEO.COM

122

M AY 2 O 1 6

CULTURE LIST

Blurs third coming, a musical love letter to 1971,

Miless wild years and an Undertone looks back.

TEENAGEKICKS:
MY LIFE AS AN
UNDERTONE
Michael Bradley
OMNIBUS, 16.99

Book

1971:NEVERADULL
MOMENT
David Hepworth
BANTAM PRESS, 20

Charting a momentous
year in music.
David Hepworths argument is
simple: 1971 was the most
febrile and creative time in the
entire history of popular
music. Its an enormous
assertion but he makes his point
with infectious enthusiasm,
offering a month by month
survey of how innumerable
classics such as Whats Going
On, Whos Next, Led Zeppelin IV
and Blue all emerged in a blur.
While his argument might
have been better served had
1971s influence been assessed
alongside other defining years,
it matters little. Hepworth
illuminates precisely because
he contextualises albums in the
highly specific moral climate
and cultural soup in which they
were released. Whether you
agree is beside the point. This is
a compelling love letter to a year
of timeless music. ####
GEORGE GARNER

Film

MILESAHEAD
CERT 15, OUT 22 APRIL

Don Cheadle plays jazz

with the truth.
This is a biopic about Miles
Davis in the sense that theres a
character called Miles Davis in
it. Thats about it. Instead,
writer, director and star Don
Cheadle captures the chaos
that the irascible Davis took
with him wherever he went
through a series of believable
fictional encounters and
unbelievable fictional car
chases. Set in the late 70s,
the main story sees a reclusive
Davis in exile from recording,

All that jazz: Don Cheadle

as Miles Davis, with Ewan
McGregor, in Miles Ahead.
much to the annoyance of
his record label. Psychedelic
flashbacks of things that
actually happened help explain
how he got there. Cheadle is
excellent as the lead and
Ewan McGregor makes a good
fist of being a Rolling Stone
writer, even if some of his
dunderheaded reverence as a
music journalist is a little too
close to the bone. Freed from
the real chronology, Daviss
music is allowed to wander as
Cheadle sees fit. It makes
the soundtrack the real star
of the show. ####
NIALL DOHERTY

Undertones bassists
teenage dreams so
hard to beat.
Mickey Bradley was, and is,
the bass player for The
Undertones, the pop-punk
band from Derry whose
Teenage Kicks was the
favourite record of John
Peel and thousands of
others of a certain age.
Bradleys memoir is both
breezy and detailed with
an anecdotal frankness
and self-deprecating
humour. It rattles through
the bands story, with
more emphasis on The
Undertones failures
than successes, recalls
moments in the bands
career, from singer Feargal
Sharkey blacking up for a
school concert to the band
nearly missing their own
final gig. Agreeable and
modest, Bradleys style is
well-suited to the story of
a band who made great
rocknroll records without
ever once appearing to be
rocknroll themselves.

####

DAVID QUANTICK

LINDA BROWNLEE

Reunion film sequel

to their reunion film.
The 2010 documentary
No Distance Left To Run
charted Blurs trajectory
from indie foetuses
to Britpop icons to
triumphant returnees,
albeit breezing over
Damon Albarns heroin
years. As such and
because, well, surely
theyre sick of talking
about Oasis Sam Wrench
focuses his film entirely on
the making of their 2015
album The Magic Whip,
their first release as a fourpiece since 1999. Stranded
in Hong Kong following a
cancelled Tokyo gig, it
captures them recording
the bones of their
comeback over five days.
Concert footage from Asia
and last summers Hyde
Park show is interspersed
with studio larks and
doubt-filled testimonies.
But rather than merely
being a tool for flogging
Blurs wares, New World
Towers is also a tender
tribute to enduring
friendship. ###
HANNAH J DAVIES

THE

Book

GADGETS

SPEAKERS
CORNER

Under the spotlight this month we have a

portable speaker, a PA system and an internet
radio. Oh, and a pair of fetching slime-green
sporty headphones. Ladies and gents, your
host and Qs gadgets guru, NIALL DOHERTY...

B&O BEOPLAY A2

299.95

THE ONE
TO BUY!

PURE JONGO T6X

ROBERTS STREAM 107

199.99

120

The blurb that comes with this hefty

speaker boasts that it can fill even the
biggest rooms with sound. I tried to
test this out by popping into the O2
Arena on my way home to see if it
was true. But they wouldnt let me in.
So I did it in my living room instead,
because its the biggest room in my
house. And yes, the Pure Jongo T6X did
fill it with sound. And that sound was
very good. And now I know. ####

Roberts Revival range is one of

the most stylish on the market, but
here they fall into the same trap as
many other DAB manufacturers
when it comes to trying to make
something to reflect modern day.
This internet radio with media
streaming works great, but there is
no discernible reason for it to look
like a prop from Quantum Leap. Its
2016. It loses marks for that. ###

There is something a little scary

about Bang & Olufsen, a bit like the
room in your grans house with all
the ornaments in. Here, the fancypants Scandinavian audio company
continue their move into portable
speakers with another smaller
product you can move around the
house. Thats what portable means.
The sound is brilliant, it looks
elegant and there is no real reason
it needs a brown belt on it, but who
doesnt like a brown belt? ####

JBL EON206P 399

This portable PA system is aimed at

amateur DJs and musicians, but its
also perfect for anyone who has an
annoying friend whos always talking
over them. Just imagine if every time
they cut you off, you could come back
in with your voice booming through
a PA. Obviously doing it once will
remove the element of surprise
so you cant repeat the gag, but
everyone will be talking about it for
at least a week afterwards. ###

HOW WE TESTED
Qs Niall Doherty reviewed the
products at a variety of locations:
his desk, his house, his gym and
the Royals section at Madame
Tussauds. Testing also took
place while the Q team discussed
the correct pronunciation of
the word ramen.

HOW WE RATED
Products were rated for their ease of
use, how they sounded, build quality,
price, what colour the box was and,
crucially, how hard they were to
remove from their packaging.

SENNHEISER
OCX 686G SPORT
79.99

Sennheiser make really good sporty

headphones, united by a shade of
green that Slimer from Ghostbusters
might sick up after eating a power
station. The good thing is that this
particular hue goes with (overpowers)
anything. And the sound is quite
beefy. And they fit round the ears
nicely. So thats nice. ####
M AY 2 0 1 6

123

Presented by the Forestry Commission by arrangement with CODA

Presented by the Forestry Commission by arrangement with X-ray

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April 16th 20

16

RECORD CORNER
INDEPENDENT RECORD STORE
established 1958
Whatever your musical tastes
email or phone for our
friendly and knowledgeable service
Email: Sales@therecordcorner.co.uk
Phone: (+44) 01483 422006
Shop: Pound Lane, Godalming, Surrey, GU7 1BX
Find us on Facebook and Twitter

1 Keswick Road East Putney

London SW15 2HL
(Nearest Tube: East Putney)
Tel: 020 8875 1018
2016
1991
soulbrothers@soulbrother.com
www.soulbrother.com
Soul Brother Records

Wide selection of the best

Soul, Jazz, blues and Reggae
releases plus 100s more

Vinyl & CD specialist across all genres of music

visit us on April 16th for a warm welcome

We will be stocking most of the RSD releases

New stock daily, record collections purchased

OPEN ON 8AM - 7PM ON RSD

25 years | 25 years | 25 years | 25 years

WIDE SELECTION
OF RSD RELE ASES
24 Harris Arcade,
Reading, RG1 1DN
Tel: 0118 957 5075

.com

thesoundmachine.uk

CDs - VINYL - TICKETS

Visit us for Record Store Day

for exclusive releases

INFO@DERRICKSMUSIC.CO.UK
www.derricksmusic.co.uk

01792 654 226

221 Oxford Street, Swansea, SA1 3BQ

Suffolks largest independent record store,

over 8,000 vintage & new stock.
Bringing Record Store Day 2016 to Bury St Edmunds
and people passionate about music.
Limited edition RSD turntable packages in store.
Vinyl Hunter, 56 St Johns Street,
Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk IP33 1SN
Tel 01284 725410 www.vinyl-hunter.co.uk

New & second-hand

vinyl & CDs
Plus the best of
2016s RSD releases
on sale from 9am
16th April

Is a famous record shop located in the

beautiful seaside town of Herne Bay, Kent.
A great retro themed record shop with owners Oz and Chris;
looking forward to their 2nd Record Store Day.

10 Soresby Street,
Chestereld S40 1JN.
Tel: 01246 234548
Twitter @tallbirdrecords
Find us on Facebook

There will be LIVE LOCAL MUSIC and QUIZ

in store on RECORD STORE DAY!
(plus on the day FREE cups of TEA for the early
morning queuing customers before we open)

Call us: +44 1227 360400

Email us: chriseastman@outlook.com
176 High Street, Herne Bay, Kent, CT6 5AJ
The Basement, 14 Gildredge Road
Eastbourne, East Sussex. BN21 4RL
Tel: 01323 430304

New Vinyl + CDs + Hi Fi

New releases, classic back catalogue and Indiepop
specialists. Wide selection of RSD releases - Live
music instore (and free cakes!)

www.pebblerecords.co.uk

www.tallbirdrecords.co.uk

PICCADILLY RECORDS
An award winning Independent
Record Store in the heart
of Manchester
 Vinyl is our speciality
%

53 Oldham Street, Manchester M1 1JR

piccadillyrecords.com
twitter.com/piccadillyrecs

Europa
uro is the
t Largest
a ge
Vinyl Shop in Scotland!
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Buy, Exchange &

sell all types of
music on Vinyl,
Cd & DVD

T-shirts and
memorabilia
also available

Your Local &

Independent
Music Specialist

10 Friars Street Stirling FK8 1HA

E: europamusic@btinternet.com

T: 01786 448623

These are the stores in your region that are

expected to take part in Record Store Day

APRIL 16th 2016

for sales/enquiries or FREE brochure call - 01423 500442

***

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 Talk to us: QMail@Qthemusic.com | Twitter.com/QMagazine | Facebook.com/

QMagazine | QMail, Q, Endeavour House, 189 Shaftesbury Avenue, London WC2H 8JG
MAD FOR IT

LETTER OF THE MONTH

Dear Q, loved your

eccentric-heavy last issue.
What other music
magazine would (or indeed
could?) feature Bez
warbling on about
beekeeping, Andrew
Weatherall admitting he
once took LSD, dressed up
as a monk and then tried to
control the weather, and Lee
Scratch Perry claiming
hes going to kill the Devil
with his todger?! Quality
craziness, Q. Keep it up!
Jake Thomson, via Q Mail

Muse: humans,
not robots!

PONY AND
TRAP!

BEHIND THE MASK

Dear Q, cracking on-the-road interview with Muse last
issue (Q357) courtesy of Dorian Lynskey. Theyve always
been a band Ive never quite got, and I put that down to
the fact that they seem so guarded, so controlled, almost
robotic. (I saw them live once very proficient and all,
but Matt Bellamy simply did not give out, not ONCE!)
Yet somehow you got under their collective skin and
made they seem well, human. And the fact that Matt
voted Green at the last election what a fascinating
snippet of info. Maybe he does it to offset the immense
CO2 emissions from their touring juggernaut?
Andy Salisbury, via Q Mail

Lee Scratch Perry:

quality craziness.

So, Foals admit

[Q357, Cash For
Questions] that
they turned down
second billing at
Glastonbury last
year because
they werent
ready. They
should grow a
fucking pair!!
When Pulp
Golden boy:
stepped in to
Kendrick Lamar.
replace The

Stone Roses in 1995 they had

their BIG MOMENT, the sort
of special performance that
certainly didnt need any
rehearsing to play the new
record In fact, bands like Foals
se that a bit of
spontaneity and
shioned winging
n go a very long way
ocknroll. Stop
ying it safe, lads.
dy Milner, York

APPERS
DELIGHT
Dear Q, thanks
for your Golden
Age Of Hip-Hop
retrospective last
sue (Q357). It took
e back to some great

Meet the worlds

best-travelled
magazine!
Matt Brear, Columbus Point,
Long Island, Bahamas
128

M AY 2 0 1 6

Wayne Flatman, Peter Tosh

Mausoleum, Belmont, Jamaica

Julia Ashmore, Phi Phi Islands,

Thailand

RACHAEL WRIGHT, REX, PRESS ASSOCIATION

The
World
of

Caption
Competition
WIN! Tickets for The
Isle Of Wight Festival 2016
has teamed up with the
organisers of The Isle Of
Wight Festival 2016 to offer
readers the chance to win
FOUR pairs of tickets.
Taking place from 9-12 June at Seaclose
Park, this years line-up includes Queen +
Adam Lambert, Stereophonics,
Faithless, The Corrs, Ocean
Colour Scene, The Kills, The Cribs,
Feeder, Status Quo, Jess Glynne,
Iggy Pop and many more! The
festival, now in its 15th year, is one
of the jewels in the crown of the
British summer calendar, boasting
a unique festival experience for
music fans of all ages to enjoy.
Once again, the festival is full of
live music over the weekend
including headliners, acoustic sets,
DJ performances and up-andcoming talent. Summer starts at the

The Wight stuff: the

legendary IOW stage and
(inset) one of the headliners,
Queen + Adam Lambert.

legendary Isle Of Wight Festival all the

biggest names in music, one unmissable
weekend. The prize consists of a pair of
weekend adult (12 and over) camping
tickets for four winners. The prize does not
include travel. See below for full Ts and Cs.
I Tickets and info
from www.
isleofwightfestival.
com

THIS MONTHS CAPTION CHALLENGE

Heres a shot of Coldplay at this years Super Bowl
halftime. Send your entry the funnier the better
including your address, to captioncomp@Qthemusic.
com or on a postcard to the usual Q address.
See below for more details. Closes: 1 April 2016

Q356 THE
WINNING
CAPTION

OK, I promise no
more solo vocals.

Mike Bingham
from Alvechurch
came up with this
gem and wins
a Tibo Electronics
hi-fi system. Nice
work, Mike!
To win, email your caption to: captioncomp@Qthemusic.com or post to the usual Q address before 1/4/16. One winner will be chosen by the panel. Winner will be notified, by email, 7-10 days after the closing date and must respond to Q
within 14 days or another winner may be chosen. Q will not respond to questions about its chosen winner but will provide winners names and the home towns, provided a request is made to the usual Q address and accompanied with a
SAE. One entry per person and you must be over 18 and live in the UK. Prize is non-negotiable with no cash alternative. Personal data will be collected by Q and passed to prize provider to process entries. See http://www.
bauerdatapromise.co.uk/ for more details. Full T&Cs apply, see http://www.bauerlegal.co.uk/competition-terms.html. Any queries, email: QMail@Qthemusic.com

music and memories, yet I would

argue that the Golden Age is
still alive and kicking. Just look
at recent albums by the likes of
Dr Dre, Kendrick Lamar, Drake,
Run The Jewels, even some
Kanye stuff, which show that
contemporary hip-hop is still
very much in rude health.
Matt Mitchell, via Q Mail

SPINE MESSAGE
Q357
Vulcano is the name of the
Austrian ship that launched the
first unmanned balloons loaded
with explosives on 22 August
1849, and hence the first
drones, which references your
cover stars, Muse. Clever, eh?
E Butterfield, via Q Mail

The long and short

of it: Josh Homme
and Iggy Pop.

LITTLE AND LARGE

I was struck last issue by the
almost comical difference in
height between Josh Homme
and Iggy Pop, as featured in your
reviews section. Did you doctor
the photo or something?
Marc Johns, via Q Mail
Nope, no doctoring, Marc! Josh
is 1.94m, while Iggy is 1.71m.
M AY 2 0 1 6

129

NILE RODGERS

I DANCE PRIVATELY EVERY

SINGLE DAY OF MY LIFE!

The disco legend on wanting to be a Brit,

drug psychosis and the coolest way to croak.
hen did you last
hear a song which
you wished youd
written?
Yesterday. Justin Biebers
What Do You Mean?. Every
time I hear it I go, Damn!
Why didnt I write that?
Its catchy, its clever, its great!
When did you last cook a meal
for someone?
Right now! And youre not
allowing me to eat it [laughs]!
Actually, in the course of
speaking with you, it might
sound a wee bit rude, because
Im taking my medication and
Im, er, chomping on a meal of
kale, fish and gluten-free
noodles. Its healthy? Sure,
thats the downside of
surviving the 70s and 80s!
When did you last despair
at American politics?
Now. Every political cycle,

when it comes to presidential

elections, you hear a lot of
negative noise but now it
seems the volume has been
turned up more than usual.
And Americans are listening
and thats scary to me. Im 63,
and Ive been lucky enough to
travel all over the world and
Ive realised we all basically
want the same things. People
are more alike than they are
unlike. So I gotta be honest
with you, and I know it
wouldnt happen, but if the UK
had banned Donald Trump Id

have applied for dual

citizenship. Id have to say,
My God, I want to be a Brit!
When did you last dance
privately?
Every single day of my life!
Though I always think
somebody will be cracking
up watching me on Skype or
something because theres
so little privacy nowadays.
Maybe I shouldnt be trying
it at my age [laughs]!
When did you last get into
a fight?
A physical altercation? Back in
the 80s, going out to afterhours
clubs and, you know, pretty
high, and some guy ran into
my car. I remember it like
yesterday. It was on the corner
of 34th Street and 7th Avenue
and this guy wanted to fight
with me so we fought. Did I
hurt him? Naaah. Ive studied
martial arts most of my life so
Ive never hurt someone badly
in a fight. But I controlled the
fight, that was for sure.

When did you last take drugs?

August 25, 1994, at Madonnas
[belated] birthday party.
What did I take? Oooh, name it.
By then my drug-choice had
narrowed to cocaine, booze and
Ecstasy. That night there was
no Ecstasy, but, boy, was there
cocaine and booze. Holy cow!
I had cocaine psychosis for the
very first time in my whole
drug-taking life, and Id started
at 11 years old. It took me two
days until I realised the scary
voices in my head werent real.
I checked myself into rehab for
eight months after that and Ive
been clean ever since.
When did you last think,
I should retire?
Retire? With an R [laughs]?!
Not attire with an A? My
partner [in Chic] Bernard
Edwards died after a show.
He passed out onstage, we
revived him, he finished the
show then died in his room.
The most romantic death
I could ever imagine. If Im ever
lucky enough to go out like that
it would be the most beautiful
thing that could ever happen.
I want to die playing the coolest
chord in the world, going,
Whoooooooaa!
I Tickets for Nile Rodgerss FOLD
festival at Londons Fulham Palace,
from 24-26 June, are on sale now.

WORDS: SIMON McEWEN PHOTO: ALEX LAKE

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