DIY, May 2015

set music free
free / issue 40 / may 2015
diymag.com
+
BRANDON FLOWERS
ALABAMA
SHAKES
DJANGO DJANGO
B L U R
SHAMIR
PALMA VIOLETS
& LOADS MORE
NO BANJO
REQUIRED
m u m f o r d
& s o n s
AS YOU’VE NEVER HEARD THEM BEFORE
1

2 diymag.com

M A Y 2 0 1 5
GOOD VS EVIL
WHAT’S ON THE DIY TEAM’S RADAR?
Victoria Sinden
Deputy Editor
GOOD ¯\_( ‘‘ )_/¯
EVIL Failed spectacularly
at getting McBusted tickets
over Easter.
..............................
Emma Swann
Associate Editor
GOOD Wolf Alice’s
triumphant Shepherd’s Bush
gig was a joy to see.
EVIL Accidentally washing
my beautiful Sleater-Kinney
sticky pass. It’s all crumpled
and faded now!
..............................
Jamie Milton
Online Editor
GOOD We have an official
Spector calendar in the
office, and it gets dreamier
every month.
EVIL Getting severely
sunburnt on a foggy (!)
Brighton beach in the first
week of April.
..............................
Sarah Jamieson
News Editor
GOOD There is new music
from Brand New in the world
and all faith and order has
been restored!
EVIL Having to text a
famous pop star before an
interview and not getting a
reply :’( Denied!
..............................
Louise Mason
Art Director
GOOD Asking a band for
their own cover shoot ideas.
Top shelf here we come.
EVIL Accidentally saying hi
to an indie dreamboat in the
street because I’d seen his
face so many times I thought
he was my friend.
..............................
El hunt
Assistant Online Editor
GOOD Festival season is
fast approaching. Bring on
the mojitos, game-changing
sets and badly drawn henna
tattoos.
EVIL Zayn Malik, how
could you? My One
Direction lunchbox is out of
date because of you.
EDITOR’S LETTER
Sure, the big story this month should be our Mumford & Sons
cover. One of the biggest bands in the world, who threw away
the banjos and reinvented themselves. And it is. But this is my
Ed’s letter, and Blur are back. So, before doing anything else,
go read the four page review that starts on page 64, while
I cry happy tears that my favourite band in the world have
returned. Thanks.
Stephen Ackroyd
GOOD Pssst. There are TWO magazines out this month. Keep
an eye open for our massive 2015 festival guide. It’s ace.
EVIL Trying to make two mags in one month isn’t easy.
L I S T E N I N G
POST
What’s on the DIY stereo
this month?
WOLF ALICE
My Love Is Cool
We’ll save the Official Verdict for next
issue. Let’s just say - yes, it is what you
hoped, and so much more.
Jamie XX
in Colour
Yes. It really is Jamie xx’s debut solo
album, but it’s definitely been worth
the wait.
W H O
SAID
They do
their own tai
chi classes,
naked.
Find out
on p58
3

C
O
N
T
E
N
T
S
NEWS
6 BRANDON FLOWERS
10 DIIV
12 BEST COAST
14 METZ
16 TWIN SHADOW
17 DIY HALL OF FAME
18 HOT CHIP
22 POPSTAR POSTBAG
26 FESTIVALS
6
NEU
32 DEMOB
HAPPY
34 B E S T
FRIENDS
37 RAT BOY
Editor Stephen Ackroyd
Deputy Editor Victoria Sinden
Associate Editor Emma
Swann
News Editor Sarah Jamieson
Art Direction & Design
Louise Mason
Head Of Marketing & Events
Jack Clothier
Online Editor Jamie Milton
Assistant Online Editor
El Hunt
Contributors: Ali Shutler,
Andrew Backhouse, Chris
Bunt, Coral Williamson, Danny
Wright, David Zammitt,
George Boorman, Huw Baines,
Jack Pudwell, Kate Lismore,
Kyle Forward, Kris Lavin, Liam
McNeilly, Matthew Davies,
Nina Glencross, Ross Jones,
Sean Stanley, Tom Connick,
Tom Walters, Will Richards
38
54
FEATURES
38 MUMFORD & SONS
46 ALABAMA SHAKES
50 DJANGO DJANGO
54 HOP ALONG
76
56 PALMA VIOLETS
60 SHAMIR
37
64
REVIEWS
64 ALBUMS
78 LIVE
Photographers Abi Dainton,
Carolina Faruolo, Mike
Massaro, Phil Sharp, Phil
Smithies
For DIY editorial
info@diymag.com
For DIY sales
rupert@sonicdigital.co.uk
lawrence@sonicdigital.co.uk
bryony@sonicdigital.co.uk
tel: +44 (0)20 3632 3456
DIY is published by Sonic
Media Group. All material
copyright (c). All rights reserved.
This publication may not be
reproduced or transmitted in any
form, in whole or in part, without
the express written permission of
DIY. 25p where sold.
Disclaimer: While every effort is
made to ensure the information
in this magazine is correct,
changes can occur which affect
the accuracy of copy, for which
Sonic Media Group holds no
responsibility. The opinions of the
contributors do not necessarily
bear a relation to those of DIY or
its staff and we disclaim liability
for those impressions. Distributed
nationally.
Cover photo: Phil Sharp
4 diymag.com

THE
10TH
EDITION
SET IN
HENHAM PARK
SUFFOLK
16TH - 19TH JULY 2015
FESTIVAL
CARIBOU
WILD BEASTS
FEMI KUTI &
THE POSITIVE FORCE
JAMES BLAKE
LAURA MARLING
LIANNE LA HAVAS
JOSÉ GONZÁLEZ
BENJAMIN BOOKER
JP COOPER
BBC RADIO 6 MUSIC STAGE
MANIC STREET PREACHERS
SEASICK STEVE
NAOMI SHELTON &
THE GOSPEL QUEENS
DJANGO DJANGO
PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING
TORO Y MOI
KING CREOSOTE
UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA
THE DISTRICTS
SOAK
CATFISH AND THE BOTTLEMEN
SAVAGES
WOLF ALICE
SUN KIL MOON
THE THURSTON MOORE BAND
DRENGE
SPECIAL GUESTS
LA ROUX
YEARS & YEARS
YOUNG FATHERS
KWABS
ARENA
THE 2 BEARS / CLARK / ADULT JAZZ / KIASMOS / JACK GARRATT / SHURA / GENGAHR / IBEYI
SUSANNE SUNDFØR / DM STITH / LEON BRIDGES / KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD
THE TWILIGHT SAD / CURTIS HARDING / MARIKA HACKMAN / NADINE SHAH / DOLORES HAZE / DUKE GARWOOD
LATE NIGHT: BEN UFO / DJ EZ / MONKI / ALEXANDER NUT / THE FOUR OWLS / THE BUSY TWIST / WERKHA (LIVE)
THE LAKE STAGE
AQUILO / BOXED IN / CHARLIE CUNNINGHAM / CLARE MAGUIRE / CLARENCE CLARITY / DENAI MOORE / EAVES / FORMATION
GULF / HONNE / MAN MADE / NEON WALTZ / PETITE MELLER / PRETTY VICIOUS / PRIDES / SUNDARA KARMA / TO KILL A KING
VERY SPECIAL PERFORMANCE: GARETH MALONE PRESENTS: VOICES AND THE LATITUDE CHOIR
COMEDY
JASON MANFORD / ALAN DAVIES / JON RICHARDSON
THE LAST LEG LIVE WITH ADAM HILLS, JOSH WIDDICOMBE & ALEX BROOKER
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5

6 diymag.comnews

New
Desires
AS BRANDON
FLOWERS GEARS
UP FOR HIS SOLO
RETURN, IT’S
CLEAR THAT HIS
CONFIDENCE IS
GROWING. WORDS:
SARAH JAMIESON.
What happens when you pair up
the flamboyant frontman of one
of the world’s biggest bands with
the pop producer du jour? When
Brandon Flowers tracked down
Ariel Rechtshaid to help him create his latest solo pop
masterpiece, that was exactly what he was wondering
himself. “It was personal and it was intense,” Brandon
offers over the phone, as he takes a short break from
rehearsals in his home city of Las Vegas. After hearing
Rechtshaid’s work on Vampire Weekend’s latest
album ‘Modern Vampires of the City’, the deal felt
sealed for Flowers. “We butted heads a lot but we also
bonded a lot. We went through all kinds of things that
relationships can go through,” he laughs, “but it was
good.”
If ‘The Desired Effect’ stands as anything, it’s a true
collaboration. While Flowers has never been afraid
to work with outside influences – on The Killers’
latest record ‘Battle Born’, for example, they worked
with five different producers - he’s the first to admit
that it’s now that he’s really getting used to the idea
of embracing them. “I love the idea of a team and
collaborating and working with people,” he explains,
“letting their talents come through.” With this record,
it was Rechtshaid’s talents that allowed his own to
blossom further. “As I’ve gotten older that’s something
that I’ve been a lot more willing to embrace and accept
that I can’t just do it by myself. I really appreciate other
people and their ideas and that was a really important
growth for me.”
Recorded in “increments” in both his own Battle Born
Studios and in Los Angeles, the follow-up to 2010
solo debut, ‘Flamingo’, was pieced together over the
past year, whenever he could make his way into the
producer’s diary. “He’s sort of an in-demand guy right
now,” he chuckles, “so it was all about when I could
get Ariel to Las Vegas, or when I could get to LA.” His
second effort has a fair bit riding on it. At the time
of press, Flowers has already sold out six sizeable
UK shows after debuting just one track. Now, with a
further song out in the open, fans are beginning to get
a feel for the album’s flair, and it’s fair to say that it’s
treading entirely different ground.
“I definitely wanted to do something different,” he says
with certainty. “When I sought out Ariel as a producer,
I knew that I was going into unchartered territory for
me. What you wanna do with any album is stay true
to yourself and that was really the goal, but you’re
putting it through a different person’s perspective any
time you let anyone else work with you, or collaborate
with you, so it’s going to go through different shapes
and sizes.”
The record still, however, possesses his stamp of
grandiose. Whether in the Springsteen-inspired twang
of ‘Lonely Town’ or the foot-stomping 80s beat of ‘I
Can Change’, ‘The Desired Effect’ sees Flowers turn just
about everything up to eleven. “Because he’s such a
capable producer, that gave me a lot of freedom,” he
reflects, again referencing his partner-in-crime. “I was
able to do whatever I could dream of; it seemed like it
was possible with him.”
7

It wasn’t just Rechtshaid that Brandon
decided to draft in; he also set about
drawing up a dream cast of supporting
musicians. In among the bombast,
there’s contributions from the likes
of Bruce Hornsby, Ethan Farmer and
Tony Levin, alongside his own peers
Angel Deradoorian (of Dirty Projectors),
Danielle Haim and Killers bandmate
Ronnie Vannucci Jr. “It was fun to
have people who have their own little
corners of expertise and letting them
get back into that, letting them do their
thing. I’ve never worked like that and it
was really fun.”
“I’m feeling more…” he continues,
touching upon his growing confidence
as a solo artist. “It’s a big pair of shoes
that you have to step into when this
is your job, I guess. There have been
so many great people who have gone
before me, and I’m finally starting to
feel like I belong. That it’s okay for me
to go for it and really let loose a little
bit more.”
The result is infectious; ‘The Desired
Effect’ sees Flowers really coming into
his own as a solo star; he manages to do
it all with an insatiable wink.
“I mean, I want people to take away
from it just what I take away from
music,” he offers up on how he hopes
listeners will react, “I don’t know that
it’s a specific thing but it made my life
better. It genuinely made my life better
and it still does. I mean, if you’re in the
car and ‘Don’t Get Me Wrong’ comes on
by The Pretenders, how do you not feel
good?!” he laughs again. “It’s a powerful
thing, music. I’m so grateful for all it’s
done for me and I just wanna repay the
favour.”
Brandon Flowers’ new album ‘The
Desired Effect’ will be released on
18th May via Virgin / EMI. DIY
“I was
able
to do
whatever
I could
dream
of.” -
Brandon
Flowers
NEWS
IN BRIEF
NINE DISCS OF
SORROW
The National have announced
the release of their “durational
performance” with Ragnar Kjartansson
as a vinyl box set. Titled ‘A Lot of
Sorrow’, the limited edition 9xLP
boxer captures the band’s six-hour
performance of ‘High Violet’ track
‘Sorrow’ at New York’s MoMA session
in 2013.
DON’T LET US DOWN
Sharon Van Etten has announced a
new EP, ‘I Don’t Want To Let You Down’.
The five-track EP is pencilled in for a
release on 8th June via Jagjaguwar. Van
Etten previously gave the title track its
first airing on Ellen back in January.
BRAND NEW
BRAND NEW
Brand New have released their
first new material in over six years.
The mysterious four-piece recently
performed a new cut titled ‘Don’t Feel
Anything’ during their tour, which was
then revealed as a single under the
new guise of ‘Mene’ back on 13th April.
Listen over on diymag.com.
SHIPWRECKED
Florence + The Machine has unveiled
the video for ‘Ship to Wreck’. Ryan
Heffington directs the new clip, which
begins in a dark, empty street, Florence
takes to a scene of distress, from crying
in bathtubs, to violent altercations
fighting on the stairs: that ship has truly
been wrecked.
8 diymag.com

SUNSET SONS
THEKLA BRISTOL FRI 01 MAY
WATERFRONT STUDIO NORWICH THU 05 MAY
O2 ACADEMY 2 OXFORD WED 06 MAY
SCALA LONDON TUE 12 MAY
SAMARIS
OSLO LONDON
TUE 05 MAY
GOD DAMN
SHACKLEWELL ARMS LONDON
WED 06 MAY
PORT ISLA
OSLO LONDON
TUE 12 MAY
SOLD OUT
TWENTY ONE PILOTS
DEAF INSTITUTE MANCHESTER TUE 12 MAY
HARE AND HOUNDS BIRMINGHAM WED 13 MAY
ELECTROWERKZ LONDON THU 14 MAY
BLEACHERS
DINGWALLS LONDON TUE 12 MAY
THE GARAGE GLASGOW SUN 05 JUL
ACADEMY 3 MANCHESTER MON 09 JUL
J.COLE
MANCHESTER ARENA THU 14 MAY
BARCLAYCARD ARENA BIRMINGHAM FRI 15 MAY
MOTORPOINT ARENA CARDIFF SAT 16 MAY
THE O2 LONDON MON 18 MAY
JACK GARRATT
O2 ACADEMY2 OXFORD SAT 16 MAY
HARE AND HOUNDS BIRMINGHAM MON 18 MAY
ACADEMY 3 MANCHESTER TUE 19 MAY
RESCUE ROOMS NOTTINGHAM WED 20 MAY
THEKLA BRISTOL THU 21 MAY
JOYWAVE
SEBRIGHT ARMS LONDON
WED 20 MAY
LA DISPUTE/
FUCKED UP
KOKO LONDON
TUE 26 MAY
ZHU
OVAL SPACE LONDON
WED 27 MAY
AQUILO
VILLAGE UNDERGROUND LONDON
TUE 23 JUN
NOEL GALLAGHER’S
HIGH FLYING BIRDS
AT CALLING FESTIVAL
CLAPHAM COMMON LONDON
SAT 04 JUL
BILLIE BLACK
THE WAITING ROOM LONDON
WED 08 JUL
LIFE IN FILM
HARE AND HOUNDS BIRMINGHAM WED 09 SEP
DINGWALLS LONDON THU 10 SEP
CASTLE HOTEL MANCHESTER FRI 11 SEP
STORMZY
MARBLE FACTORY BRISTOL MON 26 OCT
BIRMINGHAM LIBRARY FRI 30 OCT
IMAGINE DRAGONS
THE 02 LONDON WED 04 / THU 05 NOV
CAPITAL FM ARENA NOTTINGHAM FRI 06 NOV
MOTORPOINT ARENA CARDIFF WED 11 NOV
BARCLAYCARD ARENA BIRMINGHAM FRI 20 NOV
JOHN GRANT
EVENTIM APOLLO HAMMERSMITH LONDON
THU 12 NOV
@LNSource
Tickets | Exclusives | Win | livenation.co.uk
9

DIIV’s new record reflects on a turbulent few years. “It has its
darker moments,” Zachary Cole Smith explains. Words: Liam
McNeilly.
“I under greater media scrutiny, not to
feel like I’m a completely different person to
what I was three years ago; I’m coming from
a different point of view,” says DIIV’s Zachary
Cole Smith. With arrests, rehabilitation and
his relationship with Sky Ferreira coming
mention a foul-mouthed web outburst by one band member,
as DIIV’s second album comes round it’s a chance for Smith to
make one hell of a statement.
“It’s about the stuff I’ve experienced in the last three
years; big stuff, stuff that a lot of people go through in
their lives, existential stuff,” he explains, mapping out
the process of what promises to be another singleminded
representation of his own consciousness.
“It’s still all me, I’m still writing all of the songs and I’m
playing almost everything, but I’m definitely writing
more for the whole band,” he continues. “When it
comes down to it we are a live band and ultimately
it’s not fair to have something on record that doesn’t
translate live.”
While the added live dynamic has allowed new possibilities
to be realised, it remains the compiling of this into a
representative record that Cole sees as the true mark of DIIV.
“You can be the greatest band in history, but when it doesn’t
get put down on to a record that represents what you do, time
forgets you. A record is like your claim to immortality: That’s
your impact, everything else is just fleeting and temporal.”
It wouldn’t be fair to describe Smith’s personal experiences
of the last three years as fleeting or temporal, but there’s the
opportunity for them to fade in significance and become
I n T h e
Studio:
.DIIV
shadowed by a response that has the potential to reach
beyond. Legally, he’s had his hands tied for parts of that
period, forbidden from speaking on the case following his
arrest for drug possession and driving a stolen vehicle. Left to
look on, Cole has no hesitation in admitting it was a situation
that became painfully distressing.
“I spent three years having tape over my mouth. Even after
Sky’s charges were dropped it didn’t matter because nobody
was able to say anything. Sky turned into this punching bag
for chauvinistic, male-dominated music media and it was
so upsetting but we didn’t have a voice. Finally she put her
record out and got to say all this stuff she’d been wanting to
say. Now I have a chance to talk about everything that I’ve
wanted to say and I get to
make a statement musically
about what I think the world
“Now I have a chance
needs.”
to talk about
everything that I’ve
wanted to say.” -
Zachary Cole Smith
Combine these experiences
and new musical
perspectives, and you can see
the space emerging for DIIV
to work in a way that moves
beyond the gliding, melodic
and immediate nature of
their debut. “It has its darker moments,” says Cole, alluding it
seems to both the concepts and sonic make up, “but I think
it’s a much more diverse record. We’re just free to do so much
more: people are more willing to listen to what you have to
say [on a second record]... I want DIIV to be a rock band that
continually evolves. A lot of these songs are more accessible
and poppier, whilst some are way darker and weirder than
anything we’ve done before.”
DIIV’s new album will be released later this year. DIY
DIIV will play Field Day. See diymag.com for details.
DIIV aren’t taking the Mickey with their new album.
10 diymag.com

Back
On The
Road
Babes In Toyland
have returned to
play their first live
shows in 18 years -
next stop, the UK.
Words: El Hunt.
ewly reunited
and playing
Ntogether again
for the first time in
18 years, American
punk band Babes In
Toyland are amping
up for a short string
of UK dates at the end
of May. Cult figures on
the underground music scene, the band
arrived in 1987 alongside a wave of
other pioneers; Jack Off Jill, 7 Year Bitch,
Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, and L7 - who also
reformed recently.
“We wanted to play again,” laughs
frontwoman Kat Bjelland, speaking on
the phone in between band rehearsals.
“and I can’t really explain why. I missed
the other girls, Maureen [Herman] and
Lori [Barbero].”
The band barely spoke to each other
after breaking up, amid fall-outs over
Kat Bjelland continuing to use the
name. After Herman quit playing bass
for Babes in ’96, she had little to do
with them, and a reunion seemed
throughly unlikely. In the summer of
2013 however, she impulsively invited
Bjelland out to her family’s lake house
in Wisconsin, and within minutes a
reunion was fully on the cards.
“One of the reasons that I wanted to
do it was somebody showed me on
the internet - and I don’t go on it very
often - and I guess we had a whole new
generation of fans,” explains Bjelland.
“I felt obligated to, so that they could
see us live.” As for the lightning rate
at which Babes’ previous shows in
the US sold out at, she’s humbled. “I
didn’t know what to expect, and it
blew my mind,” she says. “It was really
emotional.”
Huge Babes in Toyland songs like ‘He’s
My Thing‘ and ‘Sweet ’69,’ seemed to
return in a click. “It was muscle memory,
that’s exactly what it was,” Bjelland
ON TOUR
MAY
24 Trinity Centre, Bristol
25 Engine Rooms, Southampton
26 O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire,
London
27 Gorilla, Manchester
28 Oran Mor, Glasgow
agrees. “We were laughing afterwards
because we didn’t even think about
it, we just did it. I feel like we’re better
than we were before, for some reason,
we’re a little bit more solid.”
Looking beyond their run of UK reunion
dates, Babes in Toyland also have plans
to release brand new material, and the
wheels are already in motion. “Me and
Maureen have a practice space here in
Minneapolis,” hints Bjelland, “and we’ve
always written stuff together like that.
We might do something after we tour,”
she adds, more clearly. “We’ve written
a few things. Maureen has a few ideas,
and I have some.”
Babes In Toyland tour the UK later
this month. DIY
11

California
Dreaming
As
The phrase ‘California Nights’ conjures up
all sorts of images. As baking hot days and
sun-drenched beaches melt away into Sunset
Boulevard and the Hollywood Walk of Fame,
all lit up against the darkness, even if you’ve
never walked the streets of Los Angeles,
there’s something familiar about it all.
That’s why it makes the perfect title for the newest effort from
Best Coast: it’s familiar, and possesses its own unmistakable
identity, but it’s not necessarily quite what you might’ve come
to expect. This time, for their third album, Best Coast are doing
things a little bit differently.
“I feel like by the time we went in to start recording ‘California
Nights’, everything had changed.” Bethany Cosentino is on
the end of a slightly crackly phone line from the States. “We
had taken a lot of time off and when we went in, we didn’t
really have any preconceived sort of idea of what the record
was gonna be like.”
Having last released their mini-album ‘Fade Away’ (“I was
trying to use it as a bit of an experiment”) back in 2013, the
pair - completed by multiinstrumentalist
Bobb Bruno -
decided to try some new things
when it came to their third
full-length. First things first, they
gave pre-production a go.
Best Coast
approach album
number three,
Bethany Cosentino
is learning that it’s
okay to feel okay.
“That’s the first time that I’ve
ever done that,” explains
Bethany, “and gone through
each of the songs to see how we could change them. We sat
with our producer Wally [Gagel], and Wally would say, ‘This
song is great but i think it could use a little bit of a change
up here’ and then we’d all sit together and work something
out. I would say that that really helped us because it gave us a
chance to listen to the songs and figure out what about them
could be enhanced. At the same time, we just made whatever
kind of song we wanted to make, inspired by whatever we
wanted it to be inspired by and we didn’t even think twice
about it. We were just gonna make the record that we wanted
to make and would make us happy, and that’s what we did.”
Pre-production wasn’t the only new avenue they explored.
12 diymag.com

While Best Coast’s music has
always seen Bethany approach
songwriting with a certain
degree of honesty, it was during
the making of this record that
she began to have a realisation
which saw her open up even
more than previously. “You’ve
just got to go with the flow,” she
says simply enough, “and that’s
the way that I’ve adapted to
life now; still managing to be a
very neurotic person, however,
trying to go with the flow as
best as I can.
“When you’re
making mistakes it
really means that
you’re trying.” -
Bethany Cosentino
What’s going on with…
Deap Vally?
Drummer Julie Edwards offers up an update on life in the Californian duo.
Hello Julie! How’re you doing?
Pretty good. We’re currently in
Vancouver where some lovely people
gave us a place to crash for the night.
We hear you’ve been working on
your second album - what do you
explore on the new record?
Hugeness, epicness, darkness.
How did you build upon or move
away from your debut?
We just continued our journey of
jamming and finding moments that felt
cathartic, and building them into songs.
The result is sometimes a real departure
from the ‘Sistrionix’ zone. We are really
excited. This record has ended up being
both darker and lighter than our debut.
What was the studio experience like?
We started recording this album with
Nick at Sonic Ranch in El Paso, Texas
back in January 2013, so it’s been a
long time coming. We would fit studio
time in between tours and planning
Desert Daze and Moon Block Party out
in Southern California, which is another
thing we do in our ‘free’ time...
You’re now playing some shows with
Marilyn Manson. How are they?
They’re great! His fans have been really
receptive to us. They love the heavy
dark shit just like we do, so it’s a great
match. Plus, watching Manson every
night is inspiring - he is truly a master
at communicating with thousands of
people all at once.
“On this record there’s a bit of
self-acceptance,” she continues,
“and accepting the fact that
nothing is perfect, no one is
perfect, I will never be perfect, I
will continue to make mistakes
but you know, when you’re
making mistakes it really means
that you’re trying. You’re trying
to change or reevaluate certain
situations or emotions and not react
in the way that you would have in the
past. That’s the way I was writing on this
record. Like, ‘Okay, here’s the negativity,
now what’re you gonna do with it?’
“I think that making this record was very
cathartic for me because, at the end of it
all, when I listened back to the mastered
sequence, I was like, ‘Damn, this record
is really the most real Best Coast record’
and lyrically, it’s the realest I’ve ever
been. I just didn’t hold back and talked
about a lot of different things that
I’ve never talked about before. I don’t
know if it was just because I was feeling
more confident at the time, or I was just
ready to explore other things. I think
the biggest thing on this record is that
I didn’t over think anything. I was just
doing what was coming out and feeling
natural and organic.”
Best Coast’s new album ‘California
Nights’ will be released on 4th May
via Virgin EMI. DIY
You’ve also been working with Nick
Zinner. How was he to have involved?
He has great taste, great ideas, and
he’s a guitar tone genius, so that
helps! He would sit in on free jams (he
is brave...) and then if he had some
favourites, he would let us know, and
sometimes those would be developed
into complete songs, or else he would
oversee the recording of songs that
were already completed. The process
was very democratic and organic.
What’ve you got coming up after
this tour?
First we’ve got our fourth annual Desert
Daze Festival happening on 2nd May
at Sunset Ranch Oasis in Mecca, CA.
Then Lindsey and I will be doing short
stints as bass players in White Lung
and JJUUJJUU, respectively. Then it’s
back on tour as Deap Vally as the record
comes out in the fall…
Deap Vally’s second album will be
released later this year. DIY
13

Second
“Making something really punch
you, it doesn’t just mean cranking
up your amp.” - Chris Slorach
To
M e t z r e t u r n w i t h t h e i r s e c o n d a l b u m ,
‘ I I ’ . “ I t f e e l s l i k e w e a c c o m p l i s h e d t h e
n e x t s t e p , ” t h e y e x p l a i n . W o r d s : E m m a
S w a n n . P h o t o : M i k e M a s s a r o .
know what it is about him,” ponders
Metz bassist Chris Slorach, about
engineer Graham Walsh, “he’s just
vibes. Anyone can really do what he
“You
does,” he continues, laughing, “but his
vibes are so good, he’s just happy and chill and he never gets
flustered, we just get flustered. That’s what we love about him
the most.”
The Toronto trio return this month with ‘II’, a record that,
although more expansive and accomplished in sound than
that blistering 2012 self-titled debut, is largely – in the best
way possible – ‘much of the same’. And that’s OK by them.
“You’ll always know what we sound like,” says vocalist Alex
Edkins, “this is our natural sound, it’s just who we are.”
“Closing a certain chapter” is how Chris puts it, pairing their
debut and ‘II’ as bookends, or parts of a friendship necklace.
“These two albums are definitely half of each other. They’re a
similar thing.”
‘II’ was recorded throughout the final months of 2014 in
Toronto, working with the same people, in the same way
as first time around. “It was something that worked for us,”
explains Alex. “Mentally, where we were at with this record,
to work with all the same people just made sense. We could
bang our heads together, and argue among ourselves to make
sure the songs were in a place we wanted them, and we knew
these people would step aside and let us do our thing until we
were ready. I can say this about the process of self-producing,
Graham is someone that I trust, and we all do trust implicitly.”
“They know our language,” agrees Chris. “They know how
we approach the band, what we value, what we maybe don’t
value, and how to translate some of the things in our heads
on to tape.”
“I really think it’s an evolution and a progression,” he
continues. “After the first record, we’d been around the world
several times, and it was a totally brand new and exciting
experience. Luckily, we didn’t burn ourselves out completely,
we were back and excited to get back in to the studio and
14 diymag.com

None
write and see where we could take it from that point.”
“It’s nothing drastic,” he adds, of the sonic development on
‘II’, “but there are a lot of important things, you know, melody
being some of it, production being some of it, songwriting,
where we felt we were really able to progress, and we’re
really happy how that came out. It feels nice, it feels like we
accomplished the next step in our band.
“It takes us a while to make an album, even though it’s not
a long player, there are a lot of intricacies that we liked to
be very specific about, and hopefully get across to some
listeners. I know it probably sounds very brash, and off-thecuff
to a lot of people, but we’re very meticulous.
“As a live entity there’s only so much you can do as three
people. Making something really punch you, or hit you is
a totally different process on record, it doesn’t just mean
cranking up your amp.”
It was also important to spend time away from the road, as
Chris is quick to point out, they like gigging. “We had to block
out our calendar! We find it really difficult to say no to tours,
people are like ‘Hey, do you want to do this?’, ‘Woah, that
sounds really good’. But we just have to make time.
“It was really nice to get home and have a ‘normal’ life. To
spend your time writing music is a real luxury, we felt lucky to
be able to do that and have fun with it as best we could.”
Ironically, of course, they’re taking ‘II’ out on tour almost
immediately; a couple of Toronto release shows aside, their
North American dates – including a mega-tour with FIDLAR -
begin just days after release. “The world has four days to get
ready before we start infiltrating their areas,” laughs Chris.
“It’s gonna be nice to get out on the road again,” agrees Alex.
“It’s nice to play all these shows, get a chance to really flesh
the songs out and get comfortable. Not just festival shows,
our own shows!”
Metz’ new album ‘II’ will be released on 4th May via Sub
Pop Records. DIY
Metz will play Best Kept Secret. See diymag.com for details.
15

For his new album,
Twin Shadow has
moved from a popular
independent record
label to a shiny major,
but he’s not changed
that much. “I’ve been
pop since day one,” he
explains. Words: David
Zammitt.
“I’ve always wanted
the majority of
people to like my
music”
George Lewis Jr. is sipping
on an Old Fashioned in the
bar of the Hoxton Hotel.
True to form, he comes clad
in his signature leather jacket and his
motorcycle helmet sits staring back
at him from the opposite chair, but
over the course of the next hour he
reveals that there is an awful lot more
to the Dominican-born songwriter
than initially meets the eye. Though
he’s conscious of his own role in
the construction of Twin Shadow’s
brooding throwback image, he’s also
keen to move the narrative beyond the
merely superficial and as he prepares
to release his third LP and major label
debut, ‘Eclipse’, he meditates on the
depression he suffered around the
release of previous album, ‘Confess’,
and talks openly about flying the
4AD coop for the more affluent
climes of Warner Brothers. “Believe
me, I understand there are tragedies
in the world greater than people
misunderstanding an artist. There’s
people’s families being torn apart as
we speak,” he says firmly, annunciating
every syllable. “I understand the great
weight of the world but I’m also an
artist and I also take what I do incredibly
seriously.”
And why shouldn’t he? Back in August
of last year, Lewis postponed the bulk
of his Eclipse tour indefinitely. “There
have been several moving parts,”
read an eyebrow-raising press release,
“that have lead us to re-evaluate
the time that we have to launch [the
tour].” A couple of months later it was
announced that ‘Eclipse’ would be the
first Twin Shadow work to be released
“I take what I
do incredibly
seriously.” -
George Lewis Jr.
anywhere other than 4AD. When asked
about making the move to a major
label, Lewis chooses his words extra
carefully. “I really want to explain to
people so that they understand; I made
this record on 4AD. And once it was
finished I really, really wanted to switch
homes for it. Not that I think 4AD has a
sound, but I felt like it needed a home
where people knew what to do with it.”
The graft that he puts into his work and
the desire to have it heard by as many
people as possible, he says, were the
primary motivators in the move. “A lot
of musicians are lazy, but I know a lot
who work their fucking asses off and
ruin their lives, basically, to make music.
You have to work out a way to sell your
music and, more importantly, to get
your music into people’s ears. That is
the most important thing.”
The move ties in to a burning desire to
infiltrate the mainstream, a space he
sees as restrictive and overly curated
but also, ultimately, his aim as an artist.
“I’ve been pop since day one. I’ve
always wanted the majority of people
to like my music. I was naïve enough on
my first record to actually think it was
the same exact thing as Beyoncé. I really
believed that!” He laughs but the glint
in his eye and his disdain at the mention
of the word ‘indie’ suggests that he
remains undeterred in his pursuit of
stage centre. “I wish we lived in a world
where you could hear Burial, Taylor
Swift, James Blake, Twigs, Twin Shadow
on same the radio station and that
drives me crazy – young people are still
being taught that they need to be into
one thing.”
Twin Shadow new album ‘Eclipse’ will
be released on 18th May via Warner
Bros. Records. DIY
16 diymag.com

Yeah Yeah Yeahs –
Fever To Tell
Back in the early 00s, New York City was the coolest
place on the planet. Sure, there are probably few
years where it hasn’t been – the CBGB punk and
post-punk scene; the birth of hip-hop; there are very
few musical movements that haven’t at least taken a trip on
the city’s sprawling subway network. But for those few years,
at least to our rose-tinted British specs, it really really was. 2000
saw the release of the much-feted ‘Yes New York’ compilation;
ostensibly a collection of artists with the same zip code, with a
track listing featuring The Strokes, LCD Soundsystem, Interpol,
The Rapture, and The Walkmen, fifteen years later it reads
more like a who’s who.
Nestled alongside the heavyweights were Unitard, with their
‘Year To Be Hated’. Sound familiar? It should – Unitard were
Karen O and Nick Zinner; the track soon became ‘Our Time’.
Add drummer Brian Chase and a heavy dose of garage-rock,
art-punk, hardcore and everything else New York City’s grimy
streets could throw at the trio, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs were born.
So what exactly is it about the band’s debut full-length that
made it become one of the best-loved rock albums of the
noughties? Lead single ‘Date With The Night’ was – and
DIY HALL OF FAME
A monthly place to celebrate the very best albums released
during DIY’s lifetime; the third inductee into our Hall of Fame is
Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ ‘Fever To Tell’.
still is – a blisteringly brilliant number, all punk ferocity and
dancefloor-filling ambition. Take a look at the video, live
footage of an early UK tour – is there a better frontperson for
any band, ever, than Karen O? Spitting water, swallowing mics
and throwing oneself around the stage wasn’t particularly new
– but doing it while single-handedly reinventing fashion, and
swapping between guttural screams and quiet whispers? She’s
not been rivalled since. From The Ramones to The Strokes
via Talking Heads and Blondie, the trio’s adopted home has a
long-standing reputation for the avant-garde; here were three
scrappy punks taking on all that – and running with it.
Then there’s the emotional roller coaster that is ‘MAPS’.
Still as potent today as on first listen, its delicate, intimate
vulnerability would be a masterpiece for anyone – when
contrasted with the brute force of much of the rest of ‘Fever
To Tell’, it’s even more remarkable – not just one of the
greatest songs of the 00s, but of all time. Elsewhere there’s
‘Pin’, ‘Y Control’, the venomous ‘Black Tongue’ – any track here
could’ve been a single.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs are a band still constantly reinventing
themselves – from subsequent albums playing with synths,
O’s ‘Crush Songs’ and Zinner’s involvement in Africa Express
just some cases in point, but to hungry British ears in the early
00s, ‘Fever To Tell’ was New York City, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs will
always be ‘Fever To Tell’. DIY
Yeah Yeah Yeahs in their brilliant pomp, back in 2003.
Read more on
diymag.com
17

As Hot Chip gear up
to release their sixth
album, the band’s
Al Doyle explains
how a slew of
temptations inspired
them to create a
more stripped-back
effort. Words: Sarah
Jamieson.
tempting.
.the senses.
“As a band that
likes to play
keyboards,”
admits Hot Chip’s
Al Doyle, “Angelic
Studios was kinda the perfect place
for us.” Feeling like kids let loose in a
sweet shop is probably the best way
to describe Hot Chip as they embarked
upon the recording process of their
new album, ‘Why Make Sense?’ “The
engineers said that a lot of people
never use that stuff, but we got it out
and it was really incredible. There was
some really interesting, fun stuff to play
with. That was inspiring.”
After completing work on their fifth
full-length ‘In Our Heads’ back in 2012,
the band had already begun to start
thinking about new material. “It did
take three years but I don’t know if
that’s long or short really,” Al admits,
thinking back to the birth of their new
record. “It seems longer for us because,
when it started, it wasn’t that long after
we finished the last record. It’s always
a continuous process for us anyhow;
there’s always writing going on. Then,
there were three extra albums that we
put out. It’s not bad going really!”
Since their last effort as Hot Chip,
individual members have also released
The 2 Bears’ ‘The Night Is Young’, New
Build’s ‘Pour It On’, and Alexis Taylor’s
latest solo effort, ‘Await Barbarians’. Not
bad going at all.
However, the band once again joined
forces and this time, it was about
exploring some different avenues. “I
think it is a bit more stripped down
in some ways,” he muses. Of all their
records, it feels that much closer to the
live representation of themselves. “A
lot of the songs were very multi-layered
and there were definitely lots of options
18 diymag.com

“We were
able to
g o i n
a n d p l ay
a r o u n d
in a very
f r e e a n d
natural
way.” - Al
Doyle
in terms of different parts that we were
coming up with, but then during the
process, we tried to decide what were
the key parts and what got you to the
heart of the song and were just being
quite disciplined with ourselves to not
make the textures feel too thick.”
There are always exceptions to the
rule... “Yeah, apart from when we
wanted them to feel like that: the
final song on the record gives the
album its title. It’s called ‘Why Make
Sense?’ and it’s very over-the-top and
bombastic. It almost sounds a bit like
Rick Rubin produced it and there’s a
bit where we’re all playing - the seven
of us - synched-up synthesisers. It’s all
the same thing but it’s split between
different keyboards so it’s a very thick
and exciting sound, hopefully, but
that’s a very deliberate choice.”
If anything, ‘Why Makes Sense?’ sees
Hot Chip in the midst of a precarious
balancing act: during the recording
process, they were offered up all sorts
of keyboard-shaped temptations,
but in amongst the indulgent synth
sounds, there’s a certain restraint to
their newest effort that allows for the
tracks to breathe and shimmer. “Some
songs are trying to be a little bit more
like American R&B music. In that case,
there’ll be a lot of thought about
the drums, one carefully-controlled
bassline and a few hooks, and then
you can just concentrate on Alexis’
vocal. I think his vocals are sounding
particularly good on this record.
“We were lucky enough to go to this
really amazing studio just outside
of Oxford,” he explains, referencing
Angelic, where they holed up to make
the record, “which belongs to the
keyboard player from Jamiroquai [Toby
Smith], who must’ve made quite a lot of
money in the 90s!” He laughs, “it’s this
huge farmyard complex with a career’s
collection of amazing keyboards to play
on. It’s all natural light and you stay
there, and that was really amazing to go
there. We could really set up the way we
wanted to set up, and we went in there
without too much material written so it
was very exploratory and we were able
to go in and play around in a very free
and natural way. I think that affected
how the record sounded and it was just
a really nice experience. For us, it was
quite an indulgent thing to do but it
was fun.”
Hot Chip’s new album ‘Why Make
Sense?’ will be released on 18th May
via Domino Records. DIY
NEWS
IN BRIEF
CHARLI X-PC-X
Recently, Charli XCX has been teasing
collaborations with the PC Music gang
for some time, but now she’s stoked
the fire a little more: she’s shared a
short video clip featuring a live DJ set
from SOPHIE, where you can definitely
hear her vocals. Check out the clip on
diymag.com
ALVVAYS ON TOUR
Alvvays have announced details of
some new UK live dates. They fill in the
gap between the band’s scheduled
appearances at Reading & Leeds in
August, and their already-announced
headline date at London’s Shepherd’s
Bush Empire on 11th September. Check
the dates on diymag.com
DOWN AT ABBEY ROAD
Future Islands have been recording
new music at London’s Abbey Road,
their label 4AD has confirmed. During
a UK pit-stop, Samuel T. Herring and co.
visited the prestigious studios to record
their first new material since 2014
album ‘Singles’.
ON THE ROAD
The Maccabees have announced
plans for four UK headline shows this
May. The band will be making stops
at Birmingham’s Institute (11th May),
Glasgow’s ABC (12th), Manchester’s
Ritz (13th) and London’s Coronet
(14th).
19

“We want to be
one of the
biggest bands
ever”
As PVRIS make their debut voyage
to the UK, Ali Shutler learns that
this trio are anything but faint
of heart when it comes to their
ambition.
envisage it,
believe in yourself
and never stop
hustling,” is the
“Just
advice that falls so
readily from the mouth of Lynn Gunn.
“Never stop working towards it and
one day, you’ll magically find yourself
there.” The PVRIS vocalist knows a
thing or two about magic. Formed in
2012 from the ruins of other musical
projects, Gunn, Alex Babinski and Brian
Macdonald have settled into a rhythm
that’s seen them sign to Rise Records,
stave off legal disputes and release their
superb debut album last November.
‘White Noise’ is a dark fairytale, heavy
in smouldering synths and narrated by
devastatingly powerful honesty.
“We didn’t think it would happen this
quickly,” admits Lynn of her band’s
upwards trajectory. ‘St Patrick’, the lead
single from that debut and the first real
glimpse at the band PVRIS had become
is still less than a year old. “We’re super
proud of the songs we made but we
weren’t sure how other people would
take to it,” she recalls - a slither of time
already laying those concerns to rest.
The electronic infused rock that sits at
the heart of ‘White Noise’ only came
to the forefront after the band teamed
up with Versa’s Blake Harnage in the
studio.
“I don’t think we found ourselves,”
starts Lynn. “Because we always knew
we wanted this style and this direction
but we never really had the confidence
to do that. With this record though, we
finally have the assurance to know that
we can make it work.” It’s a record that’s
caused waves and drawn attention but
the three-piece are just getting started
in the spotlight. “We’re inspired by so
many different genres and styles I think
it just came together naturally without
thinking too much about it. I think the
record has done a good job at leaving
it open ended for whatever possible
direction we go in next, because it’s
very dynamic and it touches on a lot of
different spectrums and styles that we
could go in,” Lynn ventures.
“I’m always really inspired by dark
things and the supernatural for some
reason,” explains Lynn. “Ghosts,
paranormal stuff, death, anger,
sadness,” she lists before taking a brief
pause as a realisation dawns. “Well,
anything that’s not happy basically
20 diymag.com

“NO ONE WANTS TO LIVE
SMALL.” - LYNN GUNN
inspires me, which sounds kinda messed
up,” she admits with a small laugh. “A
lot of that record, I wrote when I was
having a really bad time mentally. I don’t
like calling it depression but it seemed
like that and I couldn’t pinpoint what
my issues were, or what was wrong with
me but I knew there was something
wrong. My problems weren’t tangible
things, they weren’t things I could see
or explain to people so in a way it was
like they were ghosts or spirits that were
haunting me.”
“I think a lot of people are afraid to put
it out there and talk about it but we
weren’t. I think that might be a big
reason people have connected to it
and got behind it. I feel like for anyone
who’s sharing feelings of topics like
that, it’s a little bit scary but I feel it’s
more therapeutic and cathartic to write
about that stuff, to talk about that stuff
and put it out there. You feel better
about it. To know that other people
can connect to that makes you feel
even better. As scary as it is at first, it
eventually just pays off and turns out to
be good in the end,” she describes, that
optimism rearing its head once more.
The band are “booked until 2016 right
now,” and they’re already plotting their
next return to Europe and beyond.
“Not to get ahead of ourselves, but we
want to be one of the biggest bands
ever. We’re not going to stop working
until we achieve that. It seems like a
crazy thing but if you’re doing this, if
you’re making music, why not?” she
questions, a mix of youthful hope and
powerful determination. “That’s what
I think our main goal is, just to ride this
out for as long as possible and keep
enjoying what we’re doing forever. To
touch as many lives as possible and
get into as many ears as possible. Why
not, you only get one life,” she reasons
with faultless logic. “No one wants to
live small.”
PVRIS’ debut album ‘White Noise’ is
out now via Rise Records. DIY
SPOTTED
THIS MONTH ON ‘THE INTERNET’
Hanson look well.
Mr McCarthy could be giving ol’ Kev a run
for his money come the next season of
House of Cards.
Hang on a
second...
George has
been at it too!
Dan Bastille
wasn’t best
pleased with
the new
haircut that
the internet
gave him.
Bono’s got competition now that
Robbie’s a Slaves fan.
WHICH half of a
popular indie pop
duo was spotted
with a guitar
strapped to his
back at the local
bus stop? We can
only presume he
was one his way to
serenade a summer
camp...
WHAT frontman
did DIY lay eyes
upon not once but
twice this month,
while he was
partying as though
it was 1975? Ish.
Sort of.
WHICH famed
British Bake Off
contestant showed
off her grungy side,
rocking out at the
recent Sleater-
Kinney show in
London?
WHO sent DIY’s
very own Online
Editor some rather
incriminating
photos over
Whatsapp this
month...
21

Popstar Postbag
Sam McTrusty, Twin Atlantic
We know what you’re like, dear readers. We know you’re just as nosy as we are when it comes to our
favourite pop stars: that’s why we’re putting the power back into your hands. Every month, we’re going
to ask you to pull out your best questions and aim them at those unsuspecting artists. You don’t even
need to pay for postage! This month, Twin Atlantic’s Sam McTrusty is taking on the challenge.
Sam, what is the secret behind your
powerful eyebrows? @trippygum
Genetics. I woke up like this.
What is your next dream goal?
@MareikeRz
Overhead kick in the World Cup final
against England.
Sam, what was it like recording the
video for ‘Make A Beast Of Myself’
and trying to keep a straight face?
@Falloutatsixx
Haha! This question even made me
smile! It was a struggle at first but then
I just pretended or “acted”, if you were,
that I was Edward Norton and that I
had to be a top drawer professional.
Are you a bit scared of playing
somewhere as massive as The
Hydro? Sean, via email
I’m not sure if it’s fear that I feel... More
the weight of the accomplishment. It’s
been 8 years of playing every venue
in Glasgow... from 5 of our friends
to 10,000 people. It’s an excitement.
Nerves for sure but not fear. I WAS
BORN TO ROCK!!!!!
If you could be any animal, what
would you be and why? Matthew,
via email
A bird. So I could fly.
If you were not in a band, what
would you do? @Paraguguns91
I’d be selling art to people with too
much money.
What’s been your favourite memory
from being on the road over the
past few years? - Anna, via email
Seeing other people happy. The
other guys in the band or our team of
people behind the scenes having a
‘moment’ of appreciation. Hearing
an audience sing words that I’ve
written back at me with more
passion than I can.
What is your favourite
festival to play?
@Paraguns91
Glastonbury last year
was pretty special but as
I am Scottish the obvious
answer is T in the Park.
To be Scottish and get
to scream the festival
name through a main
stage festival PA to a field
full of my fellow country
men and women feels
spectacularly brilliant.
Have you started to think
about your next album yet?
Janine, via email
I started to think about it the day
we finished ‘Great Divide’. It’s the
way it works. The cogs have been
turning for a while now. I do this
thing where I try to distill the whole
next vision into one word. I have the
word... But it’s a secret.
What’s been your favourite album
of the year so far? James, via
email
There hasn’t been an album this
year yet that I think I love. I do love
some new music coming out and
I’ve got a lot of new bands and
tracks that I’m digging but no
album has done that thing to
me so far this year.
NEXT MONTH: marmozets
Want to send a question to DIY’s Popstar Postbag? Tweet us at
@diymagazine with the hashtag #postbag, or drop us an email
at popstarpostbag@diymag.com. Easy!
22 diymag.com

A L C O P O P ! R E C O R D S P R E S E N T
W A Y L A Y E R S R E : V E R S E
P R E - O R D E R N O W E X C L U S I V E L Y O N I T U N E S
I N S T A N T D O W N L O A D O F S L E E P W A L K I N G
0 8 0 6 1 5
0 5 M A Y - S T A R T T H E B U S - B R I S T O L
0 8 M A Y - H O X T O N S Q U A R E B A R & K I T C H E N - L O N D O N
1 5 M A Y - P A V I L I O N T A V E R N @ T H E G R E A T E S C A P E - B R I G H T O N
1 8 J U L Y - T R U C K F E S T I V A L - O X F O R D S H I R E
W W W . W A Y L A Y E R S . C O . U K W W W . F A C E B O O K . C O M / W A Y L A Y E R S W W W . T W I T T E R . C O M / W A Y L A Y E R S23

have you heard
The best new tracks from the last month.
Tame Impala - ‘Cause I’m A Man
Kevin Parker’s Tame Impala have never shied
away from the direct route. Behind each
outlandish, psych-leaning attempt is a simple
message, often one coated in sadness. But in
‘’Cause I’m A Man’, Parker’s discovered an extra
gear, an ability to express with zero distractions.
And for one of the first times, the frontman
is embracing his inner complications. “My
weakness is the source of all my pride,” he sings,
above slick clicks and a steamed up, Michael
Jackson-nodding R&B groove. If Tame Impala
were already champions of direct, unorthodox
pop, they’ve just established a new elite league.
Florence + The Machine - Ship To Wreck
When Florence Welch announced her ‘How Big
How Blue How Beautiful’ album, she told Zane
Lowe that she had something of a “nervous
breakdown”, without going into too many
details. Constant touring and a one-albumafter-the-next
cycle had clearly taken effect,
but ‘Ship to Wreck’ is the first of her new songs
to directly address the in-limbo stage that
struck LP3. “Did I drink too much? Am I losing
touch?” she sings, before - as is custom with
anything Welch does - bursting into a gigantic
chorus. Whatever happened in between
records, whichever creative blocks she ran into
headfirst - they’re gone now.
The Maccabees -
Marks To Prove It
There’s a steady pulse
behind The Maccabees’
returning single of choice,
a thudding bassline which
drags ‘Marks To Prove It’
kicking and screaming
through the haze of their
contemporaries. Time away
has granted them ample
space to beef up their act –
this is no wistful ‘sound of
the summer’ indie record;
it’s a hundred-mile-an-hour
road trip through punishing
desert. Even when they
tone it down, dipping into
echoey, eerie synth-lines
as the track enters its final
third, the tightrope is quick
to snap. It’s the playful waltz
with which ‘Marks To Prove
It’ reaches its end, though,
that leaves the most lasting
impression.
A lot happens over
the course of a month
in the mad world of
ace music. You’re
busy people, we get
that, so we’re here to
help. Catch up with
the most amazing,
exciting or generally
‘WTF m9’ new songs
that have surfaced in
the last few weeks. No
need to thank us. No,
really, it’s fine.
24 diymag.com

Bully - Trying
If the world’s crying out for one
more no-bullshit punk band, Bully
are the answer. Alicia Bognanno
isn’t just an archetype honestyfirst
songwriter. On ‘Trying’,
she captures anxiety like the @
sosadtoday Twitter account
self-combusting. She sings about
“praying for my period all week” and how she questions her
“focus, figure and sexuality” like she’s penning a diary entry
that’s nobody else’s business. But with Bully, she’s fronting
2015’s most upfront new band, a group with every intention
of getting their message across to the biggest audience
possible. ‘Trying’ is a lesson in actually giving a shit, realising
that seemingly tiny fears genuinely matter. As she screams the
chorus one final time, Bognanno proves that ultimate effort
tends to pay dividends.
Muse - Dead Inside
After the “ass”-munching threats of lead track ‘Psycho’,
it’s (sort of) back to normal with Muse’s big new single.
Conspiracy theories set the agenda - Matt Bellamy’s history
textbook has more scribbled notes than ever - but at heart,
‘Dead Inside’ is a simple, straight up blast from the trio. Partballistic
glam, part-minimal rock, it’s a sign that Muse still
know how to re-invent their trusty formula without sounding
stale.
Brand New - Mene
When Brand New released their first new material in six years,
it was like throwing a lit match into a petrol-drenched pyre.
The reaction was immediate and, despite its slight premature
appearance online, there was no taking ‘Mene’ back once
it had seen the light of day. First debuted live as ‘Don’t Feel
Anything’, the Long Island band’s first material since 2009’s
‘Daisy’ is a shot of adrenaline, opening with thundering drums
and moving seamlessly into Jesse Lacey’s taunting layered
vocals. Standalone or the first taste of a record, no one’s
quite sure, but this should keep us content for at least a while
longer.
Jamie xx - Loud Places
The wait for a Jamie xx fulllength
has been excruciating.
Thankfully, as ‘In Colour’
creeps ever closer, it looks
set to quench every dry lip in
the house; ‘Loud Places’ is a
nourishing example of Jamie
xx’s finesse. Deconstructed and
reconstructed around a gospel
choir sample, it’s that sense of
collective elation that threads
throughout. His xx bandmate
Romy may provide the tender
vocal at the track’s beginning,
but Jamie soon shifts things
upwards, handclap snares and
skipping basslines dragging
‘Loud Places’ towards the
dancefloor.
Gengahr - Heroine
Gengahr like to hang their music on a knife edge - their
songs go from soft-centred honeys to murderous beasts in
brilliant flashes. ‘Heroine’ is a gutsy example of the band’s split
personality. “I’ve changed for better now there’s metal in my
head,” sings Felix Bushe, like a loved up robot seeking solace.
He runs into trouble. What follows is a ramping up of ferocity,
culminating in John Victor’s most ‘The Bends’-channelling
solo yet. Few bands pull off this kind of Jekyll & Hyde routine
with such success.
The National - Sunshine On My Back
The National probably wouldn’t have stirred in a previous
decade, and it’s no coincidence that their almighty rise has
coincided with a post-millennial strife. Few groups capture the
strange melancholy of being comfortable but unhappy like
Matt Berninger and co., and ‘Sunshine On My Back’ is another
example of their strange balancing act. “Sunshine in my
brain is the lonely kind of pain,” sings the frontman, fending
off his bandmates’ metallic guitar work and sullen strings.
Melancholy is defined in three and a half neat minutes - it
sounds easy, but like everything The National pull off, it’s a big
achievement.
Desaparecidos - City On The Hill
It may have been over a decade since Desaparecidos released
their debut album, but if the first track to be taken from their
long-awaited second effort is anything to go by, they’ve lost
none of their potency. ‘City On The Hill’ follows in a similar
thrashing vein to its predecessor singles, which announced
the Conor Oberst-led outfit’s return in 2012. It’s a wonderfully
jarring, satisfyingly gritty example of Oberst’s more frenetic
talents which boasts a dose of Tim Kasher for good measure.
Slaves – Cheer Up London
Beginning with an ever-so-dramatic evil laugh, the scene for
Slaves’ latest ditty is instantly set. While previous cuts ‘The
Hunter’ and ‘Feed The Mantaray’ have seen the duo charged
with immediacy, their newest track comes teeming with dark
creeping guitars and mocking sarcasm, the self-aware punch
landing hard with lyrics like, “Cheer up London, it’s not that
bad.” It’s the taunting chants of the chorus, though, that are
enough to have any unsuspecting commuters glancing over
their shoulder once every so often.
25

“Look, that cloud’s shaped like a T-rex.”
FESTIVALS
2015
“FESTIVALS ARE
THE GLORY RUN”
One of the UK’s hardest
working festival bands, Slaves
are looking forward to a
packed summer. Words: Sarah
Jamieson. Photo: Mike Massaro
Imagine the scene: crowds are
waltzing past stages, warm pints
are being waved in the air, and
music is pouring from tents here,
there and everywhere. In the
middle of a festival, there are so
many options when it comes down to
who to see but sometimes, it’s all down
to who happens to catch your attention
just at the right moment. Last year, one
band in particular managed to draw
in the crowds by, quite simply, being
utterly mental.
“I guess if you just walk past the stage
and see two people doing something
a bit different, they’re drawn in,” says
Isaac Holman, one half of blistering
duo Slaves. ‘Doing something different’
is somewhat of an understatement
when it comes to this Kent-based
two-piece. Over the last three years,
they’ve been doing the rounds: their
sets are a chaotic mix of screamed
vocals, thundering riffs and a drummer
marching on the spot, bellowing
statements at the in-awe audience.
Never short on the theatrics, they’re
a duo who know the appeal of the
unknown and thrived on the challenge
of catching punters unaware. “I think
even before we had any real fans, we
would still get quite a good crowd at
the festivals who were just drawn in out
of just wondering what it was.”
It may have been during last year’s
festival season that the two-piece really
made a lasting impression, but no one
could say it wasn’t well-earned. Having
taken their time on the touring circuit
during their years prior, the band have
proven that they’re not ones to rest on
their laurels: the lead-up to last year’s
summer was about working hard. It was
a phrase that guitarist Laurie Vincent
heard once in a documentary about The
Cribs that stuck with him most. “I finally
met The Cribs last week,” he offers up,
“and I told them about that. I think I
was a bit drunk and probably annoyed
them, but I told them how much that bit
meant to me - ‘Do your two years’ - and
we’re so happy that we did. No one can
26 diymag.com

say that we blew up overnight. If they
did, they’d be missing the background.”
Now, things are looking a little different.
With support coming in from all corners,
the band are now focusing on their next
step. There’s their first official headline
tour, five dates of which are already
sold out (“Maybe the ticket link was
broken…”) ahead of the release of their
snarling new record ‘Are You Satisfied?’
“Definitely a roller coaster,” replies
Vincent, when asked how it feels to be
in Slaves right now. “It feels as close
to what I thought it’d feel like to be
successful in a band, that you expect
when you’re growing up. A dream come
true is probably the best way to put it.” “It
is completely crazy,” adds Holman. “It’s
very surreal.”
Even with so many things to look forward
to – with another round of festivals to
boot - there’s no fooling this pair: they
know the pressure’s still on, but they’re
not going to let that get in the way of
anything. “Now, there’s more pressure
than ever because we’re not just the
underdogs anymore.” says Vincent. “We
can’t really hold on to that title anymore
because we’re playing the bigger stages
this year, and our album will be out.
People will be there to see what we’re
made of. I think we always relish the
challenge of stealing a show that we
weren’t meant to be on but, this year
we’re earned our place and it’s time to
prove what we’re made of.
“I always feel like festivals are the glory
run though,” he concludes. “You slog it
over winter, freezing, playing in venues
and trying to get out of there, then at
festivals, you get to hang out with all
your mates, get drunk, play good shows,
watch all of
the bands that
you wanna
see. It’s a real
glory run.
We’ve slogged
it up until this
point but this
year, we’re just
gonna enjoy
the slots.”
LIVE AT LEEDS
F
(1st - 4th MAY)
estival season is upon us and kicking things off with an almighty bang, Live
At Leeds will set the pace when it takes place over the first weekend of May.
Spread out across the Yorkshire city, the likes of Palma Violets, Dutch Uncles
and Swim Deep will all be cosying up with local favourites The Cribs, Eagulls and
Hookworms.
That’s not all: the Brudenell Social Club is being taken over by DIY on Saturday 2nd
May, with thrashing duo Slaves topping an all-day bill at the beloved venue.
Fresh from touring the country with Wolf Alice, Brighton bunch The Magic Gang
are down to play a set at the Brudenell - they’ll be joined by some of their best mates,
so consider this a more ‘official’ version of the band’s now-famed house parties.
“I really like Slaves,” says guitarist / vocalist Kristian Smith. “I met one of the guys the
other night and he was really, really lovely. Sweetheart.”
In fact, The Magic Gang don’t really have a bad word to say about any of the acts on
DIY’s Live at Leeds stage. Spring King? They’re “lovely guys,” says Kristian. Bassist Gus
Taylor is in agreement. “Their latest song is so good, and they’re so nice.” Both bands
last played together at London Electrowerkz, but their first meeting goes all the way
back to Leeds. “We’ll be reuniting,” says Kristian.
As for Bloody Knees - famed hell-raisers and the other support act on Wolf Alice’s
recent UK tour - The Magic Gang are less familiar with those guys. “I heard they do
loads of funny stuff. I don’t actually know them, though,” jokes Gus.
DIY stage.
Brudenell Social Club, Saturday 2nd May
Slaves
We Were Promised
Jetpacks
Spring King
The Magic Gang
Bloody Knees
Black Honey
Broncho
Pinkshinyultrablast
Rakketkanon
Ohboy!
Actor
Colour of Spring
Read the full interview
in DIY’s Festival Guide,
available now from all
our usual stockists. DIY
Slaves will play Live at Leeds, The
Great Escape and Sound City.
27

WIN
T IN THE
PARK
TICKETS
This summer, T in the Park takes
residency in the beautiful
grounds of Strathallan Castle,
the festival’s new home,
from 10th – 12th July, and the stellar
line-up features some of the world’s
biggest artists and breakthrough
talent. Headliners Kasabian, Avicii,
The Libertines and Noel Gallagher’s
High Flying Birds plus David Guetta,
The Prodigy and Stereophonics will be
joined by Alabama Shakes, The War on
Drugs, The Vaccines, Hot Chip, Marina &
the Diamonds, Wolf Alice and more.
Be part of T in the Park history - don’t
miss out, get tickets now from
tinthepark.com.
Thanks to festival organisers DF
Concerts and founding partner
Tennent’s Lager we have a pair of
weekend camping tickets to give
away! To win, just tell us which night
Kasabian will headline:
a. Friday
b. Saturday
c. Sunday
Enter now at
diymag.com/tinthepark2015. DIY
SOUND CITY
(22nd - 24th MAY)
Sometimes it’s good to have a bit of change. That’s a motto that Sound City
are living by when it comes to this year’s event: not only has the Liverpudlian
weekender had a slight name change, but it’s moved to the other end of
town and is now taking place over the late May Bank Holiday Weekend.
This year’s event, located at the Docklands, has invited some rather big players to
be its 2015 headliners: The Vaccines, The Flaming Lips and Belle & Sebastian.
Elsewhere on the Main Stage, The Cribs and Gaz Coombes will be offering up live
renditions of their recently-released full-lengths, before Everything Everything
and Spector give fans a preview of their forthcoming albums too.
They’re not the only ones showcasing new material: on DIY’s Baltic Stage, the likes
of Fucked Up, Slaves and Unknown Mortal Orchestra are all set to debut their
latest musical offerings.
“We’re definitely bringing some really exciting new tunes to the table for the
upcoming shows,” reveals Palace frontman Leo Wyndham, ahead of the band’s
appearance at the festival on Sunday 24th May. “There’s some real nice upbeat
tunes that we’re very proud of. It’s an exciting thought to play new songs to our
audiences.”
Elsewhere on the DIY Baltic Stage, Honeyblood’s Stina Marie Claire Tweeddale
reckons she’s already got the duo’s setlist figured out. “I guess it’s always best to
play the faster songs rather than slow jams,” she tells us. “People wanna jump up
and down at festivals.”
The Scottish two-piece are also joined by Peace, Swans, Clarence Clarity, Iceage
and many more.
DIY stage.
Baltic stage
Friday 24th May
Swans
Okkyung Lee
Iceage
Slaves
Yak
Bad Meds
Barberos
Saturday 25th May
Fucked Up
Unknown Mortal Orchestra
The Membranes
The Bohicas
Bad Breeding
God Damn
Hooton Tennis Club
R. Seiliog
Moats
Strange Collective
Lives
Sunday 26th May
Peace
Dave McCabe & The
Ramifications
Gengahr
Sundara Karma
Single Mothers
Clarence Clarity
Moon King
The Mispers
Palace
Honeyblood
Pixel Fix
28 diymag.com

FESTIVAL
NEWS
IN BRIEF
DIY stage.
The Coliseum, Saturday 16th May
Spector
Zun Zun Egui
Menace Beach
Oscar
Ekkah
THE GREAT ESCAPE
(14th - 16th MAY)
Every May, the music industry packs up its bags, fills up local trains and
makes its way to the seaside. It’s not just to catch a glimpse of sunshine
or grab some fish and chips either; this weekend is all about the new
music. This year, The Great Escape will celebrate its tenth birthday -
that’s ten whole years of bringing fans the best of the new band crop.
For 2015, not only will Alabama Shakes be taking on Brighton Dome, but
they’ll be joined by both Kate Tempest and Skepta & JME, while the likes of
Django Django, The Cribs, Gengahr, The Thurston Moore Band and LA
Priest will all be descending upon Brighton to help soundtrack the seaside
weekender’s biggest birthday yet.
As ever, DIY will be joining in the fun and this time, we’ll be packing out The
Coliseum (formerly Digital) down on the beachfront with brilliant new talents
Oscar, Ekkah and Menace Beach. We’ve invited some old favourites down for
good measure too: Zun Zun Egui and Spector.
“It’s so good to be back and playing again,” offers the latter band’s frontman
Fred MacPherson, who will be headlining the DIY Stage on Saturday 16th May.
“It feels natural road testing new material in the venues we started out at.”
Fresh from a handful of shows in London and Manchester, the band are
already eager to get out onto the festival circuit and throw themselves into the
madness. “There’s something about the way British people act at festivals…
Minds just get lost. The Great Escape’s a little different as all the venues
are inside but it doesn’t seem to stop people acting like they’re in a field in
the middle of nowhere. “A lot of my memories of Brighton just trail off into
question marks which is worrying,” he laughs.
THAT’S NOT ALL
DIY’s also once again partnering with Dutch Impact for a showcase
of talent featuring last year’s favourites, KiT, alongside My Baby
and Birth Of Joy. “We are really looking forward to rocking Brighton
into the sea,” says the latter band’s vocalist and guitarist Kevin
Stunnenberg. “Get ready!” Come join us on Friday 15th May at the
Komedia Bar.
OPEN’ER
1st – 4th July
Drake is the latest addition to the line-up
of this year’s Open’er Festival. He joins the
bill which boasts Disclosure, The Vaccines,
Mumford & Sons and Kasabian, alongside
St. Vincent, Django Django and Modest
Mouse. The fest takes place at Gdynia’s Babie
Doly Military Airport.
FORGOTTEN FIELDS
7th - 9th August
Razorlight, Johnny Borrell & Zazou,
Common Tongues, Eden Circle, Joey Fat
and Raygun have all been added to this
year’s inaugural line-up. They join Super
Furry Animals, Basement Jaxx, Levellers,
The Horrors, De La Soul, Public Service
Broadcasting and British Sea Power
2000TREES
19th - 11th July
Alkaline Trio have been confirmed to
headline this year’s 2000trees festival.
Further additions to the line-up also include
Mclusky*, Future of the Left and Benjamin
Booker, which takes place near Cheltenham
this year. They join the likes of Young Guns,
Idlewild and Pulled Apart By Horses.
BESTIVAL
10th - 13th September
Bestival 2015 has announced the details for
its The Port line-up. Taking place across the
September weekender, a DJ bill includes
Mark Ronson, Seth Troxler and Skrillex.
They’re joined by the likes of Annie Mac B2B
Rob Da Bank, Four Tet, Horsemeat Disco
and Jackmaster.
FESTIVAL NO. 6
3rd - 6th September
Portmeirion’s Festival No. 6 has announced
a new wave of acts for 2015: Everything
Everything top the list of new names - they’ll
be joined Catfish & The Bottlemen and
recent chart-topper James Bay. There’s also
Badly Drawn Boy, Gaz Coombes and Jane
Weaver joining proceedings.
29

DIY
PRESENTS
FESTIVAL NEWS
LATITUDE CONFIRM PRIDES,
OUTFIT AND MORE
(16th - 19th JULY)
Eighteen new acts have been announced for this year’s
Latitude Festival, which takes place from 16th to 19th July
2015.
Handpicked by Huw Stephens, Prides and Honne have both
been confirmed to play this year’s The Lake Stage, Henham
Park’s new music-centric location.
South London duo Formation and bonkers producer
Clarence Clarity are on the bill. There’s also Liverpool bands
Gulf and Outfit, plus To Kill A King and Scottish newcomers
Neon Waltz.
These new names join headliners alt-J, Portishead and Noel
Gallagher’s High Flying Birds for 2015, alongside James
Blake, Caribou, Jon Hopkins, Wolf Alice, La Roux and many
more.
FIELD DAY ANNOUNCE
SHACKLEWELL ARMS STAGE IN
ASSOCIATION WITH DIY
(6th - 7th JUNE)
This year, DIY will be heading over to Victoria Park to get
involved with this year’s Field Day, and we’ll be joining forces
with The Shacklewell Arms for our very own stage, boasting sets
from Rae Morris, LA Priest and Savages.
Alongside Rae and the project of Late of the Pier’s Sam Dust,
Saturday 6th June will see performances from Fryars, Jack
Garratt, Astronomyy, Shura, TALA, Ghost Culture, Jagaara,
Sylvan Esso and Tei Shi.
The next day, the fearsome Savages will be appearing along
with the likes of Ex Hex, Hookworms, Gaz Coombes, Allah-
Las, Baxter Dury and Viet Cong.
This year’s Field Day will also feature appearances from the likes
of FKA twigs, Caribou, Django Django and Run the Jewels.
Florence, Alt-J and more
revealed for Glastonbury
Glastonbury has revealed a huge list of acts for 2015, with
Florence + The Machine and Alt-J amongst the big names.
Future Islands, Jamie xx, Caribou and Jessie Ware have
all confirmed appearances. There’s also Wolf Alice, Young
Fathers, Years & Years, Jamie T, Mark Ronson and La Roux.
The third and final headliner has yet to be announced,
however there’s a big ‘Special Guests’ slot in 2015’s bill.
Previously confirmed to play Worthy Farm this year: Foo
Fighters and Kanye West top the Pyramid Stage as
headliners. Courtney Barnett, Father John Misty and Lionel
Richie, and Emerging Talent Competition winner Declan
McKenna are also down to play.
Tickets for Glastonbury 2015 have sold out, with the
festival running from 24th - 28th June. DIY
30 diymag.com

HOXTON SQUARE BAR AND KITCHEN
GIG LISTINGS
FRI 01 MAY 7.30PM 18+ £6.00
MARRIAGES
MON 04 MAY 8PM 18+ £7.00
THE JB
CONSPIRACY
SCHOLARS + NOT ON TOUR
+ THE FAIRWEATHER BAND
TUE 05 MAY 8PM 18+ £7.00
LONGFELLOW
SPECIAL GUESTS
WED 06 MAY 8PM 18+ £7.00
THE AWAY DAYS
SWIM MOUNTAIN + HONEY MOON
THU 07 MAY 8PM 18+ £7.50
DANIEL NORGREN
FRI 08 MAY 7.30PM 18+ £8.00
WAYLAYERS
VANBOT + MASSAD
SAT 09 MAY 8PM 18+ £9.00
LONE WOLF
SPECIAL GUESTS
SUN 10 MAY 7.30PM 18+ FREE
THE MARIACHIS
FRI 01 MAY
SIREN DIPITY
WE ARE EVERGREEN DJ SET
SAT 02 MAY
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SELECTION LIVE
CLUB NIGHTS
MON 11 MAY 8PM 18+ £7.00
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FLYYING COLOURS
+ FEVER DREAM
WED 13 MAY 8PM 18+ £6.00
OKMALUM-
KOOLKAT
PH.FAT + THOR RIXON
FRI 15 MAY 8PM 18+ £8.00
KADEBOSTANY
SAT 16 MAY 7.30PM 18+ £11.00
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FORCES
SPECIAL GUESTS
MON 18 MAY 8PM 18+ £8.00
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+ CREEPOID
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TUE 19 MAY 8PM 18+ £8.00
SHAKE SHAKE GO
SPECIAL GUESTS
SUN 03 MAY
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FRI 08 MAY
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SAT 09 MAY
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Tickets from hoxtonsquarebar.com or 0844 847 2316 (24hr)
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COMING UP AT BROOKLYN BOWL LONDON
OLD DIRTY BRASSTARDS
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TURN IT LOOSE FEATURING
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31

NEU
Demob
Happy
“The internet creates a
thing where bands look
like they come and go
way too soon.” - Matthew
Marcantonio
“I’ll have four of those live lobsters, please.”
32 diymag.com

Ta k i n g
the long
run, this
Brighton
bunch have
gradually
e s ta b l i s h e d
themselves
as one of
the UK’s best
new bands.
Words: Jamie
M i lt o n .
Photo: Phil
Smithies
What makes
Demob Happy
different?
Whether it’s up
on stage or behind the scenes,
there’s something separating
this Brighton-based four-piece
from the current crop. Matthew
Marcantonio - up there with
Tobias Jesso Jr. in the tall
frontman stakes - has a delivery
that doesn’t stir from thin air.
And with each of their recent
moves, Demob have edged
further away from the norm.
It’s taken a while to translate,
mind you.
This is a band with almost a
hundred shows under their
belt. They’ve been recording
music in a coffee shop-turnedrehearsal
space by the coast
for over two years. Heads have
turned from the beginning,
but it’s only midway through
2015 that they can even begin
contemplating big things.
“We don’t need to talk about
toppling from perches right
now,” admits Marcantonio,
whose brother runs the
Nowhere Man cafe, a de-facto
Demob hub that also happens
to be so hip, it makes coffee
froth in the shape of Walter
White / Heisenberg’s face.
“Laying down the groundwork,
you’ve got a fanbase who are
there to see you progress,” says
drummer Thomas Armstrong,
who echoes the band’s belief
that good things take time.
“With the best of luck, you
wish you could come out of
nowhere and be thrust into
the limelight. But it’s easy to
disappear just as fast.”
It was last year’s ‘Succubus’
that truly put these four on
the map. Maybe it was the
timing - Brighton was seething
with bright new bands, Royal
Blood leading the city’s charge
without being remotely
connected to any one scene.
But this was a dastardly
statement of intent. Together,
with the rest of new EP ‘Young
& Numb’, Demob announce
themselves a group capable
of giving grubby rock ‘n roll a
brave new badge.
They’ve achieved it the old
fashioned way, mind you.
Avoiding social media at almost
all costs (“the Twitter thing -
none of us have ever used it
before, and none of us want it
to. It’s such a weird language,”
says guitarist Adam Godfrey),
they ruck up to distant parts
of the countryside, go out
for the odd walk, and pen
the bulk of their songs with
Christophe Skirl on production.
“The internet creates a thing
where bands look like they
come and go way too soon,”
says Marcantonio. The band
have mailing lists and whatnot
- they’re not pretending WiFi
doesn’t exist. But these four
like to maintain at least some
air of mystery, like wondering
what actually goes down in the
Welsh countryside. “We want to
drive people towards coming
to see us live - that’s where the
best stuff happens,” says the
frontman.
At DIY and Neu’s ‘Hello 2015’
showcases this January, Demob
were up there with headliners
Girl Band in forging madness
out of perfect precision. That
takes some doing. Simply by
playing so many shows and
being self-sufficient for two
solid years, they’ve hit a switch.
“The problem with a lot of
bands nowadays is their route
into the industry is a silver
spoon,” claims Marcantonio.
“They’re born with connections
and with ways in. They appear
to come out of nowhere, but…
It took a long time for us to
push the ball and get it rolling,
but everyone we’ve brought
in to work together - they’re
all ready to jump on, to use
a snowball analogy.” Just as
things look close to stepping
up a few gears, there isn’t a
band more prepared to take off
than Demob Happy. DIY
33

Best Friends were well chuffed with their
haul from Toys R’ Us.
Best Friends
‘Hot. Reckless. Totally Insane’ with long-awaited debut LP.
It might read more like a sheepish dating
profile, but the title ‘Hot. Reckless. Totally
neu Insane’ means a lot for Sheffield garage
punks Best Friends. Four years after forming
and cementing themselves as staples of
the UK DIY scene, this first work is a fuzzembellished
mission statement. Penned in Christmas 2013,
sessions took place with producer Adam Jeffrey. The band’s
Lewis Sharman tells DIY that while they’d intended for this
full-length to be a self-release or something low-key, they
decided to send to to bigger labels to see who’d bite. Within
minutes, FatCat were on board, the Brighton-based label
signing up the group for a spring 2015 release.
“We’ve worked hard for it. Not that other bands don’t, but…
It’s not been a press hype thing for us,” says Sharman. “We’ve
proved that we can write good songs over the course of four
years. We’ve proved ourselves. It’s nice to be able to look back
and think that. Some people put one song on SoundCloud
and it goes massive for them. We have a lot more experience.
And we’ve come through a scene. Sometimes a band who
blows up quickly, they miss out on so much. They’re straight
into a van with a tour manager - which would be nice,
sometimes. But they miss out on the stupid situations you
get into.” Just about past getting into every stupid situation
possible, Best Friends are finally ready for their first big step.
neu
A UK debut with
cowbell-stuffed,
chaotic London
shows.
Photo: Abi Dainton
live
report:
Formation
Swiftly moving on from their debut
EP ‘Young Ones’, South London duo
Formation brought their percussionheavy
pop to sparkling debut UK
shows. Brothers Matt and Will Ritson
expanded to a storming five-piece, first
for a head-turning support slot with
Shura at London’s Village Underground,
then for a headline night at the
capital’s Electrowerkz. Every aspect of
their LCD-nodding sound on record
came off like a beefed up, juggernaut
expansion on stage. Whether it
was the shuffling ‘Back Then’ or the
looser, more expansive new material,
Formation expressed everything with
smart precision, and enough cowbell to
make the otherwise corny instrument a
mainstream concern.
Formation will play The Great Escape, Sound City
and Latitude. See diymag.com for details.
34 diymag.com

INVITATION TO
DUTCH IMPACT PARTY
@ THE GREAT ESCAPE
Tears
&
Marble
My Baby
Birth of
Joy
KiT
1:00 PM 2:00 PM 3:00 PM 4:00 PM
FRIDAY MAY 15TH 2015
KOMEDIA BAR 12:45PM – 5:30PM
Live performances by four top acts hailing from the lowlands
Free drinks for delegates – look for Ruud Berends at the bar
facebook.com/dutch.impact
@dutchimpact
@TearsMarble
@MYBABYwashere
@BirthofJoy
@Aboutkit
BROUGHT TO YOU BY EUROSONIC NOORDERSLAG, POWERED BY PERFORMING ARTS FUND.NL AND BUMA CULTUUR.
KINDLY SUPPORTED BY THE EMBASSY OF THE KINGDOM OF THE NETHERLANDS
35

THIS
MONTH IN
EPS
Before they put themselves
to task on a full-length, some
of DIY’s favourite new acts
are releasing EPs. Here’s a
round-up of the finest.
neu
RECOMMENDED
Tei Shi
Verde
Buenos Aires-born,
Brooklyn-residing artist Tei
Shi likes to flip pop on its
head. ‘Verde’ - her second
EP - is the fullest realisation
of these intensions so far.
Best of all is ‘Bassically’, a
crazed collection of oddball
charm. It lands ahead of
appearances at Field Day
and The Great Escape.
Communions
Communions
Danish punks
Communions
search for
the unknown
on their
self-titled EP, out 1st June.
Daydreaming its way into a
sorry state, sadness lines the
seams of this work. But it’s
not all doom and gloom - this
Copenhagen four-piece have
emerged out the fog with
some huge tracks.
Thomston
Backbone
19-year-old
New Zealander
Thomston’s
been sipping
some of what
Lorde’s having. Another
talented teen from those
shores, his murky pop is
subject to chasing emotions,
giving alt-pop an earnest
edge. ‘Backbone’ is out now.
Sheer
Mag
.EZTV.
JUNK
Impossible to discard, this York trio are here to stay.
Any band willing to label themselves “scuzzy” or “slacker” won’t be taking things too seriously.
Avoiding any holier-than-thou mentality and embracing the tags, York trio JUNK are about as
carefree as they come. Led by Estella Adeyeri, they mix spine-clicking guitar parts with “la-la-la”
chants and just enough knowhow to stand out in a big crowd. Jangling its way into the spotlight,
debut EP ‘Car’ is a bellowed-out, booming blast of fuzz pop excitement.
Listen: ‘Car’’s title-track is simple, joyous guitar pop.
Similar to: Best Coast without the surfboard.
.Beach
Baby
SXSW’s success story of 2015.
Nothing - not even Bill Murray celeb spots - out-buzzed the
talk around Philadelphia band Sheer Mag at this year’s SXSW.
Post-releasing a scuzzy 7” debut in 2014, Christina Halladay
and co. mimic early Strokes with their punk-embellished,
hook-stuffed rock ’n’roll. We’re a long way from 2001’s
headrush, but there’s something special at play in Sheer Mag’s
dynamic - it’s well deserving of the South By South Best rep.
Listen: Their 7” is up on Bandcamp.
Similar to: The Strokes with a death wish.
Unashamedly big intentions can’t cloak this group’s
complexities.
Newly signed to Chess Club, Beach Baby don’t shy from
aiming high. Debut single ‘Ladybird’ has hints of Coldplay
and Mumfords - it’s that big. But there’s undoubtedly more to
the group than taking notes from stadium stalwarts. B-side
‘Bruise’ seethes with a retro-tinged frustration. They’ve plenty
more tricks up their sleeve.
Listen: ‘Ladybird’ is out now on Chess Club.
Similar to: Chris Martin after a few pints.
New London outfit specialising in tightly-packed electronic
pop.
Captured Tracks have made a couple of curious new signings
- one was Ben Stiller’s old punk band from the 80s; second was
EZTV, an easeful bunch of New Yorkers whose debut single
‘Dust In The Sky’ recalls simple, road-tripping times. Together,
they claim to “make American music”, making US suburbia
seem like a source of strange beauty.
Listen: ‘Dust In The Sky’ is out 27th April on Captured Tracks.
Similar to: The Byrds.
36 diymag.com

“Spotted: A live Rat Boy! It’s dangerous.”
“I DON’T
K N O W
WHAT I’M
DOING.”
- JORDAN
CARDY
Rat Boy
Watch out, world. Anyone who so much as sneezes near Jordan Cardy might
end up on his next mixtape. Words: Jamie Milton. Photo: Phil Smithies
neu
Jordan Cardy has ideas. More ideas than the
average Google Results page. At eighteen,
this Essex kid will write and record in any
circumstance, and there’s a chance everyday
strangers could find their chit-chat at the
heart of a hit single.
In early 2014, sick of trying to form pop-punk bands because
nobody would turn up to practice, Cardy made his first RAT
BOY mixtape. A seething mess of ragged guitars, police sirens
and dodgy samples, few things arrived more unhinged. That’s
not going to change one jot, despite the recent attention.
Cardy writes and records everywhere. In a tour van, on the
road, in big-wig meetings. “I could be recording this,” he
smirks. On his hit list for a second mixtape, he wants to
get spoken word samples of “when you get off the tube in
Camden and someone offers you drugs”, asking his mum
for a tenner (“she’s like ‘I ain’t got no fucking money!’”) and
industry bitching sessions (“I was a meeting recently - they
were slagging someone off and I just recorded it”). These
outlandish aspirations don’t compare to the top of RAT BOY’s
bucket list - getting a feat. from Frank Ocean. “He lives around
here, right?” asks Jordan. “I wanna try and find him, record a
conversation with him on
my phone and then put it on
a song.”
Fresh out of college - where
he got bad marks in art for
spending the whole time
making music and mixtape
cover art - Cardy recently
quit a job in Wetherspoons
to sign up for this music lark.
“I worked in the kitchen.
I was too weird to work
on the front of the bar…”
he remembers. Now the
attention’s firmly on taking
his bonkers first work to
new heights. Inspired by his
favourite album, The Streets’
‘Original Pirate Material’ (his
brother played the record
daily in his Vauxhall Nova
- of course) RAT BOY wants
to tell stories in the space
of one release. “I’ve got
massive ideas, diagrams on
the walls, trying to work it
out,” he says.
“I don’t know what I’m
doing,” he claims. “Just
guessing it. It’s all out of
time, too. No metronomes
and shit.” On paper, RAT
BOY is the kind of project
that would usually come
unstuck, have its wheels
fall off before getting into
second gear. But there’s
a momentum behind this
chancer that’s going to take
him very far indeed. DIY
RAT BOY will play Live
At Leeds and The Great
Escape. See diymag.com
for details.
37

Fuck
The
Banjo
After they (kind of) split, Mumford & Sons returned by ditching their trademark.
It’s out with the folk instruments, in with the electrified ‘Wilder Mind’. But just how
much have they really changed? And what caused it? Turns out, every member of the
band sees things differently. Words: Jamie Milton. Photos: Phil Sharp
38 diymag.com

39

If
Mumford & Sons ever
wanted to prove a
point - that they’re new
people, banjo-ditching
progressives with a
different perspective - this
was it: At separate times
in the space of an hour,
all four turn up to their
South London rehearsal
space on motorbikes.
Revving through an
industrial courtyard and
parking up, they reminisce
about “last night’s ride”,
which parts of the capital
they explored, and where
they’re going next. Is this
a multi-million selling folk
sensation, or Hells Angels
with good connections? A
lot’s changed in the group’s
last couple of years, but this
might be a stretch too far.
They’re more rugged
than before. Gone are the
waistcoats, tucked-in shirts
and dubious chinos. But
what else is new? Swiftly
after breaking through with
2009 debut ‘Sigh No More’,
the band became posterboys
for vocal hate. Their
traditional, sentimental
first sound was - and still
is - the antithesis of cool.
Only this time, with third
album ‘Wilder Mind’, they’re
putting their staples to
one side. The banjo’s been
locked away somewhere
(perhaps in a safe, sitting
somewhere in the bottom
of the ocean, never to be
recovered). They’ve ditched
the double bass, too. This
third LP isn’t exactly fuelled
by raging guitar solos and
bold synth parts, but it’s
significantly different. With
early sessions taking place
at Aaron Dessner’s Brooklyn
basement, this is no surprise,
but big chunks of the record
sound like The National.
The customary Mumford
image - one of country barn
brodowns, line-dancing and
sweet, sweet music - has
disappeared altogether.
But how much of this is a
misconception, and where
has everything gone?
Judging by the immediate
YouTube comments to
brooding lead single
‘Believe’, Mumford & Sons’
love / hate split isn’t under
any threat. “Where are
the deep lyrics?”, asks one
commenter. “This song
needs more cowbell,”
claims another. “What’s
Winston supposed to do
now?” is probably the
best reaction. It’s a good
question. Designated banjobearer
Winston Marshall
is also the most likely out
of the four to break cover
and say something either
tongue-in-cheek or brutally
honest. For years, he’s been
saying “fuck the banjo” at
every opportunity. Whether
he was taking the piss or
making a point, his wish
has come true. He starts
justifying the change by
saying he “grew up playing
in rock bands”, so it’s “kind
of back to our roots”. But
he’s interrupted by Ted
Dwane (former doublebass
straddler), who bursts
out laughing. Even the
band themselves find this
transformation at least a
little bit funny.
“When we started playing
folk instruments, we didn’t
have a fucking clue what we
were doing,” says Marshall,
trying to back up his first
point. Jerry Douglas (a
famous dobro player) once
told Winston he was a talent
at banjo because “I didn’t
have a fucking idea what I
was doing.” He was winging
it. “It’s harder to blag it
in rock, because there’s
so many rock bands,” he
admits.
“I stand by what I said,
but it’s tiring slagging
something off the whole
“I THINK A LOT
OF PEOPLE ARE
UPSET TO FIND
OUT THAT WE’VE
NOT BROKEN
UP.” - WINSTON
MARSHALL
40 diymag.com

ON THE ROAD AGAIN
One thing that’s staying the same with Mumford
& Sons is their ‘Gentlemen of the Road’ shows. The
Maccabees, Jack Garratt and Honeyblood all feature.
There’s also room for a couple of lesser-known
names…
“Foo Fighters are quite good. They’re really coming
along. We’ve supported them from the beginning,”
jokes Marcus. “We poured a lot of effort into this.
Ben’s amazing at hearing new bands. Ted and Win
are pretty good too. I’m rubbish at it. I’ll just pick it
up a few years down the line and be like, ‘Ah, have
you heard of Beyoncé? She’s brilliant.’ So we had
long meetings on the phone - conference calls,
spreadsheets with everyone we could ask, everyone
we had asked. And I just put the phone on mute for
two hours and had a bath. I didn’t really have much
to contribute! ‘Oh I’ve heard of Jack White!’”
time,” he says, giving
a slight nod to the
hordes of Mumford
haters, willing this
third album to go tits
up. “For some reason,
I think banjo might
win. It’s putting up a
fight…”
It’s Winston who’s
most willing to
acknowledge the big
shift. This is the first
time that any of the
group have actually
spoken about ‘Wilder
Mind’ since finishing
it. And in between
live rehearsals for a
tour that looks likely
to last for years,
every member has a
different perspective.
Marcus is the most
averse to meeting
change head-on.
“People who haven’t
seen us live or haven’t
heard the full albums
- which is the majority
of people who have
a view on Mumford &
Sons - will associate
the banjo with every
song,” he says. “We
don’t feel like it’s any
kind of betrayal to the
acoustic instruments
we were playing. It’s
more a continuation
of the other stuff that
we were doing.”
Winston claims the
group were “a bit fed
up” after touring the
first two albums. “Not
so much with those
instruments, but we
toured so hard with a
very small repertoire.
We’ve been playing
for seven years. It was
a reaction against
that.”
Ted backs up the
band’s frontman,
saying: “There’s no
sound on ‘Wilder
Mind’ that you
wouldn’t have heard
somewhere on a
Mumford & Sons
record before,” and
he calls the idea of
there being some
kind of dramatic
transformation “a
little exaggerated.”
“We wanted to stay
unique,” begins
Winston. “That
uniqueness of being
how shit we are! We’re
still shit.”
But there’s no use
in fooling around.
‘Wilder Mind’ is led by
electrics. It’s a record
that comes to life
at night. ‘Tompkins
Square Park’ is just
as romantic and
doe-eyed as previous
“WE GENUINELY
GAVE OURSELVES
THE CHOICE - D O W E
WANNA DO THIS?” -
MARCUS MUMFORD
material, but it’s delivered with an amped-up tension. ‘The Wolf’ is most
significant, placing this record way outside of where the other albums
operate. Technically, the two years separating ‘Babel’’s tour and their new
LP count as the first break Mumford & Sons have ever had. It was dubbed
an “indefinite hiatus”, which complicates matters, but it was also the first
step back from a whirlwind five years that took this hyped-up folk group
into the stratosphere. “We could have stuck to what we knew. It was
going down well,” claims Ben Lovett, and he’s right - by ticking the same
boxes as their first two albums, they could’ve secured another few years
in stadiums. Instead, they took the opposite route. “I think we got a little
41

“FOR SOME
REASON, I THINK
BANJOS MIGHT
WIN THIS FIGHT.”
- WINSTON
MARSHALL
42 diymag.com

Mumford & Sons are going hell for
leather with their new album.
addicted to the road,”
says Ben. “It got to the
point where there was
an expectation for a
record. To tour more, we
had to put another out.”
As the demand reached
new levels and the
tours trundled on,
in stepped a sense
of burnout. In June
2013, they cancelled a
Bonnaroo appearance
and nearly did the same
for their Glastonbury
headline slot, when
Ted Dwane underwent
emergency surgery for
a blood clot. He grew
up near Worthy Farm.
“Me and my mate used
to drink cider under
the main stage, when
we were like sixteen…
Glastonbury was always
going to be immensely
poignant. By not dying,
the poignancy was
magnified!” he jokes.
Ted is most aware
that things came to a
head around the end
of ‘Babel’’s tour. “You
occasionally look down
and realise how far
you’ve come. The whole
scale of the operation
has become so big, that
you do feel a bit lost in
it - carried along with
this huge juggernaut,”
he pauses. “So yeah, it’s
a bit scary sometimes.
It’s a general feeling of
anxiety…”
Winston pipes up.
“That’s not a good sign.
If you’re feeling anxious,
you shouldn’t be doing
this.”
Mumford & Sons asked
that very question,
back in 2013. Should
they carry on? When
announcing their
“hiatus”, 90% of music
fans with a Twitter
account publicly
celebrated the news.
“I think a lot of people
are upset to find out
that we’ve not broken
up,” jokes Winston.
Part of this declaration,
they say, was to give
themselves as much
space as possible, to get
people off their backs.
“We never had a time
when we didn’t have
a gig booked ahead of
us,” says Marcus. But
the idea that they might
actually call it quits -
this became a part of
the conversation. “We
were joking with all
the crew for months,
going ‘Last tour
guys!’” remembers the
frontman. “And then I
guess we hadn’t really
realised that this was an
option.”
Staggering drunk in a
New York after-party,
shortly after the
“hiatus” announcement,
Winston Marshall told
reporters the band
had officially split
for good. “It’s over,”
were his exact words.
“We had a good time
though.” Reps for
the group quickly
cleaned by the mess by
countering Winston’s
claims. “People were
asking fucking stupid
questions,” he says,
two years on. “I was
interviewed at a fucking
aftershow. I was wasted.
And then someone
just got a fucking
microphone out and
asked about the band.”
He then shuffles in his
seat, and backtracks
a little. “I don’t know.
No… I mean yeah, we
kind of split up,” he
says.
“With the intention of
probably getting back
to record,” says Ted,
attempting to clarify.
“I mean yeah, but that
was your intention!”
says Winston, halfjoking.
“I don’t think
you ever know when
you’re in a band. It could
be at any moment when
someone turns around
and says, ‘I’m gonna do
something else for a
43

“GLASTONBURY
WAS ALWAYS
GOING TO BE
IMMENSELY
bit’. Fair enough - you can’t
really argue with that.”
During the hiatus, each
member did their own thing.
Winston made the smartest
move, travelling to Brazil
for the World Cup. Ben put
his efforts into running
the Communion label,
Ted worked on producing
other bands in his own East
London space, while Marcus
maintained the essence of
Mumfords’ folk roots with
songwriting roles on Coen
Brothers film Inside Llewyn
Davis. He also joined a band
with Elvis Costello and My
Morning Jacket’s Jim James -
The New Basement Tapes.
Eventually, everyone got
a non-Mumfords dose
out of their system. They
reconvened to Ted’s space
in February 2014, a few
months on from sessions
at Aaron Dessner’s New
York space. “Just after Ted
recovered, Aaron invited us
over,” remembers Winston.
“We worked there for two
days on a tune, and then the
last night, we just played
songs. And we got really
excited about those songs.
And then we left it, took our
break.” Dessner - ever the
trusting type - gave Winston
a key, and he’d go back to
this space whenever The
National were on tour. “I
dug a tunnel underneath,”
he jokes.
“Aaron’s got an amazing
energy about him, and it
rubbed off on us. It made
us want to get out of bed in
the morning,” Ben enthuses,
dubbing this converted
garage a “really positive
place.” Still, the break took
place as planned, and by
the time studio time came
round, ideas were buzzing.
They brought in James Ford,
presenting twenty songs
from a rough batch of forty.
“And he whittled it down to
a list of… two!” says Marcus.
“And then we really started
writing the record - we
brought all the co-writers
in!” Ben jokes.
If there’s one running thread
between these scattered,
sort-of-broken-up two years,
it’s that when Mumfords
did rack their brains for new
ideas, they did so with the
help of electrically-minded
heavyweights. Ford and
Dessner aren’t likely to have
begged for banjos to come
back. But the band are keen
to point out that change
arrived from the source. Ted
describes early sessions as
“just a synth jam, basically…
Except for me, with a bass
guitar, going, ‘What the fuck
POIGNANT.
B Y N O T
DYING, THE
POIGNANCY
W A S
MAGNIFIED!” -
TED DWANE
COSTUME CHANGE
It’s not just the banjo that Mumfords are being frank
about - their early days are also defined by dodgy attire.
“You’ve got to think about the wardrobes,” says
Winston. “I looked back and saw some old photos
of myself - I looked stupid. Where was management
then?”
“We used to walk around in those barber’s outfits. That
was weird,” agrees Ted. “We shouldn’t have done that.”
44 diymag.com

“WE COULD
PUT BANJOS
ON THE
FOURTH
ALBUM, IF
WE WANT
TO.” - BEN
LOVETT
is going on?!’ It became clear for me from an early stage
that this was going to be an experimental record. Not
quite Kraftwerk, but it could’ve been…”
“We could put banjos on the fourth album, if we want to,”
says Ben, like he’s making a threat. Truthfully, whether
all four are agreed on the idea, Mumford & Sons are a
completely different band with ‘Wilder Mind’. They’ll
still be adored and loathed in equal measure, and if
those Kraftwerk nods eventually emerge, it’ll take a few
records. Same goes for the banjo revival - this LP is too
far removed to be ditched altogether next time round.
For years, there’s been a very different group waiting to
show their true colours. As second album ‘Babel’ gave
them a headlining status, the fabric of ‘Wilder Mind’ was
coming together. Chances are, what happened next only
enhanced the transformation. Near-death experiences
don’t exactly lend themselves to the status quo.
But as the leather-clad bikers depart, there’s still a sense
of continuity. On the other side of the construction site,
a builder taps away at his phone, looking intrigued.
Eventually he walks over. Sheepishly, he says: “Sorry for
being nosey, but I couldn’t help asking - who are those
people having their photo taken?” Given the answer, he
exclaims: “I thought so! Ah, I love them. Brilliant band.
I’ve seen so many of their shows. Are they going on tour?
Me and the wife are going to get tickets. I love Mumford
& Sons.” Despite the transition behind the scenes -
something made even more pointed on record - those
bikers outfits aren’t fooling anyone. They’re still one of
the biggest bands in the world, only this time, they’re
making a big leap.
Mumford & Sons’ new album ‘Wilder Mind’ will be
released on 4th May via Gentlemen of the Road /
Island Records. DIY
Mumford & Sons will play Open’er and Bibao BBK
Live. See diymag.com for details.
45

46 diymag.com

“ I ’ m n o t
s u r e w h a t
kinda band
w e a r e
anymore”
to expect from
‘Sound & Color’?”
says Steve Johnson,
rolling the question
“What
around his mouth
before breaking into a beaming grin that’s half
playful, half pride. “A different record.”
Think you know
Alabama Shakes?
Think again.
Words: Ali Shutler.
Photos: Mike
Massaro
“Sorry mate, I’m gonna need to see your ID.”
In the backroom of a central London bar, Heath
Fogg and Zac Cockerell are sat on a weathered
sofa. Flanking them on either side are Steve
Johnson and Brittany Howard, both perched
on mismatched chairs. They’re the same four
people who started Alabama Shakes in 2009 and
released their debut, ‘Boys & Girls’, in the spring
of 2012. The four-piece have been nominated for
a Grammy, had to worry about playing a cover
of Led Zeppelin’s ‘How Many More Times’ in
front of Robert Plant and are currently in London
to promote their imminent second album, the
glorious ‘Sound & Color’. It’s an album still seeped
in their trademark honesty, yet as the band readily
admit, it’s a departure.
“We didn’t set out to make a diverse record,”
admits Heath. “But I do think it ended up that
way.” The band describe it as “black” compared
to their “white as hell” debut and, written in brief
moments of downtime and snatched days at
home during the two years the band were touring
their debut ‘Sound & Color’ is the product of very
different circumstances; change is to be expected.
“I’m inspired by the smallest things,” explains
Steve. “It could be interacting with somebody
new, travelling to new places or seeing a tree
that’s about to die.”
Prior to the release of ‘Boys & Girls’, Alabama
Shakes hadn’t toured outside of their home state.
47

Now, three years later, they’ve seen the world. “I’m not sure
what kinda band we are anymore,” says Brittany. Described as
rock and soul when they first emerged, Alabama Shakes were
always something more. Grimacing through interviews when
the label was raised and never explicitly defining themselves,
they’re a band at ease with their sound.
That feeling can be felt throughout ‘Sound & Color’, though it
isn’t a knee-jerk reaction to any annoyance. “When we started
writing this record, we didn’t think about ‘Boys & Girls’ that
much because it happened three years ago. It occasionally hit
me that ‘this song is not ‘Hold On’’, but that was it,” Brittany
clarifies.
“That’s the thing, we’re just being natural. The first record was
not all 60s R&B, there were some odd quirky songs on there
which were always my favourites. It’s just what we get along
with, all of us together, because we’re all really diverse people
with different tastes and interests. When we get together it’s a
melting pot,” she continues.
Three years on the boil, Alabama Shakes are closer than ever
and that variation
has intensified. “I
don’t think we push
ourselves to the limits,”
claims Brittany. “I
think we challenged
ourselves and within
that, is being tasteful.
It’s giving it space and
letting it breathe so
you have time, as a
listener, to get in there
and think why you’re
listening instead of
being bombarded with
everything at once.”
“I’m inspired by someone like Nina Simone,” starts Brittany
before quickly adding “not her voice, but her playing. She
spent her entire life trying to get better and better at the
classical piano. That inspires me because I want to get better,
to play better and understand music better,” she explains
before moving on to another influence.
“I like going to see live shows. We went to see Blake Mills, who
co-produced the record with us, it was my first time seeing
him and I was really inspired by that. Just where he puts
the monitors and things like that inspire me because it’s a
different perspective. I think I’ve got it all figured out but then
realise there’s another way to do things,” she admits, keen to
carry on growing. “I don’t want to just say ‘Yeah I’m good,’ I’m
not. I can get better, trust me.”
That keen, experimental attitude is mirrored by every
member of Alabama Shakes. “The fact we had more time and
resources to afford more time in the studio let us explore a lot
of different aspects and avenues,” says Heath. “Every time we
went in for a session we’d just bring something in that was like
‘what the hell?’” Brittany reflects, “It’s a very different record. I
don’t know how people are going to react when it’s released
really,” before shaking off that moment of uncertainty. “That
doesn’t matter to me hugely because I think the best thing
we could have done to respect our fans is to respect our own
integrity and do what we like, because that’s what makes us,
instead of creating another ‘Boys & Girls’.”
“I didn’t have really have a plan going into ‘Sound & Color’ but
if I heard this record when we started, I would be shocked,”
adds Heath. “It took a couple of different turns that I really
like but wouldn’t have expected us to do,” ahead of Brittany
summarising, “I didn’t set out to do anything but make
ourselves proud.”
It’s a simple yet open-ended wish for a band whose fears
still revolve around being under-rehearsed for television
appearances and (metaphorically) peeing themselves on
stage. They still find their situation crazy but are thankful to
be in this position. They venture, tongue firmly in cheek, that
the reason people are drawn to their music is the fact they’re
“all just real cute,” and the concept behind the band can be
succinctly described as “railroad fashion.” Their goals amount
to “having good experiences and seeing the world while we’re
young people.”
With 2015 already looking like a hectic one for Alabama
Shakes as they bounce between Europe, America and
Australia for headline shows and festival appearances via
“lots of planes trains
and automobiles,” it’s
a goal they’re set to
achieve almost daily.
The ever-expanding
schedule seems
daunting but Alabama
Shakes are just “really
excited for the record
to come out and for
people to hear it,”
and the tour offers
the opportunity to
put newly acquired
knowledge into
practice, “I learnt an important lesson recently,” starts Brittany.
“Not everything can or should be reproduced like the record
and I’ve been thinking about it, this is a performance.”
With the twelve tracks of ‘Sound & Color’ whittled down
from twenty, and three in particular only just missing the
cut, there’s every chance their second record won’t be the
only new material on offer from Alabama Shakes this year.
“We’re musicians, we’re a band and we like creating things
together,” concludes Brittany. “I knew naturally we’d write
another record. It’s the same as any craft. You grow, evolve
and here we are with this record. We’re really proud of it, it’s
my favourite record I’ve ever made.”
Beautiful, eclectic yet cohesive, ‘Sound & Color’ is a selfprofessed
grab bag of influences and inspiration. Each
member of the band has their own personal favourite and
as the record flows with considered sequence, taking in a
range of direction and lyrical focus, it’s perhaps the only
unsurprising thing about it.
And what do Alabama Shakes want people to take from
‘Sound & Color’? Zach doesn’t miss a beat and answers
with deliberate care: “Great pleasure.” The four members of
Alabama Shakes break into knowing smiles as Brittany agrees,
“That’s it.”
Alabama Shakes’ new album
‘Sound & Color’ is out now
via Rough Trade. DIY
Alabama Shakes will play
The Great Escape. See
diymag.com for details.
48 diymag.com

49

50 diymag.com
Django

Free from the constraints of day jobs and
degrees, Django Django are coming into their
own - and they’re all the more confident for it.
Words: Ali Shutler. Photos: Mike Massaro
Unchanged
“C
omplacency’s known our name
forever,” declare Django Django
during one of the many twists
of comeback single ‘First Light’, “The higher
we are the further we will fall,” they continue.
It’s a brash turn of phrase that highlights
the potential flaws that came with trying to
follow up their self-titled debut. Then, across
the thirteen tracks that make up ‘Born Under
Saturn’, the London-via-Edinburgh four-piece
show just how much higher they can go. Sitting
in the DIY HQ canteen, all natural light and
high ceilings, sits Jim Dixon. Around him lie
a couple of national newspapers - interviews
with Django Django appear in both - and half a
51

sausage sandwich. Recovering from a press trip to Paris, he
describes how “It feels like we’re building up to something.
There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.”
Formed in 2009, Django Django began with Dave Maclean
producing Vinnie Neff’s songs. After posting a couple
online, offers started coming in from promoters and
Django Django needed to change from a bedroom project
into a live entity. Tommy Grace and Jim joined their ranks
and it became “this organic thing that snowballed.” They
released their self-titled debut in 2012 after a stint touring
tiny clubs and “learning how to be a band.” Years of touring
followed until they concluded with a headline set at
Edinburgh’s Hogmanay event at the close of 2013.
“When we were first nominated for the Mercury Prize,”
starts Jim, with a hint of disbelief still dancing on his
tongue, “everyone was getting really excited. But when
you’re in a transit van going from Norwich to Nottingham,
you just don’t notice any change. It never felt like one
morning you woke up and everything had changed,”
continues Jim. “It felt like a really natural progression.” Dave
was “definitely aware” that things were moving. “We were
always quite a few steps behind, we were always running to
try and keep up with the record,” he says.
Leaving the stage at the close of 2013, the band retreated
home for a few weeks before reconvening in London to
start work on what would become ‘Born Under Saturn’.
“We treat each song like its own little universe,” explains
Dave. Like their first record, “it’s more a collection of ideas
rather than one concept,” but still, there’s a narrative to
‘Born Under Saturn’ that’s difficult to ignore. “I like to think
of it as a mixtape,” Dave continues. “Even though it twists
and turns in the way our influences come through, there’s
things that hold it together as a Django Django record
that we can’t escape from. It’s the follow-up we wanted to
make.”
“We just wanted this album to be bigger,” says Jim. “We
really wanted to push ourselves with our songwriting [this
time split four ways] and it feels like we’ve taken a big step
forward.” From the playful dance of ‘Giant’, through the
stuttering stare of ‘Vibrations’ until the grand swaggering
finale of ‘Life We Know’, ‘Born Under Saturn’ is a bounding
leap onwards. “There was no shortage of ideas and each
song felt strong,” Dave reflects. “We were going to have
ten songs but no one could agree on which ones to drop.”
“Every time we took a song away, the album didn’t feel as
strong. It just seems to work,” adds Jim.
“We make this music because
we want people to
enjoy it.” - Dave Maclean
‘Born Under Saturn’ is “more realised.” The first one was
made over a period of time (and recorded on a £50 mic),
with bits and bobs of ideas floating around. “I was doing a
post grad degree and we all had jobs,” explains Dave. “This
time around it was a lot more focused.” “‘First Light’ was
one of the first songs we wrote,” Jim continues. “It’s about
knowing where you are and where you’re going. I suppose
writing lyrics helps you make sense of what did happen in
those two years. We weren’t sure about ‘First Light’. It was
just a tiny scrap of synth that Tommy had and for a while it
sounded really pastiche. Then Dave came in; cut it apart and
put things together.”
“Getting through that process gave us faith in what we
were doing,” shares Jim. “To see the light, you have to get
through the dark. We were working on that song for a
52 diymag.com

month and the lyrics were borne out of being really unsure
but then feeling like we could go and tackle the rest of the
album. It was a cathartic start to the album, clearing things
out and starting again.” That sense of starting afresh is a
theme that dances throughout ‘Born Under Saturn’. “After
touring for two and a half years, it was like sweeping all that
aside and starting again. I think that underpins a lot of the
songs,” ventures Jim.
“We’re good at hiding behind characters to get things
across,” starts Dave. “Little love stories or your own personal
feelings. It’s not quite wearing your heart on your sleeve
but within each song, a lot of your hopes, fears, and desires
come through. Quite often we’ll write a little film in our
heads and we’ll all latch on to that, rather than someone
coming in saying ‘I’ve been feeling like this, can you
help me get my feelings out into the world’.” It makes for
wonderful listening; grand ideas wrapped around a real
sense of intimacy. “We just run with something until it starts
sounding right, until it starts working, then we follow it
down that avenue. During the writing process, all sorts was
seeping in,” admits Jim.
The title is taken from an 18th Century book looking at
artistic inspiration as a form of madness that was spotted
in a charity shop while Dave and Tommy were working
with The Royal Shakespeare Company. “We were locked
in this studio for three weeks and you do start to go mad
but I think that’s half the process of making art,” explains
Jim. “Making music you can get completely lost in. There’s
a famous image of Brian Wilson sitting in a sandpit in the
studio with a fireman’s helmet, and Dave’s always worried
he’s going to end up like that. I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Jim
assures before adding, “As long as we’re all there to keep
him sane.”
“We spend so much time with each other you don’t notice
things changing, but Vinny’s just had a baby girl, Tommy’s
just had a baby as well. We’re all changing but in terms of
the band, we’ve just grown a lot more confident and have
much more belief in what we’re doing,” explains Jim. “We
didn’t notice it until we’d finished but I think it shows in the
album.”
“You do start to go mad
but I think that’s half
the process of making
art.” - Jim Dixon
“We’re not making difficult avant-garde music,” reasons
Dave. “It’s accessible. We make this music because we want
people to enjoy it.”
“Hopefully when people listen, they can get lost in their
own little world. I think it’s important to be able to forget
what’s going on around them,” says Jim. “We want it to be a
joyous thing that lifts people’s moods.” With the rest of 2015
booked up, there’ll be plenty of chances for Django Django
to see just how celebratory ‘Born Under Saturn’ is. “In the
80s, the tendency was to write music that was dark but
then Manchester’s house scene was built around people
saying, ‘Fuck you, we’re going to build our own world,’ and
made it into a positive thing. It’s a celebration that came
out of a grey northern time at the end of the Conservative
government,” concludes Jim. “We just want people to go
somewhere else with our music.”
Django Django’s new album ‘Born Under Saturn’ will be
released on 4th May via Because Music. DIY
Django Django will play Field Day, Open’er
and Latitude. See diymag.com for details.
53

Death, mental illness and difficult decisions - Hop Along frontwoman Frances
Quinlan isn’t afraid to tackle hard topics head on. Words: Huw Baines.
Painted
s h u t
54 diymag.com

Frances Quinlan is outside a cabin near Knoxville,
Tennessee. The house belongs to a friend’s parents
and a hen is pecking at her feet. Later in the day,
and a hundred miles or so down the road, her
band, Hop Along, will open for The War on Drugs in
Chattanooga. For now, though, she’s talking about
death.
“I like albums that feel real,” she says. “Writing about death I find
really difficult. There’s this idea of having respect for the dead. But
life is grimy. It gets ugly.”
At the heart of ‘Painted Shut’, the Philadelphia band’s intense,
beautiful second record, are the stories of Buddy Bolden and
Jackson C. Frank, two groundbreaking musicians beset by mental
health problems. Their deaths - each of them lonely, destitute
ends - were characterised by a broad lack of empathy and
understanding.
“If you had mental illness in the early 1900s, you were in major
trouble,” she reflects. “You still are today. [Bolden] died in an
asylum, his sister couldn’t keep up with the payments of the burial
so they basically kept digging him up and burying people on top of
him, to the point that they don’t know where he’s buried.
“I felt so many complicated feelings after writing that. I didn’t want
to be disrespectful. He was an immense talent. But when you talk
about mental illness, it’s not pretty and there’s no glamour in it. I
don’t know that we know quite how to admire without attaching
mythology to it. There’s a lot that we don’t like to talk about
concerning our heroes.”
Frank, a singer-songwriter from Buffalo who made one influential
record with Paul Simon in 1965, was regarded as a leading light in
a folk scene that resembled a blanket of stars. He learned to play
guitar while recuperating in hospital as a child. A fire at his school
had killed a number of his classmates. The tragedy never left
him. He died in 1999, having lived with depression for most of
his life. He was forgotten by the world at large.
“I’m just telling
these stories,”
Quinlan
continues. “I’m “ W r i t i n g
not forming any
solutions, but a b o u t
there should be a
discussion about d e a t h I
it. The whole ‘pull
yourself up by the
find really
bootstraps’ thing
just isn’t going to
difficult.”
work, you know?
People might not
agree with what I
- Frances
have to say about
these individuals. Quinlan
I didn’t want my
opinion to get
through as much
as an interpretation of what happened. I’m 29 and from the
suburbs, what do I know?”
A bit, actually. Quinlan has a deft hand with artefacts from
the lives of others. She writes with grace and sensitivity and
is analytical but not judgmental. Her voice, meanwhile, is the
sort that reaches into your chest and takes hold.
Her gaze has always pointed inward as much as outward,
too. As with ‘Get Disowned’, Hop Along’s sprawling, brilliant
debut, ‘Painted Shut’ is a
morass of personal writing
as much as observational.
‘Powerful Man’, the second
song to emerge from it,
shone an unflinching light
on a moment from Quinlan’s
past. Aged 18, she walked
away after seeing a father
beating his son outside a
school.
“I witnessed a frightening
part of myself that day,”
she wrote at the time of its
release. “In a time of crisis I
was not there for a child, I
froze up.” The song, though,
is direct and unfailingly
melodic. It’s the most
straightforward pop tune
Hop Along have ever put
their name to but, amid the
hooks, Quinlan’s words bite
down.
“It’s troubling that it’s catchy,
right? They’re forced to live
with it,” she says. “When
we started working on
that song, I thought of it as
being heavy. It was slow and
drawn out. Something just
wasn’t coming off sincerely
with that. Sometimes, if you
assume people aren’t going
to get something, you ruin it
by overstating. I like to write
assuming that people will
understand.”
‘Powerful Man’’s bare-bones
arrangement is emblematic
of changes across the board.
Album two is a different
beast to ‘Get Disowned’.
That record could be pulled
into a thousand constituent
parts, each arranged
methodically. Hop Along’s
approach was revised to
suit a fresh set of obstacles.
During the writing process,
they were in a position many
bands inhabit the second
time around: time was finite,
expectations were raised
and motivation had to come
from somewhere new if they
were to avoid a retread.
“As you get older, sometimes
it gets harder,” Quinlan says.
“Your challenges get greater
because, hopefully, you’re
getting better. Complacency
shouldn’t be the answer.
We went pretty far from
what’s comfortable for us
to strip songs to a more
straightforward sound.”
For Quinlan, everything
begins with pen and paper.
The words come first. It’s
here that the band - her
drummer brother, Mark,
bassist Tyler Long and
guitarist Joe Reinhart -
enter. If it’s possible to tie
yourself in knots with a Hop
Along lyric sheet, then it’s
just as easy to do it while
following their competing
guitar lines and idiosyncratic
time signatures. Her
bandmates find the things
that Quinlan misses, with
their imaginative writing
complementing her
narrative drive. Beneath
the surface, ‘Horseshoe
Crabs’ and ‘The Knock’, the
album’s first song, bristle
with complex, yet unshowy
melodies.
“The lyrics are with me
from the beginning,” she
says. “I’m not really much
of a musician. If I’m playing
guitar, it’s because I’m
writing something. That’s
just the way my mind seems
to go. The lyrics changed
a lot over time. In the past
I’ve been very precious with
lyrics, but with this record I
was more willing to edit and
to start over. Sometimes the
lyrics are in battle with the
music if you’re not putting
them totally in service to
it. I’m not as interested
in serving the melody
sometimes as I am in getting
a point across.”
Certain bands become
obsessions. Hop Along have
the raw materials to take
over a segment of your heart
and refuse to let go. Bolden
and Frank are the ghosts at
the edge of the frame, along
with a boy from Quinlan’s
youth. ‘Painted Shut’ is
visceral, intelligent and, at
times, devastating.
Hop Along’s new album
‘Painted Shut’ will be
released on 4th May via
Saddle Creek. DIY
55

the
hills
Spiritual encounters, murderous dreams - Palma Violets
were never going to get an easy ride, but new album ‘Danger
in the Club’ has taken a strange course. Words: Jamie Milton.
Photos: Phil Smithies
56 diymag.com

are
alive
Picture the scene: In the isolated rural hills
of Wales, where no cars go and barely
any noise can be heard, a dastardly figure
going by the name of Pete Mayhew
emerges through the trees wielding an axe
(and a couple of guns, for back-up). He then begins
the most bloodthirsty rampage known to man, one
spanning several continents and taking no prisoners.
That’s Pete for you. Or at least, that’s the Pete who
defines ‘Peter and the Gun’, a gruesome tale arriving
towards the end of Palma Violets’ ‘Danger in the
Club’, which isn’t short on outlandish influence.
The inspiration came from a brutal dream Sam
Fryer had of his keyboardist bandmate. A “terrible”
experience, he recalls the story of Pete “running
round the hills and murdering the local choir boy,”
before “escaping to America on a boat, going on a
spree and killing loads of people… The chorus of the
song is the last scene in the dream,” he continues.
“Pete’s wearing rollerblades, and he’s outside the
Brooklyn Vegan bar, singing ‘Peter! Peter! Peter And
57

The Gun!’ Pinky and the Brain style. I
woke up and then the hit single ‘Peter
and the Gun’ came out,” he smirks,
behind great big sunglasses. “You’re
famous, Pete.”
Something had to stir in the Palma
Violets camp. By mid-2014, they still
didn’t have a bloody clue how to
write songs. Any ability had firmly
flown the nest. It wasn’t that they
didn’t have any fully-fledged ideas
- they didn’t have a single half-idea.
The way these four recall the tale, it
sounds as if the next step involved
them being sent to Wales (perhaps
against their will) by a tour manager,
just after they closed out Reading
Festival. Something had to give.
So they re-located to the isolated,
spiritually-struck Preseli Hills, the
original source of Stonehenge’s
bluestone. “So if you ask who wrote
the songs, it’s none of us,” jokes Sam.
“It’s the spirit of Wales. It’s something
bigger than we can comprehend.”
With only a knackered telephone for
outside communication, they began
to settle into their new surroundings.
A couple of “free folk”, as Pete
describes them, owned the area.
“They do their own tai chi classes,
naked,” claims drummer Will Doyle.
The only musical inspiration they
had was the couple’s ‘Sounds of the
Desert’ cassette, which Sam describes
as “really therapeutic… You can hear
a parched camel, dying.”
In between writing and recording, the
band were ordered to sleep facing
West, so as not to awaken the spirits.
“We all suffered from really intense
dreams, didn’t we?” remembers Sam.
“And we were told we were going to
be suffering. That’s the kind of place it
is - a spiritual bluestone.”
In an ideal world, the next part of this
story would see the group emerging
with a miraculously polished,
enlightened record. Palma Violets
don’t suit that kind of tale. ‘Danger
in the Club’ is a shambolic album,
its running thread being a sense of
perfect chaos. It really does sound
like a group of guys losing their minds
while racking their brains about how
to actually write songs. Sweet gold
steps out eventually, but producer
John Leckie didn’t have a lot to work
with when he first stepped into the
Welsh retreat.
“I think I’ve got some of the early
recordings of us trying to write songs
again,” remembers
Sam. “And it would be
extremely embarrassing,
but it’d be great
inspiration for any upand-coming
acts to know
that no matter if you’re
a professional band, you
can still be fucking shit.
The early stages of the
first album are far better
than the early stages of
the second album. It’s
fucking abysmal.”
“To be honest with you,
we didn’t write any
songs,” chimes in Chilli
Jesson. “We didn’t even
try. We played the first
album to death. Made
sure that people had
heard it. That everybody
had heard it.” Once that
process was wrapped up,
these initially hyped-tothe-heavens
Rough Trade
darlings went back to
square one.
Leckie was the first
person to hear the songs
in rough form. “He
thought we might have
something, but we still
had to work harder,” says
Sam. “It didn’t sound
like a record. We were
just writing songs, not
thinking about how the
album was going to be.
And that’s the only way
you can go, really.”
All things in place,
‘Danger in the Club’ does
somehow arrive with
some sense of cohesion.
Sam jokes that “there’s
no producer in the world who could
ever make us sound professional,”
but that’s the appeal of this LP. It’s
an often bizarre, almost streamof-consciousness
blast of punk,
informed by beloved bands of the
past, all while retaining a sense of
youthfulness unhinged. “Literally,
that was the only thing that we spoke
about before,” beams Chilli. “Wanting
to keep it young. When you know all
the chords, and you get better at your
instruments, it’s easy to write tenminute
fucking dark songs. But I think
it’s important to be honest.”
“A lot of bands in the past have grown
up too quickly,” states Sam. And if
NICE TO MEET
HUGH
As well as Pete’s evil alter-ego, ‘Danger
in the Club’ also sees Palma Violets
singing about another fictional
character - Hugh Diver, the subject of
‘English Tongue’. “He’s an interesting
one,” says Sam. “He’s a man who’s in the
middle of a small rural England society.
He has fame within the town, but he’s
old and bitter. He’s dishevelled. And he
just wants out of it. He’s a very paranoid
man. It’s very sad. It starts out as
something that you just think about in
your head, and then it becomes so real.
And you actually realise that this person
probably existed once, you know?”
58 diymag.com

“There’s no producer
in the world who
could ever make us
sound professional.”
- Sam Fryer
Sam Fryer’s sunglasses remain
one of the great wonders of the world.
there’s anything Palma Violets are actively shunning on this
record, it’s a sense of maturity. ‘Hollywood (I Got It)’ is a berserk
collision of chants, while opener ‘Sweet Violets’ even gets
those aforementioned “free folk” to sing an unnerving chant.
Drawing links between the title-track’s pub rock homage and
‘English Tongue’’s triumphant ending point is fairly pointless
- this is a scattered-to-the-bone record, albeit one delivered
with curious charm.
It’s this closing track that brings about the most interest. Palma
Violets are already fielding plenty of questions about national
identity and patriotism. But they’re not about to get all Nigel
Farage in this joint. “It’s damning of [the UK], as opposed
to unifying it,” says Chilli, of ‘English Tongue’. “But I guess
when we’re away on tour in America, you just need to put on
the Kinks albums and then you’re back home. You miss the
English countryside. We’re writing the English perception of
America,” claims Sam. When Palmas go Stateside, they do so
with tongues firmly in cheek. “If you’re in primary school and
you learn about America, you hear about Hollywood, the stuff
dreams are made of. And you dig into the secrets of America,
conspiracy theories. They’re very basic ideas,” says Sam. “I think
it’s more us having a laugh than having an actual dig.”
Unbelievably, Palma Violets did actually work out how to have
ideas again. Pin it on the unruly spirits, the deathly dreams
or the ‘Sounds of the Desert’ tape. The fact is, this is a group
sounding more inspired - and more on the brink of mutual
self-destruction - than they did on head-turning debut ‘180’.
‘English Tongue’ was the last of the songs to be recorded, and
it’s the sound of a group pacing towards the next step. Despite
the chaos of these last two years, maybe Palma Violets are
closer to their next move than anyone expects.
Palma Violets’ new album
‘Danger In The Club’ will
be released on 4th May via
Rough Trade. DIY
Palma Violets will play Live
At Leeds. See
diymag.com for details.
59

Make
A
Scene
60 diymag.com

Shamir’s ascent has been swift; on the
climb he’s found a new appreciation for
unlikely genres. Words: Tom Connick.
Las Vegas is a weird place. As you approach
along the razor-straight stretch of road from
the city’s airport, stitched together imitations of
foreign cultural landmarks jut out of the desert
surroundings one-by-one. It’s a place both overtly
flamboyant and yet somewhat devoid of its own identity – a
mirage of flat-packed culture which can take you from the
stoic romanticism of the Eiffel Tower to the grandeur of the
Statue of Liberty with a simple left turn of the head. It’s here
that a young Shamir Bailey found his niche.
“There aren’t really musical scenes out here,” he explains from
the sofa of his Nevada home. “When I grew up listening to
music, and started becoming a music-head, I was just listening
to a bunch of music that wouldn’t be around me otherwise,
because no one else was really listening to music outside of
the radio. Being genreless has always been something that
was instilled in me, because scenes pretty much don’t exist
where I’m from. I never think about ‘who’ listens to it, I’m just
like, ‘oh, I like this song! And I listen to it!’”
He laughs at the simplicity of his personal music curation,
but being unrestrained by the idea of genres or scenes has
granted Shamir’s debut full length ‘Ratchet’ an interesting
setting. Sitting somewhere between bubblegum pop and
club-ready dance music, and yet skipping through every other
genre under the sun along the way, it’s a debut that reads
like a personal checklist for the energetic young buzz-blog
graduate. The ear for a pop melody that threads throughout,
however, suggests his radio-centric friends might be tuning
in before long.
“I wanted something different for everyone,” he explains. “I
wanted people to leave the album saying ‘I at least liked one
song’ and ‘I at least vibed with one song’. I’m very proud of
that – I felt that even though the album is very eclectic and
has a bunch of different sounds, it still has a very cohesive
aesthetic and it’s not too jarring of a sound.”
That consistency is something he willingly attributes to his
manager and co-producer Nick Sylvester of Brooklyn record
label GODMODE, and a writing process that was “pretty much
50/50” in the share of duties - the vocals that aren’t in Shamir’s
signature, high-pitched countertenor voice? That’s Nick. The
little embellishments and flourishes? Nick again.
“Each song starts off different,” says Shamir of the
collaborative process. “I might write on guitar and I’d send
him a demo and he’d write around that, or a quick little drum
machine demo and he’ll work around that. Or he’ll send me
demos that he’s done, and I’ll write around that. For the most
part, the lyrics are me, and the little ad-libs and low voices
and things, those are usually Nick. He usually just adds into
his production, which is good, because when I write my lyrics
I have to be completely alone. It’s good that he’s fine with
the idea of bringing each other stuff – we come together and
61

build around it, as opposed to building
from scratch, because we both work
really well in isolation.”
They’re a truly inseparable duo, so
much so that Nick and his Godmode
ties came as “kind of a package deal”
once XL came to Shamir with an offer
following debut EP ‘Northtown’’s
runaway success last summer. “It’s not
like it was a switch,” Shamir clarifies of
the jump to the indie super-label; “it’s
kind of just like adding to the family.”
“I always wanted to intern,” he
continues; possibly the only time those
words have willingly left a young adult’s
mouth. But intern he did, mucking in at
XL’s New York office between recording
sessions – an experience which kept
him grounded in the business of things,
and with his eyes on the prize after
‘Northtown’ and its mega-hit single ‘On
The Regular’ went stratospheric.
“It’s crazy to think that I’ve only really
made this music for a little over a year,
and within that year I’ve had an EP
out, I’ve recorded an album, and that
album is soon to come out,” he beams.
“It seems really fast when I look at it in
hindsight, but it felt very gradual in a
very good way, for me.”
It was a gradual learning experience
in more ways than one though, with
Shamir and Nick’s twosome provoking
some profound musical epiphanies.
very nostalgic for him. It was also a
challenge for me, because it was almost
experimental and something new and a
new way to push myself as a musician.”
It’s that idea of constantly pushing
both himself and his boundaries
that makes Shamir one of pop’s
most exciting prospects. ‘Ratchet’’s
piecemeal approach to music making
may skip from genre-to-genre - cultural
reference point to cultural reference
point - but with Shamir’s vocal
signature tying it all together, it never
feels as disjointed as the skyline of his
Vegas home.
“I think that’s kind of where the
uniqueness of my music comes from…
the fact that with the type of music
that I do, I don’t really have too many
influences for - because I really don’t
listen to that type of music. I think that
kind of takes away from sounding like
a copycat. It’s completely fresh – at
least to me.
“I also like to have different mixes
of genres in my music as kind of an
homage,” he ponders. “You know,
showing where I came from and what I
listened to – the type of music that got
me to the point where I am now.”
As he makes his move
from Las Vegas to
New York and from
the blog world to a
potential storming of the charts, it’s
not where he is now, but where he’s
heading, that should really pique
Shamir’s imagination.
Shamir’s debut album ‘Ratchet’
will be released on 18th May via XL
Recordings. DIY
Shamir will play The Great Escape.
See diymag.com for details.
“I never really listened to electronic
music, or disco, or house music,” he
confesses. “I used to absolutely be so
annoyed by disco music, actually! It
wasn’t until I got my drum machine
and I started to experiment with it, and
then I came to Nick and showed him
some demos, and he was like ‘oh, you
must listen to a lot of house music’ – at
this time I thought I was just doing
something that had never been done
before, something completely new. And
he was like ‘no, this is house music!’ so I
was like ‘okay, what is house music?!’”
“He kind of schooled me, and put me
up on game. And I was like oh wow – I
guess I kind of was doing this. ‘Cause
coming from Vegas, electronic music to
me was EDM music and the stuff they
play on the Strip and in the pools – like
Diplo and Aviicii, and all that stuff.
House music was something new to
me. And it was something very old
and something Nick really loved, and
already had such a huge knack for. So
bringing it together was good for him
because it was an old love and it was
“I used to be
so annoyed by
disco.” - S h a m i r
Bailey
What’s up
Shamir’s sleeve?
An amazing debut
album, that’s
what.
62 diymag.com

63

A Grave With No Name / And So I Watch You From Afar / Best Coast / Blur / Brandon Flowers / Ceremony /
Like Apes / God Damn / Hop Along / Hot Chip / Joanna Gruesome / Metz / Mumford And Sons / My Morning Jacket /
Weller / Shura / Sleater-Kinney / Spector / Surfer Blood / Swim Deep / The Tallest Man On Earth / The Vaccines /
Sixteen years from their last album as a four
eeee
BLUR
THE MAGIC WHIP (PARLOPHONE)
Be honest, nobody
expected there to actually
be another Blur album.
Sixteen years since their
last as a four-piece (1999’s ’13’),
twelve since ‘Think Tank’ and
its bittersweet closer ‘Battery In
Your Leg’ - none of the signs were
especially great. There’d been the
big comeback, a triumphant jaunt
from Colchester Railway Museum
to the Main Stage of Glastonbury
celebrating one of Britain’s very
best bands. There’d been the
second coming, with that last night
in Hyde Park in the summer of 2012.
There’d even been the odd spark
of new music - ‘Fool’s Day’, ‘The
Puritan’ and ‘Under The Westway’.
But the noises from Damon Albarn
weren’t great. Even at his most
positive, it never really felt like a
64 diymag.com

Courtney Barnett / Django Django / Du Blonde / Faith No More / Fight
Nai Harvest / Novella / Other Lives / Palma Violets / Patrick Watson / Paul
Torres / Total Babes / Twin Shadow / Unknown Mortal Orchestra
1. LONESOME STREET
Put bluntly, Blur haven’t sounded
this much like themselves in
the better part of two decades.
‘Lonesome Street’ quickly finds
a familiar rhythm. Audible eyerolls,
sparkling disco balls - at no
point does it feel to be growing
old disgracefully. Yep, Blur are
definitely back.
2. NEW WORLD TOWERS
Where ‘Lonesome Street’ is
familiar, ‘New World Towers’ is
something a little different. An
almost looping melody, Coxon
has described it as his take on
‘Greensleeves’. On paper, it
sounds bizarre. In reality, it’s a
slow-burning standout.
3. GO OUT
The first song to appear from ‘The
Magic Whip’, thematically ‘Go
Out’ may sit somewhere between
‘Blur’ and ‘13’. Experimental and
immediate, direct and obtuse, it’s
brilliant and most certainly Blur.
piece, Blur’s big comeback is a week-long-wonder.
new Blur album was top of his to-do list.
When a week long recording session in
a tour break was mentioned, it seemed
there may be hope, but before long
that faded away too. Chances were, Blur
were done.
Keeping a surprise in 2015 is hard.
Keeping the shock comeback of one of
the biggest acts of the last quarter of a
century quiet should be near unheard
of. The reclusive David Bowie may
have managed similar, but he wasn’t
operating in the front line anymore -
he could scheme well away from the
limelight. The members of Blur were
hardly playing wallflowers. Albarn spent
2014 promoting a solo album, working
on a musical and headlining festivals -
not the place you’d expect someone to
plan the secret return of the year from.
But then, Damon wasn’t the one doing
4. ICE CREAM MAN
On the surface, ‘Ice Cream Man’
sounds harmless enough -
bleeping, bubbling electronic
sounds underpin stories of vans
parked at the end of the road,
full of screwballs. Underneath,
though, there are even chillier
undertones.
5. THOUGHT I WAS A
SPACEMAN
The longest track on ‘The
Magic Whip’, ‘Thought I Was
A Spaceman’ comes in at over
six minutes. From a midway
explosion of dramatic sounding
65

the plotting. Not really.
If anyone brought Blur back, it appears only fair their
virtuoso guitarist Graham Coxon should take the plaudits.
The same man who found himself out of the band back in
2003 returned to those 2013 session tapes to find gold.
“We had some downtime,” Coxon told Zane Lowe at the
launch event for ‘The Magic Whip’. “We had a cancellation
when we were out in Hong Kong. And so we thought we’d
find a few days to relocate into a studio to record our stuff
there. We decided to have a play, really.”
“We didn’t really have much stuff,” Damon added. “It felt
like it was back to the way we recorded when we first
started doing stuff together. It wasn’t a flash studio. It
was pretty claustrophobic. It was really hot. We didn’t get
anything finished. After that we went to Jakarta, we did
a gig and we didn’t see each other for months. We did
another few gigs in South America but during that time,
I think the whole thing had dissipated, hadn’t happened.
It was fun, it was a nice few days, but nothing concrete
came out.”
As with any act who’ve been around for more than a
quarter of a decade, Blur are a band with more than one
dimension. From the shoegazy jangle of ‘Leisure’ through
the Britpop templates of ‘Modern Life is Rubbish’ and
‘Parklife’, the Stateside lo-fi fuzz of ‘Blur’ or the more
experimental moments of ‘13’ - they’ve long since evolved
past the cheeky chappies on old Top of the Pops clips to a
genuinely fascinating, musically diverse group.
“At that point,
everyone was
going, ‘There
is a record
here’. And I
knew there was
a record here,
but I hadn’t
f o u n d a n y
lyrics for it.”
Damon Albarn
It shouldn’t need saying that ‘The Magic Whip’ is
no different. Its main ideas recorded in a week - it’s
remarkable that Blur’s eighth album is even remotely
coherent. That it manages to duke it out with their very
best is something else altogether.
A calmer beast than ‘Blur’ or ‘13’, not as concerned with
the sugar rush as their mid-90s incarnation, ‘The Magic
Whip’ has a groove of its own. In the last decade and a
half, Albarn and Coxon have only further developed their
own distinct musical identities. Previous full-lengths
would pull one way or another, their differences and
juxtapositions producing a spark that drove Blur to their
highest heights. Here, they find themselves synchronising
in near perfect harmony.
An echo of Albarn’s ‘Everyday Robots’ here, a wave of
Coxon’s ‘A+E’ guitars there - there’s even the occasional
hint of ‘The Good, The Bad & The Queen’ - but none of
these overpower the fact that - recorded in a few days or
not - ‘The Magic Whip’ really is a proper Blur album, and
a proper Blur album that still finds itself at the very top
of the class.
“Graham came to me, said ‘I think we’ve got something
here’,” Albarn recounted. “I was like, ‘Brilliant. Go and have
a look at it’. I was busy doing what I was doing and I came
back, they played me what they’d done and I was like, ‘Oh
no, this is really good’.
It’s at this moment the penny drops. Whatever anyone
involved wanted to do with their next few months, it’s out
of their hands. These demos are too good. Whichever way
it’s spun, the material demands attention. Blur are back.
66 diymag.com

“It was very mixed emotions for me,” Damon continued.
“I really felt at the end of those last gigs that was the end.
Not for any sort of heavy reason, it’d run its course. There
was no way we could do another gig without another
record.”
For all the constraints of its conception, the biggest
hurdle in ‘The Magic Whip”s path was always going to be
time at its other extreme. All those years since the band
last stepped into the studio; even longer since those
sessions were helmed by their long-term collaborator
Stephen Street. There’s no shock that Albarn may have
had a few nerves.
After all, how many bands make a big comeback and go
on to record something really great? Many smarter peers
simply decided it wasn’t worth it. This year, Sleater-
Kinney returned with an album that’s out of this world,
but they made sure the magic was still there behind the
scenes before committing. Blur had already bolted six
years previously. As Damon said - without new material,
there could be no more gigs. Without more gigs, there’d
be no more band. Everything was on the line.
But, with time, also comes a chance to clean the
palette. Were ‘The Magic Whip’ to have followed
straight on from ‘13’, or even ‘Think Tank’, the relative
lack of obvious, classic Blur singles would no doubt
have been mentioned. No, there’s no ‘Tender’, ‘Coffee
and TV’ or even ‘Out of Time’ here, but that doesn’t
mean there’s no immediacy.
Opener ‘Lonesome Street’ has that typical Blur rhythm
- a reassuring echo that couldn’t be further from tired.
‘I Broadcast’, too, knows its roots. The most in your
face track on the album, it sits somewhere between
‘Modern Life is Rubbish”s ‘Advert’ and the back half of
‘Parklife’, all punky riffs and acerbic critique. Lead track
‘Go Out’ stalks the gaps between ‘Blur’ and ‘13’, while
‘Ong Ong’ and its simplistic refrain is nothing but liquid
sunshine; even the darkest, most cynical souls will
struggle to hold back a smile.
Elsewhere, it’s closer to new ground. No, Blur aren’t
pushing the boundaries of Music with a capital M, but
they’re still finding somewhere fresh to inhabit for
themselves. While ‘Ice Cream Man’ still manages to
trigger the odd memory, its bubbling, beeping, laidback
swagger is closer to Gorillaz than Blur. ‘Thought
I Was A Spaceman’ moves from oriental undertones
to dramatic stabs, while ‘Ghost Ship’ is Blur - but on a
Caribbean cruise. And yes, it does still work.
From the military march of ‘There Are Too Many Of Us’,
with its proclamation of “terror on a loop elsewhere”,
to woozy closer ‘Mirrorball’, it’s these tracks that
reward the persistent listener. As always, in later day
Blur’s deepest cuts come their biggest triumphs.
Standout ‘My Terracotta Heart’ shows it best. As
Albarn’s vocal hits its lilting sweet spot, Coxon’s guitars
work their understated magic. Yes, Blur went away. No,
they’ve not come back to rehash the hits. But on that
ninth listen, with the lights off, they’re a band still able
to find new emotional triggers their contemporaries
have yet to discover. Their magic remains as strong as
ever. (Stephen Ackroyd) Listen: ‘My Terracotta Heart’,
‘I Broadcast’, ‘Ong Ong’
stabs, Coxon’s guitar takes hold,
buzzing under oriental chimes
and his own vocal refrain.
6. I BROADCAST
‘I Broadcast’ is, by a country mile,
the most aggressive, immediate
track on ‘The Magic Whip’.
Recalling everything from ‘Advert’
to ‘Jubilee’, lyrically it concerns
itself with the connected world -
where every moment is broadcast
for no real reason. Bratty and
brilliant in equal measures.
7. MY TERRACOTTA HEART
Here’s where things get personal.
Coxon has already admitted that,
lyrically, ‘My Terracotta Heart’ is
about the band’s relationships
with each other - especially
between Albarn and himself. Close
to magical.
8. THERE ARE TOO MANY
OF US
Over a military beat, the lyrical
context of ‘There Are Too Many Of
Us’ seems obvious - there literally
are too many people. Becoming
increasingly intense, with talk of
“terror on a loop elsewhere,” this is
Blur at their most effective.
9. GHOST SHIP
Thankfully, that tension is dialled
right down for ‘Ghost Ship’. Laid
back, musically it’s a cruise ship
holiday on the sun loungers.
Closer to what would be expected
of Gorillaz, it’s pleasingly different.
10. PYONGYANG
Chiming bells, a, foreboding bass
line; lyrically concentrating on
the place, not the obvious angles
others would choose, ‘Pyongyang’
ends up being infinitely more
effective.
11. ONG ONG
It’s fair to say ‘Ong Ong’ won’t
win any awards for complex
songwriting, but when it comes to
raw, grin-inducing positivity, it’ll
be hard to match. It doesn’t even
get to the second chorus before
the refrain takes hold.
12. MIRRORBALL
‘Mirrorball’ isn’t an epic closer in
length, but soaked in reverb, it
knows how to do its job. A fitting
full stop for ‘The Magic Whip’, but
hopefully not the final chapter
for Blur.
67

Q&A
Unknown Mortal Orchestra
guitarist Ruban Nielson discusses
the band’s latest album, ‘Multi-
Love’.
You’ve said this record sounds a
little more hi-fi - what prompted
the change?
A lot of things I suppose. Rather than
a change I’d just call it a progression.
My method and philosophy was
much the same, I just spent more
time, money and effort on it. I’d been
focussed on various records from
the second half of the 70s, Steely
Dan’s ‘Aja’, Michael Jackson’s ‘Off
the Wall’, Bowie’s ‘Station to Station’.
Those records were made during a
high point of recording technology.
I started getting excited about
making a kind of DIY hi-fi record.
eeee
UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA
Multi-Love (Jagjaguwar)
On paper, ‘Multi-Love’ deals with the dramatic highs and lows of a relationship.
Everyday emotions rule the roost, but it’s not quite as it seems. The clue’s in the title:
this isn’t just one strand of love Ruban Nielson’s dealing with. It’s arriving from all
sides, overflowing the conscience and kicking aside sanity. Nothing’s delivered onedimensionally
with Unknown Mortal Orchestra.
‘Multi-Love’’s title track is a spiralling R&B ballad, but the vocals sound like they’re
being submerged in ether. It’s a disco track, if the disco was attended by zombies.
Same goes for ‘Stage or Screen’, a romantic road trip where the wheels are spinning
off into the distance. ‘Like Acid Rain’ - a barmy, fleeting two-minute dose of psych -
shows the studio-head at his best, always on the brink of losing control. He sounds
like Prince on a roller-coaster. (Jamie Milton) Listen: ‘Like Acid Rain’
eee
TWIN SHADOW
Eclipse (Warner Bros. Records)
Where debut ‘Forget’ was murky and moody, its follow
up ‘Confess’ saw George Lewis Jr. gunning for gold,
to a lot of success actually. The songs were sharper,
louder and more dynamic - he was pushing his formula
to the limits. Then came ‘Old Love / New Love’, Lewis Jr.’s crowning moment
to date - an unbelievably infectious dance floor belter. It’s a shame then that
‘Old Love...’ is still the centrepiece within a record of brand new material.
Considering how much Twin Shadow excels as a project of pristine, highly
addictive pop bangers, ‘Eclipse’ falls flat too often - eclipsing, some might
say, the stadium-worthy songs we know he can achieve. (Tom Walters)
Listen: ‘Old Love / New Love’
What’s the most fun piece of new
equipment you introduced?
I got this amazing box called a
kaimaitron. It was made by this guy
in New Zealand who calls himself
Ekadek. It’s a four channel recording
mixer. It sounds so beautiful and
was custom and all hand-built by
one guy in his workshop in the
Kaimais which is a mountain range
in New Zealand. It has two different
types of distortion built into it, so
it can have this very clean, fat high
fidelity sound or it can get crazy and
blown up and gnarly. But it always
sounds good. I had this idea that I
wanted this record to sound more
widescreen but I didn’t want it to
be clean or sterile. I still wanted it to
be dirty and have impact and not
soften up too much. This box helped
me to start to move in that direction.
It sounds beautiful.
Which is your favourite track on
the record?
I’m trying to follow the way other
people are enjoying it, so I mostly
listen to ‘Multi-Love’ right now. I
think when the next single comes
out I’ll switch over to that. I want to
be in it with everyone else. I want
to understand where their mindset
is, so I’m not listening to the other
songs unless I have to right now. I
want to listen to the full album when
it comes out.
68 diymag.com

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69

eeee
JOANNA GRUESOME
Peanut Butter (Fortuna POP!)
‘Peanut Butter’’s ten tracks come and go
in an impossibly short 22 minutes; it’s a
lesson in including only the necessary and
the absolute best you have to offer. Joanna
Gruesome’s debut, ‘Weird Sister’ sometimes
let its songs drag on into indistinguishable
end sections, while here they cut it all out
and move briskly along to the next sub-twominute
belter.
The band’s lyrics are, as ever, elusive, but the
lines that do slip through and become legible
- “crying in the pizza restaurant” / “crushing
your tiny skull” - suggest a continuation of
Owen Williams’ violent, abstract storytelling.
Album closer ‘Hey! I Wanna Be Yr Best Friend’
is the best they have ever done a slowy, and
introduces organ parts and a twin guitar solo
that could only end an album.
Joanna Gruesome have
adapted, honed and stretched
their sound on ‘Peanut Butter’,
and though nothing here
sticks in the brain quite like
‘Sugarcrush’ or ‘Secret Surprise’,
their tip as one of Britain’s
brightest new hopes is more
than backed up on this showing.
(Will Richards) Listen: ‘Jamie
(Luvver)’
“I wanted it to be a
bit more grounded”
Joanna Gruesome are tackling new subjects on new album, ‘Peanut
Butter’. Words: Will Richards
It wouldn’t have been difficult if,
after beating national treasures
Manic Street Preachers and cult
hero Cate Le Bon to 2014’s Welsh
Music Prize with their debut album
‘Weird Sister’, it went to Joanna
Gruesome’s collective head. Instead,
they’re using the platform the
success of their debut has afforded
them to give back to their hometown
and the scene that spawned them, as
songwriter/guitarist Owen Williams
explains. “Max (Warren, bassist)
and I are putting a deposit down
on a new DIY space in Cardiff next
week. Partly because I hate most
venues, I do really want to help start
an autonomous, radical space that
we all enjoy
spending time
in. After our
first album,
we donated
some money to
DIY Space For
London, and
we’re trying to
get the same
idea off the
ground in Cardiff
and contribute in an active way.”
The new space is set to be called
Castle Lane, although Gruesome
guitarist George Nicholls threw the
name The Chuckle Hut into the ring,
a suggestion that’s… on the back
burner.
The band’s second album ‘Peanut
Butter’ was already written before
their award success, and has since
been previewed with a three-night
London residency back in January
and a set at the BBC 6 Music Festival
in Newcastle. “I feel a bit detached
from it now, as I wrote the songs
about a year ago, but it definitely
feels more like a flowing album
than ‘Weird Sister’, and is more
representative of our tastes and how
we operate as a band than the last
album”, Williams explains. “We’ve
become a bit closer to a hardcore
band as we’ve developed, and we
definitely emphasise those aspects
live. One thing I like to do is re-use
melodies and parts from earlier
songs, and I find the idea of being
self-referential really funny. More
in melodies than lyrics, but there’s
70 diymag.com

definitely nods to some of our old songs on this
album.”
Williams emphasises the idea of ‘Peanut Butter’
as a complete record, where ‘Weird Sister’ brings
together songs written over a number of years, and
some from before the band even existed. “The songs
‘Jerome (Liar)’ and ‘Psykick Espionage’ were written
for our split releases with Trust Fund and Perfect
Pussy respectively, but when we started to think
about how the album was going to fit together, there
were some gaps and those tracks seemed to slip in
perfectly.”
The band’s kinship with Bristol-based Trust Fund, led
by Ellis Jones, has given Williams the inspiration to
write more autobiographically on the new album. “I
had very specific ideas about what I wanted our very
first songs to be about, with very violent lyrics and
lyrics about zombies and vampires and comic books,
all very cartoon-ish. This time, I wanted it to be a bit
more grounded in my own emotions and everyday
stuff that happens, and I think becoming really good
friends with Ellis has inspired some of that, as he
writes about stuff that is personal and important to
him. For the most part though, it’s still just artificial
pop lyrics and doesn’t aspire to be anything else.
There’s loads of stuff about food on this album, I
don’t really know why. There’s also some revenge
fantasy stuff,” he laughs, “so the weirdness hasn’t
completely gone away!”
Read the full interview on diymag.com. DIY
eeee
PATRICK WATSON
Love Songs for Robots (Domino)
Patrick Watson and co. have been honing their
sound since the early 2000s, having already
mastered the use of spoons and bicycles, and won Canada’s
prestigious Polaris prize in 2007. But where do you go from
there? On new full length ‘Love Songs for Robots’, it’s a dash of
meticulous refinement and peaceful revolution; a thoroughly
accomplished album that oozes musicality. Whether the
experimental takes on ‘retro’ techniques, such as ‘Grace’, take your
fancy; or the wonderfully tangential ‘Bollywood’ is more your
bag – there is pretty much something for everyone here. (George
Boorman) Listen: ‘Grace’
eeee
MUMFORD AND SONS
Wilder Sounds (Gentlemen of the Road /
Island Records)
Mumford & Sons aren’t just a walking, talking
banjo. There’s more to them than casual barn
dancing and plucked-string singsongs - this is a band reinvented.
Marcus Mumford couldn’t front a subtle electronic pop song if he
tried, so he sticks to what he knows: all-out sincerity. Everything
else has changed, but it’s Marcus’ vocal that carries this group’s
true signature.
Songs like ‘Believe’ and ‘Monster’ would sound like complete
strangers in other hands, but the frontman’s in his finest form yet.
He’s just as capable holding the keys to blistering, atmospheric
rock as he is tear-soaked strummers.
It’s fun to poke fun at a band sporting traditionally uncool songs
and selling millions in the process. But the truth is, Mumford &
Sons are one of the world’s biggest acts for a reason. This is a
new blueprint, and they’ve emerged a fuller force. (Jamie Milton)
Listen: ‘Monster’
eee
THE TALLEST MAN ON EARTH
Dark Bird Is Home (Dead Oceans)
Waking from a twelve month hibernation and
reassuring us, buried in a short teaser video,
that “this is not the end – this is fine,” Kristian
Mattson’s fourth album as The Tallest Man on Earth feels worthy of
such a frank disclaimer. He’s self-medicated his loneliness through
the company of other musicians, and these songs project a new
kind of warmth. At its peak, there are moments of clarity that only
seem to be achievable to those that share Scandinavian ancestry,
shining through like bright sunshine on a bitterly cold morning.
(Chris Bunt) Listen: ‘Sagres’
eeee
TORRES
Sprinter (Partisan Records)
The difficult second album: time constraints,
extra pressure, greater scrutiny. For Mackenzie
Scott, or Torres, read: added focus, powerful
execution, sharper writing. ‘Sprinter’ is not one to be filed
alongside the missteps. Much like her debut, the shots to the
sternum here are emotional, with pointed lyrics emerging from
circular guitar passages and squalls of noise. Scott’s poetic
phrasing provides a smokescreen for analysis of a conservative,
Southern upbringing and some bare bones imagery: drowning
children, lost youth, disgraced pastors. ‘Sprinter’ is a bruising,
brilliant record from a singular talent. (Huw Baines) Listen: ‘Son,
You Are No Island’
71

God Damn drummer Ash Weaver takes
a break from a lengthy drive over to
Europe for a few dates with Therapy? to
fill us in on the duo’s debut.
God Damn jumped the boat when playing hide and seek.
Was the album a long time in the
making?
The actual recording process,
instrumentally, wasn’t long at all. The
only thing that took a while was finding
the right person to mix it: it turned out
that Xavier Stephenson, the guy who
engineered the album, was the man for
the job. We recorded the album a year ago
now, and we have been itching to release
it ever since, so it’s a relief that it’s finally
being released and we can get our music
in people’s ears.
Where did you record?
We recorded the album at Metropolis in
London. It’s quite strange really as it’s
known for pop music, then us two scruffs
went and ripped the place up. It’s a great
studio though, the whole experience was
amazing, definitely something we won’t
forget in a hurry.
Did ‘Vultures’ end up as you’d
envisaged at the start?
I would say so, yeah. We had previously
recorded a single at Toe Rag, which was
equally as cool but totally different, very
vintage. We decided from that point that
we wanted something a bit more polished
as we wanted to use a lot more pedals and
effects like we do in a live situation.
eeee
GOD DAMN
Vultures (One Little Indian)
From start to finish, ‘Vultures’ is a relentless storm. Lead single ‘Where the Wind
Blows’ growls and snarls with enough power to run the national grid. It’s the
kind of glass-smashing riot of a gig that should be censored. They might pose
as head-thrusting creatures of the stage, but don’t let that fool you. Underneath
the muscles, this band are literate and heartfelt poets. Free from the fads
and the trends of the moment, God Damn are aiming just to write the songs,
without bothering to think what genre it has to be. It might not be leading a rock
revolution, but you can bet – when their peers hear this – they won’t be the only
ones shouting ‘God Damn!’. (Andrew Backhouse) Listen: ‘Where The Wind Blows’
eee
PALMA
VIOLETS
Danger in the
Club (Rough Trade)
Palma Violets’ debut
album ‘180’ was written in a Lambeth
haze. Made very much in the heat of the
moment, chaos, hedonism and odes to
‘Chicken Dippers’ were the main order.
‘Danger In The Club’, might not have the
same immediacy, nor instant hard-hitters,
but it does show the band exploring new
territories, and bringing flamboyant 70s
rock influences to the fore. Well-trodden
themes find a new lease of life in their
no-frills honesty - “we had a pact, but I
was fucked, that’s just how it goes.” When
they connect, they sound all the richer for
it, and on the whole ‘Danger In The Club’
is a more patient, careful record than its
predecessor. Palma Violets’ initial appeal
lay in their ramshackle approach. This
second album shows that there is more to
their schtick than barely tamed chaos. (El
Hunt) Listen: ‘Gout! Gang! Go‘
eeee
HOP ALONG
Painted Shut (Saddle Creek)
Hop Along’s singer Frances Quinlan just has one of those
voices. Burring and catching at the edges like a bit of paper
blocking a bass amp, and charged with Philly-flavoured
drawl, it’s raw and unmistakable on record. Potent, it has
always formed the centre - and at times the main over-ruling draw - of Hop Along.
On ‘Painted Shut,’ though, the band seem to truly find the footfalls of their musical
stride, too, and they’re armed with a balloon full of effortless aplomb from start to
finish. Batshit crazy guitar solos curl outwards at every turn, and the journey that
the record takes is wonderfully unpredictable. If this outstanding record doesn’t
wake everyone else up, nothing will. (El Hunt) Listen: ‘Waitress’
eee
FIGHT LIKE APES
Fight Like Apes (Alcopop!)
From the opening bounce of ‘I Am Not A Merryman’, all
hopping synths and joyful adventure, Fight Like Apes’ selftitled
third album takes you away to a land of multi-coloured
glee and decorated discovery. The arcade introduction is a
gentle one, rolling backdrops and captivating welcomes holding your hand before
the Irish four-piece confidently bound onto the next level. The gunshot drop at
the start of ‘Crouching Bees’ starts the band down a path taking in shimmering
excess, traversed obstacles and heartfelt narration. It’s an album that can’t help
but twinkle. (Ali Shutler) Listen: ‘Pop Itch’
72 diymag.com

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HOT CHIP
Why Make Sense? (Domino)
The most striking thing on the first listen to ‘Why Make
Sense?’ is what’s not there. This is not an album overloaded
with layers of sound. It’s not an album of dancefloor bangers
or songs about monkeys with miniature cymbals. ‘Why Make
Sense?’ is a stripped back affair, an album of emotionally
intelligent, lithe, pared-back R&B.
That means initially it can feel a little flat. But the one thing
Hot Chip could never be accused of is not overloading their
albums with great ideas - and this is a record chock full of
them. So, hey presto, after a few spins it reveals itself to be
everything you could want from a grown-up Hot Chip.
Joe Goddard has said “This is our take on R&B” and there’s
that feeling throughout. At times it feels like a re-imagined
version of Scritti Politti – that same funk, that same
intelligence and sincerity. It just demonstrates that Hot Chip
don’t really fit in anywhere.
They’ve created their own
A record
chock full of
great ideas.
universe. There’s a line on
‘Started Right’ where Alexis
sings “you make my heart
feel like it’s my brain,” which
sums up what they do. This
is the sound of a band still
exploring after 15 years, of
working out what they want
to sound like, where to go
next and, most importantly,
having a lot of fun doing
it. (Danny Wright) Listen:
‘Started Right’
eee
SURFER BLOOD
1000 Palms (Fierce Panda Records)
Having made the switch from major
label to indie, Surfer Blood’s chilled-out
fuzzy-pop hasn’t really changed that
much – but they’re clearly keen for you to
think it has. Third album ‘1000 Palms’ isn’t completely cohesive,
with the tracklisting seemingly random and changes between
songs less than seamless. Second track ‘Island’ would have
made a better opener, for instance, than the cliché-ridden
‘Grand Inquisitor’. But each song has its appeal, and the rough
and ready layout kind of matches the DIY recording process.
A wake-up slap might’ve injected more life, but as it is, it’s
another collection of cheerful indie-pop. (Coral Williamson)
Listen: ‘Feast/Famine’
eeee
TOTAL BABES
Heydays (Wichita)
Glistening with barbed hooks hidden
under scuzzy exuberance and the
occasional saxophone-led breakdown,
courtesy of Cloud Nothings’ Dylan
Baldi, ‘Heydays’’ eight tracks may toe the line between
album and EP but in terms of distance covered, the record is
a full-length adventure. ‘Blurred Time’ is the chattering shot
that gets things underway but it’s the title track that sets the
pace, lashing together vocal cries and heady instrumentals.
‘Heydays’ manages to craft a new path from a well-travelled
landscape. (Ali Shutler) Listen: ‘Heydays’
Buying those original Backstreet Boys outfits
off eBay had seemed like such a good idea at the time...
73

Mad
Sounds
Nai Harvest share their
recent listening.
Ty Segall - Horn the
Unicorn
One of the more underrated
but we think best Ty Segall
records out there. It sounds
so dirty, like it’s been
recorded inside a beer can
or something, which is very
cool! There are some killer
guitar parts and weird drum
beats too.
eeee
NAI HARVEST
Hairball (Topshelf
Records)
Reinvention is part and
parcel of the Nai Harvest
ethos, their kaleidoscopic
approach to music revealing
a new side with each and
every release. With second
full-length ‘Hairball’, they’ve
gone full on bombastic - opener
‘Spin’ is Glastonbury headliner
material, barrelling into view
with the kind of arms-aloft
euphoria lifted straight from a
midsummer’s evening.
The woozy, lovelorn ballads
of the Sheffield duo’s last
incarnation have been replaced
with a vicious snarl, vocalist
Ben Thompson’s vocal chords
sounding ripped straight from
the throat of Liam Gallagher
had he been raised on a diet
of Relentless and imported
American cereals; it’s a
transformation that sees last
summer’s ‘Buttercups’ dusted off
and sharpened up.
‘Hairball’ succeeds in adding
another golden string to Nai
Harvest’s ever-expanding bow.
They are tighter knit than ever
before. (Tom Connick) Listen:
‘Melanie’
eeee
DJANGO
DJANGO
Born Under Saturn
(Because Music)
Since Django Django’s self-titled debut, we’ve
had to wait a burning three years for their return.
Before their debut emerged, the band never
attracted the all-consuming sandstorm of hype
their music demands. But if you were worried
that Mercury Prize nomination had gone to their
heads – that they’d sold out for an easier ride - you
couldn’t be more wrong. Django Django aren’t a
band to dumb down; we’re still running to keep
up. It may have been three years, but there’s no
apologetic, mild-mannered interlude to ease you
back in - and we wouldn’t want it any other way.
Never mind the eclipse – crowds will gaze up in
wonder at Django Django. (Andrew Backhouse)
Listen: ‘Giant’
Nai Harvest are tighter
knit than ever before.
Tom Petty & The
Heartbreakers - Damn the
Torpedoes
We love dad music, and Tom
Petty is great for long drives.
It’s so simple and so poppy
how can you not love it!
Neutral Milk Hotel - In The
Aeroplane Over the Sea
This album is pretty
much perfect in our eyes.
The lyrics were a huge
inspiration on ‘Hairball’,
because of how odd and
obscure they are (Jeff
Mangum is a genius).
74 diymag.com

An album that
shimmers in
the sunshine.
eeee
BEST COAST
California Nights (Virgin EMI)
Ever since the sun-drenched guitars of debut
‘Crazy For You’, Best Coast have continued
to make a name for themselves as the queen
and king of lo-fi surf-pop. Their newest record
isn’t exactly reinventing the wheel, but those
familiar scuzzy guitars feel just as satisfying as ever.
While their previous effort, ‘The Only Place’ saw them veering closer to the more
country-tinged aspects of their influences, their third full-length sees the duo make
a return to the more driven sound of their debut.
There’s something bolder about ‘California Nights’; within the confidence of
Bethany Cosentino’s vocals and the brightness of the instrumentation, this is
an album that feels to shimmer in the sunshine, and come alive in the darkness.
Tracks like ‘Feeling Ok’, ‘Fine Without You’ and ‘So Unaware’ all shine with that
quintessential Best Coast sound.
Even within her lyrics the vocalist has reached a new high; while her previous tracks
would bear much darker undercurrents, this set of songs seems to have a theme of
self-acceptance running throughout.
Have no fear: there are still some of those lazy, fuzzed up moments – ‘Jealousy’
stands out best – but they come juxtaposed with the heady, psychedelic murmurs
A frootiful return:
of the album’s title track; showcasing just a taste of the new territory that they have
Marina and the
the potential to tread. (Sarah Jamieson) Listen: ‘Fine Without You’
Diamonds.
eeee
CEREMONY
The L-Shaped Man (Matador
Records)
Ceremony take their name from the
Joy Division song, and ‘The L-Shaped
Man’ is the closest the band have come
to paying a full-on homage to Ian
Curtis’ lot. From moody piano opener
‘Hibernation’ all the way to bleak album
closer ‘The Understanding’, Ceremony
have rediscovered their melancholy
and are channeling it through their
heroes. They might not have returned
to their hardcore roots, but Ceremony
are back on track. (Tom Walters) Listen:
‘Bleeder’
eee
OTHER LIVES
Rituals (Play It Again Sam)
There’s no doubt Other Lives
are, as they say, ‘musicians of the
accomplished kind’; there’s an attention
to detail throughout ‘Rituals’ that would
put even the most dedicated studioheads
to shame. But while it’s easy to
get lost in the intricacies of the record,
it’s hard to fall for it – bar the folksy
‘English Summer’ and melancholic ‘Easy
Way Out’, the songs themselves largely
drift by without too much of note.
(Emma Swann) Listen: ‘Easy Way Out’
eeee
A GRAVE WITH NO NAME
Feathers Wet, Under the Moon
(Lefse Records)
2013’s ‘Whirlpool’ was a step away from
Alex Shields’ past home-recordings,
but ‘Feathers Wet...’ is literally
thousands of miles away. Recorded in
Nashville, it marks a new era for A Grave
With No Name. The instrumentation
really shines: every melody is bursting
with character. Every interlude, every
flicker of violin and wail of feedback -
it’s all there for a reason: to tell a story.
(Kris Lavin) Listen: ‘Orion’
eee
MY MORNING JACKET
The Waterfall (ATO Records)
It’s evident a primary influence of ‘The
Waterfall’ is the location in which MMJ
recorded. Settling themselves in the
idyllic Stinson Beach in California, they
retain a calm and unhurried quality
throughout, one not unfamiliar within
their catalogue. While it perhaps won’t
warrant an influx of new listeners, ‘The
Waterfall’ is an inviting record that will
leave returning fans thankful for them
not disappearing. (Ross Jones) Listen:
‘Like A River’
75

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THE VACCINES
English Graffiti (Columbia Records)
While their first two albums saw them embark
on a steep upward curve that culminated in a
Number One record; with their 2013 ‘Melody
Calling’ EP, The Vaccines stepped firmly into
critically acclaimed territory. Something changed.
‘English Graffiti’ isn’t ‘Melody Calling’ in album
form: it’s far more diverse than that. The Vaccines
still know how to write a direct hit - ‘Handsome’,
with it’s opening “oh God oh God oh God” panic
attack, is still an indie-tastic thrash - but they’ve
got other gears too. ‘Gimme A Sign’ is the real
revelation. Starting like a triumphant take on
Justin Timberlake’s ‘Mirrors’, before dropping
down to acoustic heartbreaker,
then back up to stadium sized,
arms aloft, goose-bump inducing
chorus - this is a band able to
play pop magpies of the highest
grade. From now on, we’ll expect
only the best from The Vaccines.
(Stephen Ackroyd) Listen: ‘Gimme
A Sign’
from the past few months
Recommended
eeeee
Sleater-Kinney - No Cities
To Love
“‘No Cities To Love’ could be
Sleater-Kinney’s finest work
to date: there’s not an ounce
of flab.” (Stephen Ackroyd)
eeee
Laura Marling - Short
Movie
“Wonderfully unlike
anything Marling has
attempted before.” (El Hunt)
eeeee
Courtney Barnett -
Sometimes I Sit And Think,
And Sometimes I Just Sit
“This is a debut like few
others: beyond bonzer,
mate.” (Jamie Milton)
eeeee
METZ
II (sub pop)
As Canadian trio Metz return for round 2, the most
pressing question for the group might be how can they
possibly pack a bigger punch than their furious debut?
The answer lies not in their power, but in their control.
From the raucous flurry of their self titled debut, ‘II’ differs in being a direct
gut-punching affair. It’s immediate, but leaves no doubt that however
many times it strikes it’s going to be leaving the same mark.
As album introductions go, ‘Acetate’ is terrifyingly effective. It’s immaculate
in execution, but the album bursts with unconventional hooks, from the
woozy repetition of ‘IOU’ to the manic fury of ‘Nervous System’. ‘II’ is an
advert to be a whole new generation’s Sonic Youth or Nirvana. On this
performance, you’d be foolish not to buy in. (Matt Davies) Listen: ‘IOU’
eee
NOVELLA
Land (Sinderlyn)
‘Land’ opens with the gentle eastern melodies of
‘Follow’, launching the template of motorik rhythms,
crystallised harmonies, and melodious tanpura
that shape the rest of the journey. The album is a
convincing introduction to Novella’s practice of bringing together past
and otherworldly sounds into the present. It’s kraut-rock for psych
lovers, head music that marries an array of cultures and genres to create
a colourful web of sound. If Novella’s intentions were to capture a new
audience, then ‘Land’ will hopefully result in a wider listenership. No
doubt it will prove to be one of the year’s most understated releases.
(Sean Stanley) Listen: ‘Something Must Change’
76 diymag.com

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BRANDON
FLOWERS
The Desired Effect
(Virgin EMI)
After over a decade of releasing music, it’d be easy enough
to assume you’ve got Brandon Flowers pegged. Yet, it only
takes the first few seconds of his latest album’s opener to
unravel any preconceptions.
‘The Desired Effect’ is everything you wouldn’t expect
and more. From the opening brass section of ‘Dreams
Come True’, it heralds a bombastic return, introducing
his latest solo effort with an explosion of ridiculousness.
Melodramatic drums reign supreme while 80s synths echo,
and backing vocals blend themselves into spine-tingly
layered choruses. It’s a little bit Eurythmics, a little bit
Footloose and then a bit of everything in between. Here
is Brandon Flowers being potent and playful, funky yet
flourishing.
Granted, his new record comes with quite a supporting
cast: pop master supreme Ariel Rechtshaid is at the
production helm, and the record features appearances
from Danielle Haim, Ronnie Vannucci Jr., Bruce Hornsby
and Tony Levin. Yet, one thing remains undisputed:
Brandon is still very much the star of this show. (Sarah
Jamieson) Listen: ‘Dreams Come True’
ee
AND SO I WATCH YOU
FROM AFAR
Heirs (Sargent House)
ASIWYFA remain an impressive live
prospect - truly one of the scene’s finest
- but on record they increasingly come
across as painfully self-celebratory,
relishing solely in their technical
prowess and ability to bludgeon, rather
than connect. Fretboard noodling far
outweighs any emotional or intellectual
potency, and ‘Heirs’ continues to leave
ASIWYFA stuck between a rock solid
live show and a hard-to-place recorded
direction. (Tom Connick) Listen: ‘Heirs’
e
FAITH NO MORE
Sol Invictus (Reclamation
Recordings / Ipecac Recordings)
Mike Patton and co. seem hellbent on
reversing their sidestep into reunion
ennui with ‘Sol Invictus’, Faith No
More’s first studio album in 18 years.
Unfortunately this is a record that
sounds less like the work of a band
celebrated for its unhinged sardonic wit
and more like that of an act desperate
to cling on to relevance. It’s incredibly
hard to believe that FNM would be
anything other than disappointed with
an effort so toothless. (Jack Pudwell)
Listen: ‘Superhero’
eee
DU BLONDE
Welcome Back To Milk (Mute)
Du Blonde is, we’re told, a “new
incarnation” for British singersongwriter
Beth Jeans Houghton, and
while the sounds are a little gnarlier, a
tad more beefed-up, her vocals are so
distinctive it’s impossible to separate
‘Welcome Back To Milk’ from what
came before. Her eccentricity and
give-no-fucks attitude is a joy to listen
to, and her singular vision so strong
that Samuel T. Herring’s guest vocals on
‘Mind Is On My Mind’ jar a little at first.
(Emma Swann) Listen: ‘Mr Hyde’
eee
PAUL WELLER
Saturn’s Pattern (Parlophone
Records)
Paul Weller’s twelfth studio effort sees
the ‘Modfather’ come out fighting with
a strong nine track album that dabbles
in bluesy guitar and space-age synth.
While the celestial effects sometimes
make it feel like the soundtrack to Lost
In Space, you can clearly hear Weller is
writing and creating music confidently
once again. (Kate Lismore) Listen: ‘Pick
It Up’
77

live
COURTNEY
BARNETT
Electric Ballroom, london Photo: Emma Swann
78 diymag.com

ften Courtney
Barnett’s presence
Ois described as shy
and introverted - bordering
on awkward, even. Really,
though, she’s the kind of
artist who gets totally,
completely, lost in her
music. She performs as if,
by some feat of haphazard
teleportation, she’s been
whisked away from playing
songs in her bedroom and
unexpectedly ended up on
a stage. Bravado-riddled
stage patter isn’t Barnett’s
forte, admittedly, but
the moment she closes
her eyes and lets loose
her breathless tirades of
colliding syllables - jumping
from taxidermy kangaroos
to extended studies of
off-white wallpaper in
pauseless flashes - she’s an
unstoppable live force.
Varying the pace
interchangeably between
‘Sometimes I Sit and Think
and Sometimes I Just Sit’
stand-outs and older songs
like ‘Canned Tomatoes
(Whole)’ and ‘History Eraser,’
Barnett’s forever tinkering
with her songs on-stage,
to electrifying effect. The
riffs of ‘Pedestrian At Best‘
tumble over one another at
clattering, rampaging, speed,
but Barnett’s meticulously in
control of her own runaway
train . By the end, the chorus
“put me on a pedestal and I’ll
only disappoint you,” comes
out as a series of “bleargh”
noises, thrown breathlessly
in the vague direction of the
microphone.
All of Barnett’s wit shines
tonight. “This one’s
amazing,” she says, on an
unburstable high towards
the end of her set, “it’s
a cover of a band called
Courtney Barnett.” Playing
about with her vocal delivery,
but keeping a keen eye
trained on her bandmates,
Barnett’s not bothered about
record-perfect renditions as
much as she is playfulness.
Tonight proves that she’s
storming in cruise control
down the one-way round to
all-out success. (El Hunt)
SWIM DEEP
Electrowerkz, London Photo: Emma Swann
A
t exactly half-past nine, Austin Williams
– indie hero, fashion eccentric and
frontman of Swim Deep – glides onto
the stage, and introduces the opening track
with: “This one’s a little bit weird”.
And bloody weird it is. Out are the sugary
hooks and slacker vibes. In? Insanely dense
krautrock-inspired instrumentation, a whiff
of Berlin at night, a hugely extended running
time, darkwave synths and a monomaniacally
repeated motif of ‘THE HOUSE OF FUN’.
Almost everything seems alien; the Martian
SHURA
Village Underground, London Photo: Abi Dainton
K
eeping her cards close to her chest at
first, Shura kicks things off with two
brand new songs; ‘Figure Stuff Out’
and ‘Kids n’ Stuff’. They’re far murkier affairs
than the sharp climbing synth-lines of ‘Touch’,
or the punchy early-Madonna undercurrent
of ‘Indecision’. Instead they serve as little
experimental previews of which direction
Shura could swerve in next, and her set is a
playful, relaxed one. Later on there’s even an
unexpected, but euphoric re-imagining of
‘She Drives Me Crazy’ by 80s new wavers Fine
Young Cannibals. There’s a lot of road-testing
going on tonight, and by-and-large Shura
finds her feet, with final song ‘White Light’
reaching the spiralling heights of carefully
tensioned heartbreak on the dancefloor.
Though sluggish sound in the venue slightly
hinders ‘Touch’, ‘Indecision’ and ‘Just Once’,
they still sound pretty stupendous anyway,
lighting, the otherworldly synths; and the fact
that a band who were all about three-chord
tunes and not caring about knowing how to
play bass are suddenly churning out massive,
post-apocalyptic jams.
Yet, as Ridley Scott would appreciate, it may
be alien; but that sure don’t stop it from being
bloody incredible. Most of the time, everything
is expansive and jaw-droppingly rich. Swim
Deep have put their bollocks on the line to
create a pretty incredible new sound; even if it
is just a little bit weird. (Kyle MacNeill)
and the whole room bawls itself hoarse in
response. Whether her music induces the
mass-snogging across the venue tonight,
or teary-eyed listening sessions in dark
bedrooms, Shura has the most important
ingredient of all, and it’s one that you can’t
buy in the corner shop. She’s got a knack for
connection. When people listen to her music,
it hits them right in the emotional schnozzle.
It’s easy to forget that, despite the joyful pop
immediacy of her massive singles, Shura’s
output so far is coloured, lyrically, by sadness,
lost love and near-misses, and her honesty
does something special. Fast becoming a
master of the delicious melancholy, and
in the middle of writing her debut album,
tonight confirms that whatever Shura does,
and wherever her experiments take her next,
she’s one of the most exciting new names in
pop. (El Hunt)
79

SLEATER-KINNEY
ROUNDHOUSE, London Photo: EMMA SWANN
A
s returns go, there’s very little on earth that can pack
more impact per square metre than Corin Tucker’s
unhinged vibrato, Carrie Brownstein’s unparalleled
command of the fret-boards, and Janet Weiss’ pounding war
drums in potent combination. On record Sleater-Kinney’s
musical chemistry is tangible enough, but live it morphs into
an altogether different beast.
Tonight’s setlist is something of a whistle-stop tour, which
only adds to the celebratory atmosphere. Hopping nimbly
from the marching pulse of ‘One Beat’ to the sardonic spokenword
of ‘Get Up’ from 1999‘s ‘The Hot Rock’, and then right
back again to the mischievous descending scales of ‘Fangless’
- from the band’s newest record ‘No Cities To Love’ - Sleater-
Kinney are having a ball, and the room is at fever pitch by the
closing song. Stalking towards each other and teasing notes,
visibly grinning, Tucker, Brownstein and Weiss finish up with
‘Jumpers’.
Soon enough the stamping crowds bring them back out onto
the stage.”We know things have changed but things haven’t
changed enough,” says Corin Tucker to a hushed room. “So
we say: give me respect, give me equality, give me love!” she
shouts, with a fist-punch, and it’s time for The Roundhouse
to erupt to ‘Gimme Love’. Tucker dramatically crumples to
the floor, and Brownstein’s kicks become more frenzied and
theatrical; it’s as if Sleater-Kinney live off the energy of their
audience. Penultimate song ‘Modern Girl’ enduces a swaying
trance, and then just as suddenly ‘Dig Me Out’ breaknecks
the night to a triumphant close. Exhume your idols; Sleater-
Kinney are back. (El Hunt)
SPECTOR
The Lexington, London Photo: Carolina Faruolo
s soon as Fred Macpherson opens with the words
“heaven let me down”, it’s clear that like a good wine,
A Spector’s sound and vaesthetic has deepened and
matured since their 2012 debut. This very opener, ‘Lately
It’s You (Moth Boys)’ screams change just as loudly as the
assembled squabble at The Lexington screams their love.
It centres around a weird alien-vocal sound gained from an
effects microphone and a load of wave-pads that lasso a
couple of eyebrows and raise them right up.
The same happens with the funk-spunk of ‘Cocktail Party’,
with both the far poppier sound and Macpherson’s request
for an E-Cigarette, showing how times have changed for both
the band and the world around them. With two keyboards
featuring in most of the new songs, their sound is more
expansive, 80s-inspired and experimental.
Most of the time, however, the biggest reaction is reserved
for the older material: none more so than when the frontman
breaks into a smile at the line: “there’s still a Chevy in the
parking lot outside.” It’s a pretty fitting image; fitted out with
some new kit and a fresh tank of gas, it’s full speed ahead with
neon-lit roads and New Romantic bangers. (Kyle MacNeill)
80 diymag.com

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81

INDIE DREAMBOAT
Of the Month
SS,
HOOKWORMS
Full name: Sam Shjipstone
Do you have any nicknames? ‘N’.
Anything to be the centre of attention.
Star sign: Aries.
Do you have any pets? None, but I
love to ‘share’ the neighbours’ cats.
Favourite film: Paris Is Burning?
Tricky.
Favourite food: Japanese, Mexican,
vegan.
Drink of choice: Maximum foliage. I
want to invent the ‘peacocktail’.
Favourite scent: The herbaceous
notes of the basil plant.
Favourite hair product: I have about
twenty. It’s my hobby to buy a new
one and not like it.
Song you’d play to woo someone:
Sweet Female Attitude - ‘Flowers’.
If everything is okay after that,
everything’s okay.
If you weren’t a pop star, what
would you be doing now? Doing
some other band, playing for a bag
of crisps.
Chat up line of choice: Hey, I was
Indie Dreamboat of the Month.
DIY
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