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Home , All Neon Like, Annie Holland, Another Eternity, Anything in Return, Army of Me, A Perfect Contradiction

CATFiSh & The BoTTleMen Van McCann: “i’ve written

14 MARCH14 2015 20 new ”

“i’m just about BJork back frOm clinging on to the brink the wreckage” “ukiP are taking Pete us backwards” lAurA Doherty MArling the verdict On her new Out Of rehab, intO the future ►the Only interview ClIve Barker ClIve

+ Palma Violets Jungle Florence + The Machine Joe Strummer “It takes a man with real heart make to beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep”

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN 93NME15011142.pgs 09.03.2015 11:27 EmagineTablet Page HAMILTON POOL

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BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN 93NME15010146.pgs 27.02.2015 14:37 BAND LIST New Musical express | 14 March 2015

Action Bronson 6 Kid Kapichi 25 13 42 The Amorphous Left & Right 23 REGULARS Androgynous 43 12 FEATURES Antony And The Lieutenant 44 Johnsons 12 Lightning Bolt 44 4 SOUNDING OFF 13 Loaded 24 Bad Guys 23 Lonelady 45 6 ON REPEAT 26 Peter Doherty Bully 23 M83 6 Barli 23 The Maccabees 52 19 ANATOMY From his Thai rehab centre, Bilo talks Baxter Dury 15 Maid Of Ace 24 to Libs biographer Anthony Thornton Beach Baby 23 6 OF AN ALBUM about , sobriety and Björk 36 45 – ‘Elastica’ Black Rivers 10 Mumford & Sons 7 his “cracking new songs” Braids 7 6 21 12 Njomza 25 SOUNDTRACK Catfish & Orwells 25 Bottlemen 32 Outfit 7 OF MY LIFE Chilly Gonzales 45 Palma Violets 13, 48 Jim Reid, The Jesus And Courtney Barnett 44 Parastatic 23 Mary Chain Criminal Hygiene 25 Peter Doherty 12, 26 Crows 6 Pins 7 22 RADAR D’Angelo 53 Pity Sex 24 16 Pix 23 Meet scissor-kicking Aussie Death From Above 1979 53 Pond 51 rockers The Preatures, plus Destruction Unit 24 Pooltheory 23 Doldrums 6 The Preatures 22 19 more brand new bands Dream Wife 23 Ryley Walker 44 42 Drenge 6 45 REVIEWS Egyptian Blues 25 The Silence 24 3 ► Elastica 19 Slaves 15, 48 Laura Marling – ‘’ Enter Shikari 40 12 Errors 43 Spector 13 The Amorphous Androgynous Faith No More 6 Speedy Ortiz 7 – ‘Wizards Of Oz’ Fat White Family 48 13 51 The Strokes 12 Courtney Barnett Fawn Spots 25 The Symposium 25 – ‘Sometimes I Sit And Think, Fever Dream 24 Tim Burgess 10 Florence + The Machine 8 Tony Volker 24 And Sometimes I Just Sit’ Formation 45 6 Modest Mouse – ‘Strangers 32 Catfish & The Gengahr 6 Us The Band 25 To Ourselves’ The Go! Team 43 Vant 7, 23 Haim 6 Vetiver 44 and more Bottlemen Holly Herndon 7 The Walters 25 Holly Miranda 7 Warpaint 13 ► FilM The Llandudno band hit America to I Need A Dodge Jarvis Cocker 13 What Tyrants 25 play Letterman, meet Bill Murray and The Jesus And The Whig Whams 24 and more make new friends in Chicago Mary Chain 21 51 ► liVe 7 The Wytches 48 7 Yak 53 Palma Violets 36 Fat White Family Björk ***SHAMELESS PLUG!!!*** ***SHAMELESS Pond Collaborators and friends discuss PLUG!!!*** SHAMELESS how the Icelandic star conquered SUbScribE to The Maccabees heartbreak on new album ‘’ todAy froM £20.49 Death From Above 1979 SAvE UP to 39% and more Subscribe now at 40 www.nMESUbS.co.Uk/16H Enter Shikari or call on 0330 333 4555 quoting code 16H 58 Lines are open from 8am to 9pm, 7 days a week

CROSSWORD/ PLUG!!! ***SHAMELESS *ofer opened to new subscribers only. Final closing date for all orders is march 31, 2015. In Glasgow and with Rou, Please allow up to 6 weeks for delivery of your first subscription issue, 8 weeks for overseas orders. For full terms and conditions please visit www.magazinesdirect.com/terms. For enquiries and THINGS WE LIKE Chris, Rory and Rob as they spread overseas rates contact [email protected] or call +44 330 333 0233. their message in the circle pits cover: charles hamelin cover:

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN 93NME15011105.pgs 06.03.2015 16:59 Tell us whaT’s Answering you ON YOur this week: miND Lucy Jones LETTER OF THE WEEK EmaiL letters@.com twitter.com/nme Wins £50 of vouchers! FacEbOOK www.seetickets.com facebook.com/nmemagazine POsT NME, 110 Southwark St, HOOKED ON SE1 0SU NEW MUMFORDS

Judging from the trailers, GUITAR Mumford & Sons’ new album MUSIC LIVES will be drastically diferent to There’s been much talk of the last album, ‘Babel’. The lack guitar music fading away of banjo and acoustic guitar in recently, but I look at it the most recent teaser was diferently. 2015 has a huge a definite shock when I watched roster of albums coming out it for the first time. I was that are gonna be brilliant: bemused about the electric Drenge, , The sound they were going for, but Maccabees, Palma Violets. after 10 seconds of listening All these bands have and watching I could hear the massive followings that are familiarity of Mumfords’ classic keeping this mothership tunes, just played on electric afloat. Then you’ve got guitars. Now I can’t stop playing it. I’m already hooked! Lucy Jones: Mumford & Sons’ schtick has been way more bands like Ride, Sleater- I adore Mumfords’ previous releases, but I completely successful than most people might have predicted when Kinney and The Pop Group get why they wish to change their sound. The band have they first glimpsed Marcus in his tweed waistcoat, and it who are reforming because developed a name for themselves on acoustic guitars would’ve been easy for them to make similar records they know that guitar and banjos that some people appreciate while others over and over again. So good on them. But from where music is alive and kicking. do not. I appreciate their diversity. It’s clear they aren’t I’m sitting I see no reason for them to stop at the The critics are the 4 limiting their possibilities, and I have utter respect for electric guitar. Album four: go gabba. Album five: get wrong verse. Guitar music this. I am excited to hear their new ideas. Winston dropping some terrorcore verses. Album six: will last forever! Alysa O’Connor, via email time for Ted to play about with some drum’n’bass beats. Declan Roberts, via email

LJ: Add albums from this THE CRIBS’ NEW whole review Ruby (I hope out Sunhouse, , ALL HAIL HYDE PARK lot to your list, Declan, and SONGS: INSTANT you enjoy our sensitive , Toy Drum and Over the years, Hyde Park you’ll have the best year of CLASSICS edit), but your description ’ films has been the home to so music of your life: Grimes, Me and a few friends of a moshpit is A+. Can (a great friend of Gavin’s many iconic shows by iconic Courtney Barnett, Kendrick went to The Cribs’ show smell it from here. Please who featured his music in bands. Not only have The Lamar, Lana Del Rey, Blur. at Manchester Ritz on accept this excellent most of his films). Please Libertines made a comeback Some with guitars, some February 25. It was hot. picture, below, from their pay tribute to a great artist. there, but other bands without, all sure to be fine It was sweaty. It was show at the London’s Helen Buckley-Hofmann, such as Blur, and pieces of work. moshing mayhem. But it Electric Ballroom last via email The Strokes have been was amazing. They opened month as a reward for getting involved too. 2015 is with ‘Mirror Kissers’, and your endeavours. LJ: You’re absolutely definitely going to be a year the crowd raged to all the right, Helen. Gavin of pleasantly unexpected new songs, even though PAY TRIBUTE Clark was a remarkable headliners, reformed bands they’re not out yet – surely TO GAVIN CLARK . His work with and new music, so let’s just a sign that they’re instant I can’t believe that your last Shane Meadows on the hope it’s as good as we all classics… As final ‘City issue had no mention of the soundtracks to This Is expect – bring on the music! Of Bugs’ was being played, tragic and untimely death , Somers Town Kate Tacey, via email a huge area of the moshpit of Gavin Clark on February and Dead Man’s Shoes cleared, ready for everyone 15. To those who knew him was fantastic, as his solo LJ: Blur at Hyde Park LOOK WHO’s to have a final jump as personally, professionally work and everything he in 2009 was one of the sTaLKing the chorus built. Every or just through did with the bands you greatest gigs of my steaming-hot member of loving his music, mention in your letter. The entire life, so I share I met Ben and Mike from the crowd ran in like it the shock and vulnerability of his voice your excitement, Kate. Royal Blood after their was full of ice-cold water. pain was/ marked him out as unique. I cannot describe to you gig in Portsmouth. The perfect sendof for is immense For anyone not familiar the euphoria I felt as They were really the perfect band. and I’d urge with his work, try digging the final chords of ‘The lovely, down-to- Ruby Kenwright, anyone not out his beautiful cover Universal’ rang out. guys who introduced via email familiar with of The Smiths’ ‘Please, Judging by what we’ve themselves even his work to Please Please, heard about ‘The Magic though we’d waited two LJ: We didn’t check Let Me Get Whip’ they’ll have loads hours to see them. have space What I Want’ more big tunes to add to Kelly, Portsmouth to print your for starters. the setlist. Bring it on! ANDREW WHITTON, ANDy FORD, JAMES MINCHIN III , ANDy ANDREW WHITTON, 14 march 2015 | New musical express

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN 93NME15011106.pgs 06.03.2015 16:14

20 TRACK OF THe WeeK

1. M83 & Haim 6. Toro Y Moi Holes In The Sky Buffalo having cut his teeth scoring 2013 Tom cruise The two years since chaz Bundick’s last outing film Oblivion, anthony ‘m83’ Gonzalez is rapidly as Toro Y moi have done little to diminish his establishing himself as the go-to guy for self- penchant for scattershot beats and lush synth haze. important, string-drenched songs to soundtrack new single ‘Bufalo’ picks up where second album your widescreen dystopian sci-fi epic. here, ‘anything in Return’ left of, surrounding his raspy writing for forthcoming movie The Divergent soul croon with disco guitars, siren sounds and a Series: Insurgent, he coaxes fellow la residents danceable bassline. “Can’t stop by if he never stops”, haim out of their pop comfort zone to voice Bundick rasps, but there’s a slick urgency to ‘Bufalo’ a planet-sized power ballad. stirring stuf. that suggests he’s only just getting going. Dan Stubbs, News Editor Al Horner, Assistant Editor, NME.COM 2. Crows 7. Drenge Crawling Never Awake at a recent london gig supporting Wolf alice, drenge’s 2013 debut thrummed with exciting, dirgey, crows frontman James cox violently threw up sarcastic rock. Follow-up ‘Undertow’ looks set to be pre-show and went onstage with his mouth covered more of the same, with some subtle progressions. in blood. ‘crawling’ sounds just as bedraggled as he ‘never awake’ is mightily meaty, Rory loveless’ looked. The B-side of the london-based quartet’s drums crunching furiously under heavy bass as his upcoming single ‘Pray’ starts of as a malevolent older brother eoin spools out nirvana-esque rifs rumble before speeding into a frantic punk dirge. and moody lines like, “How about twisting the knife The last 60 seconds are best, full of weighty bass after you stick it in?”. drenge are as sardonic as ever, and skull-cracking guitar noise. then, but 10 times the band they were before. Ben Homewood, Reviews Editor Rhian Daly, Assistant Reviews Editor

6 3. Major Lazer 8. Faith No More Superhero “Blow a kiss, fire a gun”, goes danish pop singer mØ ‘superhero’ is the third single to be taken from on major lazer’s new single. This first taste of , ‘sol invictus’, Faith no more’s first album since Jillionaire and ’s follow-up to 2013’s ‘Free 1997, and chucks machine-gun drums, tightly The Universe’ is a summery, low-key pop gem, full coiled basslines, and a widdling of big drops and bass assaults, with a “woah-oh” into the crusty san Francisco quintet’s arena-rock sample looped repeatedly instead of a chorus. Rest cement mixer. The pick of 47-year-old singer assured, the major lazer bangers are in the post – mike Patton’s growled lines is the mid-life-defying but for now, this will do nicely. “Ain’t no grave gonna keep this body down”. David Renshaw, Acting Deputy News Editor Ben Homewood, Reviews Editor 4. Gengahr 9. My Morning Jacket Haunter Big Decisions north london boys Gengahr have never been louisville’s my morning Jacket know all about the afraid to show of their softer side, but this, the trials and tribulations of relationships. On this, the B-side of debut single ‘she’s a Witch’, takes things first taste of their seventh album ‘The Waterfall’, to another level of gentle. Over brushed drums the country-rock band are finding that looks and delicately plucked guitars, Felix Bushe trills aren’t always enough. “You’re sweet and sexy”, about falling into bombs “going of that they’d said sighs frontman before irritably laying would feel my pain” and falling into a “dizzy spell”. down his problems: “What do you want me to do?/ The plush, cushioned sounds of ‘haunter’ make Make all the big decisions for you?”. he ends on a dazzling explosion. an irrefutable “I can’t”. Rhian Daly, Assistant Reviews Editor Rhian Daly, Assistant Reviews Editor 5. Action Bronson 10. Doldrums Baby Blue (feat. Chance The Rapper) Loops “Why you always on my back? Why you gotta do The third track from airick Woodhead’s first me like that?”, chance The Rapper asks a lover album for label is a step up who won’t cut him any slack. “I hope you win the from the far-out fantasias of 2013’s ‘lesser lottery and lose your ticket”, he continues on evil’. it’s an efervescent blaze of disco pop action Bronson’s new single, produced by mark that recalls Pet shop Boys, Redinho and Björk, Ronson and featuring a slinking saloon- hook. dipping and diving between low-key and in-your- Bronsolini is less vengeful, instead lamenting nights face. signing to a big label doesn’t seem to have slept on the sofa and “someone else eating all my dimmed Woodhead’s quixotic experimentalism pudding” as a relationship unspools. Pretty huge. one bit. Top notch. Al Horner, Assistant Editor, NME.COM Lucy Jones, Deputy Editor, NME.COM ed miles, James minchin iii James ed miles, New Musical express | 14 MarcH 2015

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN esseNtial New tracks ►LISTeN TO THeM ALL AT NMe.COM/ONRePeAT NOW

11. Kelela 16. Vant A Message Parasite The story goes that Kelela, the hypnotic voice hurtling out of the blocks with breakneck guitars behind 2013’s stellar ‘cut 4 me’ mixtape, met Kanye and frenzied cymbals, the debut track from and Björk producer at a boat party in the london’s Vant doesn’t hang about. ‘Parasite’ clocks summer of 2012. she’d recorded just one song at in at under one-and-a-half minutes and races that point but he took a chance on her and the pair through them like The strokes swapping their cool agreed to go into the studio together. ‘a message’ nonchalance for an intense 100mph workout. “I’m a is the result: a sleek and hypnotic R&B ballad given prison, Armageddon on the fourth of July”, splutters extra muscle by arca’s liberal use of bass and mattie Vant, and the whole thing clatters to an end Kelela’s beguiling, devilish voice. before you can work out what he’s on about. David Renshaw, Acting Deputy News Editor Rhian Daly, Assistant Reviews Editor 12. Outfit 17. Speedy Ortiz Genderless The Graduates ’s Outfit have been shouting about many of speedy Ortiz’s songs exist on the margins, their album ‘slowness’ since last summer, and their protagonists the disenfranchised and unveiled some of it at two small gigs in november. marginalised of romances and friendship. ‘The ‘Genderless’, the first oficial single, starts with Graduates’, from new album ‘Foil deer’, is a sardonic synths that chop like helicopter rotors. it unfolds celebration of those who used to be “the best at slowly, with floating vocals and cosy electronics. being second place” but now struggle to make Then the whole thing explodes into an almighty runner-up. But if life ofers diminishing returns, at noise that’s like a bomb going of in a concrete least the Boston band don’t – their squally thunder club in Berlin. not for the faint-hearted. grows more uncompromising at every step. Ben Homewood, Reviews Editor Laura Snapes, Features Editor 13. Pins 18. Braids Too Little Too Late Taste 7 “You looked so good at first when I didn’t know trio Braids promised that their new album your name”, sings Faith Vern alluringly on the would be harder-hitting than their previous two, first track from Pins’ new album ‘Wild nights’. and latest track ‘Taste’ backs that up. “Take me by Then everything twists and she delivers a series the throat”, sings Raphaelle standell-Preston over of cutting blows, like “Your voice is just a noise chopped-up beats, and the whole thing sounds and it’s playing ”. Ragged garage guitars genuinely heavy. The band have always excelled rattle around her, building into an urgent, angry in the emotional stakes, but they’ve they rarely crescendo of noise. sounded so compelling when doing it. Rhian Daly, Assistant Reviews Editor Matt Wilkinson, New Music Editor 14. Holly Miranda 19. Kanye West All I Want Is To Be Your Girl U Mad (feat. Vic Mensa) Taken from holly miranda’s forthcoming self-titled a preposterous number of amazing things album, ‘all i Want is To Be Your Girl’ comes with happened when Kanye West played Koko in london a pretty clear message. “I’ve got a lot of concern last week, but most newsworthy was the big reveal when you’re not around me”, goes the detroit of new song ‘U mad’, featuring fellow chi-town singer, before repeating the titular message rapper Vic mensa (who’s also on ‘Wolves’, also from over a country-fried melody and slide guitar. West’s upcoming album ‘so help me God’). The after a breezy two-and-a-half minutes it’s all clips online are sketchy, but just about crisp enough over, leaving you to reflect on a simple love song to detect ‘all Of The lights’-ish opening horns and whose best quality is its total lack of soppiness. bass that booms like a blue whale’s heartbeat. Ben Homewood, Reviews Editor Tom Howard, Assistant Editor 15. Mumford & Sons 20. Holly Herndon Believe Interference after dropping their “no banjos” bombshell, the san Francisco-based artist holly herndon shatters first new material from the mumfords in three the notion that there is any distance between years is a soaring, -sized, grown-up rocker. the human and digital realms, blurring the pixels With a welcome dose of grit courtesy of marcus between vocals and electronic stutter. ‘interference’, mumford’s steadfastly gravelly vocals, it’s powered the lead single from her first album for (due in by ’s mammoth electric guitar may), is centred around voices that recall ancient rifage and heartstring-tugging synths from Ben rituals being yoked to frenetic digital clutter, veering lovett. not content with being the biggest band occasionally into the symphonic, and at other points in the world, they’re now out to be the most epic. recalling aphex Twin’s journeying bass parts. Leonie Cooper, writer Laura Snapes, Features Editor

14 MarcH 2015 | New Musical express

93NME15011107.pgs 09.03.2015 10:09 ► ■ EdItEd by dAN StUbbS

Rise of the Machine

Florence fires up the engines with a low-key live return in London

Photo by siobhan bailey turner

he last time played a full next song was recorded in LA on that day I got London show was in December 2012, you that outfit and we dressed up as . It was when she headlined The O2. On March 4, the first song that was written for ‘How Big, How T Welch swapped the former Millennium Blue, How Beautiful’ and it means a lot to me.” Dome for The Dome in Tufnell Park, The track built to an explosive chorus, and Welch a modest venue in north London, to warm up for recreated the dance from a teaser video for the a summer of festival slots and the release of her track during its extended outro. eagerly awaited forthcoming third album, ‘How What came as a surprise was her willingness to Big, How Blue, How Beautiful’ on June 1. reel in that trademark theatricality, too. Another In front of mates including The xx, The Kills, new track, ‘St Jude’, marked possibly the most Klaxons and Bastille, Flo twirled, spun, sprinted, low-key moment of Florence’s career to date – it’s stripped and practically snogged everyone in the a fractured song about storms, “real ones and front row of the 600-capacity room. Behind her, emotional ones”, she told the crowd, which she The Machine was expanded to an 11-piece band credited producer Markus Dravs (Arcade Fire, that included a harpist. Mumford & Sons) for championing. Finally, Old favourites including ‘Rabbit Heart (Raise It ‘Third Eye’ saw her dabbling with a -style Up)’, ‘’, ‘’ and melody, belting out the refrain “There’s a hole ‘’ were aired, plus four new tracks from where your heart lies/I can see it with my third Florence + The Machine’s which were performed eye” while beaming at Summers. for the first time. The show opened with explosive The show took place the day after Festival new single ‘What Kind Of Man’, performed with Republic boss Melvin Benn said he had it on Run The Jewels’ plenty of headbanging and a heavy-duty lightshow. good authority that Florence + The Machine El-P and (right) Later,Killer introducingMike live the album’s title track, which will only play one UK festival this summer featuredat Manchester languid vocals and peals of trumpet, (he wouldn’t say which one). This small gig FlorenceAcademy, gestured to her synth player and musical suggested she’s more than ready to return to collaboratorDecember 2014 and said: “This the biggest stages. ▪ LEONIE COOPER

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN Florence Welch at The Dome, Tufnell Park, March 4, 2015

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93NME15011108.pgs 06.03.2015 14:58 10 BLACK getty, andy fallon Williams are embarkingonalbumtwo done,brothersNoel Jez andAndy With Doves “on ice” andatour with with flow the riversblack go YELLOW his brother’s one dayhis brother’s withhis to deciding drivejust round to Williams says itcamefrom him work ontheiralbum, and starting of history.” backgroundsMancunian –there’s alot plus we’relot, Cityfanstoo, Man from Irish Oasisanawfulwatching. supported Doves Noel andLiamwould always sideofstage, be Oasis,too: uswhenwe supported impressed always supportive. very Thatalways been “He’s likethat,andhe’s straightforward very withmethen?” gigs doing some ofce, whereLondon hesimply “Fancy said, textsandinvitedenthusiastic themto his year, theduowere fast-tracked ofthis debut atthebeginning and releasing theirself-titled into summer existence last After Doves. springing rockers up two thirds ofManchester Jez andAndy Williams–made Theduo–twinbrothers faces. T When itcameto formingtheband “I love thatthere was nobullshit,” says Jez. MAGENTA onto the big stages, an onto thebigstages, Black Rivers’ them hesent demos out onto a sea of beans ontoast”. ofbeans out onto asea Jez likenstoexperience “looking act, butBlackRiversact, are familiar thenameofsupport recognised have mightnot thisweek, arena tour, oninto whichrumbles whocaught ’s hose As soon asGallagher heard soon As CYAN supporTive” beeN very “Noel’s always New Musical express If anything, Black Rivers seems to be respite BlackRivers to be If anything, seems oflovea lot there. We abreak.” needed just says we on.There’s get still Williams.“So and Andy andIwere upstairs,” rehearsing andWarrington.Manchester alongtheM62between barn somewhere Doves’ HQ,use inaconverted theirstudio did. It’s onice.” just thetrioallstill Infact, never broke up,” he says. “We never we said “We can’t weGoodwin. reform because in2010,Project ashave hisbrother and Warehousetheir fnalgigatManchester’s on thematter since theday theyplayed up hisdebut‘Odludek’ around time. thesame to follow isexpected bandmate JimiGoodwin recording itlater thisyear.begin His Doves in thisday andage” –andwillhopefully Rivers’ album–“you can’t second hangabout stuf, andwhatwe went liked onthealbum.” to have slate. aclean We outloadsof tried itwas record, into Doves so great going each baggage,” hesays. “We muchbaggage hadso there were or pressure nopreconceptions, that “Itwas important guitar intheboot. “Recently Jimiwas downstairs rehearsing He’s writingforBlack already started from abandthatnever themselves. “Doves albums “Doves themselves. simplefor made things | March 2015 14 March weren’t to easy make,” says Jez, tellingly. “And they never will be.” ▪ Jez has been clear clear Jez hasbeen onhiatus– going festivalMan before Green and headlined four theyreleased, One albumsoutofthe twoscored Number –who forDoves means ANDY WELCH As forwhatallthis As Andy (right) andJezAndy (right) Rivers, and(below) Williams, akaWilliams, Black with JimiGoodwin in Doves in 93NME15011109.pgs 06.03.2015 15:51 ESSEnTIalS FIVE TOuRIng burgess Tim (March 11)andfour more dates UK tour at Glasgow Barrowland ► touch withitagain.” time, butIwanted to getin – keeping itreal!” one was ongameboy. Tetris thelasttimeIplayedgames. “I don’t play computer comfortable.” – Imake mistakes ifI’m too comforting onstage though moccasins. they’re abittoo to fantastic wearthese , always used Pete Kember, whowas in “I like my moccasins. you never getinto it.” don’t getinto itat thestart of thosethingswhere ifyou watch that film.” to take drugsand I’ve known been Walk WithMe. Twin Peaks: I always loved months! But for thepastnine children’s tVprogrammes “I’ve watching onlybeen The Charlatans Burroughs Junkie by William BOOK e s i r Tet gaME Moccasins HOME COMFORT Walk Me With Twin Peaks: Fire FIlM The Charlatans continue their The Charlatans their continue The Wire BOXSET it’s butit’s good one The Wire. I’ve heard gave meaboxset of “throbbing gristle read itinalong I’ve addict. not life asaheroin Burroughs’about “a –it’s classic Fire Fire

aS told to marK Beaumont BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN 93NME15011144.pgs 06.03.2015 16:41 A rough guide a new compilation celebrates the output of Rough Trade. here, the label’s bosses pick the releases that define it

aving spent 37 years helping indie bands get their music into people’s ears, Rough Trade have seen whole scenes H come and go. Launched by Geof Travis in 1978, two years after establishing his London record shop of the same name, the label began putting out punk-era releases by the likes of The 12 Fall, Stif Little Fingers and Robert Wyatt. Relaunched in 2000 by Travis and former The Libertines PiL member Jeannette Lee, they were 2003 just in time to catch a new wave of indie Jeannette: “Their demos were quite darlings including The Strokes, The Libertines Strokes-y so we were a bit sceptical, and Arcade Fire. The best of the label’s legacy “THe one THing rougH but they put on a rehearsal for us in is collected for the frst time on a new best-of London Bridge. They were totally compilation, ‘Recorded At The Automat’, on TrAde AcTs HAve in fantastic, riveting, charming, interesting and March 23. Travis and Lee talk us through 10 funny. They already had their double act tracks that defne Rough Trade. coMMon is souL” routine going on. We loved them on the spot. They were winging it. Even the day we signed The Smiths geoff Travis, label boss them they were hours and hours late.” London 1987 Geof Travis: “The nice thing about Antony And The Johnsons Arcade Fire The Smiths is that even though they i Fell in Love With A dead Boy 2001 crown of Love 2004 were courted by EMI, we’ve read Geof: “Antony’s frst big public Geof: “They were self-releasing their subsequently that they’d drawn up a performances had been singing album in Canada, and it was just wish list of things they wanted to do and one of ‘Candy Says’ on ’s tour. about to come out. We heard it and them was ‘sign to Rough Trade’. Which is Lou absolutely loved him. Antony just fipped out. We managed to fattering, but on the other hand: why did they brought the house down. We were astonished track them down and license it just in time do demos for EMI? Maybe it’s just them by how good this song was. He’s one of the before the whole world caught up.” mythologising. It was who frst greats of the modern era, but he felt he’d been came to see us, contrary to what burned by previous labels.” says in his book. Morrissey wasn’t even there.” Jeannette: “We reassured him we desperately Peter Doherty wanted to do it, and he decided to give us a try.” on the label The Strokes “I had a dream about Rough The Modern Age 2001 British Sea Power Trade last night. I was on this Geof: “This was the frst Strokes remember Me 2001 barge. There was a rep from Rough Trade at this clinic where song we heard, and we loved it right Geof: “British Sea Power are now our they found dead bodies. They from the introduction. I was played longest-serving act. This track was said, ‘We’ll always be there for it over the phone from .” voted the ninth most important Peter. Just get in touch.’ The Jeannette Lee: “We saw them a week later in a song of the decade by BBC 6 Music right way to think of Rough funny little bar in . There were a listeners, which is a great accolade for them. Trade is like a family: kind of load of jock students who weren’t interested. We put on a great show at [London venue] the fallings out and makings up. We couldn’t believe our eyes and ears. They Cherryjam with them and The Libertines. The But at the base of it all, it’s were perfectly formed. It was one of the all- Libertines’ manager was saying: ‘They’re very kind of love. They have time great moments of seeing a new band.” tight, aren’t they? Do they rehearse?’” a place in my heart.” GETTY, GETTY, New Musical express | 14 March 2015

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN Rough Trade signees (from left): The Strokes, The Smiths, Fred Warpaint Macpherson Spector frontman

spector play two free Topman 24 gigs with superfood this week. What can fans expect? “We’ve got a second album coming out so there’ll be new songs. Our current single ‘All The Sad Young Men’ is really fun to play. We did a secret the one that gig in London recently and g ot away played it twice – once at the start, once at the end.”

You’re playing in and Manchester – happy memories from there? “I’m keen to play Brighton 13 Jeannette: “It was minutes recommended to them by Flea from because we haven’t always before! We were lucky. . They already given them our best. One It’s an incredible record. The Stone Roses sounded great though. A hybrid of time at The Great Escape Certain records give you elephant stone 1988 Jeferson Airplane and something I ate a pizza during the gig.” an indescribable feeling. Jeannette: “We’d agreed to more modern.” Whether other people release The Stone Roses’ first There’s a music quiz catch up to it is another single. We had John Squire’s Alabama Shakes before the gigs. What’s question. You have to artwork. We were making up Always Alright 2012 spector’s team name? follow your instincts.” the covers. We had all the Geof: “We few to “You want to avoid clichéd music. Then their manager Savannah, Georgia to see ones. So no Quizzy Rascal or went and got them a ‘better Jarvis Cocker deal’. We hadn’t signed a them and loved them so Quiz-Team Aguilera. If I was 2006 running The World contract but as far as we much we went straight into going down that route I’d Jeannette: were concerned it was a done their dressing room after the show pick Quiz Akabusi.” “We’ve been deal. about 15 years later Ian and gave them the spiel about Rough managing Pulp Brown came up to us at a gig Trade there and then. The core of You were among those for 22 years, so and said: ‘Sorry about that!’” that conversation is just about telling lucky enough to see Jarvis has become part of them that we love the music that Kanye West at camden the family. He always has great ideas. When they’re playing. All the Rough Trade artists Koko. How was it? he was working on his frst solo record, I kept have one thing in common, and that’s soul.” “It was the joint best gig I’ve saying that my favourite Pulp songs were the ever seen, tied with when ones that have a bite to them, like ‘I Spy’. He Palma Violets he headlined Coachella in sent me back this song [chorus: ‘Cunts are still Best of Friends 2012 2011. Having been a grime running the world’] and said, ‘Has this got Jeannette: “We’d heard a lot about fan since I was at school enough bite for you?’” them. We knew this band existed I got really emotional seeing and that they were really good. We’d English MCs and American Warpaint also heard rumours about this place, rappers being given equal undertow 2010 Studio 180, so we went down there to see them. billing.” ▪ davId RenShaW Geof: “We saw Warpaint play at CMJ It was love at frst sight!” in New York and we did that classic Geof: “They were being courted by a host of ►Spector play thing where we said to them: ‘You’re diferent record labels. They always laugh Topman 24 dates good, but you need a diferent about the fact that everyone else took them out with Superfood at drummer’. We don’t usually say that but it was for dinner and showered them with gifts and Brighton Haunt pretty evident. It could have backfred, but we came down with nothing whatsoever. They (March 17) and they said ‘We know!’ That’s when Stella had a lot of choice, but they knew the history Manchester Soup Kitchen (19). [Mozgawa] came on to the scene. She was of the label.” ▪ KevIn eG PeRRY Info: topman.com/topman24

14 March 2015 | New Musical express

93NME15011110.pgs 06.03.2015 17:16 The besT liVe eVenTs The besT music on TV, radio and online This week This week

Morrissey The former Smiths man plays ‘World Peace Is None Of Your Business’ at arenas across the country. ►DatEs Nottingham Capital FM Arena (March 13), Bournemouth International Centre (14) ►tIckEts £45–£65 from Hear Noel on NME.COM/tickets with BBC 6 Music £4.50–£7.70 booking fee on March 15 coves The Leamington Spa duo preview their new EP ‘Spectrum’ with two more dates. noel Gallagher ►DatEs Brighton The Hope (March 11), London Corsica 14 Studios (12) the First time Doors first got together; XFM two nights running ►tIckEts Brighton £7; ►LIstEn BBC 6Music, 1pm, March 15 celebrate with this concert this week to play tracks London £8 from NME.COM/ In October 2014, the BBC’s Matt Everitt hosted film following the LA from her forthcoming tickets with 80p–£1.05 the press conference at which Noel Gallagher rock group on their 1968 debut album, ‘Before We booking fee European tour, featuring Forget How To Dream’. announced his second solo album, ‘Chasing 5 tO sEE FOR FREE Yesterday’. With the record finally out, Noel sits songs like ‘Light My Fire’ down with Everitt once more to discuss the and ‘Spanish Caravan’ The Music 1. Fawn Spots recorded in London, Videos That A Nation Of Shopkeepers, music that’s shaped his career and the influence Stockholm, Frankfurt and Shaped The ’80s Leeds of the , The Damned and The Smiths. Amsterdam. ►watc h Sky Arts, 9:20am, ►March 11, 8pm He’ll also reminisce about all things Oasis. March 14 2. : Time Is Illmatic Soak Music videos might film screening X-Posure be largely confined Rough Trade, Nottingham Swans ready as they gift John ►LIstEn XFM, to YouTube now ►March 12, 7pm X-Posure Kennedy with a handful of 10pm, March 16–17 but this 3. Shinies ►LIstEn XFM, 10pm, exclusive live recordings. Derry singer- documentary The Old Blue Last, London March 11–12 songwriter examines the ►March 14, 8pm Michael Gira’s New York The Doors Bridie revolution 4. Bayy noise band are renowned Live In Europe Monds- they caused Bleach, Brighton for their ear-splitting, ►watc h Sky Arts, 9:15am, Watson, aka in the ’80s ►March 16, 7:30pm uncomfortably brilliant live March 16 Soak, (pictured following the 5. Brawlers

SHAMIL TANNA, ANDY HuGHES ANDY SHAMIL TANNA, shows, so get the earplugs It’s 50 years since The right) drops into launch of MTV. The Parish, Huddersfield ►March 17, 8pm

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN 93NME15011128.pgs 06.03.2015 12:56 has spent 12 years at Radio 1

and frankly, probably only Zane does – it speaks volumes for why Zane will be so sorely missed: he’s a man who sees past genre boundaries and loves music on its merit. When he likes a track, he wants you to hear it too. He shouts about it, plays it to death and proclaims it the hottest thing in the world (right now). People of a certain generation speak of fnding the next John Peel, who died in 2004, but the BBC didn’t bother looking – they instead had the frst Zane Lowe. The pair shared a spirit of discovery and love for new music, but their approach was vastly diferent: Peel revelled in the obscure and esoteric; egalitarian Lowe, a DJ for a diferent generation, has always striven to help acts fnd as big an audience as possible. Of course, Zane’s fawning style, boundless enthusiasm and total lack of cynicism isn’t for everyone. His show was not the place to check in for a hard-hitting interview or scathing critique. But that undimmable nice-guy persona helped him achieve a degree of trust that meant he was able to bag huge interviews – it was to Zane that Kanye West gave his wildest ever interview in 2013 (where he proclaimed himself “the biggest of all BRITAIN jUST LOST rock stars”), and he paid a repeat visit last month. Along with Eminem, Jay Z and countless others, it was the kind of headline booking that’s made Lowe not just a national name, but a globally respected THE WORLD’S BEST Dj tastemaker. And that is why Apple have snapped him up for an unspecifed role in the States. 15 Zane’s fnal show rightly felt like a celebration, and Last Thursday afternoon, before Zane saw the DJ surrounded by BBC colleagues including BY DAN Lowe’s fnal show for BBC Radio 1, the Annie Mac, who started her career as his assistant STUBBS hashtag #thankszane starting trending producer and this week became his worthy successor, on Twitter. Some of the people using it taking over his Monday to Thursday evening slot. Zane Lowe is of to were listeners who’d discovered beloved Nobody expects her to copy Lowe’s style, but if there’s bands thanks to the New Zealander’s one thing she should take from her predecessor it’s that work for Apple in the dogged adherence to the mantra “In new music we boundless enthusiasm for new music of all types, genres, US, leaving behind a trust”. Others were artists who’ve been given a leg-up sounds and origins – not an easy task given she’s best by Zane in his 12 years at the station, among them, via known as the station’s champion of dance music. legacy of boundless various social networks, , Bify Clyro, We haven’t, of course, heard the last of Zane. He says enthusiasm and a Coldplay, Chvrches, , , Red Hot his new role is about “being able to get great music to an Chili Peppers, The Vaccines, , , audience on a global level… to build something that will total lack of cynicism Kasabian, Royal Blood, , Professor Green and reach parts of the world that I’ve never reached before.” Mark Ronson, who also penned a lengthy tribute that Keep shouting, Zane. ▪ attributed his continued success to his friend. Whether you like all the artists on the list or not – ►For more opinion and debate, head to NME.COM/blogs

#65 Happy Soup Baxter Dury (2011) Chosen by Isaac Holman, Slaves ► ►RELEASE DATE “This is his third album, and like everything he’s put out, it’s been criminally august 15, 2011 overlooked. He’s definitely respected and he always gets good reviews but ►LABEL regal he’s not listened to enough. I got into him via my mum. She introduced it to ►BEST TRACKS Picnic on me, saying, ‘This bloke is Ian Dury’s son, have you ever heard him?’ She played The edge, happy soup me the album and I was hooked straight away. The melodies are insane, ►WHERE TO FIND IT Widely and the way he uses vocabulary is incredible. We used to listen to it driving available in record shops to Slaves gigs together – we both [Holman and guitarist Laurie Vincent] ►LISTEN ONLINE on spotify absolutely love him.” jordan hughes jordan

14 March 2015 | New Musical express

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN 93NME15011111.pgs 09.03.2015 11:10 Deap Vally’s Julie Edwards (right) and Lindsey Troy in House Of Blues The la rockers Studios, Encino have enlisted ’ to help make album number two “totally siiick” Deap Vally

16 indsey Troy is pondering Deap Vally’s “I see value in women forming bands work with them. “Nick has a deep respect for second album with her fst clenched without men just so we don’t have to talk female musicians and likes heavy music,” says around a fork, which she’s repeatedly about it any more,” interrupts Julie. Lindsey. “He’s a brother.” stabbing into a crouton. Every time Deap Vally don’t waste time extracting They kicked of in January 2014 during L she looks up to discuss the sequel to and analysing their new lyrics, because spates of downtime, frstly in El Paso and 2013 debut ‘Sistrionix’ she winks, protecting they believe in letting the rock speak for eventually in Tito Jackson’s former LA HQ, the secrets she and drumming partner-in- itself. “We’ve written songs that make you which was “like a swanky Buddhist retreat”. crime Julie Edwards won’t reveal. What’s the dance, headbang and move your body,” Zinner pushed the songwriting beyond the album called? Wink. What infuenced the says Julie, citing LA gigging buddies and limitations of ‘Sistrionix’ but not so much writing? Wink wink. What tracks exist besides recently reformed riot grrrl band Babes In that they crossed what he describes as “the ‘Turn It Of’ and ‘Refections’? Lindsey: Toyland as inspiration. “They were dangerous line into “‘Refections’ has a new name. It’s called so courageous, terrifying, fucking cheesy ” ‘Fuck You Number 7’.” heavier than metal. They brutalised ► or lost their sense of ‘Fuck You Number 7’ (the number is their audience. If there’s a ‘concept’ ►TITLE TBC self. Lindsey likens insignifcant, apparently) is the frst snippet to this record it’s to explore the ►RELEASE DATE TBC the operation to from the mystery album, a bluesy frecracker female experience. Wait…” She burps. ►LAbEL Island “a democracy of battling that sounds like ’s ’60s anthem ‘I’m “That sounds like some fucking ►PRoDucERS Nick Zinner shit out. I have a big A Woman’ possessed by Royal Trux. It’s about exhibit at the Millennium Dome.” and Lars Stalfors ego and don’t work well the malaise they feel when they’re unwillingly Over the past six months, Julie ►REcoRDED Sonic Ranch in with other egomaniacs.” appointed as representatives for all of has been enjoying married life, El Paso, Seahorse Sound Their brand of blues womankind. “Yes, I am a feminist, but that balancing the album sessions with Studios in LA, House Of Blues now spans soul, punk, isn’t why I started doing this,” snarls Lindsey curating local music festivals, Studios in Encino African music, pop, surf as Julie clatters away. “We’re not writing love while Lindsey has being going stir ►TRAckS IncLuDE rock and psych. Besides songs. We’re women who express ourselves crazy in her Silverlake apartment, Bond, Bubble Baby, Little ‘Fuck You Number 7’, in a traditionally male format and we’ve killing cockroaches, hanging out Baby Beauty Queen, Fuck You ‘Turn It Of’ refects learned that’s inherently political whether with “fucking cool person” Shirley Number 7, Turn It Of Zinner’s infuence, you wanna be or not.” Manson and dying her hair to ►JuLIE EDwARDS SAyS “We’re a hybrid of stinging a pinkish peach. Another musical making music that’s fun to play, guitar and melodic friend, Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist fresh as fuck and totally siiick aggression that could “I hAVE A bIg Ego Nick Zinner, – with three ‘i’s.” easily be a ‘It’s AnD Don’T woRk produced the Blitz!’-era incarnation. album. He Zinner reckons the wELL wITh oThER met the hellraising album is bigger than the debut in every EgomAnIAcS” duo when they were dimension. “This record is heavier, catchier LInDSEy TRoy supporting YYYs in and more dynamic,” he says. “There are guitar 2013, and ofered to rifs on it I wish I’d written.” ■ eve barlow dEBI dEL GRANdE, jENN FIvE

New Musical express | 14 March 2015

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN 93NME15011112.pgs 03.03.2015 17:22 pROMOTiON

Kasabian say it loud as they pick up their Best British Band award supported by Marshall at last month’s NME Awards 2015 with Austin, Texas

Marshall devotees Darlia headline an NME Awards Show STACKED at London’s Garage TO PERFECTION For 50 years, Marshall have been turning 17 things up to 11 with their iconic stack

n 1965, an icon was born. Dissatisfed with Marshall’s infuence the volume of their Vox amps, The Who’s is still going strong 50 ThE bIggER ThE mARShAll Pete Townshend and John Entwistle were years later. Artists as STACK, ThE gREATER Icraving more decibels with which to win wide-ranging as Muse, over their crowds. The band spoke to Jim The Maccabees, AC/DC ThE bAND’S STATuS Marshall, who set about creating the frst and many others all use 100-Watt amplifer, the Super 100 head and their amps. The iconic the 8 x 12" speaker cabinet. brand even made its presence felt at the The latter proved too difcult to take from NME Awards 2015 with Austin, Texas: ►WIN A hANWEll gig to gig, so Marshall and Townshend stacked the lectern where the night’s awards were blACK SPEAKER! two 4 x 12" cabs on top of each other. The presented was a decorated Marshall amp, Marshall stack was created and rock’n’roll was and the sound pioneers supported the Best Hailing from a line of 50th anniversary products, the Hanwell given a new lease of devastatingly loud life. British Band award, Marshall users Kasabian moves Marshall’s heritage of big Alongside The Who, , Deep taking home the prize. stage performance out of the arena Purple and Cream were all early adopters of To celebrate the stack’s 50th anniversary, and into your personal space. the stack, and soon the new approach to live Marshall have produced two very special, ►Head to NME.COM/win for a amplifcation was notorious in rock’n’roll limited-edition 4 x 12" speaker cabinets: chance to win one of two speakers circles. Before long, bands began building the 812A-50 angled cab and the 812B-50 plus a Marshall goody bag. walls of Marshall stacks – the bigger the wall, straight cab. Both feature special plaques the greater the band’s status. signifying their 50th anniversary status and they’ve been designed to look just like ►I lOvE mY AmP those made in 1965, right down to the A cab’s one-third Sam mcTrusty Twin Atlantic and combos, settling with a open back, meaning it’s even “Marshall amps are the Bluesbreaker combo and a 100 Watt easier for you to recreate tone of British indie and Plexi Head through a vintage Marshall your favourite moments from rock history – whenever cab. It’s the perfect balance between a I imagine a guitar tone wide, powerful and deep tone blended rock’n’roll history – from in my mind that’s with sharp, open, crystal-clear clean Pete Townshend’s signature channelling something great from my options. It just doesn’t sound right to windmill moves to Jimi heroes, I always manage to dial it in me unless it’s got all of those sonic Hendrix playing ‘The Star with a Marshall amp. Over the years, attributes. What Marshall ofer is class Spangled Banner’ with his

emma viola lilja I’ve used two or three diferent heads and style over or fad.” teeth at Woodstock 1969.

14 MARCH 2015 | New MusiCAl expRess

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN 93NME15011140.pgs 06.03.2015 16:48 subscribe to today from £20.49 sav e up to 39%

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BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN 93NME15011120.pgs 02.03.2015 17:02 “PUT IT ON AS yOU’RE GOING OUT, OR WHEN yOU’RE HAvING SEx”

LYRIC ANALYSIS FAMOUS FAN “My heart’s spaghetti “It summed everything up junction/Every shining at that time. Elastica and bonnet/Makes me Suede were at this pre- think of my back on tipping point, when it” - ‘Car Song’ it was still dirty and exciting ◄ STORY BEHIND Justine’s saucy, JG Ballard- – when it was still ours. If THE SLEEVE style tribute to getting you can live on that tipping Renowned German fashion steamy in motor vehicles. point, being on the verge of photographer Juergen Teller, the mainstream and it still who has worked with artists “Drivel head knows belonging to you, that is including Sinéad O’Connor, all the stars/Loves where the real excitement Björk and Elton John, took to suck their shining comes about music.” Ricky the black-and-white snap guitars” - ‘Line Up’ Wilson, Kaiser Chiefs for Elastica’s debut – a cover Having been in the orbit that, with its sparse, sparing of both Blur and Suede, IN THEIR OWN style, stood apart from the Justine was no stranger WORDS elaborate and conceptual to groupies. Here, she “I think we’ve made a record sleeves favoured by Blur takes a pot shot at those you can put on from start and Suede. fans desperate to cop of to finish without feeling like THIS WEEK... with a musician. you want to kick the cat. FIVE FACTS You could put it on as you’re Now-defunct music “We were sitting in going out, before you go to Elastica: 1 paper waiting/And I told you sleep or when you’re having ran a competition asking my plan/You were sex.” Justine Frischmann, fans to name Elastica’s far too busy writing/ 1995 debut Lp, but readers’ Words that didn’t 19 Elastica suggestions – including scan” - ‘Never Here’ THE AFTERMATH ‘Edible Liar’ and ‘Tie Me Up This was reportedly written Momentum can be And Give Me Toast’ – were about Frischmann’s split with squandered far more easily The punchy THE BACKGROUND all rejected by the band. Anderson, taking a vengeful than it can be gained. Britpop classic “The token girl playing Another title, ‘Keys, sideswipe at his songwriting. Just ask Elastica: after the guitar in the back”: that’s 2 Money And Fags’ success of their debut, they is 20 years old how a fed-up Justine – a lyric from ‘Line Up’ – was WHAT WE SAID THEN took their sweet time to make this week Frischmann described her also nixed due to fears that “Fun, lovable and exciting, a follow-up. Matthews and stint in Suede, the band American fans would have Elastica’s debut burps Holland both split before she’d formed with then- a diferent interpretation of out of the speakers the record was released, boyfriend the word ‘fags’. like a pissed kid on and the rest of the band in 1989. At personal a spacehopper.” Johnny decided to re-record all the loggerheads with Anderson 3 contributed keyboards Dee, NME, March 3, 1995 material in 1999 (with new after she left him for his to ‘Elastica’, but the band contributions from The Fall’s arch-rival, Blur’s Damon chose not to credit him WHAT WE SAY NOW Mark E Smith and Damon Albarn, she formed her own with his real name – the It deserves to be celebrated Albarn again). By the time group in 1992 with drummer pseudonym Dan Abnormal just as much as Britpop the patchy ‘The Menace’ was (another early was used instead. contemporaries like released in 2000, the Britpop Suede outcast), bassist ‘Diferent Class’, ‘Definitely bubble had long burst. The and guitarist 4 has claimed that the Maybe’, ‘’ and band amicably called it Donna Matthews. That mysterious acronym of the ‘Modern Life Is Rubbish’: a day the following year, and may all sound like a Britpop track ‘SOFT’ stands for punchy and acidic, full of Frischmann turned her back version of EastEnders, but ‘Same Old Fucking Thing’. catchy-as-fuck singles and on music to become a visual Elastica soon proved they and not an ounce of fat. artist in the US. had something far more 5 Wire took issue with substantial to ofer. The Elastica’s debut: Wire succinct punchiness of early claimed that both ‘Line ► singles ‘Stutter’, ‘Line Up’ and Up’ and ‘Connection’ ►RECORDED 1994 ►RELEASE DAT E March 13, 1995 ►LENGTH 37:59 ‘Connection’ quickly turned ripped them of, while ►PRODUCERS Marc Waterman, Elastica ►STUDIO Konk, London heads – ex-NME journo The Stranglers alleged that ►HIGHEST UK CHART POSITION 1 ►SALES 100,000+ ►SINGLES , in particular, ‘Waking Up’ borrowed from Stutter, Line Up, Connection, Car Song, Waking Up ►TRACKLISTING began championing them ‘No More Heroes’. Both ►1. Line Up ►2. Annie ►3. Connection ►4. Car Song ►5. Smile ►6. Hold on his BBC Radio 1 show bands received out-of-court Me Now ►7. SOFT ►8. Indian Song ►9. Blue ►10. All Nighter ►11. Waking and signed them to his label, settlements as a result of Up ►12. 2:1, Vaseline ►13. Never Here ►14. Stutter

WORDS: LEONIE COOpERWORDS: Deceptive Records. the legal disputes.

New Musical express | 14 MarcH 2015

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN 93NME15011113.pgs 05.03.2015 16:50 TOP 40 ALBUmS mARcH 8, 2015

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Too ofensive for radio” NEW Matt Bellamy nixes rumours that muse’s new single 01 could hit the airwaves soon Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds chasing Yesterday sour MasH noel’s post-oasis career continues to soar as his second solo album – the fastest selling record of 2015 THE NUMBERS so far – careens into the number one spot this week. NEW 2 Hand Cannot Erase Steven Wilson KsCopE ▼ 3 The Race For space Public Service Broadcasting $300,000 $1.6m TEsT CaRd RECoRdings ▼ 4 physical graffiti RHino What Jack White paid for an stake 50 Cent is betting on ▼ 5 Royal Blood Royal Blood WaRnER BRos acetate of ’s first Floyd mayweather to beat ■ 6 The Killer instinct Black Star Riders nuClEaR BlasT ever recording – ‘my Happiness’ manny pacquiao in their ■ 7 in The lonely Hour Sam Smith CapiTol and ‘That’s When your upcoming boxing match, ■ 8 X Ed Sheeran asylum Heartaches Begin’ according to the rapper ▼ 9 o shudder Dutch Uncles mEmpHis indusTRiEs NEW 10 shedding Ghostpoet play iT again sam 2.40am ▼ 11 Wanted on Voyage ColumBia Time that Kanye West’s surprise $400,000 NEW 12 Js Bach/goldberg Variations Jill Crossland apEX show at london’s Koko on march 3 asking price for Kurt Cobain’s ▲ 13 lost in The dream The War On Drugs sECRETly Canadian finished. He was joined by guests childhood home in aberdeen, ▼ 14 i love you, Honeybear Father John Misty including Raekwon, novelist, Vic Washington. it includes the NEW 15 shadow of The sun Moon Duo saCREd BonEs mensa, Big sean and skepta singer’s grafiti on the walls ▼ 16 mount The air RaBBlERousER NEW 17 War of Kings Europe udR 20 ▲ 18 liquid spirit Gregory Porter BluE noTE WHO THE + GOOD WEEK + IN BRIEF ▲ 19 1989 Taylor Swift Emi NEW 20 another Eternity Purity Ring 4ad FUCK IS… New Dawn fades ▼ 21 Hozier Hozier island in a libel case against her, ▼ 22 girls in peacetime Want To dance Belle And Sebastian maTadoR Courtney love has been told ▼ 23 music in Exile TRansgREssiVE that calling fashion designer ▼ 24 a perfect Contradiction RCa dawn simorangkir a drug NEW 25 Black messiah D’Angelo & The Vanguard RCa Alec Baldwin dealer and prostitute was NEW 26 To Kill a King To Kill A King XTRa milE normally seen playing not “in the public interest” ▼ 27 stay gold First Aid Kit ColumBia powerful men in expensive because simorangkir is not NEW 28 modern nature The Charlatans Bmg RigHTs suits, alec Baldwin was famous enough. NEW 29 piece By piece Kelly Clarkson RCa filmed mCing on the streets ▼ 30 shadows in The night ColumBia of Chicago with Chance Limp Bass-Kid NEW 31 no sound Without silence ColumBia The Rapper. Baldwin was in nick garner, bassist in ▼ 32 smoke & mirrors Imagine Dragons inTERsCopE Nuclear Hellfrost the city to promote yCa, aussie indie-poppers san ▼ 33 Happy people Peace ColumBia This us band were revealed a programme bringing Cisco’s, shot himself in the ▼ 34 Chapter one Ella Henderson syCo musiC as the mystery group young writers together. foot while ■ 35 no Cities To love Sleater-Kinney suB pop boasting about vandalising working on a NEW 36 Brave The Shires dECCa nasHVillE NEW the grave of pantera guitarist friend’s farm. ►Find these 37 am Arctic Monkeys domino lazaretto Jack White Xl dimebag darrell. They spat - BAD WEEK - He’ll miss gigs stories and ▲ 38 more on ▼ 39 The stone Roses The Stone Roses silVERTonE on the headstone, stole a pair in the us and NEW NME.COM 40 our love Caribou CiTy slang of boots left in tribute and mexico while The compiles the Official Record Store Chart from sales daubed the word ‘Fag’ on it. recovering. through 100 of the UK’s best independent record shops from Sunday to Sunday. Why did they do that? THIS WEEK on Facebook they explained Braneater that they “hate pantera with Viet Cong Hall & oates are suing TOP BIG SPARRA a passion” and “fuck dimebag, a us promoter was ofended a us cereal firm, claiming OF THE VINYL AYR buncha racist hillbillies”. by their name – from the its Haulin’ SHOPS FOUNDED 2015 Was there any fallout? Vietnam resistance fighters oats granola WHY IT’S GREAT They’ve started pantera’s surviving members – and cancelled a gig. The infringes their out with the aim to be the musical hub for ayr, with a commitment to said they were “disgusted”, band hit back with a Wayne’s trademark. stocking leftfield artists. while nuclear Hellfrost World reference: “We should let’s hope TOP SELLER LAST WEEK sun singer Reece Eber (above) change our name to old man mcdonald’s Wizard – ‘positively 4th avenue’ had a change of heart and Fashioning a Kayak. no-one never hear THEY SAY “We put on gigs or invite apologised for “the dumbest will get ofended by that!” about ‘Big customers for a jam. We have a possible delinquent act”. mac’ demarco. record player with lights in the lid!” ndEWsdEsK CompilEd By daVid REnsHaW pHoTos: gETTy, CoRBis gETTy, pHoTos: REnsHaW daVid ndEWsdEsK CompilEd By

New Musical express | 14 MarcH 2015

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN 93NME15011114.pgs 09.03.2015 11:16 The Monkees

Donna Summer

a band, and we were going were the biggest band in the to do quite well, too.” world when it was released, but it kind of sounds like The song I can no a demo. It’s so stripped- longer lIsTen To down. That’s what I love ÔEver Fallen In LoveÕ about ‘The White Album’ Ð Buzzcocks generally – although it’s “There’s lots of songs I go of produced to the hilt, there’s for a while. I didn’t listen to a ‘not much to it’ element the Buzzcocks for about 10 that really appeals to me.” years, just because I’d heard them so many times. But one The song I wIsh day you’ll be out driving and I’d wrITTen somebody will play this, and ÔDrive-In SaturdayÕ you’ll be like, ‘Fuck, it’s so Ð good! I’m gonna go and play “Everything about this more Buzzcocks.’” song lands just right. The lyrics are amazing. Even The song I do though I have no idea aT karaoke what they’re about, every ÔDrive-In SaturdayÕ line just sounds right Ð David Bowie somehow. It’s a bit like Syd “I have done karaoke on Barrett: it appears to be Jim Reid occasion. I did ‘Drive-In nonsense, but it’s beyond Saturday’ in Tokyo and everyday language, if you I remember being very know what I mean.” drunk and thinking that I’d 21 The Jesus done a fucking bang-up job The song ThaT The fIrsT song I The fIrsT album on it. Some bastard was remInds me of And Mary remember hearIng I ever boughT recording it and played it sTarTIng The Jesus ÔShe Loves YouÕ ÔSladeÕ Ð Slade back to me the next day. It and mary chaIn Chain Ð “I was massively into Slade. wasn’t such a good job – if ÔOut In The StreetsÕ “Christ, I’m really giving my I bought this album of Bowie had been there he Ð Shangri-Las age away here. I used to a friend of mine. The stuf would have murdered me.” “We were playing quite a lot have a little plastic toy guitar that me and William of Shangri-Las when we and I’d strum it and sing listened to when we were The song ThaT started and the song that ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’. It was my eight and nine, we’ve still makes me wanT jumps out immediately is party piece – if I did that, got with us. Music’s never To dance ‘Out In The Streets’. It was the adults assembled been a trivial thing to us. ÔI Feel LoveÕ simple and it sounded would give me sweeties. It All that glam-rock stuf is Ð Donna Summer kind of raw, probably was my introduction into still in my record collection “I don’t dance. If ever anyone unintentionally. That takes – that if you do and always will be.” sees me dancing, feel free to me right back to 1984.” it, there’ll be rewards.” “‘boRn to lose’ was The songs I wanT The fIrsT song played aT I fell In love wITh always my theme song” my funeral ÔBlockbusterÕ ÔAs We Go AlongÕ Ð The Sweet Ð The Monkees “That was the first record The song ThaT get a baseball bat and whack and ÔBorn To LoseÕ that made the hairs on the made me wanT me over the head. I think Ð back of my neck stand up. To be In a band Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ “I’ve given instructions to I heard it on the radio and ÔAnarchy In The UKÕ might make me do it, though, my sister about this. I’m was dumbstruck and in Ð Sex Pistols and I probably have on going to be cremated to two awe. I still love it. It’s just “I remember hearing ‘Anarchy occasion danced to this.” songs – ‘As We Go Along’ by AS TOLD TO LEONIE COOPER PhOTOS: BRIAN STEVENS, CORBIS, GETTy CORBIS, BRIAN STEVENS, LEONIE COOPER PhOTOS: TO TOLD AS a dumb pop record, it’s In The UK’ when The Monkees will segue into stupid, but when hit, and I thought, ‘Fucking The song I can’T ‘Born To Lose’ by Johnny you’re 11 years old hell, everything’s diferent geT ouT of Thunders as I go into the David Bowie and it’s belting out now.’ But it never really gelled my head incinerator. ‘As We Go Along’ of the radio and your until I heard The Velvet ÔDear PrudenceÕ is a Carole King song with dad’s going ‘turn that Underground a few years Ð The Beatles a beautiful melody and fucking racket down’, it’s later – that’s when I realised “It’s one that I come back to ‘Born To Lose’ has always a special moment.” we were going to be in over and over again. They been my theme song.”

14 march 2015 | New musical express

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN 93NME15011115.pgs 05.03.2015 17:02 ►LISTEN NOW NME.COM/ NEWMUSIC

NEW BANd OF ThE WEEK

22 The Preatures

Scissor-kicking Aussies fighting physical, and I need to know I can get up there and get ► inside every single corner of the room.” ►BASEd Not that she’s scared of channelling the world- hard to stay on the toilet circuit ►FOr FANS OF Blondie, beating spirit of rock’n’roll. Ask her who she feeds off as Tame Impala a performer and you’ll get a list of the greatest showmen ►SOCIAL facebook.com/ ll great bands thrive in the most chaotic and women to ever step onto a stage: “. thepreatures live situations. The absolute best are able Tina Turner. . Chrissie Hynde.” What links ►BUy Debut album ‘Blue Planet to get right up their audiences’ noses, to them all? “They’re about controlling energy in confined Eyes’ is out on April 6 the point where you’re not entirely sure spaces. They’re totally in control, and it’s electric.” A ►SEE ThEM LIvE Brighton whether they’re gonna spit at you or The yin to Izzi’s yang is Preatures guitarist Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar (March start snogging your face off. ▼ and self-professed band leader Jack Moffit. 11), London Dingwalls (12), This is a scenario that Sydney’s Preatures O N Prone to “zoning out” onstage and way more Nottingham Bodega (13), are more than comfortable with, but for NME.COM/ serious than his singer, he’s the brains behind Manchester Soup Kitchen (14) frontwoman Izzi Manfredi (key onstage NEWMUSIC their progression from garage wannabes ►BELIEvE IT Or NOT One of the attributes: accidentally-on-purpose pogoing NOW to Blondie-style punk-pop masters, having band’s earliest gigs was in a pub her way into her fellow bandmates; chucking ►Hear an exclusive helmed the recording of their monster hit-in- in front of nine bridge-playing water in people’s faces; scissor-kicks that remix from Prides waiting ‘Is This How You Feel?, and played OAPs. They got paid $400 Pete Townshend would be proud of), it also a key role in the making of forthcoming presents something of a problem. Having taken their debut album ‘Blue Planet Eyes’. Released on April 6, native Oz by storm over the past six months, they’ve it’s a record that fizzes with three-minute new-wave now attained Next Big Thing status – and it doesn’t gems – the kind that were born to be played loud in feel quite right. tiny clubs, sweat dripping off the walls. And it’s just as “Maximum two or three thousand people in a room” well: “I’d love to be this storytelling type of performer,” is how big Izzi wants The Preatures to become in terms muses Izzi. “But actually I just wanna thrash around of their own shows. “No bigger! I like a lot of energy. It’s and lick people’s faces off.” ■ MAtt WilkinSon jENN FIvE New Musical express | 14 March 2015

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN 93NME15011118.pgs 06.03.2015 17:47 MORE NEW MUSIC

Pooltheory Enigmatic LA act Pooltheory have so far revealed nothing but their beguiling debut track ‘The Dreamer’. Like gone West Coast, the track takes heart-bursting yet simple pop melodies and adds a shimmer of something more mystical. Whoever he/she/ they may be, Pooltheory are on to something special. ►SOCIAL facebook.com/ pages/pooltheory/ 961138163900323 ►HEAR IT soundcloud.com/ Pix ooltheory Dream Wife Dream Wife are an art- school pop fantasy come true. Icelandic singer Rakel and British friends Bella and Alice formed as an imaginary ’90s girl group and there’s an earthy quality of John Carpenter’s film for a university project in to first single, ‘A Way To scores is evident in ‘Old Brighton, and enjoyed it so Say Goodbye’, that echoes Street’, while ‘I Am The much they’re doing it for her countryside origins. One’’s dense oscillations real. With inspirations as Woozy melodies undulate and icy vocals lend a gothic diverse as Grimes, Sleater- beneath plaintive vocals, darkness to the electronics. Kinney and the , giving the track a soft lilt Total obliteration of the 23 their swirling “poolside pop” despite its drum-machine senses guaranteed. arrives in spring on Anglo- beats and mechanical ►SOCIAL facebook.com/ Parisian label Enfer. ticks. Apparently based parastatic ►SOCIAL facebook.com/ around a misheard Cocteau ►HEAR THEM soundcloud. dreamwifedream Twins lyric, Pix’s debut is a com/parastatic-band ►HEAR THEM soundcloud. beguiling introduction. ►SEE THEM LIVE London com/dream-wife ►SOCIAL facebook.com/ Vant Dalston Victoria (March pixpixpixpixpix Newcomers Vant, from 27), Manchester Fuel (28), Barli ►HEAR HER soundcloud. London via Newcastle, may Newcastle Cumberland Citing Gil Scott-Heron and com/p-i-x only have one track online, Vant Arms (April 2) Nina Simone as influences, but that was enough to Barli’s sultry tone gives ‘Rum Beach Baby earn them a support slot Bad Guys Woman’ a brooding quality. The lyrics on Beach Baby’s with Royal Blood in London. If you’re won over by their New track ‘Stole’ features debut single ‘Ladybird’ ‘Parasite’ borrows a bit of shirtless, moustachioed rich harmonies layered over (“I don’t wanna think about fizzing Strokes cool, some image, you’ll be powerless production from songwriting it/I don’t wanna live for Ramones three-chord when you hear this Hackney partner Ton Epoch. She nothing”) make perfect simplicity, a weird whif of gang’s brutal hard rock. → released her debut EP sense accompanied by ‘Johnny B Goode’ – and ‘Pebbles’ last year, with a their hazy and compacts them into 90 BAND follow-up set for the summer. folk textures. The band seconds of hurtling energy. CRUSH ►SOCIAL twitter.com/ members hail from Athens, You can see why Mike and iambarli Shefield and Ben were impressed. ►HEAR HER soundcloud.com/ and came together while ►SOCIAL facebook.com/ Alicia Bognanno iambarli studying at Goldsmiths wearevant ►SEE HER LIVE London in London. The single is ►HEAR THEM soundcloud. Bully Waiting Room (April 17) released on March 30 via com/wearevant Chess Club Records. BUZZ ACT SOCIAL twitter.com/ Parastatic Left & Right OF THE WEEK ► beachbabymusic ‘Recall Fade Return’, “Left & Right are from . They’re really Pix ►HEAR THEM soundcloud. the second album from awesome, they’re really cool and they’re very nice Pix – aka 19-year-old Hannah com/beachbabymusic Newcastle space-rockers people. They sound similar to Diarrhea Planet, and Rodgers – hails from the tiny ►SEE THEM LIVE London Parastatic, finds them on they have that same energy live – that shreddy, Surrey village of Chipstead, Courtyard Theatre (April 15) cosmic form. The influence

ANGELINA CASTILLO garage thing.” ►For daily new music recommendations and exclusive tracks and videos go to NME.COM/NEWMUSIC

14 march 2015 | New musical express

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN 93NME15011116.pgs 06.03.2015 12:57 Loaded With the ‘Bad Guynaecology’ album out March 16 – featuring deviant truck-love single ‘Crime’ – they’re set to be a sinister highlight at the Desertfest stoner/sludge Loaded festival in Camden in April. Named after Primal ►SociAl twitter.com/ Scream’s ode to drug- badguyslondon addled joy, London quartet ►liSTEn soundcloud/ Loaded (three brothers plus riotseason drummer Raissa) deal in ►SEE THEM livE London hazy tunes that best suit a Lexington (March 13), party 12 hours in. Jesus And Brighton Green Door Store Mary Chain jangles decorate (27), Portsmouth Eastney songs like ‘Wash Over Me’ Cellar (28), Leeds Brudenell and ‘I’m Free’ with the kind Tull-style flute solo. A Social Club (31), Newcastle of lilting layers that sound memorable introduction. Northumberland Arms (April more 1985 than 2015. ►HEAR THEM soundcloud. 1), Glasgow Nice N Sleazy (2), ►SociAl facebook.com/ com/drag-city Manchester Mill (3) thebandloaded ►HEAR THEM soundcloud. Tony Volker Fever Dream com/thebandloaded This Peckham-based London three-piece Fever ►SEE THEM London songwriter draws inspiration Dream’s latest track Shacklewell Arms (March 22) from Thom Yorke, Pusha ‘Serotonin Hit’ delivers T and ’70s soul legend on the title’s promise Maid Of Ace Darondo to create artfully of chemical goodness. Having clawed their way out produced electro-folk. The Sounding like Sonic of Hastings’ skate’n’BMX EP ‘Break And Reshape’ 24 Youth’s more commercial scene, Maid Of Ace’s is out in spring; excellent experiments, with shades of “cuntpunk” racket bests Maid Of Ace ►HEAR THEM maid-of-ace.com first taster ‘Kingdom Of Dinosaur Jr and MBV, the the Ramones’ back-story by ►SEE THEM livE Canterbury The Beasts’ flickers with song is an early taster of virtue of coming from four Lady Luck (April 2), infectious vocal hooks and debut album ‘Moyamoya’, actual siblings: Alison, Anna, Hastings Flairz (4), London beguiling lyrics. out April 26 via Club AC30. Amy and Abby. The sisters’ Gunners (10), London ►HEAR HiM soundcloud. ►SociAl facebook.com/ bullshit-free gang mentality Unicorn (12) com/tonyvolker feverdreamband has spawned an album of ►HEAR THEM soundcloud. snotty punk put-downs The Silence The Whig Whams com/club-ac30 (sample titles: ‘Dickhead’, Tokyo outfit The Silence’s Those at Twin Peaks’ DIY ►SEE THEM livE Leeds ‘Dirty Girl’, ‘Sick Of You’). debut LP is due for release London gig recently would Wharf Chambers (April 7), Prepare to get stomped. on Drag City in March. have caught San Diego’s London Shacklewell Arms ►SociAl facebook.com/ Psyched-up prog track Whig Whams opening the (May 1) maidofaceband ‘Lemon Iro No Cannabis’ is a show. The best place to juggernaut, combining King start is their latest song Crimson guitars, flowery ‘Marine Street Blues’, which organs, and even a Jethro comes loaded with Cloud

nEWS RoUnD UP

NME HEads To PiTy sEX iN UK Faris GETs a LabEL dEcoNsTrUcTioN Faris and Faris

sXsW Michigan four-piece Pity Badwan Tarik Horrors mainman Faris diNEr SXSW takes places this Sex set out on their first UK Badwan, alongside his Sacred Bones faves month and Radar will be tour. The band, whose ‘Acid brother – and Loom singer Destruction Unit have reporting back about all Reflux’ recalls Dinosaur – Tarik, has launched his released the video for ‘Final the new bands we discover. Jr, call at Brighton Great Hinds new label Raft Records. Flight’, directed by Cali We’re also putting on a Escape (May 16), Guildford After a soft launch last year Thornhill DeWitt. Recorded showcase at Latitude 30 Boileroom (17), London at NME’s Jack Rocks The in Joshua Tree, the short (March 21) with PRS For Hoxton Square Bar & Macbeth venue, Raft’s first features a chaotic gig in a Music. Hinds, Girl Band, Kitchen (18), Liverpool proper release came out diner, with the band playing Happyness, Ultimate East Village Arts Club (20), last week, featuring tracks to bemused families. “By the Painting, Honeyblood and Glasgow Bar Bloc (21) and by Niqab, Pufer, Jet Black third song, the owner had Hector Bizerk fill the bill. Cardif Clwb Ifor Bach (26). and Skinny Girl Diet. kicked us out,” they say.

►For daily new music recommendations and exclusive tracks and videos go to NME.COM/NEWMUSIC PHOTOS: ANDY FORD, NEELAM KHAN, ALICE BAXLEY FORD, ANDY PHOTOS: WORDS: MATT WILKINSON, HAYLEY FOX, TOM WARDEN, JAMES BENTLEY, LISA WRIGHT, LEONIE COOPER, TIM HAKKI, STUART HUGGETT, LUCY JONES, SAM LAVAN LAVAN SAM JONES, LUCY HUGGETT, LEONIE COOPER, TIM HAKKI, STUART WRIGHT, LISA BENTLEY, JAMES WARDEN, TOM FOX, WILKINSON, HAYLEY MATT WORDS: New Musical express | 14 March 2015

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN ►HEAR THEM soundcloud. com/forged-artifacts nEW Us The Band SoUnDS The Whig Imagine The Eighties FRoM Whams Matchbox B-Line Disaster fronted by Jack White and WAY o U T you’re still not close to imagining Us The Band’s infernally jacked-up racket. Hailing from Sydney, an EP is due “soon”; in the This week’s columnist meantime, you can hear ‘And I Will’ and ‘Fallout’ on MARio SoundCloud. Nothings-style guitars and ►SociAl facebook.com/ cUoMo urgent, lilting vocals. ustheband666 The Orwells ►SociAl facebook.com/ ►HEAR THEM soundcloud. thewhigwhams com/us-the-band-4 ►HEAR THEM soundcloud. com/thewhigwhams Fawn Spots FEEl THE illinoiS York punks Fawn Spots’ The Walters released a six-song EP entitled ‘Songs For What Tyrants debut album ‘From Safer Dads’ that has some of the most solid songwriting I’ve Minneapolis three-piece Place’ comes out on Critical heard in years, matched with harmonies that would What Tyrants create brilliant Heights this week. In true make nervous. Songs like ‘I Love You noisy guitar pop, and latest DIY fashion, the band So’ and ‘Fancy Shoes’ made my used-up narcissistic ass single ‘Mufins’ is packed recorded it in a Georgian feel like fnding love is still a possibility. On top of those with cocksure swagger; the garden shed. Thankfully, harmonies, and lyrics that will melt your heart, these seven-inch ‘Hanging Out In the pastoral setting guys are straight-up hunks, so attractive they make me Havana’ is another highlight. hasn’t afected the band’s question my own appearance on a daily basis. It’s warm Debut album ‘No Luck’ is fantastically vicious strand stuf and I defy anyone to not enjoy it, feel it, and get out later this month. Sean of post-hardcore. something out of it. Schultz’s shouted vocals are ►HEAR THEM soundcloud. On the other hand, Criminal Hygiene are an gnarly as hell, backed up com/fawn-spots LA-based trio who sound something like the aborted by tumbledown post-punk ►SEE THEM livE York City love child of Kiss and The Replacements. I’ve had the reminiscent of The Fall. Rowing Club (March 14) pleasure of spending weeks with them living on a strict ►SociAl facebook.com/ whiskey and pizza diet. They live the true modern- 25 WhatTyrants Kid Kapichi day rock’n’roll lifestyle that comes with making tunes Hastings’ Kid Kapichi struck within a genre that no longer puts food on the table or lucky, getting debut EP’s gets your face on a video countdown on MTV. If I had calling card ‘She Kicks Criminal Hygiene a licence, their self-titled album would be the perfect Of’ on the radio after a soundtrack to speed to a party to, with a car full of your lABEl oF holidaying Steve Lamacq The Garden drunkest and bestest buddies. I love these dudes. stumbled upon the town’s Njomza is an Albanian Chicagoland-based babe THE WEEK Fat Tuesday festival. With a with a set of pipes that are on a par with Beyoncé Libs-esque front line of twin and Rihanna. Her track ‘Ridin’ Solo’ is a slow, Ben Beetham passionate bump full of attitude, anger and serenity. Stones Throw and Jack Wilson, the She’s an independent woman with a strong voice unsigned band won’t remain and an ability to mix her vocals with hip-hop beats that way for long. while maintaining this incredible soul. Get on it. ►SociAl facebook.com/ The Symposium hail from the same small suburban thekidkapichi midwest town of Elmhurst, Illinois ►HEAR THEM soundcloud. “ The Symposium that we fell out of. Their double ►FOUnDED 1996 by com/thekidkapichi EP ‘Drugs’ consists of eight smart Peanut Butter Wolf give the impression tracks. They’re a great live band ►BASED Egyptian Blue too, with onstage chat that gives ►KEy RELEASES Peanut Egyptian Blue are promising they lead double me the impression they might Butter Wolf – ‘My Vinyl upstarts from Colchester. lives as comedians” lead double lives as comedians. Weighs A Ton’ (1999), Standout track on debut Out of all the local up-and-coming J Dilla – ‘Donuts’ (2006), EP ‘Coma Chain’, ‘Venus Fly artists in Chicago (and there are a shit ton), their songs The Stepkids – ‘The Trap’ starts of upbeat, in defnitely show the most promise as the next group Stepkids’ (2011) the vein of The Maccabees, that we’ll be very proud to call our own. I’ve heard ►RADAR SAyS Their motto opening up into lysergic them compared to The Strokes, but I don’t really hear – “keep it simple, stupid” – Tame Impala-style synths those similarities. I’ve found that after The Strokes, any shows they’re focused on and fuzzy rifs. band consisting of white men with guitars, a bass and creating a legacy. The label ►SociAl facebook.com/ some drums are quickly written of as unoriginal. The are on a roll: Mild High Club, egyptianblueinc Symposium however, should not be. Take drugs and Tuxedo and Silk Rhodes are ►HEAR THEM soundcloud. listen to ‘Drugs’ by them as soon as you can. Do it now. all associated with them. com/egyptianblueinc Next week: Friendly Fires’ Jack Savidge

►For daily new music recommendations and exclusive tracks and videos go to NME.COM/NEWMUSIC

14 March 2015 | New Musical express

93NME15011117.pgs 06.03.2015 12:57 peter doherty

“ I realIsed how lIfe could be wIthout 26 drugs. I learned It all over agaIn”

New Musical express | 14 March 2015

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN Peter Doherty is out of rehab, back in the UK, and preparing to record the most anticipated British indie album in a decade with The Libertines. Before he left Bangkok, he told Libs biographer Anthony Thornton about his hopes, fears and regrets

27

14 March 2015 | New Musical express

93NME15011132.pgs 05.03.2015 16:40 peter doherty

JULY 8, 2004. Peter Doherty is in distress. He’s licking his wounds after being kicked out of The Libertines and feeing from rehab at a remote Thai monastery called Thamkrabok. I’m interviewing him for NME in his fat in Clerkenwell. Wolfman (with whom Peter Peter in had released the single ‘For Bangkok Lovers’ three months earlier) is in the next room dressed in nothing but a fufy brown dressing gown stained with something else that’s also brown. I’ve seen Peter upset and angry before, but this is a new low: he’s completely crushed. He’s just fnished explaining why he hates the Peter Doherty of the pre-fame that everyone wants back (more of which later) and he’s doing his best to explain why he quit rehab. “When I went to Thailand I… began a spiritual journey that I’m not prepared for… maybe in 10 years I’ll embark on that journey… But if you’re going to go over there 28 and do that you’ve got to do it properly.”

A decade on from that conversation, Peter is excited. It’s January 2015, 5pm in Thailand. It would appear, to all intents and purposes, that On Koh Si he has achieved in the past two months what he Chang island singularly failed to do in the previous decade and a half. He’s quit drugs, thanks to the Hope Facility in Chon Buri. What’s more, The Libertines are a going concern again. And then some. I’ve got a mental league table charting the state of Peter’s wellbeing “It’s home. It’s the people working there. It’s diferent over the years and right now he sounds way better than types of counselling. There’s people who have really been he did in 2004. And maybe – would it be too good to there, been through it, and I who could really relate to. hope for? – as good as way back in fresh-faced 2002. It just made sense, really, to wake up in the morning and But has really changed? Has he found be clean and not have to grapple around, to feel normal inner peace at last? Has rehab fnally tamed his demons? – and it had been such a battle, y’know? It was like I hit And if it has, what will it do to his muse? Has the a wall, a place… You can’t. It’s like you can’t live without creative spark with Carl Barât been reignited? We’ve drugs, but you can’t live with them any more. And you’re been here before, of course. Personally I’ve lost count horribly broken. I’ve been through that really… I just of the number of times that he was going to get clean realised how life could be… how life could be without or claimed to be clean. So, however you look at it, his drugs, just learned it all over again.” recent achievement is a huge one. Even the Daily Mail is impressed. After pulling of the return of The Libertines there is, also, the small matter of music. The last year, why did he feel the need to get clean now? last eight months have seen Peter reunite with The “I really needed to do it,” he says, inhaling deeply. Libertines, play with Helsinki, the debut solo project of “To be honest, I was in a pretty poor state, physically, ’ Drew McConnell, and record his frst y’know?’ solo single since 2009. And he’s found time to read In what way? Worse than before? autobiographies by Morrissey and Neil Young. “I reached the end of the road. It was make or break. It’s the busiest he’s been since… well, since 2004. There was no easy way out. I just couldn’t carry on in Back then, in a few short months he put out ‘For Lovers’, the state I was in.” His tone brightens. “I suppose, really, recorded The Libertines’ second album, wrote a bunch of I went out for a little break, and I got clean by accident, new songs, toured with Babyshambles and released their and really I didn’t really expect... I tried so many times debut single, ‘’. “I had so much to prove,” he before... half-arsed attempts to get clean and do these says of that time. “When there’s a lot of negative things in little patch-up jobs.” your life, and music is the one good thing coming out of The Hope facility fnally made it possible because it, you’re almost compelled to write.”

“there’s something magical about the place”, says Peter. This brings us to the new solo single (produced by kerr dylan de vidas, katia this page: de vidas adrian hunter and katia lead photo:

New Musical express | 14 March 2015

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN Reading in Koh Si Chang

wasn’t so clear was that half a decade later it would result in arguably his most touching song since ‘For Lovers’. “It was actually written in the aftermath of, well, two major events [for me] really,” says Peter. “Amy’s death and coming out of prison, and being on a tag [he was under curfew when he was released from prison in 2011]. It was quite a big deal for me, all in all.” Despite their longstanding friendship, they never got round to writing together – Amy giving her nod of approval to the ‘Flags…’ melody was as close as it got. “Invariably, whenever we got together to write, I was probably in no ft state Libertines either,” says Peter. “But the way I remember it was she... I never really aLbUm #3 caught her at the right time. She was more interested in, y’know, other What we know, from things, not in actually getting any the horses’ mouths music done, which is strange because that’s something that people have Peter Doherty: “We always had accused me of as well.” the tunes but we threw away He pauses, then draws an so many. Some sneaked out image a world away from the Amy as internet giveaways or they Winehouse of tabloid notoriety; of an weren’t recorded properly. So Amy who was focused and serious this is a chance for us to make about music. “Whenever we used a record rather than somebody to get together to do music, she was just stapling loads of bits B29 together. If we can pick up from always very, very critical of all the where we left of 10 years ago, new ideas that I had. So we never fuck what anyone else thinks.” ended up getting anything fnished. “ the mUsic is I’m haunted by that.” Carl Barât: “I’m delighted with the new songs we’ve got so Originally titled ‘Oh My’ and then coming oUt far, they’re belters. There’s ‘Amy’, ‘Flags…’ was frst played in a lot of energy and jumping up a raw, untested form in 2011. Peter and down and going fucking struggled to perform it the frst now i’m cLean” mental. There are some pretty couple of times. (“It was almost emotional bits as well that impossible to get the words out as Peter Doherty will probably make me a little teary… The Libertines have it was the perfect expression of that always been about anthems state,” he revealed in a YouTube and with Drew McConnell to doomed youth.” video. “It [expresses] a strange on bass). Or rather, the subject of ‘Flags contradiction between wanting Of The Old Regime’: it is, he says, based : “The groundwork to bare your soul and putting it and the foundations have around the only chord sequence of his in a catchy melodic form.”) The [begun] to manifest something that Amy Winehouse – a surprisingly of interest for everybody. fnished version achieves the rare hard taskmaster – ever liked. The tune is Because we haven’t recorded quality of being both universal and a copper-bottomed classic, the atmosphere for such a long period of time devastatingly personal, expressing immediately set by the smoky fug of a pure we need to figure out exactly the predicament of having material Velvets/Ronettes drum and tambourine. how we all work together and possessions but a spiritual void. the direction of the record.” (“I love that sound,” says Peter. “I was A single couplet starkly sums up worried that it wouldn’t come out properly : “Obviously Amy’s predicament – “You’ve got when recorded digitally.”) It uncoils, gently we have changed a lot, but a fortune, but you’re broke inside”. spiralling up to new levels of soft-sung ultimately we still play the same Peter saw the contradictions in drama as Peter articulates what is, in as we did before. There’s still Amy’s life frst-hand. “I remember essence, the ballad of Amy Winehouse. the same chemistry.” at that time, when I was living in Everyone has an opinion on Amy, but a tiny little fat, I was quite skinny. Peter is better qualifed than most to She just bought a brand new house have one. He was there, a frequent fxture in her life in Camden Square. It was incredible, and she bought from at least 2008. He had experienced similar levels it outright, and she had loads of great guitars in the of tabloid hysteria and hounding from the paparazzi. basement, and she had a huge music system. On her And of course, they had similar tastes in recreation, as doorstep, she had all these horrible paparazzi. So she an unsettling video of the pair playing with baby mice couldn’t go anywhere. Blake was in prison. She was just... demonstrated. It was inevitable that these Camden- She’s got a lot of time; she’s been in a state of absolute lovers’ paths would cross and become entwined. What despair. Fame had completely hemmed her in.”

14 March 2015 | New Musical express

93NME15011133.pgs 05.03.2015 14:58 FEATURE TITLE: secOND liNe?

lyric from ‘Rubber Ring’… [“But don’t forget the songs that made you cry/And the songs that saved your life/ Yes, you’re older now/And you’re a clever swine/But they were the only ones who ever stood by you…”] It’s true,” he continues. “Sometimes all you’ve got is the “when you music. When you haven’t got that any more, when you can’t rely on can’t rely your songs any more to pull you through… that’s it.” on Music, As dark as Peter’s life has been at times, he never quite hit those that’s it” lows. “I’m always just about clinging on,” he says gravely, going quiet Peter Doherty for a moment. “Clinging on to the wreckage.” And for a moment he sounds like Peter back in 2004, but being clean has changed his attitude to music. “I feel it diferently,” he says. “But as it happened, the music is coming out now while I’m clean.” That must have been a massive relief? “It’s great, and I’m happy and a bit surprised about that,” he says, “but it wasn’t the main reason to get clean, to be more creative.” And now he’s got songs coming out at a pace. There have been unconfrmed reports of a new solo album, his second. “I think that’s going to happen quite naturally,” he says. “I’ll do a solo record, defnitely. I’ve got plenty of songs. I’m going to try not to put them online and put Behind the scenes of them together as an album.” 30 the ‘Flags Of The Old The Libertines signed a new album deal in Regime’ video shoot December 2014 and Peter and Carl have been meeting up regularly in Thailand to write new material. “He’s great,” says Pete. “I was going to say he’s trying not to All proceeds from the sale of the single go to the Amy drink. We ended up doing some tunes and demoing Winehouse Foundation. “If you look at the charity logo,” them in the studio [Karma Sound Studios in Thailand] says Peter, “it’s got a little bird singing. It seems to be ‘Anthem For Doomed Youth’, ‘The Belly Of The Beast’, fying free, and I think that was her natural spirit, just to ‘The Looking Course’. Yeah. There are some cracking be fying on melody and feeling. And yet, she was caged. new songs, man. [‘Anthem For Doomed Youth’] is as You know? She was trapped... To make the money and good as anything we’ve ever done.” get the wealth and the power that comes with it, you It also nicks its title from a work by World War I poet have to sacrifce a lot of your personal liberties.” Wilfred Owen, though that’s not surprising – in 2004 The other standout couplet in ‘Flags…’ is equally The Libertines accepted their NME Award for Best heartbreaking: “You stand there in front of the world/But Band with a speech that was a two-handed rendition you just don’t feel those songs no more”. It’s about Amy and of Siegfried Sassoon’s Suicide In The Trenches. when music didn’t provide the respite it always “Lyrically, [‘Anthem…’] is as powerful as anything had. But it also articulates the fear that has haunted we’ve ever written,” Peter goes on. “It’s probably the Peter and The Libertines since their inception: the fear song we’ve been trying to write for years and years. that music could desert you and its power to move you It sounds more like The Libertines than anything you evaporate. Or as the key lyric of The Libertines’ ‘Good Old could possibly imagine.” Days’ put it: “If you’ve lost your faith in love and music/Oh As for writing with Carl, Peter says little has changed the end won’t be long”. since they last sat down together in 2004, holing up in “That ‘you don’t feel those songs no more’ line cuts to the Alan McGee’s house in to write songs including bone,” says Peter. “For me personally, the worst feeling ‘Can’t Stand Me Now’, ‘The Likely Lads’ and ‘The Saga’.

in the world is losing the songs. There’s that Smiths “He’s quite a strange fella, Carl, really. He’s so boyd andy getty, ford, andy oxley, charles hamelin, derek bremner, tom

►Jan 15 ►Jan 23 ►Jan 25 ►Jan 29 NME Peter tells ►Jan 22 Photos appear Peter describes The Libertines the that the Libs’ online of all four Winehouse as announce ‘Flags Of reunion is “a chance members of a “harsh critic” that they will The Old for us to make a The Libertines and admits that headline T In saga Regime’, record rather than working on new their attempts The Park 2015. a tribute to somebody just music in Thailand. to make Peter’s 2015 Amy Winehouse, stapling loads of music together is released online. so far bits together”. never worked.

New Musical express | 14 March 2015

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN pETER dohERTy

saying we really want the old Peter back. I don’t know, man – I don’t want the old Peter back at all. He’s a deeply confused, fame- hungry, desperate, really lonely individual.” And you know what? We don’t have the old Peter back now, and we should be thankful. Peter Doherty circa 2015 is on a creative roll: a world away from Peter in 1995 and the creatively driven but haunted Peter of 2004. Asked what advice he would give the Peter Doherty of 1995, he’s wistful. “What would I say to him? Get your hair cut… and keep up the good work.” He pauses to signify the end of his answer, only to break into song – “Take it easy on yourself”, paraphrasing ‘Make It Making new friends Easy On Yourself’, the Bacharach/David in Bangkok tune covered most famously by The Walker Brothers. The original is about choosing the path of least resistance to heal a broken heart, doing anything for a quiet life. But talented, but he gets so wound up and nervous about his Peter isn’t saying this. He’s telling his teenage self to own capabilities. He’s always trying to make the excuse. stop being so hard on himself: to stop being so self- He says ‘let’s go down to the beach’ or ‘let’s go to the critical. In 1995 Peter Doherty was driven but doubted lake and try to get in the right mood and try to get in the his ability to succeed. In 2004, he couldn’t confront the right frame of mind’. I’ll be like, ‘No, let’s just go sit down obstacles that were the only thing from stopping him with some guitars and do some fucking writing.’ ‘Ah, OK. succeeding. Back then, he wasn’t ready for rehab, but Let’s…’ It’s amazing what comes out.” now he is, and seems possessed of a new inner peace: It’s obvious that Peter feels safe in Thailand. He one forged through reignited relationships, rehab, and sounds comfortable. He can speak to the world via a new creative spark. He even manages a joke at his YouTube and in a way that has greater impact own expense: “Typical. Just my luck: ‘Flags Of The Old 31 than the days in the early 2000s when he communicated Regime’ is the frst single that everyone seems to like, on messageboards. You can imagine that it would be and all the proceeds are going to charity.” tempting to stay away from the tabloid spotlight for It’s all wonderful to witness. If it holds, we could a long time, speaking directly to fans from his exotic see Peter and The Libertines achieve everything they idyll, but he is keen to return to Europe. always seemed capable of. Watch this space. ▪ “I can’t wait to go and do some shows and make some records,” he says. “I’m kind of itching to get back out there. I don’t want to rush it, but I’m trying to get back out there and get back to Europe. I can stay out here for a little while longer, but I just want to play live again and just do some work, fulfl these contracts I’ve signed.” He pauses. “To be honest, I want to make a bit of money and get back somewhere to live. Settle down, get myself somewhere to live; to eat.”

In 2015, things are looking brighter for Peter than they have in most of the years I’ve known him. In contrast to the Peter Doherty of a decade ago, he seems reconciled with the past. He’s even come to terms with his youthful ambition. In 2004 he explicitly attacked his younger self, telling me: “Rough Trade are Jamm, February 23, 2015

►Feb 16 ►Feb 17 ►Feb 22 ►Feb 24 ►Feb 25 In his first gig after It’s announced that a ►Feb 19 Peter plays London The Libertines Peter posts a video leaving rehab, Peter life-size sculpture of Peter premieres the video for for the first time announce that online telling fans performs to 300 Peter being crucified ‘Flags…’, directed by Katia since leaving rehab, they will headline he “can’t stop fans at Bangkok’s will be displayed at de Vidas and filmed at doing two sets at Reading & Leeds thinking about Club Soma. St Marylebone Parish Karma Sound Studios Brixton Jamm in Festivals, following Reading & Leeds”. Church. The Libertines also in Thailand. Carl Barât one night. a headline slot at announce that they will play says the band is “back Benidorm’s Low Ibiza Rocks. on track”. Festival.

14 March 2015 | New Musical express

93NME15011134.pgs 05.03.2015 15:03 the van who would

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BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN entercatfish shikari & the van who the Bottlemen ld be king

Catfish & The Bottlemen are one of Britain’s biggest new bands, and now they’re breaking America. But, as frontman Van McCann tells Kevin EG Perry in 33 Chicago, there’s no rest ’til Knebworth…

PhoTos: JoRDAN hUGhEs

igarette paper between his fngers, Van McCann is sat in the smoking room at the back of Catfsh & c The Bottlemen’s tourbus. It’s parked outside Schubas Tavern in Chicago, a 200-capacity room where the band are due onstage in less than an hour. “I don’t know what to do,” he croaks. Sat across from him is Catfsh’s sound guy, Mike Woodhouse. “Your voice is fucked,” says Mike, “so the way I see it, you have three options. Option one: sing as normal. From what you’re saying, that’s not an option. Option two: get the audience to help you. Get them to sing like you did that night in Leeds. Option three: pull the gig, but…” Van cuts him of. “We’re not pulling the gig.” Catfsh & The Bottlemen have never pulled a gig. “People have paid their hard-earned money and they’ve already been waiting outside for hours,” Van says, gesturing to the snow piled up outside. “It’s fucking freezing out there.”

93NME15011129.pgs 06.03.2015 14:49 On their current American tour Van has enough word-for-word what he just said to been up at 9am every day to do live sessions Mike and the band in the bus: “I’m sorry my for radio and local TV before the band’s voice sounds so rough. I want you to know evening gigs. He says that’s why his 22-year- we don’t go out and get fucked up before old voice currently sounds like a waste- shows. We’ve had to play sessions every disposal pipe. He’s tried all sorts to save it. morning. We love playing shows. We take He’s tried not drinking. He’s even tried not this seriously. We’re professional. We’ve smoking, and Van smokes likes it’s a dying art. never pulled a show, because we’re prepared. Nothing made any diference. I’m really sorry I’m not 100 per cent…” “Our label says we have to do sessions if we They make it through the single ‘Pacifer’ want to be the biggest band in the world,” he unscathed, but Van isn’t done apologising. says, “but it frustrates me that the competition “I’m only here because I can sing,” he says. winners at the session this morning are going “I feel awful. If any of you want your money to get a better show than back afterwards you can the fans tonight. I’m only have it. Or I’ll buy you a in this band to write songs beer. I promise you I’ll buy and sing. It frustrates me the whole place a beer…” when I can’t do it.” A voice from the crowd The rest of the band and cuts him of: “Shut up management once again and sing!” propose cancelling the gig, “You sound great!” even at this late hour. Van Inside the “We love you!” won’t hear of it. If Catfsh They tear through tourbus & The Bottlemen have ‘Fallout’ at full pace, and made it this far – two afterwards Van just grins. sold-out nights at O2 Academy Brixton, “Shit. Did I promise you all beers? I’ve just a Top 10 UK debut album in ‘The Balcony’, done the maths in my head. There’s a lot of appearing on Letterman – it’s because of you in here. Is this an 18-plus gig? So you’re all Van’s work ethic, about which he’s endearingly old enough to drink? Shit. I didn’t say anything earnest. Catfsh have been gigging hard since about getting your money back, did I?” 34 2009. This is their second US tour and it too The crowd laugh and shout for him to go is completely sold out, but Van refuses to let on, but on ‘26’ his voice starts to drop out, and anyone treat it like some kind of victory lap. by the next track, the slower-paced ‘Business’, If they want to keep reaching new heights, he sounds awful. The band’s tour manager they have to be responsible about it. No runs onto the stage and puts his arms around slacking or hard partying. Schubas Tavern Van’s shoulders and asks if he wants to pull is a rung on the ladder to playing big shows: the gig there and then, but Van won’t leave Van wants Oasis at Knebworth, The Stone unless he’s dragged of. Roses at Spike Island. He’s got to play the next song, because it’s ‘Kathleen’ and that’s the big radio hit. “We Want to It’s the one the American fans all heard frst. The one they played on the Late Show With play simple David Letterman. The one that fnds the sweet spot between The Strokes and The Cribs. songs in Impossibly, something about ‘Kathleen’ seems to rejuvenate his voice. By the end of the song stadiums” he’s full of confdence again, and signals for the other three members to leave the stage Van mccann so he can play the introspective ‘Homesick’ on his own. Accompanied by just his guitar, “We were going to invite them in and make “I remember going to see Oasis at Heaton his voice is now totally exposed and yet them a brew,” says Van, “but imagine what Park,” he says. “It was like everyone was going somehow healed. The band come back on people would think if they saw some picture of to the core of the earth. It was like Jesus was and they roar through a couple more songs. a young girl posing with us on our tourbus.” back. A couple of lads from Burnage did that? Then, before the howling closer ‘Tyrants’, So instead they stand around outside for That looks good to me.” the tour manager reappears. He tells the room an hour, even as the temperature drops down the band have put enough money behind the below minus 10. They separate of, and three the first thing Van McCann says bar to buy everyone in the venue a pint. concentric circles of fans form: one around when he gets onstage is: “I need you tonight, The crowd look at each other. “Fuck,” bassist Benji Blakeway and drummer Bob Hall, Chicago. My voice has gone completely so someone says. “He wasn’t kidding!” one around guitarist Johnny ‘Bondy’ Bond, I need you as much as you can.” The band and the biggest around Van. A girl hugs him launch into opener ‘Rango’, which tilts at the after the show, the band are back and says, “You changed my life!” stadium rock of recent songs, in the tourbus for just 13 brief minutes. Van A 21-year-old guy called Nicholas tries to and Van starts thrashing around as he plays, and his best mate and guitar tech Larry shut force a fstful of dollars into Van’s hand. “I just as if hoping to make up for his lack of voice themselves in the back room for a smoke, their played the House Of Blues a couple of weeks through sheer physical exertion. post-gig decompression ritual, then open the ago with my band and I had bronchitis,” he “Thank you,” he rasps afterwards, then doors and jump out into the snow to meet the explains afterwards. “I know how hard it is launches into an explanation that’s near fans clustered outside. to go onstage and sing your heart out. When

New Musical express | 14 MarcH 2015

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN catfish & the Bottlemen

he said he was going to buy everyone in the it’s an 18-year-old boy trying to get out venue a drink I got goosebumps from my of a small town. When I listen to the frst toes to my fucking head. They just put on the album now, it sounds angry. That was us best show I’ve ever seen, because it was so trying to break out and get somewhere, and real. It’s humble, and it’s honest. The lyrics now we’re opening up and going, ‘Christ, mean something to everyone. It’s not the we’re in America! This is class!’ We want to overproduced bullshit go to stadiums and play simple that you usually hear on va n rock’n’roll songs. Put your girlfriend the radio. When he sings on your shoulders and your arm about being drunk and mccann round your best mate. Dads can horny… I’ve been there. take their kids, like my dad used to We’ve all been there.” on… take me. They’re still songs about normal life, but it’s less about John only when in Manchester and more about absolutely everyone Manchester, y’know what I mean?” has got their selfes do The band head back into the Catfsh climb back onto venue to hit the bar. Van prefers the bus. Van heads back to chill out on the bus. He hasn’t to his smoking room, thought about anything other than leaving the rest of the Catfsh & The Bottlemen for six band to hang out at the …Feeling like years. “I’ve tried to slow it down front. At the end of last The Strokes on because I realised I wasn’t enjoying year Van told NME that Letterman it,” he says. “All the lads would be the band aren’t really “If you watch the footage laughing and having a joke, but I’d mates. After so long on you can see me walk over to be coming of stage thinking, ‘Fuck, the road, is that still true? our guitarist Bondy and say I missed that note.’” The idea is that “I think we’re like something to him. I’m going, it’ll all be worth it in the long run. brothers now. We get on,” ‘We’re The Strokes, lad! We’re Van has put every penny he’s ever says Bondy. He laughs, The Strokes!’ I used to stay up earned from royalties into a separate Letterman and continues: “Although dead late to watch bank account. “I’ve never touched on ITV2 because I loved seeing saying that, I fght with my it,” he says, “even if I wanted £40 bands like The Strokes and 35 brother all the time.” Kings Of Leon on it. If you to go to the pub. I’ve kept it all and “There’s a family spirit,” watch it, in ‘Kathleen’ I should when I have a kid I’m going to give says Benji, nodding. be playing guitar in the second it to them. That means every single Van re-emerges. After verse but I stop just so I can do song I’ve ever wrote will mean spending so much of the some Julian moves.” something to somebody. I want night worrying about his to be the best dad and the best voice, he wants to think …Meeting Bill husband, like my dad was to me.” about something else. Talk Murray That’s why Van keeps writing turns to their next album, “We came ofstage at songs. He wasn’t supposed to start Letterman which he wrote months and I was going, writing that new album until April. ‘Was I in time?’ and then Bill Catfish & The ago but frst played to the Instead, he fnished it while they Murray was in among us. I was Bottlemen: (l–r) Benji band last night. like, ‘What the fuck are you were still recording the last one. Blakeway, Johnny “It’s more widescreen,” doing here?’ He just asked us Then he wrote 20 more songs. His says Van. “We needed friends in bands told him he should Bond, Bob Hall and how it went. Alana from Haim to open our eyes a told me that the very next day take advantage of his Van McCann little bit. The album he appeared at a party they and get them to fy him to LA, so we’ve got is good, but were at in LA. Bill Murray is he hatched a plan to keep the new everywhere.” record a secret until April, then feign writer’s block and get a free …Befriending Ewan holiday. He couldn’t do it. He McGregor shrugs. “I couldn’t hold it in.” “The label wanted a video He loves being on tour in America, for ‘Kathleen’ so I just made a compilation of him laughing his but he misses Britain. “I love pound head of. They said, ‘What the coins,” he says, “and pasties.” Mostly fuck is this?’, but it made them he misses his “shitty cottage” in laugh. Ewan’s daughter showed Chester, where he can write songs, it to him and he messaged play Fifa and smoke in the kitchen. us on Twitter. He said he was That’s why, after he has eventually watching it with his missus and joined his bandmates for a few howling. When we got to New drinks, he tells them he won’t be York, he took us for breakfast. going on to the next bar with them. He’s the most gorgeous, Onstage at interesting and interested Instead, he goes back to the bus with Larry, and they smoke and rewatch Schubas Tavern, person I’ve ever met. He always wanted to be a rock star. We Austin Powers until Larry falls Chicago put him down on the guestlist asleep. Then Van picks up his guitar, in New York as ‘Obi +1 Kenobi’.” and he writes another song.

14 MarcH 2015 | New Musical express

93NME15011130.pgs 06.03.2015 14:48 Kill

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Over the past 20 years, Björk has continually released consummate records that established her as an indomitable force. But her eighth album, ‘Vulnicura’, shows the Icelandic icon coming apart at the seams following the end of the most significant relationship of her life. Monroe talks to her friends and collaborators about how she bounced back

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN bjöRK cureor

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adolescence to learn that people we admire can break as hard as the rest of us, but witnessing the vulnerable experiences of an artist like Björk, usually the picture of composure, resurfaces our childish horror at human jörk has always made art on the fallibility. ‘Vulnicura’ is full of such moments. creative and emotional brink, In the two years since the break-up, Björk but she had never threatened has returned to the public eye. On the way to topple into the abyss. That she’s centred herself amid a cluster of cutting- B was until this January, when edge producers and rappers, including her eighth LP ‘Vulnicura’ collaborators Arca and Death Grips, and leaked and revealed a broken version of the friends and . “I guess I got, seemingly shatterproof songwriter. It is a bleak like, fred from the patriarchs but hired by masterpiece, a devastating hour of emotional herds of matriarchs, surrounding me, ofering crisis that minutely chronicles Björk’s split from beats and DJing,” she has said. Last October her longtime partner, the avant-garde artist she was spotted at a club night Matthew Barney. Throughout the record her organised by art school terrors PC Music, and wounds are raw, the detail queasily precise, later turned up at a Halloween trance party the view grimly spectacular. “Did I love you too headlined by Liverpool producer and Kanye much?” she demands on ‘Black Lake’; “Every West collaborator . single fuck we had together is in a wondrous time-lapse, with us here at this moment”, she

inez and vinoodh wallows on ‘History Of Touches’. It’s a rite of

14 MARcH 2015 | NEw MUsicAl ExpREss 21 FEBRUARY 2015 | NEw MUsicAl ExpREss

93NME15011126.pgs 06.03.2015 15:03 Fine-tuning the record kept Björk on her feet, dashing between her Reykjavík home, the Grotta lighthouse and a cabin on a snowy slope near Lake Þingvallavatn, the polar opposite of the Puerto Rican beach hut where she developed ‘Biophilia’. It was a process of unparalleled intricacy: ‘Vulnicura’ meticulously references Björk’s earlier lyrics and melodies, a psychic dredging that deepens and reclaims the traumatic potency of her past. The phrasing of ‘Vulnicura’’s opening lyric, “A juxtapositioning fate/Find our mutual coordinate”, subtly plays on ‘’, a ‘Biophilia’ track that compares Earth’s ever-grinding tectonic plates to the abrasion of human relationships. For all its complexity, ‘Vulnicura’ is a remarkably visceral and striking record. Partial credit must go to Arca, aka Alejandro Ghersi, a Björk super fan and in-demand producer known for his work on FKA Twigs’ debut. Björk has admitted that she is not short of people who want to work with her, but something about Arca’s reaching out struck a chord with her. The Bjork in “healing” Venezuelan few in to help fnish seven tracks. yellow and lilac As she grew comfortable, Björk slid into the role of “backseat driver”, letting Arca interpret and develop rhythms she suggested (‘Notget’, As told through a series of heartbreaking a churning epic that crested their production interviews, the story of ‘Vulnicura’ so far has partnership, is a 50-50 collaboration). From often felt like a prolonged postmortem of the there things moved fast: in an ecstatic note relationship it commemorates. Its physical posted on her website, Björk marvelled that 38 release this week may coincide with the opening it would usually take her three years to make of her frst career retrospective, at New York’s beats – as it had done on the meticulous Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), but Björk is patchwork of 2001’s ‘’ – but “this a constant forward-motion machine who has enchanted Arca would visit me repeatedly and never settled for a singular defnition of her Shortly before her split from only few months later we had a whole album !!!” work. ‘Vulnicura’ is one of the fnest albums she Barney, Björk had sufered a knot in her vocal Once Björk had written 15-piece string and has ever released, but she isn’t about to let the cords. For three weeks she couldn’t speak and choral arrangements, Tri Angle label head circumstances of its creation defne her. communicated with their daughter Isadora Robin Carolan introduced her to the Haxan To her friends, Björk’s return to adds in notes. But when she healed, something Cloak, a shadowy composer whose mix up. “She’s eternally in her twenties,” says video clicked: “I was in this forest outside Reykjavík, accentuates ‘Vulnicura’’s suspenseful pall. director Andrew Thomas Huang, who began warming up, opening my throat like a bird,” At frst Björk was appalled to have indulged working with Björk around 2011’s multimedia she told . “It was cathartic – you in the ultimate cliché, a break-up album, but album ‘Biophilia’. “She’s so plugged in on what’s realise the tension that built up, because you soon warmed to its gut-wrenching stature. going on, but there’s always a part of her that were protecting that part of you.” What came “When she frst played me the demos I was wants to fuck with you. Once you think you out was ‘Vulnicura’’s ‘’, a refection on totally in tears,” Huang recalls, “and she just know her, she’ll turn things upside-down.” the paralysing numbness that can occur before looked at me like, ‘Yep! There it is.’” Case in point: near Reykjavík last winter, relationships collapse: “Maybe he will come Post-breakup, Björk’s hunt for collaborators Björk, Huang and their team were shooting out of this/Maybe he won’t/Somehow I’m not too ensured that she landed among kindred a 3D video for forthcoming ‘Vulnicura’ single bothered either way”. A few months later, their spirits as well as sonic inspirations. Rapper ‘’. It was a particularly intensive partnership imploded. Mykki Blanco had met her through Marjan shoot, flmed with a novel 360-degree camera Björk packed her bags and few to Japan. The Pejoski, the designer of the infamous to justify the video’s prominent place at the idea was to ease her mind, but progress came Björk wore to the 2001 Oscars, but they bonded MoMA exhibit, where it will be adapted for slowly: her frst move was to check in to a health after Blanco supported Death Grips, whose virtual reality headsets. As flming wrapped, the retreat. It was a trying period – her mother had last album featured a Björk collaboration. “She singer beckoned the exhausted crew to her cosy recently survived a heart attack – but one told me, ‘What you’re doing is really cool!’” lighthouse crash pad in nearby Grotta. Instead that shaped ‘Vulnicura’. Eventually, with says Blanco today. “And I guess she saw some of biscuits and green tea, however, the 49-year- moral support from her assistant, James more of my videos, because a week or two later old proposed a club crawl in central Reykjavík. Merry, and his boyfriend Jón, Björk stabilised, she asked if I would like to open for her at two A New York Times writer described the scene: spending days in bed but recuperating during ‘Biophilia’ shows.” Soon after, Blanco ran into “Around midnight, she led her fock to a packed long nights in the Japanese hot springs. Björk again at Airwaves festival, where hip-hop club, where she danced non-stop and It was there that she wrote ‘Black Lake’, Björk invited her to stay at the Þingvallavatn downed shots until 4am. ‘Best! Song! Ever!’ she the album’s 10-minute centrepiece, cabin, even extending the ofer while she shouted when Amerie’s ‘1 Thing’ hit the sound and soon began an eccentric process of and Arca were away recording. How system.” This is the Björk her friends recognise. recovery. “She’s been wearing yellow does she stay so sharp? “She’s a defnite jACk MAnnIx, AnDREW THOMAS HuAng, COuRTESy OF WEllHART lTD AnD OnE lITTlE InDIAn lTD OF WEllHART COuRTESy MAnnIx, HuAng, AnDREW THOMAS jACk and lilac,” explains Huang. “Those are healing colours for her. She even painted her walls neon yellow.”

New Musical express | 14 March 2015

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN bjöRK

YouTube junkie,” Blanco says, laughing. sort of career end-point.” Besides, he adds, “When I was in Iceland, because she’s such a maybe interpreting the zeitgeist isn’t all about mad scientist when it comes to sound, she was self-reinvention any more. “All these kids showing me all these videos of people that were before sidewinding into creative insights that grew up in the ’90s are wearing platform making their own instruments. When you’re an and odd geographical tangents (eg, Björk shoes again,” he says, highlighting culture’s artist like Björk, what really is your schedule? sends him a picture of “a river that isn’t”). habit of recycling itself. “And then you’ve got She has a lot of time to stay hip.” When Morton outlines his philosophical [throwback trends like] PC Music. I don’t think mission of “rediscovering enchantment it’s a coincidence that she fell in love again This month, Björk’s career through science”, Björk with the instrumentation retrospective opens at MoMA, who made exuberantly echoes and the beats that she the multimedia ‘Biophilia’ project as the frst back his words, adding, used to listen to.” app in their collection last June. After years “something so so MAGIC “Björk has If Björk sees the MoMA bugging her to sign up (“How do you hang is fnally happening !!” exhibition as something a song on a wall?” she had argued) museum What links the pieces a lot of time of a victory lap, she’s not director Klaus Beisenbach fnally convinced is a high-minded showing it. In the video her to take stock – on her own terms, of course. admiration for Björk’s for ‘Black Lake’, which The installation is a condensed walk-through constant adaptability to to stay hip” will play at the exhibition of Björk’s solo career, featuring costumes and the rapid ebb and fow of theatre on a pair of videos set in rooms corresponding to each art, technology and her MYKKI BLANCO video screens mounted solo album, as location-based sound snippets personal life. In several on opposite walls, trigger in visitors’ headphones. passages, Beisenbach places her work in she pushes herself to punishing extremes Accompanying the exhibition is a wider context to reveal the narrative scarcely witnessed since her harrowing, Archives, a hefty boxset of three Björk genius in choices that seemed purely sound- Oscar-nominated performance in Lars von books, including an email exchange with driven or incidental. For example, on Björk’s Trier’s 2000 flm Dancer In The Dark. Fierce contemporary philosopher Timothy Morton ‘Medúlla’ LP, the mostly a cappella follow-up and barefoot, she journeys from dank caverns and a “psychographic journey” through her to the beat-driven ‘Vespertine’, her overlapped through moonlit felds, pausing only albums by the poet Sjón. Most intriguing are voices mimic a band of instruments minus to perform ritual chest-beating exorcisms. the Morton emails, which zigzag enjoyably percussion. But rather than a simple volte- At the song’s redemptive climax, she stops, through philosophical, political and ecological face, the development was conceptually suspended in ecstasy, her golden shawl of topics – all laced with personal refection – watertight, advancing her ongoing eforts wing-shaped leaves futtering skyward as to stay enchanted with the human body in her lyrics capture the vulnerable cure at the the face of advancing science and technology, heart of ‘Vulnicura’, itself now a sanctuary a theme she later developed with her for the heartbroken. “I am a glowing shiny ‘Biophilia’ apps. rocket”, she sings, “Returning home/As I enter “When she signed up to do this exhibition, the atmosphere/I burn of layer by layer”. ▪ 39 I think her intent was very clear,” says Huang. Five key exhibits “She didn’t want this retrospective to be some from Björk’s exhibition at MoMA

Robots from the ‘’ video Director Chris Cunningham’s Twin Tesla coil video focused on from ‘biophilia’ tour two robots that “I guess the natural elements are were modelled the superheroes of ‘Biophilia’,” on Björk. “I’ve Björk told Dazed magazine of the been obsessed with industrial unorthodox instrument, “and a robotics since I was a kid,” said Tesla coil allows you to invite one Cunningham. “It was something of them into your house.” I was waiting for a chance to do.” Swan dress Alexander McQueen Björk wore Marjan Pejoski’s bell dress eccentric dress to the 2001 For ‘Who Is It’ in 2004, Björk Oscars. “It was sort of like returned to the late ‘’ wearing a clown suit cover artist and fashion designer, in a Catholic church whose job was to dress her as on Easter mass,” the “a warrior who had to fight not singer admitted. with weapons, but with love”. ‘Stonemilker’ video Shot in a hurry on a remote beach that floods at high tide, 3D panorama ‘Stonemilker’ is among Oculus Rift’s first music videos: “It’s almost more intimate than real life,” Björk said.

14 March 2015 | New Musical express

93NME15011141.pgs 06.03.2015 16:43 Party Enter Shikari’s new album ‘’ tackles climate change, feminist issues and capitalist har corruption. Barry Nicolson joins the campaign trail PhoToS: jordaN hughES

OES ANYBODY REMEMBER M PEOPLE?” It’s 1.49am on February 21, and Enter Shikari’s DJ set at Manchester’s Club (Clockwise from Academy is coming to an D end, but not before frontman right): guitarist Rou Reynolds drops ‘Moving On Up’ on an rory Clewlow; rou unsuspecting audience. From Mancunian reynolds; among pop-house he segues neatly into Will Smith’s the crowd in ‘Miami’ before ending with his usual set-closer, Manchester Katrina & The Waves’ ‘Walking On Sunshine’, while bassist Chris Batten and drummer Rob Rolfe dance wildly at the front of the stage. The Enter Shikari become a force of 40 crowd lap up this school-disco vibe. In their pure energy and positivity, orchestrating fans’ eyes, Enter Shikari are unimpeachable, (and subsequently disappearing into the even when their impulses in the DJ booth are vortex of) circle pits in the centre of the anything but. room, singing ‘Radiate’ from atop the bar When they frst emerged in the mid-2000s, counter and gleefully smashing candy-glass Enter Shikari were the sort of thing it was vases over each other’s heads. “This is not assumed ‘the youth’ would grow out of. Their entertainment,” Rou tells the crowd towards music was an unlikely meeting of post-hardcore the end of their 90-minute set, “this is and hyperactive rave that made a kind of quasi- a passionate exchange of energy, from us to sense in the context of them being a ‘MySpace you and you to us.” Which obviously doesn’t phenomenon’. Over the course of the next stop it being riotously entertaining anyway. nine years, however, people have grown with them: all but one of their four independently DJ set over, I hitch a ride to Glasgow released LPs have cracked the Top 10, and their on the band’s tourbus, where there’s a bottle latest, ‘The Mindsweep’ (which got to Number of Irish whiskey and a fridge full of beer to Six), is their most musically and thematically get through. The rest of the band give it their ambitious ofering to date. They’ve retained best shot, but Rou is in a more contemplative the juvenile irreverence of old – “laughing in mood, talking about his recent decision the face of horrifc situations is a good way to to turn down an invite onto the BBC’s another, everything he writes about on the stay sane,” Rou says later – but they’ve also Question Time programme because he was record – from climate-change denial to the developed a powerful sense of social justice: worried about “freezing up and doing more British class system to the suppression of the new album tackles subjects as diverse damage than good to the causes I’d want to new technologies – boils down to money. as renewable energy, global warming, the speak about. Someone like , “It’s hard to fnd a problem that isn’t linked corrupting infuence of capitalism and the whose brain works at double speed, has the to it,” he sighs. “I don’t think people meet in need to eradicate the practice of female genital arsenal you need for Question Time, but darkened rooms and hatch a plan to control mutilation, which Rou has blogged about. In I don’t. I’m much better at writing a song or the world; with the direction that proft and essence, they’re the sort of band who’ll write a blog – something I can sit down and think wealth and greed lead people in, there’s no a song like ‘Anaesthetist’, an impassioned about.” Anyway, he laughs, “Question Time is need for secret societies.” attack on the Tory privatisation of the NHS, and probably more of a seventh-album thing.” Nevertheless, like Enter Shikari’s music, open it with the line, “You fucking spanner!” Still, you can see why they ofered it there’s a determinedly optimistic streak Earlier that day, I meet the band backstage to him. Rou defnes mindsweeping, the to Rou himself, a self-described “citizen at Manchester Academy. They’re approaching concept behind the latest album, as “the scientist” who constantly tries to “stay aware the halfway point of their UK tour and withholding, discrediting or disparaging of of the technological capacity of humankind, looking battle-hardened from the experience new ideas, philosophies or alternative ways which is racing forward at a ridiculous rate. If – they’ve been DJing after every gig. Yet of structuring society by people in power you read about the latest discoveries science while their afternoons are spent sprawled on who see these things as destructive to their is making, it will fll you with pride at being sofas rubbing the sleep from their eyes, come own interests”. He notes that, in one way or a member of the human race. Until you open

New musical express | 14 march 2015

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN enter shikari hard

and Rob do a meet-and-greet, posing for photos, signing CDs and just hanging out. One of those people is Thomas Easton, who later tells me that “as a teenager growing up in Great Britain, I feel like what Enter Shikari sing about relates to me. Everything is changing at the moment – the education system is changing; here in we’ve just had a referendum – and as I’ve become more engaged with those issues, I feel more aligned to their political views. Their music speaks to me and my life.”

it’s these interactions, Rou tells me, that are the most rewarding thing about being in Enter Shikari. “Our fans act on the things we sing about in real, tangible ways,” he says proudly. “I remember meeting one girl in America who decided to go and join the Peace Corps because of us. Others have started working for NGOs, or their choice of university degree has been infuenced by our the newspaper, anyway.” music... as clichéd as it sounds, when you’re These days the newspapers are full of speaking to someone who’s saying ‘your band career politicians trying to outdo each other helped me through this’ or ‘your music made when it comes to being ‘tough’ me think about this issue’, that’s equally as on immigrants, the poor and mindblowing as walking out on the main the unemployed. Party politics Chumps stage at Reading and Leeds.” isn’t one of Rou’s favourite on the stump Back when their local council were sending subjects, but as the general plainclothes police ofcers into their gigs election approaches, it’s one With the general election looming, Rou Reynolds and trying to have the venues they played he’s been thinking about more in St Albans shut down (a campaign that and more. “The no-voting idea rates the UK’s leading political parties sparked the band’s interest in activism in the is tempting, and I’ve done it subsidise renewable energy, frst place), few would have believed that, before out of a similar stance,” Labour a decade later, Enter Shikari would become “People like to romanticise instead of fossil fuels and he says. “But my feeling is that it about reinventing Labour, fracking. I think they’re an awareness-raising force for good, one of only plays into the hands of the trying to make it that left- definitely worth a vote.” the few British bands unafraid to nail their right wing. I’m going to write leaning party that it once political colours to the mast. “I never want a blog about this soon, because was, but it’s just not going to Conservatives to be the guy who’s like, ‘Where are all the we’re getting so many fans happen. Every major party is “God, where do you even start political bands, then?’ because that just asking us, ‘Who should I vote funded by big business and with the Tories? I don’t have makes you sound like an old fucking fart,” a witty one-liner about them, for? What should I do?’” that’s where their interests lie.” grins Rou. “There’s a lot of underground hip- they’re just absolute rubbish.” Enter Shikari’s relationship hop which does talk about that sort of stuf, with their fans is something Liberal democrats but in the big pop and rock worlds, there’s “They just seem like this weak Ukip they take very seriously. In no modern-day equivalent to the Lennons, alternative, not really standing “Right-wing politics plays on Glasgow, as at every gig they for much, nibbling away on emotions – that’s how they reel the Dylans, the Marleys. I fnd that strange, play, they invite the fans David Cameron’s balls.” people in. But look analytically because it it’s so easy to get angry who’ve been queuing outside and you see that these right- about this environment we live in, to talk all afternoon to watch them Green Party wing parties like Ukip are just about these issues and blend it with art.” soundcheck; afterwards, Rou “At the very least they’d taking us backwards.” Be thankful that at least one band still are. ▪

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93NME15011136.pgs 05.03.2015 16:47 ► ■ EditEd by bEn homEwood

42

Laura Marling Short Movie

the travel-weary storyteller Laura Marling must wish loner trying to find her place in the world, but the acuity that life made as much sense of Marling’s talent makes any sort of ambiguous ending draws on a year spent drifting ►to her as songwriting does. impossible. This might not be what she wants to do with She’s still only 25 years old, but the the rest of her life, but there’s little doubt that it’s what to bring a taste of Americana four albums she’s released thus far she should be doing right now. sound like the product of lifetimes, ‘Short Movie’ is Marling’s second attempt at following to her compelling fifth album each one more accomplished and ‘’. The decision to scrap the first, acclaimed than the last. which she started with longtime producer Her fifth, ‘Short Movie’, was born in late 2013, kicked off the quarter-life crisis described of a sort of existential gap-year ennui. Since the release above. She’s produced this one herself and the results of 2013’s ‘Once I Was An Eagle’, Marling has drifted in are surprisingly rockist – the electric guitar is especially Los Angeles, bought a house in London, retreated from prominent, amplifying ostensibly fragile folk songs like (and returned to) making music, dabbled in mysticism, ‘Walk Alone’ or ‘Howl At The Moon’ into something applied – unsuccessfully – to a poetry course in upstate more panoramic and spiritually American-sounding. New York and even, briefly, held down a regular, bills- ‘False Hope’ starts off full of quiet, coiled anxiety paying service job, though not necessarily in that order. before the drums kick in with the sudden, unexpected If ‘Short Movie’ were just that, it would be a ’70s New force of Hurricane Sandy, the 2012 storm that serves as

Hollywood film about a young, precocious and confused a backdrop to its tale of being barricaded in an Upper JIMMy TuRReLL ILLuSTRATIOn:

New Musical express | 14 March 2015

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN The Go! Team The Scene Between West Side apartment with no electricity. The pinched Memphis Industries guitar licks and drivetime-radio chorus of ‘Gurdjieff’s Ever since Daughter’ even sound a bit like Dire Straits. However, 2004’s debut the story behind the lyrics (see box, below) is rooted ‘thunder, The Amorphous firmly in the esoteric. Lightning, Yet while there’s a Yankee bloom on the English Strike’, the Androgynous rose, ‘Short Movie’ isn’t Go! team have felt like a an outright volte-face. jagged squiggle of musical LYRIC Warning well-meaning brainstorming. Fourth A Monstrous Psychedelic ANALYSIS boys of the perils of album ‘the Scene between’ falling in love with her feels like band mastermind Bubble (Exploding In Your “Never give orders just is a recurrent theme of ian Parton trying to pull to be obeyed/Never Marling’s. She revisits focus on the often Mind) – The Wizards Of Oz consider yourself or it on ‘Warrior’, whose infuriating eclecticism of others without knowing sighing rebuke of “I can’t the six-piece’s sound, Production duo explore Antipodean psych-rock that you’ll change” - be your horse any more, writing everything himself. on their fourth crate-digging mix ‘Gurdjieff’s Daughter’ you’re not the warrior the fidgeting is toned marling doesn’t touch I’m looking for” makes it down on the title track and on it in the lyrics, but clear that her priority is ‘blowtorch’, and rapper What if the greatest talents of the filmmaker Alejandro walking her own path, not ninja’s clattering delivery psychedelic era had ended up with Jodorowsky’s account of making someone else’s has fallen away in favour of ►careers in IT or 30-year stints as Hare his relationship with the easier. ‘Strange’ is blunter what Parton calls “hooks Krishnas? This is the suggestion of Amorphous daughter of the titular still: “Should you fall in with a wobbly VhS feel”. Androgynous’ latest psych-rock comp, on Armenian mystic, Reyna love with me, your love however, frenzied which the Manchester DJ duo rifle through four d’Assia, has to be read becomes my responsibility excitement still prevails. it’s decades’ worth of psych from and New to be believed (warning: and I can never do you all so deliriously ‘up’ that Zealand, dating from the ’60s to the present involves ‘absorbing’ olives wrong... do you know how even ‘the Art of Getting day. It’s a move that should please fans of Tame into vaginas and ricocheting hard that is?” She often by’ – a song about Impala and Pond, who appear on disc one with them off the ceiling). tempers candour with Californian suicide cult ‘It’s Not Meant To Be’ and ‘Fantastic Explosion moments of sweetness, ’s Gate – Of Time’ respectively. Elsewhere, there’s 43 “I’ve got us lost, so I’ve but even ‘How Can I’, makes you feel dizzy. 7 proto- from The Missing Links, lilting turned aside in Joshua for all its wistful talk of ■ GAVin hAynES ballads like SJC Powell’s ‘Governor Lane’ and, in Tree” - ‘Easy’ “riding up mountains, ‘Flight Of Yaraan’, whacked-out prog from Rob during her sabbatical from turning corners in our Errors Thomsett, who’s now an IT professional. There’s music, marling spent time lives”, has the spectre of Lease Of Life Rock Action even a virtuoso jam, ‘Midnight Sun’, from ’60s in ’s Joshua tree impermanence hanging Starting out New Zealand guitarist Doug Jerebine, national Park, where she over it: the song ends with as jittery aka Jesse Harper, who might’ve been “used to wake up and be so Marling, “going back east, electro-punk the new Hendrix if he hadn’t turned excited by the isolation”. where I belong”, alone. instrument- down a deal with EMI, shaved More than anything alists, his head and become a monk else, it’s that restlessness, Glasgow trio Errors shed in India. But that’s another 8 “It’s a short fucking movie, man” – ‘Short that fear of becoming the last of their itchy guitar story. ■ ALEx dEnnEy Movie’ too comfortable or on 2012’s ‘have Some the title track was complacent by staying in Faith in magic’. Fourth ► inspired by an encounter one place, that seems to album ‘Lease of Life’ ►RELEASE DATE March 16 ►LABEL Monstrous Bubble/Festival with an ageing hippy define Marling. There’s no pushes their rich electronic ►PRODUCERS Various ►LENGTH 126:41 ►TRACKLISTING CD1 shaman in a bar in overarching narrative to grooves further into humid ►1. Russell Morris – the Real thing ►2. Tame Impala – it’s not meant to be ►3. The Missing Links – h’tuom tuhs ►4. Cybotron/ California. he and marling ‘Short Movie’ – it plays out dancefloor territory, with like a series of vignettes, the chirruping synths and Krozier & The Generator – the Gods of norse/house of the struck up a friendship Sun ►5. Asher Bilu & Duncan McGuire/Doug Jerebine – Amaze/ of moods and moments, echoing vocals of the title and stayed in touch. the midnight Sun ►6. Sunset Strip – mercy Killing ►7. Leong refrain was apparently people and places – track reminiscent of Animal Lau – Salem Abdullah ►8. Melissa – Getting through ►9. Ash a favourite saying of his. but there is a sense Collective. Steev Livingstone Grunwald – walking Away ►10. Rob Thomsett – Flight of yaraan of a journey has a tendency to murmur, ►11. Kongress – Eyes of the witness ►12. Sons Of The Vegetal completed, with a hard-won wisdom at the but deadpan clarity from Mother – Love is the Law ►13. Pond – Fantastic Explosion of time ►14. Cybotron – Raga in Asia minor ►15. Krozier & The end of it. Marling is her own protagonist guest vocalists bek oliva Generator – house of the Sun CD2 ►1. SJC Powell– Governor – flawed, like anyone else, but utterly (from magic Eye) and 8 Lane ►2. Rob Thomsett – moulding of Red Earth ►3. Air – the compelling all the same. ■ bARRy niCoLSon Glasgow singer Cecilia Sea ►4. Flake – dream if you Can ►5. Doug Jerebine – Ain’t So Stamp pulls the record into hard to do ►6. Iain McIntyre – A warning (Segue) ►7. Doug focus. the 13-minute finale Ashdown – i’ve Come to Save your world ►8. Rob Thomsett – ► ‘through the Knowledge Entrance to warrambool ►9. Leong Lau – the Atlas Revolution ►10. Pip Proud – A Fraying Space ►11. Hiroshi & Claudia – this ►RELEASE DATE March 23 ►LABEL Virgin eMI ►PRODUCER Laura of those who observe Us’ Early broadminded’s Emptiness ►12. Tyrnaround – Colour your Marling ►LENGTH 49:53 ►TRACKLISTING ►1. Warrior ►2. False is the crowning glory as it mind ►13. Steve Von Braund – monster Planet ►14. Madder Hope ►3. I Feel your Love ►4. Walk Alone ►5. Strange ►6. Don’t unfolds into a looping, Lake – 12lb toothbrush ►15. Railroad Gin – A matter of time Let Me Bring you Down ►7. easy ►8. Gurdjieff’s Daughter late-night voyage of ►16. Mandu – Gimme Shelter ►17. Kanguru – waves of Aquarius ►9. Divine ►10. How Can I ►11. Howl At The Moon ►12. Short sax and guitar. ►18. Krozier & The Generator – wandjina ►BEST TRACK Rob 8 Thomsett – Flight of yaraan Movie ►13. Worship Me ►BEST TRACK Gurdjieff’s Daughter ■ StUARt hUGGEtt

14 March 2015 | New Musical express

93NME15011119.pgs 05.03.2015 16:51 songwriter’s debut album is full of Lightning Bolt Thrill Jockey wry slacker pop and It’s been six years since caustic humour the last new Lightning Bolt material, so let’s recap. Two shy comic-book obsessives from Courtney Barnett Rhode Island shun the stage, set up in the thick of the crowd and make a Sometimes I drums-and-bass racket that sounds like a Neanderthal punch-up. ‘Fantasy Empire’ Sit And Think, is the first album the pair have made in a conventional studio, although if it And Sometimes polishes their sound, it’s by a small increment. No matter: the rough grain is I Just Sit pretty much the point, opener ‘The Metal East’ “Put me on a pedestal, I’ll only disappoint you”, Peas’, she’s still trying to fgure it all out, spooling out spraying from your ► bristles Courtney Barnett on the pinballing stream-of-consciousness thoughts about all of life’s speakers like wood from ‘Pedestrian At Best’, the lead single and second mundanities. On the washed-out ‘Depreston’ she’s a chipper. Drummer/vocalist track from her debut album ‘Sometimes I Sit And Think, battling her own brain while househunting, trying to Brian Chippendale’s And Sometimes I Just Sit’. It could be a warning shot: convince herself it’s OK to live in a lousy neighbourhood delirious sing-song brings a way of squashing everyone’s anticipation after 2013 just because it’s cheaper. “We don’t have to be around all notes of fancy to tracks like single ‘Avant Gardener’, her hilariously deadpan take on these cofee shops”, she reasons as she gazes around ‘Dream Genie’, but Lightning having a panic attack while planting vegetables, turned – until she spots a thief being arrested by police and Bolt’s aim remains simple: the 26-year-old Australian into a poster girl for slacker grumbles, “How’s that for frst impressions?”. ‘Dead to batter you into pop. For anyone haplessly trying to make sense of the Fox’, with its splintered guitars, fnds her fretting 44 ecstatic submission. 8 meaningless din of the 2010s, about whether her hayfever could cause a car crash ■ LouIS PATTISoN Barnett’s wry observations and during a lengthy drive. caustic humour made her seem The slow, insomnia-inspired strum of ‘An Illustration Lieutenant the perfect spokesperson. Only Of Loneliness (Sleepless In New York)’ and the sinister If I Kill This Thing We’re All now here she is, claiming she’s creepiness of ‘Kim’s Caravan’ are similarly confused. Going To Eat For A Week just as clueless as the rest of us. The latter fnds Barnett looking at a ceiling, her mind Dine Alone Don’t take her at her word, playing tricks as she eyes a damp patch and insists it Foo Fighters though. On the follow-up to looks like “Jesus, and he’s frowning at me”. But Barnett bassist Nate 2013’s double EP ‘A Sea Of Split is never resigned to defeat. On ‘Elevator Operator’, Mendel’s a disgruntled ofce worker makes his way first solo ► to the roof, but, when begged not to jump, album has ►RELEASE DATE March 23 ►LABEL Mom + Pop ►PRODUCER Burke Reid replies: “I’m not suicidal… I come up here a bloodthirsty title, but the ►LENGTH 42:25 ►TRACKLISTING ►1. Elevator Operator ►2. Pedestrian At for perception and clarity/ I like to nine songs here hardly Best ►3. An Illustration Of Loneliness (Sleepless In New York) ►4. Small imagine I’m playing Sim City”. She bare their fangs. Anyone Poppies ►5. Depreston ►6. Aqua Profunda! ►7. Dead Fox ►8. Nobody Really might not want a pedestal, but there expecting rasping Foos Cares If You Don’t Go To The Party ►9. Debbie Downer ►10. Kim’s Caravan aren’t many songwriters who’d make 8 rock will be disappointed, ►11. Boxing Day ►BEST TRACK Pedestrian At Best better use of it. ■ BEN HEwITT because ‘If I Kill…’ is closer to Mendel’s output with Sunny Day Real Estate, the Ryley Walker the fleet fingers of Bert Vetiver hiccups and false starts in Seattle emo group that Primrose Green Jansch and John Fahey Complete Strangers people’s lives, working up disbanded in 2013. That’s Dead Oceans back in the ’60s. ‘Primrose Easy Sound a dreampop shimmer on no bad thing: with acoustic There’s Green’, walker’s second For this, the ‘From Now on’ and noodling guitar and Mendel’s husky something album, was recorded with sixth Vetiver around with tropical jazz on vocals, ‘Some Remove’ and very modern a crack team of local musos, album, San ‘Backwards Slowly’, finding ‘Artificial Limbs’ envelop about the and both the playing and Francisco’s a middle ground between, the listener like a warm way Chicago production have the lithe, Andy Cabic say, Real Estate and blanket. It all gets a little guitarist Ryley walker gets loose feel of a lost album by has really perfected his Destroyer. There’s one too comfortable on ‘Lift his retro-ness so dead-on. folk-jazz group Pentangle. aural snooze pill. The 10 wake-up call when the The Sheet’, but ‘Rattled’ whether he’s a vintage vinyl occasionally veering into songs on the follow-up to Byrds-like ‘Loose Ends’ and ‘Sink Sand’ come to freak or a download junkie, distortion (‘Sweet 2011’s ‘The Errant Charm’ breaks into a garage stomp, life with overdriven guitars he hasn’t found this sound Satisfaction’), even walker’s drift by, tucked under interrupting the reverie with and brass respectively, by accident: he’s only in his more tender, a warm electronic blanket, pounding drums. otherwise, providing a welcome mid-twenties, but he has moments (‘Love Can Be with Cabic strumming his this is one to settle into, glimpse of Mendel’s an uncanny feel for the Cruel’) seem gnarled guitar and whispering softly. your hat brim pulled more eccentric side. 6 triangulation of folk, jazz beyond their creator’s 8 But that’s no bad thing. He over your eyes. 6 ■ BEN HoMEwooD and blues that came from years. ■ NoEL GARDNER gives voice to the emotional ■ MATTHEw HoRToN

New Musical express | 14 March 2015

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN 93NME15011121.pgs 06.03.2015 13:00 eP ‘Young ones’ ofers Seasick Steve sound notably tired. Lonelady more of the same. Arthur Sonic Soul Surfer You’re probably aware Hinterland russell’s Dinosaur l disco Caroline of, and perhaps bored Formation project is a clear touchstone Seven by, the drill: impressive When Julie Young Ones EP on the title track, with taut albums fingerpicking, liberal use Campbell Meno drumbeats skipping into into his of canine metaphors released her Formation thwacked cowbell as synths career (‘Dog Gonna Play’, ‘Swamp excellent first emerged flash over the top. ‘Take It and now Dog’) and the odd moment lonelady in July 2014, All Away’ is swampier, well into his seventies, of downbeat folkiness (‘In debut ‘nerve up’ on Warp in releasing unfolding like something it’s probably unwise to Peaceful Dreams’). not 2010, its jerky guitars and a low-key from King Krule’s ‘6 Feet expect progression or many will be expecting uncomplicated beats stood white-label 12-inch limited Beneath The Moon’. The diversity from Steven Gene innovation from Seasick apart from their core roster to 300 copies. on lead track loungey ‘no Great Change’ Wold. ‘Sonic Soul Surfer’ Steve, but these 16 lurching of artists, such ‘Waves’, the south london is marginally faster, but the ofers much the same as its blues tunes make his as Autechre and Aphex twins Will and Matthew snappy funk of closer ‘Back six predecessors, its maker shtick feel as worn out as Twin. So does follow-up ritson created a warm but Then’ ensures ‘Young twanging and growling the crotch of those ‘Hinterland’, which deals restless take on funk, disco ones’ ends on a high. 7 throughout. except now, dungarees of his. 4 in muscular rifs, lustful7 and soul – and their debut ■ Ben HoMeWooD his dusty blues jams ■ JAMIe FullerTon basslines and simple programmed drums throughout. Campbell recorded the album at Concrete retreat, her tower-block home studio Modest Mouse in Manchester, overlooking a motorway flyover. Tracks like ‘Mortar remembers You’ convey the bleakness Strangers of the situation (“I had to build a room to contain all the panic”), but Campbell’s To Ourselves voice and the persistent whirling synths infuse the desolation with Brilliantly deranged first album in compelling energy. 8 eight years from the alt-rock heroes ■ luCY JoneS Chilly Gonzales 45 Chambers Modest Mouse’s 22-year career is something of Gentle Threat a Cinderella story, in which the Washington on the ► scrappers have succeeded against all the odds. follow-up to Frontman is a throaty, barking philosopher, 2012’s ‘Solo like Tom Waits shouting into a wood-chipper. Their Piano II’, sound has been consistently wonky, evolving from Canadian awkward fuzzbox pop (2004’s ‘Good News For People pianist Chilly Gonzales Who Love Bad News’) to sea-shanty concept albums explores chamber music, about drowned sailors (2007’s ‘We Were Dead Before an intimate form of the The Ship Even Sank’). There’s a gloomy, fatalist streak classical genre that’s only to their lyrics, too. Hardly mainstream fodder, then, but ever played by a small while their impact in the UK extends little further than group of musicians. Being the popularity of 2004 single ‘Float On’, Modest Mouse accompanied by a string have become a popular concern back home. Their songs quartet is Gonzalez’s only have been covered on American Idol; they’re regular A Box’) to campfre lullabies (‘God Is An Indian And concession to tradition. In festival headliners; and ‘We Were Dead…’ – featuring the You’re An Asshole’) this impressively unpredictable every other way, ‘Chambers’ writing talents of Johnny Marr, who has since left the record veers down wildly diferent paths, in ways no is typically odd. on opener band – was a number one hit on previous Modest Mouse album has dared. Brock’s ‘Prelude To A Feud’ – the US Billboard chart. lyrics – dense thickets of imagery and introspection dedicated to Bach and Coming after an eight-year – remain cohesive. “Another branch on the tinder-bound in the liner notes break for the quartet, ‘Strangers tree/Birds fying lower, lookin’ downwards to feed”, he – his piano part undulates To Ourselves’ delivers some of sings over tender acoustic guitar on ‘Coyotes’. relentlessly, creating tense their most brilliantly deranged Not all the risks come of. ‘Pistol (A Cunanan, Miami, confusion, and ‘Sample moments yet. From grizzled, FL. 1996)’ is a twisted, ill-advised parody of Gwen This’ audaciously attempts slap-bass disco freakouts (‘The Stefani chart hip-hop, which sees Brock booming a hip-hop rhythm. Such wild Ground Walks, With Time In “Why don’t you come to my room and clean my pistol?” shifts make ‘Chambers’ But after two decades, Modest Mouse’s ostentatious and often ► S audacity is refreshing. ‘Strangers…’ irksome. Closer ‘Myth Me’ ►RELEASE DATE March 3 ►LABEL Epic ►PRODUCER Brian Deck ►LENGTH 57:10 doesn’t pack the emotional punch of – the only track to feature ►TRACKLISTING ►1. ►2. Lampshades On Fire ►3. Shit In Your their classic albums, but there’s vocals – irritates most, with Cut ►4. Pistol (A Cunanan, Miami, FL. 1996) ►5. Ansel ►6. The Ground Walks, With Time something laudable about its Gonzales goofily cooing, In A Box ►7. Coyotes ►8. Pups To Dust ►9. Sugar Boats ►10. Wicked Campaign ►11. Be genre-hopping loopiness. Their “We’re still addicted Brave ►12. God Is An Indian And You’re An Asshole ►13. The Tortoise And The Tourist Cinderella story just got a surreal 7 to the ridicule”. 6 ►14. The Best Room ►15. Of Course We Know ►BEST TRACK Strangers To Ourselves new chapter. ■ Al Horner ■ Ben HoMeWooD

14 march 2015 | New musical express

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN 93NME15011122.pgs 06.03.2015 15:46 SPECIAL COLLECTOR’S EDITION

ORDER ONLINE NOW AT AVAILABLE TO DOWNLOAD AT NME.COM/STORE NME.COM/DIGITAL-EDITION

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN 93NME15011148.pgs 09.03.2015 10:37 CINEMA White Bird In FILM A Blizzard Based on laura Kasischke’s 1999 novel, White Bird Poignant doc sheds In A Blizzard sees shailene some much-needed woodley (Divergent,The Fault In Our Stars) play light on Joe strummer’s Kat, a student whose mother vanishes one late-’80s ‘wilderness years’ in autumn day. Directed by Gregg araki, a Japanese- spain in the 1980s american auteur associated with the New Queer cinema of the 1990s, the mysterious disappearance and Kat’s struggles with her sexuality unfold without urgency. I Need The tension builds almost imperceptibly, but the mess he had caused with the last formation of .” conclusion is so out This was an uneasy juncture in Strummer’s career: the of the blue it’s deflating. sacking of Mick Jones, the ill-conceived assembly of The Nevertheless, a strong A Dodge! Clash MkII and the release of the much-maligned album supporting cast, a period ‘Cut The Crap’. Realising what a huge mistake he’d made soundtrack typical of araki In 1985, a 33-year-old Joe Strummer parked his in following manager Bernie Rhodes’ advice to oust (, New order) secondhand Dodge Barreiros in an underground Jones, Strummer withdrew from the public eye and fed to and a crystalline score ► garage in Madrid and caught a fight to London for Andalucía, “to understand, to feel the pain of the mistakes from ’ the birth of his second daughter, Lola. When he returned, of the past”. He befriended a local punk band, 091, and robin Guthrie and los he’d forgotten where he’d left it and even after decided to produce an album for them. angeles avant-garde making a lighthearted appeal on Spanish radio Thus began his so-called wilderness years pianist are years later, he never saw it again. It’s an amusing (“Fuck that, that was our life!” his former all reasons to dive in. 6 enough anecdote, but a rather slight thing to partner Gaby Salter exclaims at one point), ■ sTuarT HuGGETT hang a documentary on, particularly when the a little-documented period on which this subject is someone like Strummer, whose life flm aims to shed some much-needed light. CINEMA 47 has already been extensively chronicled. Hall’s focus is narrow throughout – you X+Y I Need A Dodge! never fully explains why sense there’s a larger tale to tell about these Director Morgan Barcelona-based director Nick Hall is so keen to lost years, in which the Spanish sojourn Matthews won track down the vehicle; even Strummer himself would be a mere footnote – but the detail he a Bafta in 2009 doesn’t appear to have looked especially hard uncovers is impressive, tracking down and for The Fallen for it. The car, however, is not what this flm is talking to the musicians Strummer worked – a documentary ►DIrector really about: Hall’s search for it doesn’t begin in Nick Hall with, the bandmates he left in the lurch exploring the impact of earnest until the fnal 15 minutes and feels like and the friends he made along the way. It’s soldiers’ deaths on their ►IN cINeMAS a bit of an afterthought. Instead, I Need A Dodge! March 25 their memories of – and obvious fondness families. His debut fiction explores Strummer’s relationship with Spain for – Strummer that bring this obscure little feature is a coming-of-age – a country he had felt a strong afnity with story to life, ofering a snapshot of a man – drama with asa Butterfield since his pre-Clash days squatting with two sisters from not a rock star – looking for catharsis in the most (Ender’s Game) as autistic Malaga – and attempts to fnd out what Strummer was unlikely of places. maths prodigy Nathan. after doing in Spain in the frst place. “It was an escape,” Do they fnd the car? Let’s just say it was never his father’s death, Nathan explains one interviewee. “He was a man on the run. He really what they were looking for. 7 becomes distanced from his was getting away from the tension in London, from the ■ Barry NicolsoN mother (Blue Jasmine’s sally Hawkins) and connects with teacher Mr Humphreys (rafe CINEMA They set up home and begin CINEMA – is sloppy. Houston’s rap-a- spall), who sufers from Ms. My Name Is Salt a painstaking eight-month Drake’s Homecoming: lot records are behind the He helps Nathan win a trial Voted Best process of extracting salt The Lost Footage film, and they’ve long been for the British team at the Documentary from the rock-hard ground. This concert film beefing with Drake’s people international Mathematics at 2014’s Their livelihood depends on is being shown in over his early career, olympiad in Taiwan, where Edinburgh Film it, and Pacha captures cinemas for one claiming a verbal agreement he is coached by richard Festival, My sanabhai’s desperation as night only was broken that would (Eddie Marsan, in an Name Is Salt uncovers the humdrum family life unfolds (March 19) and otherwise have meant amusing cameo). it’s an devastating bleakness of around him. The tender even that is one too many. rap-a-lot getting a share occasionally mawkish but indian salt harvesting. moments can’t mask the calling the footage “lost” of the profits from Drake’s moving film about the three Mumbai director Farida strain on Pacha’s subjects, suggests we’re lucky it’s career. The footage is central characters rebuilding Pacha’s film begins with who are forced away when been found, but it’s badly spliced with three talking their broken lives, and one protagonist sanabhai sat monsoon season submerges shot, terribly edited and heads, none of whom are in which Butterfield’s on his motorbike, before the plains, only to return Drake’s performance Drake and all of whom are emotionally complex a truck containing tools, months later and start – in Toronto, after his connected to rap-a- performance is the clothes and his young family all over again. 7 breakthrough mixtape ‘so lot. cash-in, much? 2 undisputed standout. 7 appears through the haze. ■ BEN HoMEwooD Far Gone’ came out in 2009 ■ PHil HEBBlETHwaiTE ■ DaN BriGHTMorE juaN jesus garcia juaN

14 March 2015 | New Musical express

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN 93NME15011123.pgs 06.03.2015 16:25 GIG OF THE WEEK

Palma Violets Fat White Family Slaves The Wytches 02 Academy Oxford/ Institute, Birmingham Friday, February 27/ Saturday, February 28

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN

(Clockwise) Fat LIVE White Family, The Wytches, Palma Violets

Fat White Family, main support to the Palmas, have upped their game, too. Introduced by their biker pirate tour manager lobbing bread at the front row, they emerge in a cacophony of wails and chants as the sacrifcial grind of ‘Auto Neutron’ begins with the cheekier elements of the crowd singing the “hey-hey-hey-HEY!”s from Simple Minds’ ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’ over the top. They’re soon stunned into silence, though, as frontman Lias Saoudi sheds his shirt, then alternates between convulsing, screaming and fddling with his tackle. Their plan to gradually FAT WhITE FAMILy SETLIST replace the fakier members of the band, like some sort of Fat White ►Auto Neutron Foster Family – drummer ►Is It Raining In Your Mouth? Dan Lyons got the boot ►I Am Mark E Smith last year, and bassist ►Wild American Joseph Panucci has been Prairie replaced for this tour by ►Cream Of Ben Auston, until new the Young 50 ► member Taishi Nagasaka touch the leather PALMA vIOLETS ►bomb Disneyland steps in permanently – SETLIST has made their satanic racket slightly slicker, but by the time ‘Touch LIAS SAOUDI cOMES ►Rattlesnake The Leather’ has sleazed out like the backing Highway ►Danger In the Club music for the world’s grottiest strip club, ‘Wild PrE-OILED, DrIPPIng ►All the Garden American Prairie’ has come on like a hillbilly birds speed orgy and Nathan Saoudi has humped his LIqUID OvEr hIS hEAD ►On the beach keyboard all through ‘Bomb ►tom the Drum ►best Of Friends SLAvES Disneyland’, they’ve set the bar onto their mates’ shoulders. It’s a wailing car ►Step Up For the SETLIST of demented debauchery crash of frenzied noise. ‘Step Up For The Cool Cool Cats mighty high. Cats’ has guitarist Sam Fryer howling, ‘Johnny ►last Of the ►White Knuckle Ride Yet Palma Violets vault it Bagga’ Donuts’ is a ramshackle carnival whirl, Summer Wine Union Jack socks,” says ►Sockets with ease. As they rattle out 50 and ‘14’ rounds things of in awesomely messy ►Johnny bagga’ bassist Daniel Rumsey, ►live like An Animal minutes of raucous retro- fashion. It’s just a shame the fare kids missed it. Donuts “it’s cool.” ►Feed the Mantaray they look more and “We bumped into those boys in the street ►Hollywood (I Got It) Between them they ► ►We Found love Sugar Coated more like this generation’s about two in the afternoon and they asked, ‘Are launch another night of bitter truth ►14 Libertines, a ragged, brotherly you into your pyro?’” says Sam the next day, chaotic noise in the ►Where’s Your Car Debbie? riot band speaheading a fresh backstage at Birmingham’s Institute. “We Midlands. The Wytches pour out a barrage of ►the Hunter wave of caterwauling guitar came onstage and the room smelt of smoke. sludgy guitars, scorched-earth bass and ►Hey gods. The ethos of soiling rock’s You could see two people being dragged away monolithic grunge, with Kristian Bell gargling roots is frmly in place; their by the staf. But they promised us fre and like a goblin Cobain. ‘Beehive Queen’ has its charming lowlife south London characters there was fre.” own flthy gravity, while ‘Gravedweller’ makes crawl from the clattering wreckage of songs There’ve been similar sparks between the the sound of moons slowly colliding and new built from scat jazz, rock’n’roll, doo-wop, bands too – “it’s been overly lovely, there’s too track ‘Wasteybois’ lurches heavily. crooner pop, spaghetti western and blues that much love on this tour, it almost makes you feel Slaves, meanwhile, come on like Sleaford make them sound like sick at times,” claims Sam. Punks. As stand-up drummer Isaac Holman a Merseybeat-era pop Chilli Jesson The Wytches, last-minute barks couplets like a romantic poet from combo burning loudly in meets the fans additions after The Benefts Street – “I love you more when you’re Hell. And new track Amazing Snakeheads angry with me!”, “If you live like an animal you’re ‘Secrets Of America’ even pulled out, then gonna die like one!”, “You’re so BAW-RING!” – pilfers its sunny squall disbanded, have certainly guitarist Laurie Vincent wields garage-rock from ‘Don’t Look Back bonded with their rifs like a smashed glass in a pub brawl. ‘The Into The Sun’ before dressing-room-mates Hunter’ tackles global warming in the style descending into a Slaves. “They keep of a rabid Rancid, ‘Hey’ sees Laurie go torch-song coda that popping out to TK Maxx crowdsurfng and, when it’s over, Slaves have

sends topless boy fans and coming back with happy-slapped Birmingham senseless and bEN bENtlEY HUGHES, ANDY

New Musical express | 14 MarcH 2015

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN Pond

Father John Misty Whelan’s, Dublin Sunday, February 22 “Let’s get fuckin’ weird!” roars Josh Tillman. Three songs in and the ex- drummer has already clasped hands ThE WyTchES with the audience, swung SETLIST from an overhead beam, upended the mic stand ►beehive Queen and taken selfies with ►burn Out the a fan’s phone. Tillman’s bruise two albums of wordy ►Gravedweller folk-pop as Father John ►DADFAC# ►Wasteybois Misty are known for ►Robe For Juda ironic disaffection, but ►tricks And Dance tonight he’s all heart. The 33-year-old’s six-piece backing band rollick Academy, Manchester through almost all of 2012’s ‘Fear Fun’ and Wednesday, February 26 new album ‘I Love you, ThE vIEW FrOM ThE crOWD Honeybear’, and the pace Perth psychonauts bring proggy rifs only relents during an and disco jams to the north west Dominic, 20, telford encore of ‘Bored In The “It was epic. I think USa’. When the audience Slaves were the diligently recreates the Pond’s fans are out in colourful force best, they stole the song’s canned laughter, in Manchester tonight. Inside the show. It was edgy.” Tillman proclaims the ► Academy, there are paisley shirts and night “fun as fuck”. lank hairdos everywhere. There’s a party Murray, 17, Few would argue. atmosphere, and after opening with the Whipsnade 8 51 “It was incredible. ■ CIan Traynor Flaming Lips-esque ‘Waiting Around For Palmas were really Grace’, Pond stoke it by playing spin-the-bottle good but the best bit had to Wolf Alice with genre. They jacknife from the poppy be ‘Auto Neutron’ by Fat The Boogaloo, London ‘Elvis’ Flaming Star’ (think Ariel Pink covering White Family.” tuesday, February 24 Kenny Loggins’ ‘Footloose’), to the cosmic “It feels so good to be sing-along of ‘You Broke My Cool’, and the Phoebe, 17, Milton back in north London,” prog-heavy ‘Heroic Shart’ – whose title Keynes Wolf alice bassist Theo references shitting yourself, “It was probably the Ellis proclaims midway something the band fortunately second best time SETLIST I’ve seen Palmas, I saw them through tonight’s tiny don’t work into their stagecraft. at Bedford Esquires when homecoming gig. Back for During its extended freakout, the ’alf-inched the show. they’d only just started out. the briefest of moments ►Waiting Around unhinged Nick Allbrook wrestles Tonight, Lias Saoudi They’ve got a lot better between touring Europe For Grace his guitar like a snake charmer comes pre-oiled, since then.” with alt-J and heading ►Elvis’ Flaming Star fghting to put a python back into ►You broke My Cool dripping unidentifed Stateside for a run of its basket. ‘Don’t Look At The Sun ►Heroic Shart liquid over his head, Florence, 16, Milton dates, the quartet are Or You’ll Go Blind’ – from 2009 Keynes ►Don’t look At the writhing through ‘I Am shunning a rest in favour debut ‘Psychedelic Mango’ – is “Palma Violets were Sun Or You’ll Mark E Smith’ like definitely better of piling into their local Go blind transformed from the lava lamp-lit ►Sitting Up On a serpentine Steptoe and than at Reading last summer, to share tracks from their stoner-rock of the recorded version Our Crane smearing himself on the I enjoyed all their songs.” upcoming debut album into a monstrous disco jam, with ►baby’s On Fire front row during ‘Cream ‘My Love Is Cool’ with 150 keyboardist Jamie Terry hurling ►Holding Out Of The Young’. Circle-pits erupt for ‘Bomb lucky fans. The moody For You waves of feedback and synth efects. Disneyland’ and don’t let up for the Palmas’ set. ‘your Love’s Whore’ ►Giant tortoise On the trippy ‘Sitting Up On Our ‘Danger In The Club’ sends Brum into surges uncontrollably ►Midnight Mass (At Crane’, drummer Jay Watson grabs paroxysms, and come ‘Last Of The Summer and ‘you’re a Germ’’s the Market Street a mic and assumes screeching duty. Payphone) Wine’, their merch guy Harry Violent punk explodes with Ellie Before a storming cover of Brian ►Man It Feels like masterminds a sit-down-jump-up rowsell’s shrieked vocals. Space Again Eno’s 1973 song ‘Baby’s On Fire’, they moment that turns the entire venue ‘The Wonderwhy’, aired lob an infatable pink famingo into into a pogoing mosh mass, united in live for the first time the crowd. “If I had a receding hairline and nefarious noise. It’s 2015: bring on the 9 tonight, shows Wolf alice goatee, I could pull Eno of better,” Allbrook bedlam. ■ Mark BEaUMonT haven’t lost their delicate says afterwards, but all that matters to side, rowsell moulding this crowd is how well he delivers his heartbroken lyrics and own band’s wayward shtick. ‘Man It soft guitar into a Feels Like Space Again’ caps a delirious dewy-eyed stunner. 8 performance that shows he’s doing 8 ■ rHIan DaLy it brilliantly. ■ Gary ryan

14 MarcH 2015 | New Musical express

93NME15011125.pgs 06.03.2015 17:17 LIVE

With their new album in the can, the south Londoners venture back out into the wild

The Leadmill, Sheffield Saturday, February 21 The Maccabees

There’s an obvious reason 52 for the palpable sense of ► relief onstage at The Leadmill tonight. Days before this tiny one-of show, The Maccabees A pair of new tracks follows. ‘Kamakura’ one as loud as you can!” he instructs. The White revealed that the follow-up to their stunning grows from a gloomy bassline and a single brothers revel in the crowd’s obliging response. 2012 album ‘’ is in the can. dissonant chord into a full-band singalong. Of the four new tracks aired tonight, After being holed up in their south London ‘WW1 Portraits’ is more abstract, built around comeback single ‘Marks To Prove It’ is the one studio for months on end, the fve-piece bound a bittersweet melody and Sam Doyle’s strange that most shares the punky qualities of The onstage to get reacquainted with their fans percussion. Suddenly the drums kick in Maccabees’ 2007 debut album ‘’, after a long and frustrating absence. furiously, the bass thunders and Orlando with catchy verses and fast rifs punctuated by The crowd are just as up for it, surging adopts a steely gaze until the music drops slower jam sections. By contrast, ‘Spit It Out’ is towards the stage as soon as Rupert Jarvis’ bass back down to bare piano chords. unlike anything they’ve done before, based begins to bounce through opener ‘Wall Of “There’s a loose theme running through around a folky piano motif and Orlando’s Arms’. And why not? The Maccabees last the record,” Orlando explains afterwards, mournful vocals, it suggests the upcoming played here in January 2012, and return with “about coming full circle. So we thought it was record will be stained with sadness. The the same four new songs they played at one-of important to play a song we’ve not done in melancholy quickly turns to anger for the shows in Liverpool and Norwich late last year. a long time.” Cue ‘Latchmere’: The Maccabees’ fearsome ‘No Kind Words’, which leads without As ‘’ builds to a booming climax, dizzying tribute to their local leisure centre and pause into a jubilant thrash through ‘Pelican’. the crowd fing arms aloft to act out its central fantastic 2007 breakthrough single, absent Couples waltz at the back of the room to the message spectacularly: “They who are my army/ from setlists for years. Diehard fans dance their gentle lullaby of ‘’ during The wall of arms around me”. For the rest of the arses of, Felix bangs his head and waves his the encore, before ‘Grew Up At Midnight’’s show, the grin doesn’t slip from guitarist Felix arms, and everyone present realises The glistening guitars reach to a joyous fnal climax. White’s face. ‘Love You Better’ engulfs the Maccabees missed a trick by ditching this one. For the band, this is the frst triumph in whole room in heartfelt euphoria, and White “The frst time we played the Leadmill was a year that’s bound to feature many exchanges knowing smiles with singer Orlando about 10 years ago with a guy called , more, but for the rest of us the wait is Weeks that tell you just how much they’ve who’s still a hero,” Felix shouts as he introduces fnally over: The Maccabees are back. 9 missed moments like this. ‘Precious Time’. “We’d like you all to sing this ■ RobeRt Cooke

LInE-upSETLIST WALL OFWALL ARMS FEEL FOLLOW TO YOu LOVE BETTER LIONS YOuNG CHILD WWI PORTRAITS LATCHMERE PRECIOuS TIME CAN YOu GIVE IT? OuTSPIT IT NO KIND WORDS KIND NO PELICAN POWERS WILLIAM TOOTHPASTE KISSES GREW uP AT MIDNIGHT MARKS TO TO MARKS IT PROVE KAMAKuRA 10

2 How good? How BEN BENTLEY, POONEH BEN BENTLEY, New Musical express | 14 MarcH 2015

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN Death From Above 1979

D’Angelo Eventim Apollo, London SHOWS Saturday, February 21 SHOWS Felix White and D’angelo left it until the Orlando Weeks onstage in middle of December Shefield last year to drop ‘black Messiah’, his first album for 15 years, but damn, if it wasn’t worth the wait. Now, the 41-year-old reclusive R&b legend is in London, crack eight-piece outfit in tow, for the last of a three-date Uk tour. He’s astonishingly good, seamlessly blending the Prince-does-protest rock of ‘the Charade’ and the angry, Sly Stone-esque ‘1,000 Deaths’ in with O2 Academy Brixton, London signature smooth classics Wednesday, February 25 like the slinky ‘Untitled (How Does It Feel)’, from 2000’s ‘Voodoo’. that the the toronto duo create a demonic comeback album ‘The Physical The setlist draws heavily from cacophony with their deformed rif rock World’, lumbers of the slab, ‘black Messiah’ makes a monstrous chunk of deformed Maccabees this return all the more rif rock. Yet, as an invisible on… triumphant. all hail Their trunks lit like keyboardist strikes dramatic ’80s the return of a true rainbows and their eyes chords and ‘Virgins’ arrives like ...Self-sabotage funk master. 9 ►glowing red through the AC/DC thrown into a lava pit, a hint Felix White: “We didn’t give ■ aLex DeNNeY smoke, DFA 1979’s backdrop logo of indie pick-up tune emerges. ourselves a break, so we refects the demonic cacophony “Please stay with me, I’m begging 53 realised maybe six to nine Ya k spewing from the stage. They tonight”, Sebastien wails over a months into the recording Bleach, Brighton number but two – Sebastien ‘Seven Nation Army’ beat – The process that we hadn’t Friday, February 27 Grainger attacking his kit in white White Holy Shites, anyone? – and really got anything we liked, Yak’s shows come dungarees like a psychopathic the disco band at the core of this and we were exhausted. prefaced by tales of Mario Brother and Jesse F Keeler hellfre sound-storm breaks cover. We shot ourselves in the organs set on fire onstage ripping rifs from his guitar like They’re the house band in Hell, and foot to begin with, and it or shoved into the an exorcist of the E string – but they get us dancing Satan’s blues. took a while to work out audience, unpredictable the noise they make is enormous. Jesse plays the sinister silent what the record was going chaos looming over each It’s a squadron of henchman in black, drawing to be. It was a year-and-a- gig. tonight, though, SETLIST Messerschmitts dive- chords of pure distortion from half false start.” the London-based trio bombing the Grand his synth or summoning feedback prove they can be just Canyon flled to the from his amp just by placing his ...New album inspiration as exciting without ►Turn It Out brim with exploding hands on it like a predatory Orlando Weeks: “Jim physical destruction. “I’m ►Right On, crockery. It’s the last 10 preacher and groin thrusting his Frankenstein! from the label took me to going nowhere but I’m minutes of every Jason guitar into the speaker. Grainger is ►Virgins a Viking exhibition. I think going there fast”, sneers ►Cheap Talk Statham movie playing the light to his shade, claiming the he thought that would help frontman oli burslem – ►You’re A Woman, simultaneously. It’s what band are from “one of your loyal inspire us, but I actually an intoxicating mix of I’m A Machine rock’n’roll sounds like colonies, we still have the Queen found it pretty stressful. Lou Reed slurs and Jim ►Go Home, when it’s falling into the on the money”, thanking London Get Down It was a very, very sweet Morrison attitude – on sun. Try to make love to profusely for its support and letting ►White Is Red thought and we had a nice ‘kid Yaself’, while debut it and you’ll have babies the crowd choose the encore of ►Trainwreck 1979 time, but the exhibition single ‘Hungry Heart’ runs ►Crystal Ball made of brimstone. a squealing gremlin version of itself wasn’t great.” in jagged psych-punk ►Dead Womb The Toronto duo’s ‘Pull Out’. But as the taped circles. ‘Smile’ stutters ►Going Steady fve-year hiatus between screams of “fuck you! And fuck this ...Their new single and snarls, oli baring ►Gemini 2006 and 2011 – during establishment!” give way to the ►Little Girl Felix: “there was a very slow his teeth as he shrieks, which their legend as The bloodbath of ‘Government Trash’ ►Government Trash version of ‘Marks to Prove “I never said that romance ►Always On La’s of hipster thrash and the likes of ‘’, It’ and then we changed was dead now” over ►Pull Out punk only grew, as many ‘Trainwreck 1979’ and ‘Dead Womb’ it into one of the quickest brutally sharp guitar. ►Romantic Rights bands who call it quits are reduced to thrash pop rubble, things we’ve ever done. It’s No instruments harmed, ► after one classic album their true intentions are very clear. now an amalgamation of the then, but Yak are just generally fnd – clearly They wish to rain hot death two so there are noticeable as menacing and did nothing to dampen their on us, our frst borns, our shifts in it, and electrifying as their crushing power. “It’s alive!” squeals politicians and our very anyone who hears it goes, reputation suggests. 8 the backing tape intro and ‘Right society. Let it all come 8 ‘Nice tempo shift!’” ■ RHIaN DaLY On, Frankenstein!’, from last year’s down. ■ MaRk beaUMoNt

14 MarcH 2015 | New Musical express

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BELLYACHING dEPUTy EdITOR, NME.COM Lucy Jones (ext 6867) ASSISTANT EdITOR Tom Howard (ext 6866) “We’re like a virus – we’re ASSISTANT EdITOR, NME.COM Al Horner (ext 6847) FEATURES EdITOR Laura Snapes (ext 6874) going to grow on people,” says REVIEwS EdITOR Ben Homewood (ext 6894) NEwS EdITOR Dan Stubbs (ext 6858) Echobelly’s Sonya Madan, NEw MUSIC EdITOR Matt Wilkinson (ext 6856) ACTING dEPUTy NEwS EdITOR David Renshaw flouncing around a TV studio in (ext 6877) ASSISTANT REVIEwS EdITOR Rhian Daly (ext 6860) a red mini-dress, “trying to look ACTING NEwS REPORTER Nadia Khomami (ext 6863) like a transvestite”. According ACTING ART dIRECTOR Tony Ennis to NME’s Simon Williams, the dESIGNER Dani Liquieri four-piece are on the cusp of dIGITAL dESIGNER Jon Moore PICTURE EdITOR Zoe Capstick (ext 6889) The Big Breakthrough, to the ONLINE PICTURE EdITOR Emily Barker (ext 6852)

point that Sonya even received PROdUCTION EdITOR Tom Mugridge an unexpected house call from SENIOR SUB-EdITORS Kathy Ball, Alan Woodhouse SUB-EdITORS Nathaniel Cramp, Mike Johnson, Morrissey. “He played with Anthony Pearce

the cats and made some witty PROdUCER, NME.COM Jo Weakley comments. He’s quite shy VIdEO PROdUCER Ryan Forde wITH HELP FROM Mark Beaumont, Claire Cheung, actually. He just said, ‘I really Maria Lo, Niralee Modha like the band, blah blah blah, ADVERTISING I’d like you to come on tour 6th Floor, Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark Street, London SE1 0SU with me in America.’” GROUP AdVERTISING dIRECTOR Romano Sidoli PA TO GROUP AdVERTISING dIRECTOR Kelly Litten (ext 2621) HEAd OF MARKET, MUSIC TITLES CLEO ROCKERS Andrew Minnis (ext 4252) BRANd MANAGER Hot on the heels of their Matthew Chalkley (ext 6722) CREATIVE MEdIA MANAGER debut album ‘Dream Of 100 Benedict Ransley (ext 6783) Nations’ and its immense hit dIGITAL BUSINESS dIRECTOR Chris Dicker (ext 6709) dISPLAy SENIOR SALES ExECUTIVES ‘Templehead’, Transglobal Steve Woollett (ext 2670) Underground dress up as Fred Buun (ext 2662) LIVE & LABELS SENIOR SALES ExECUTIVE Antony and Cleopatra for their Emma Martin (ext 6705) NME HEAd OF PROjECT MANAGEMENT photo shoot, mocking the Elisabeth Hempshall (ext 6726) Tory government’s clampdown dIRECTOR OF INSIGHT Amanda Wigginton (ext 3636) 57 on rave culture. “They don’t REGIONAL BUSINESS dEVELOPMENT MANAGER Oliver Scull (0161 872 2152) give a toss about what Ad PROdUCTION Laurie King (ext 6729) CLASSIFIEd SALES MANAGER people think,” keyboardist Laura Andrus (ext 2547) CLASSIFIEd SALES ExECUTIVE and visionary Attia Ahlan Tom Spratt (ext 2611) CLASSIFIEd Ad COPy tells Steve Sutherland. “They Rosanne Hannaway (ext 2506) keep winning elections with Tom Coelho (ext 2672) SyNdICATION MANAGER Lucy Cox (ext 5483) a minority, so what that means SUBSCRIPTIONS MARKETING ExECUTIVE is the minority are in control.” Gemma Burnie (ext 6304) Kurt’s overdose INNOVATOR – INSERT SAlES Emma Young (ext 3704) REVIEWED THIS WEEK PUBlISHING Nirvana’s future hangs in the balance after Morrissey – GROUP PROdUCTION MANAGER Tom Jennings As the Nirvana PROdUCTION CONTROLLER Lisa Clay an overdose in Italy on March 4 leaves Kurt ‘Vauxhall And I’ INTERNATIONAL EdITIONS singer recovers from Bianca Foster-Hamilton (ext 5490) Cobain in a coma for over 12 hours and the “A skull gets MARKETING ANd EVENTS ExECUTIVE Charlotte Treadaway (ext 6779) an apparent drugs remaining dates on the band’s European tour hammered in, PUBLISHER Ellie Miles (ext 6775) are cancelled. “Kurt is recovering,” management a sailor dies, PUBLISHING dIRECTOR Jo Smalley overdose in a Rome PA TO PUBLISHING dIRECTOR Zoe Roll (ext 6913) representative Janet Billig says. “It was an there’s a bizarre swimming © Time Inc. (UK) ltd Reproduction of any material without hospital, the rumours accident. He had been sick with infuenza and fatality… Morrissey’s ways are permission is strictly forbidden had a bad throat condition, so he went to Italy to still amazingly, luridly sick.” and denials begin recuperate. Then he inadvertently mixed a dose ■ STUART BAIlIE of tranquillisers with alcohol.” Though Cobain is conscious and reportedly ALSO IN THE ISSUE writing to well-wishers, doctors at the American THIS WEEK

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JUSTIN THOMAS JUSTIN room foor at 6.15am. if they really were rock gods.”

14 march 2015 | New musical express

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14 March 2015 | New Musical express

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN 93NME15011131.pgs 06.03.2015 16:16 ALSO NEXT WEEK IN NEXT WEEK’S ISSUE

INTERVIEWS Jamie T Diplo Raekwon

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