On his Red Hand Files website, Nick Cave reflected on a comment he’d made back in 1997 about needing catastrophe, loss, and longing in order for his creativity to flourish. “These words sound somewhat like the indulgent posturing of a man yet to discover the devastating effect true suffering can have on our ability to function, let alone to create,” he wrote. “I am not only talking about personal grief, but also global grief, as the world is plunged deeper into this wretched pandemic.” Whether he needs it or not, the Australian songwriter’s music does very often deal with catastrophe, loss, and longing. The pandemic didn’t inspire *CARNAGE* per se, but the challenges of 2020 clearly permitted both intense, lyric-stirring ideas and, with canceled tours and so on, the time and creativity to flesh them out with longtime collaborator and masterful multi-instrumentalist/songwriter Warren Ellis. The most direct reference to COVID-19 might be “Albuquerque,” a sentimental lamentation on the inability to travel. For the most part, Cave looks beyond the pandemic itself, throwing himself into a philosophical realm of meditations on humanity, isolation, love, and the Earth itself, depicted through observations and, as he is wont to do, taking on the roles of several other characters, sentient and otherwise. The album begins with “Hand of God.” There’s soft piano and lyrics about the search for “that kingdom in the sky,” until Ellis\' dissonant violin strikes away the sweetness and an electronic beat kicks in. “I’m going to the river where the current rushes by/I’m gonna swim to the middle where the water is real high,” he sings, a little manically, as he gives in to the current. “Hand of God coming from the sky/Gonna swim to the middle and stay out there awhile… Let the river cast its spell on me.” That unmitigated strength of nature is central to *CARNAGE*. Motifs of rivers, rain, animals, fields, and sunshine are used to depict not only the beauty and the bedlam he sees in the world, but the ways it changes him. On the sweet, delicate “Lavender Fields,” he sings of “traveling appallingly alone on a singular road into the lavender fields… the lavender has stained my skin and made me strange.” On “Carnage,” he sings of loss (“I always seem to be saying goodbye”), but also of love and hope, later depicting a “reindeer, frozen in the footlights,” who then escapes back into the woods. “It’s only love, with a little bit of rain,” goes the uplifting refrain. With its murky rhythm and snarling spoken-word lyrics, “White Elephant” is one of Cave’s most intense songs in years. It’s also the song that most explicitly references a 2020 event: the murder of George Floyd. “The white hunter sits on his porch with his elephant gun and his tears/He\'ll shoot you for free if you come around here/A protester kneels on the neck of a statue, the statue says, ‘I can’t breathe’/The protester says, ‘Now you know how it feels’ and he kicks it into the sea.” Later, he continues, as the hunter: “I’ve been planning this for years/I’ll shoot you in the f\*\*king face if you think of coming around here/I’ll shoot you just for fun.” It’s one of the only Nick Cave songs to ever address a racially, politically charged event so directly. And it’s a dark, powerful moment on this album. *CARNAGE* ends with a pair of atmospheric ballads—their soundscapes no doubt influenced by Cave and Ellis’ extensive work on film scores. On “Shattered Ground,” the exodus of a girl (a personification of the moon) invokes peaceful, muted pain—“I will be all alone when you are gone… I will not make a single sound, but come softly crashing down”—and “Balcony Man” depicts a man watching the sun and considering how “everything is ordinary, until it’s not,” tweaking an idiom with serene acceptance: “You are languid and lovely and lazy, and what doesn’t kill you just makes you crazier.” There is substantial pain, darkness, and loss on this album, but it doesn’t rip its narrator apart or invoke retaliation. Rather, he takes it all in, allowing himself to be moved and changed even if he can’t effect change himself. That challenging sense of being unable to do anything more than *observe* is synonymous with the pandemic, and more broadly the evolving, sometimes devastating world. Perhaps the lesson here is to learn to exist within its chaos—but to always search for beauty and love in its cracks.
Vilde Tuv, known as one of Norway’s greatest lyricists, has lost her words and is now expressing herself through a wooden recorder. Tuv rose to prominence as a “one woman band”, and she still is – the album is produced and mixed by her, and released on her newly minted label Poesy. It is an instrumental flute album for our times – it sounds busy, but it’s more of an antidote to busyness – a remedy to toxification and boredom.
“I don’t like to agonize over things,” Arlo Parks tells Apple Music. “It can tarnish the magic a little. Usually a song will take an hour or less from conception to end. If I listen back and it’s how I pictured it, I move on.” The West London poet-turned-songwriter is right to trust her “gut feeling.” *Collapsed in Sunbeams* is a debut album that crystallizes her talent for chronicling sadness and optimism in universally felt indie-pop confessionals. “I wanted a sense of balance,” she says. “The record had to face the difficult parts of life in a way that was unflinching but without feeling all-consuming and miserable. It also needed to carry that undertone of hope, without feeling naive. It had to reflect the bittersweet quality of being alive.” *Collapsed in Sunbeams* achieves all this, scrapbooking adolescent milestones and Parks’ own sonic evolution to form something quite spectacular. Here, she talks us through her work, track by track. **Collapsed in Sunbeams** “I knew that I wanted poetry in the album, but I wasn\'t quite sure where it was going to sit. This spoken-word piece is actually the last thing that I did for the album, and I recorded it in my bedroom. I liked the idea of speaking to the listener in a way that felt intimate—I wanted to acknowledge the fact that even though the stories in the album are about me, my life and my world, I\'m also embarking on this journey with listeners. I wanted to create an avalanche of imagery. I’ve always gravitated towards very sensory writers—people like Zadie Smith or Eileen Myles who hone in on those little details. I also wanted to explore the idea of healing, growth, and making peace with yourself in a holistic way. Because this album is about those first times where I fell in love, where I felt pain, where I stood up for myself, and where I set boundaries.” **Hurt** “I was coming off the back of writer\'s block and feeling quite paralyzed by the idea of making an album. It felt quite daunting to me. Luca \[Buccellati, Parks’ co-producer and co-writer\] had just come over from LA, and it was January, and we hadn\'t seen each other in a while. I\'d been listening to plenty of Motown and The Supremes, plus a lot of Inflo\'s production and Cleo Sol\'s work. I wanted to create something that felt triumphant, and that you could dance to. The idea was for the song to expose how tough things can be but revolve around the idea of the possibility for joy in the future. There’s a quote by \[Caribbean American poet\] Audre Lorde that I really liked: ‘Pain will either change or end.’ That\'s what the song revolved around for me.” **Too Good** “I did this one with Paul Epworth in one of our first days of sessions. I showed him all the music that I was obsessed with at the time, from ’70s Zambian psychedelic rock to MF DOOM and the hip-hop that I love via Tame Impala and big ’90s throwback pop by TLC. From there, it was a whirlwind. Paul started playing this drumbeat, and then I was just running around for ages singing into mics and going off to do stuff on the guitar. I love some of the little details, like the bump on someone’s wrist and getting to name-drop Thom Yorke. It feels truly me.” **Hope** “This song is about a friend of mine—but also explores that universal idea of being stuck inside, feeling depressed, isolated, and alone, and being ashamed of feeling that way, too. It’s strange how serendipitous a lot of themes have proved as we go through the pandemic. That sense of shame is present in the verses, so I wanted the chorus to be this rallying cry. I imagined a room full of people at a show who maybe had felt alone at some point in their lives singing together as this collective cry so they could look around and realize they’re not alone. I wanted to also have the little spoken-word breakdown, just as a moment to bring me closer to the listener. As if I’m on the other side of a phone call.” **Caroline** “I wrote ‘Caroline’ and ‘For Violet’ on the same, very inspired day. I had my little £8 bottle of Casillero del Diablo. I was taken back to when I first started writing at seven or eight, where I would write these very observant and very character-based short stories. I recalled this argument that I’d seen taken place between a couple on Oxford Street. I only saw about 30 seconds of it, but I found myself wondering all these things. Why was their relationship exploding out in the open like that? What caused it? Did the relationship end right there and then? The idea of witnessing a relationship without context was really interesting to me, and so the lyrics just came out as a stream of consciousness, like I was relaying the story to a friend. The harmonies are also important on this song, and were inspired by this video I found of The Beatles performing ‘This Boy.’ The chorus feels like such an explosion—such a release—and harmonies can accentuate that.” **Black Dog** “A very special song to me. I wrote this about my best friend. I remember writing that song and feeling so confused and helpless trying to understand depression and what she was going through, and using music as a form of personal catharsis to work through things that felt impossible to work through. I recorded the vocals with this lump in my throat because it was so raw. Musically, I was harking back to songs like ‘Nude’ and ‘House of Cards’ on *In Rainbows*, plus music by Nick Drake and tracks from Sufjan Stevens’ *Carrie & Lowell*. I wanted something that felt stripped down.” **Green Eyes** “I was really inspired by Frank Ocean here—particularly ‘Futura Free’ \[from 2016’s *Blonde*\]. I was also listening to *Moon Safari* by Air, Stereolab, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Tirzah, Beach House, and a lot of that dreamy, nostalgic pop music that I love. It was important that the instrumental carry a warmth because the song explores quite painful places in the verses. I wanted to approach this topic of self-acceptance and self-discovery, plus people\'s parents not accepting them and the idea of sexuality. Understanding that you only need to focus on being yourself has been hard-won knowledge for me.” **Just Go** “A lot of the experiences I’ve had with toxic people distilled into one song. I wanted to talk about the idea of getting negative energy out of your life and how refreshed but also sad it leaves you feeling afterwards. That little twinge from missing someone, but knowing that you’re so much better off without them. I was thinking about those moments where you’re trying to solve conflict in a peaceful way, but there are all these explosions of drama. You end up realizing, ‘You haven’t changed, man.’ So I wanted a breakup song that said, simply, ‘No grudges, but please leave my life.’” **For Violet** “I imagined being in space, or being in a desert with everything silent and you’re alone with your thoughts. I was thinking about ‘Roads’ by Portishead, which gives me that similar feeling. It\'s minimal, it\'s dark, it\'s deep, it\'s gritty. The song covers those moments growing up when you realize that the world is a little bit heavier and darker than you first knew. I think everybody has that moment where their innocence is broken down a little bit. It’s a story about those big moments that you have to weather in friendships, and asking how you help somebody without over-challenging yourself. That\'s a balance that I talk about in the record a lot.” **Eugene** “Both ‘Black Dog’ and ‘Eugene’ represent a middle chapter between my earlier EPs and the record. I was pulling from all these different sonic places and trying to create a sound that felt warmer, and I was experimenting with lyrics that felt a little more surreal. I was talking a lot about dreams for the first time, and things that were incredibly personal. It felt like a real step forward in terms of my confidence as a writer, and to receive messages from people saying that the song has helped get them to a place where they’re more comfortable with themselves is incredible.” **Bluish** “I wanted it to feel very close. Very compact and with space in weird places. It needed to mimic the idea of feeling claustrophobic in a friendship. That feeling of being constantly asked to give more than you can and expected to be there in ways that you can’t. I wanted to explore the idea of setting boundaries. The Afrobeat-y beat was actually inspired by Radiohead’s ‘Identikit’ \[from 2016’s *A Moon Shaped Pool*\]. The lyrics are almost overflowing with imagery, which was something I loved about Adrianne Lenker’s *songs* album: She has these moments where she’s talking about all these different moments, and colors and senses, textures and emotions. This song needed to feel like an assault on the senses.” **Portra 400** “I wanted this song to feel like the end credits rolling down on one of those coming-of-age films, like *Dazed and Confused* or *The Breakfast Club*. Euphoric, but capturing the bittersweet sentiment of the record. Making rainbows out of something painful. Paul \[Epworth\] added so much warmth and muscularity that it feels like you’re ending on a high. The song’s partly inspired by *Just Kids* by Patti Smith, and that idea of relationships being dissolved and wrecked by people’s unhealthy coping mechanisms.”
Towards the end of “Serotonin,” the opening track on girl in red’s debut album, some Norwegian dialogue emerges through the bracing alloy of indie rock and hip-hop. “That recording is where I’m talking to the doctor,” the singer-songwriter born Marie Ulven tells Apple Music. “My friend had to carry me out from a lobby in Bergen while I was making the album because I woke up, thought I had a blood clot in my brain, and was like, ‘I’m about to die.’ I’m like, ‘OK, it felt like my heart stopped beating.’” It’s a moment that exemplifies the album’s remarkable openness—manifested by Ulven’s emotional honesty and her anything-goes approach to making music. “Serotonin” details the Norwegian’s experiences with intrusive thoughts, and across the subsequent 10 tracks, she performs an unflinching internal audit, processing her feelings, anxieties, and behaviors and their effects on herself and her loved ones. It’s all cast in a free-spirited brand of alt-pop that dissolves genre boundaries and shreds the “bedroom indie” tag that accompanied her early DIY EPs. The result is something that she hopes will offer help to anyone who listens. “It would be really cool if I was able to say some shit about their lives, not just mine,” she says. “The best thing about music is when you hear a song where someone is explaining what you felt but you’re not able to say because you haven’t dared to try and figure it out, or haven’t had the time.” Let girl in red take you through the album, track by track. **“Serotonin”** “\[Intrusive thoughts\] can be really scary and make you feel really crazy if you don’t know what they are, where they’re coming from, and how to deal with them. It was so liberating, knowing that I’m not crazy and that I don’t want to do these things, and then I just felt like I was over it almost. Then I wrote the song. It was just a weird journey figuring out the rap parts, but they came really quick. It was not a hard time writing those lyrics. They poured out of me.” **“Did You Come?”** “There’s no proper chorus there. The entire thing is just like a vibe. It’s hooky, and that’s all you need. I started out with the lyrics first: ‘You should know better now to fuck it up and fuck around.’ I was like, ‘Oh, this is cheating. Someone is really fucking angry here, and this is a great way to get out this aggression.’ I started making really fast-paced drums and this guitar and this piano thing. It really made me see a lot of stuff in my head.” **“Body and Mind”** “I’ve experienced a lot of self-hatred this past year, which I’ve never really understood. Realizing that you are a person is really fucking weird. I think a lot of people struggle with accepting mortality. People fixing up their bodies, changing themselves because they just want to avoid the inevitable, which is dying and aging. This is me trying to comfort myself: ‘I’ve had my deepest cries for now/My heart’s out, my guard’s down.’ I’m accepting this shit, and I don’t want to beat myself up for being a person. I think aging as a concept is really beautiful because it just means that you’re alive still.” **“hornylovesickmess”** “It’s a fun, self-aware track about how my life led me to be a jerk to someone a little bit and also being really sad that touring had its toll on my relationship with this person. My favorite line is ‘Maybe on a bus for months straight, shit’s fun but I’m going insane/Like it’s been months since I’ve had sex, I’m just a horny little lovesick mess.’ Just this fun image of me being with 10 sweaty guys on the tour bus, and being in a bunk bed thinking about this one person that I just want to call right now.” **“midnight love”** “I had a friend that would always get a guy over late at night. Then he would leave in the morning and they would never hang out during daytime. It was really getting to her. I was like, ‘Oh, this reminds me of someone.’ I was that dude who would just call someone when I felt like ‘I need this and I know that you are able to give it to me, so therefore I will call you.’ I’d never had any bad intentions. But I was able to realize a few things about myself.” **“You Stupid Bitch”** “The story here is that I had to go and comfort someone because of their broken relationships with other people. But really: ‘I’m here, I could be yours right now and you wouldn’t be going through all of this if you just saw how present I am and how much I want to be with you.’ It’s about being so angry but still comforting someone: ‘I love you but you’re fucking stupid.’ It is a really intense song, but it’s going to go hard live.” **“Rue”** “I’m singing to my sister. I had to sleep in her bed for weeks straight because I’ve just been so scared. Every time I was about to fall asleep, I felt like my heart stopped beating, so I’d want to be in her bed in case I died. I’ve just been completely all over the place. This is singing to my family and loved ones that I want to get better. I’m trying to leave it all behind. I don’t want to make it worse for you guys. It’s also about realizing that you have to do the work. If you want to get better mentally, or if you struggle with depression or anxiety, it’s such a heavy realization figuring out that it’s you who has to do it.” **“Apartment 402”** “I live in Apartment 402. I’m imagining myself lying on the floor because I’ve lost every will to do anything. I’m singing about how shitty things have been for so long; I have a sense of hopelessness. But then I’m seeing the sun come in. You know when you see the sunlight hit dust? The room is opening up for me. I’m turning this place that I’ve had so many bad feelings towards into something beautiful and into a safe place and a good place—not just a place I could die in and nobody would know.” **“.”** “There’s something about the vocal performance that’s just like, ‘Oh, Marie, you really, really know what you’re saying right now.’ That song is really sad and I always want to cry thinking about it. It’s about the one that got away, really. A result of touring and being away a bit too long and not giving enough while being away. And how that can seem like you don’t care, but in reality, in my bubble, I was like, ‘I have absolutely no emotional capacity to be in another country and to give you what I think you need from me right now.’ It just ended up disappearing, and there wasn’t really anything more to say than to just have a full stop.” **“I’ll Call You Mine”** “It’s such a catchy, summery, driving song. It’s about letting someone in and hoping for the best, even though you’ve been fucked over a few times. I’ve had a tendency to think that nothing good could ever last. You know how sometimes you have fun but then we’re like, ‘Oh, something bad is going to happen.’ Two or three years ago, I’d have fun with my friends, and I’d be driving and I’d be like, ‘One of us is going to die first.’ That always happens, a real death element coming in, or ‘someone is going to get hurt’ element.” **“it would feel like this”** “\[The title\] *if i could make it go quiet* is all about the mental noise, all the feelings and thoughts that are so big they just take up your entire mental capacity and take over your entire body. This song feels like ‘If I could make it go quiet, it would feel like this.’ This place of quietness, this beautiful place where I’m able to be OK. I’m taking it all in. It feels like the credits to a movie because the album is so full, you could get to like, ‘Holy cow, what did I just listen to?’ There’s no words. You don’t need any. I’ve just poured my heart out in all of these songs.”
On their seventh album, French prog-metal stars GOJIRA take a very different lyrical tack than the one they explored on their previous album, *Magma*. “There was a lot of pain and grief attached to that album, from the whole experience of losing my mom back in 2015,” vocalist and guitarist Joe Duplantier tells Apple Music. “With *Fortitude*, we had the desire to fill the album with more joy, even if it doesn’t come across as joyful music.” With its themes of civil disobedience and environmental awareness, *Fortitude* takes Magma’s inward gaze and turns it outwards. “*Magma* was very personal and intimate,” Duplantier offers. “*Fortitude* is more oriented toward the world and politics.”Below, he comments on each song. **“Born for One Thing”** “This is about facing the fear of death. At a certain age, there’s a consciousness in all of us, a clock ticking—a countdown to the great unknown. It’s a reflection based on some books I read when I was younger about Buddhism and these philosophies that teach how to be at peace with oneself and meditate on the essence of being. That’s something we’re losing a little bit in society. Instead, we worry about the things that we want to hold on to in case the world goes to shit.” **“Amazonia”** “The intro and outro riff sound very much like Sepultura’s ‘Roots Bloody Roots.’ We don’t hide from the fact that we are huge Sepultura fans—our first show was mainly Sepultura covers, believe it or not. They’re a Brazilian band originally, and they also were working at raising awareness about the Indigenous cause. So the proceeds from this song are going to launch Operation Amazonia, as we call it, where we’re going to ask our musician friends to donate instruments for an auction. The money will go to an NGO based in Brazil called APIB—it’s the largest Indigenous-owned NGO—to support the Indigenous peoples and protect the rainforest from big corporations.” **“Another World”** “We wrote this song in one day, whereas some of the others on the album took three years. The lyrics come from a feeling that the world is completely screwed, so I feel sometimes that I want another world. The video we made for it is supposed to be ironic and funny—four dudes that play in a metal band build a rocket together and travel through a wormhole to the future. It’s sort of a funny remake of *Planet of the Apes*. But the animation was so well-done and classy that it somehow lost a little bit of the humor that was intended.” **“Hold On”** “It’s one of the last songs I wrote for this album, and I was struggling to come up with lyrics. I had already written about things that really matter to me, like civil disobedience and the Amazon. But I really loved the music for this, so I absolutely wanted it on the album. At some point, I was really depressed and about to give up and I decided to just fucking let it out. I was feeling overwhelmed by life, and I had this vision that life is like an ocean and we need to hold on to something because waves are crashing on us. Then it started to flow and I found my voice for this song.” **“New Found”** “For this, I had the title before doing the lyrics. But the main thing I wanted to talk about in the song is finding the thing that gives a new meaning to your entire life. Having kids is a big one. When you understand something about yourself deeply and think, ‘Okay, this is who I am,’ you get to know yourself a little better.” **“Fortitude”** “Fortitude is the underlying idea throughout the whole album. It’s a mantra. It’s something that is addressing the universe and the stars and the planets when I sing, and maybe an alien consciousness or whatever there is up or down there—spirits, guides. It’s like a prayer. It\'s the thing that sums up the entire album, but very personal. The more you’re honest with yourself, with your heart, the more people are going to feel it.” **“The Chant”** “This is a leap from the metal songs to a weird, Indigenous type of rock song. There’s a change of tonality also. The beginning of the album is a G, and then towards the end it’s a C. As the intro to this song, ‘Fortitude’ is something that orients your ear towards another field of notes, so it’s preparing the brain to make room. When ‘The Chant’ hits, it feels two times harder and stronger than it would be if it was directly after another song. It’s a mantra with an intention of unification through peace and strength, something that the human race needs a lot.” **“Sphinx”** “There’s a lot of our roots as a death metal band coming through here, and a little bit of a Metallica vibe at the beginning with the buildup on the toms. So it sounds old-school but also modern, because we have these intricate things with the whammy and all that stuff. Lyrically, I’m very fascinated by the Sphinx. Some Egyptologists say that the Sphinx is actually pre-Egyptian, that it’s much older than we think and was maybe built by a different civilization. So I wrote a song about how the Sphinx is witnessing the rise and maybe the fall of our civilization, and it’s surviving us all.” **“Into the Storm”** “This is about civil disobedience, a subject that is very dear to my heart. If you\'re a good citizen and you believe in communities and in people, you have to disobey sometimes. We have to bend the rules because some of the rules are ridiculous and unfair. We are creating the rules and laws of this world, not the other way around. Of course, I\'m not calling people for a riot or whatever. What I\'m saying is that it\'s important to question things and to realize that it\'s not because society is telling you to do something that you should necessarily do that.” **“The Trails”** “It’s like a blurry dream—a poem with soothing music. We always have this toward the end of our albums, because we can’t help but experiment. I could easily do a side project or a solo career to express some of the stuff that is not metal, but I choose to focus on the band and turn GOJIRA into a weird beast that has several faces. I think ‘The Trails’ is a more subtle side of us, but it’s actually very technical. It’s maybe the hardest song to play on guitar on the entire album, but it’s also the calmest.” **“Grind”** “Of course, we love to grind. I don’t know if there’s anything better in this world than playing a riff with a drummer, just grinding it. Lyric-wise, I’m talking about transcending ourselves and overcoming our problems. We have the power. We can change things. We can bend laws. We can break walls. But we also have our routines—wake up, wash the dishes, go to work, make money. You have to surrender to that clockwork grind in order to find freedom. So do your dishes, motherfucker. You’ll suffer less tomorrow.”
Lil Nas X is nothing if not a testament to the power of being true to yourself. His breakthrough single, “Old Town Road,” forced the industry to revisit old conversations about the limitations of genre, race, and who is kept out (or locked in) by the definitions we use to talk about music. The Georgia-born singer-rapper responded in kind with a remix and remixes to that remix that rocketed him up the charts and simultaneously highlighted the fickleness of the entire endeavor—did Billy Ray Cyrus suddenly prove his country bona fides any more than the addition of Young Thug proved his trap ones or Diplo his electronic? But that\'s the magic of Lil Nas X and of his debut album *MONTERO*: He knows that pop music is whatever the artist creating it wants it to be, an exercise of vulnerable imagination packaged as unyielding, larger-than-life confidence. “I feel like with this album, I know what I wanted,” he tells Apple Music\'s Zane Lowe. “I know what I want. I know where I want to be in life. And I know that\'s going to take me being more open and bringing it out of myself no matter how much it hurts or feels uncomfortable to say things that I need to say.” But any such ambivalence doesn\'t explicitly manifest in the songs here, as Lil Nas X roams his interior spaces as openly as he does assorted styles—which span everything from emo and grunge to indie pop and pop punk. On “DEAD RIGHT NOW,” a thunderous track complete with choral flourishes, he recaps the journey to this moment, how it almost didn\'t happen, and the ways his personal relationships have changed since. “If I didn’t blow up, I would\'ve died tryna be here/If it didn’t go, suicide, wouldn’t be here,” he sings, adding, “Now they all come around like they been here/When you get this rich and famous everybody come up to you singing, \'Hallelujah, how’d you do it?\'” All throughout—on songs like “SUN GOES DOWN” or “DONT WANT IT”—the weight of his burdens exists in contrast to the levity of his sound, a particular kind of Black and queer disposition that insists on a joy that is far more profound than any pain. And make no mistake, there is plenty of joy here. On “SCOOP,” he finds an effervescent kindred spirit in Doja Cat, while “DOLLA SIGN SLIME,” which features Megan Thee Stallion, is a trapped-out victory lap. Elsewhere, the dark riffs on the outstanding “LIFE AFTER SALEM” bring him to new creative lands altogether. The album brims with surprises that continuously reveal him anew, offering a peek into the mind of an artist who is unafraid of himself or his impulses, even with the knowledge that he\'s still a work in progress. “Don\'t look at me as this perfect hero who\'s not going to make mistakes and should be the voice for everybody,” he says. “You\'re the voice for you.” And to that effect, *MONTERO* is a staggering triumph that suggests not just who Lil Nas X is but the infinite possibilities of who he may be in the future, whether that falls within the scope of our imaginations or not.
When Low started out in the early ’90s, you could’ve mistaken their slowness for lethargy, when in reality it was a mark of almost supernatural intensity. Like 2018’s *Double Negative*, *Hey What* explores new extremes in their sound, mixing Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker\'s naked harmonies with blocks of noise and distortion that hover in drumless space—tracks such as “Days Like These” and “More” sound more like 18th-century choral music than 21st-century indie rock. Their faith—they’ve been practicing Mormons most of their lives—has never been so evident, not in content so much as purity of conviction: Nearly 30 years after forming, they continue to chase the horizon with a fearlessness that could make anyone a believer.
Fresh off of their 2020 offering Adult Themes, El Michels Affair is back with a new full-length release. Titled Yeti Season, this newest album has everything we've come to expect from EMA’s patented cinematic style of instrumental soul music. Where Adult Themes inspired a soundtrack to an imaginary film, Yeti Season brings us to a different place in time—with new inspirations. Taken with Turkish-styled funk and an almost Mumbai-esque take on soul, El Michels Affair offers us a different kind of drama and imagination with Yeti Season. If you've been following along, this shouldn't be viewed as too far a departure for El Michels Affair. The first single off of Yeti Season showed their hand back in 2018. A double-sided banger, that release brought the musical textures to the fore that dominate this record. The first song, titled "Unathi," is fully realized with the beautifully haunting-yet-hopeful vocals of Piya Malik, formerly of 79.5. Singing in Hindi, Piya's ethereal voice is telling us to work and strive together toward progress. Even if you don't understand her language, you can still hear the urgency of purpose, creating a lasting vibe that sits on top of it all. Leon Michels explains that Piya had a vital influence on this record: "When Piya started singing in Hindi, she had a different voice, a different tone. I knew we had to do something together." And so Piya appears on three other songs on Yeti Season: "Zaharila," "Murkit Gem," and "Dhuaan." Each providing particular signatures to the album. "Zaharila" is a building and changing love song punctuated by blaring trumpets, driving drums, and Piya's pleading lyrics. While the more upbeat "Murkit Gem" opens with a fuzzed out, Wu-Tang-esque baseline that buoys Piya's stylings. The psychedelic guitar and Piya's changing tones and textures singing about an all-consuming love are what pushed "Dhuaan" on to the second single from Yeti Season. There is also a vocal appearance from Shannon Wise of The Shacks, yet another Big Crown artist. Her song called "Sha Na Na," lies more in the familiar EMA vein: melodic, hypnotic, soulfully visual. But between Shannon's airy singing, the jumpy baseline, moody vibes, the active drum lines, it sounds like a pensive walk home after a strangely dramatic night. So what is Yeti Season? It could be more of a feeling than an actual place or time of year. It's a heavy album—as evidenced by the signature musicianship and dramatic vocal expressions. But it's also a hopeful record, with phrasings, textures, and chord changes that hint at something better—or fuller—coming our way. You hear it in songs like "Ala Vida," with its stabby, pulsing chords laying a bedrock for EMA's bright, atmospheric horn lines. Or even in "Fazed Out," which leaves you with a feeling of determination, a striving for resolution even though the driving, march-like song structure should accompany some conquering army. This persistence has to come from the fact that Leon Michels and company finished this record during the lockdown. It was a tough and troublesome time. But look at what has come of it: Yeti Season—a record of high and heavy drama, but also one of hope and promise. It may take a year like 2020 behind us to find hope in a winter big footed creature like a Yeti, but that's where we are.
Where Lana Del Rey’s previous 2021 album *Chemtrails Over the Country Club* made no reference to the global pandemic in which it was partly created, *Blue Banisters* is steeped in it. From bringing up Black Lives Matter protests in “Text Book” to facing the loneliness of isolation during quarantine in “Black Bathing Suit,” there’s no shortage of references to the year that kept us all inside. “And if this is the end, I want a boyfriend/Someone to eat ice cream with and watch television,” she sings. When not singing about girls in summer dresses dancing with their masks off, Lana ruminates on her family. She mentions her sister Chuck in the title track and regales with tales about her parents in “Wildflower Wildfire.”
“Sometimes I’ll be in my own space, my own company, and that’s when I\'m really content,” Little Simz tells Apple Music. “It\'s all love, though. There’s nothing against anyone else; that\'s just how I am. I like doing my own thing and making my art.” The lockdowns of 2020, then, proved fruitful for the North London MC, singer, and actor. She wrestled writer’s block, revived her cult *Drop* EP series (explore the razor-sharp and diaristic *Drop 6* immediately), and laid grand plans for her fourth studio album. Songwriter/producer Inflo, co-architect of Simz’s 2019 Mercury-nominated, Ivor Novello Award-winning *GREY Area*, was tapped and the hard work began. “It was straight boot camp,” she says of the *Sometimes I Might Be Introvert* sessions in London and Los Angeles. “We got things done pronto, especially with the pace that me and Flo move at. We’re quite impulsive: When we\'re ready to go, it’s time to go.” Months of final touches followed—and a collision between rap and TV royalty. An interest in *The Crown* led Simz to approach Emma Corrin (who gave an award-winning portrayal of Princess Diana in the drama). She uses her Diana accent to offer breathless, regal addresses that punctuate the 19-track album. “It was a reach,” Simz says of inviting Corrin’s participation. “I’m not sure what I expected, but I enjoyed watching her performance, and wrote most of her words whilst I was watching her.” Corrin’s speeches add to the record’s sense of grandeur. It pairs turbocharged UK rap with Simz at her most vulnerable and ambitious. There are meditations on coming of age in the spotlight (“Standing Ovation”), a reunion with fellow Sault collaborator Cleo Sol on the glorious “Woman,” and, in “Point and Kill,” a cleansing, polyrhythmic jam session with Nigerian artist Obongjayar that confirms the record’s dazzling sonic palette. Here, Simz talks us through *Sometimes I Might Be Introvert*, track by track. **“Introvert”** “This was always going to intro the album from the moment it was made. It feels like a battle cry, a rebirth. And with the title, you wouldn\'t expect this to sound so huge. But I’m finding the power within my introversion to breathe new meaning into the word.” **“Woman” (feat. Cleo Sol)** “This was made to uplift and celebrate women. To my peers, my family, my friends, close women in my life, as well as women all over the world: I want them to know I’ve got their back. Linking up with Cleo is always fun; we have such great musical chemistry, and I can’t imagine anyone else bringing what she did to the song. Her voice is beautiful, but I think it\'s her spirit and her intention that comes through when she sings.” **“Two Worlds Apart”** “Firstly, I love this sample; it’s ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy’ by Smokey Robinson, and Flo’s chopped it up really cool. This is my moment to flex. You had the opener, followed by a nice, smoother vibe, but this is like, ‘Hey, you’re listening to a *rap* album.’” **“I Love You, I Hate You”** “This wasn’t the easiest song for me to write, but I\'m super proud that I did. It’s an opportunity for me to lay bare my feelings on how that \[family\] situation affected me, growing up. And where I\'m at now—at peace with it and moving on.” **“Little Q, Pt. 1 (Interlude)”** “Little Q is my cousin, Qudus, on my dad\'s side. We grew up together, but then there was a stage where we didn\'t really talk for some years. No bad blood, just doing different things, so when we reconnected, we had a real heart-to-heart—and I heard about all he’d been through. It made me feel like, ‘Damn, this is a blood relative, and he almost lost his life.’ I thank God he didn’t, but I thought of others like him. And I felt it was important that his story was heard and shared. So, I’m speaking from his perspective.” **“Little Q, Pt. 2”** “I grew up in North London and \[Little Q\] was raised in South, and as much as we both grew up in endz, his experience was obviously different to mine. Being a product of an environment or system that isn\'t really for you, it’s tough trying to navigate that.” **“Gems (Interlude)”** “This is another turning point, reminding myself to take time: ‘Breathe…you\'re human. Give what you can give, but don\'t burn out for anyone. Put yourself first.’ Just little gems that everyone needs to hear once in a while.” **“Speed”** “This track sends another reminder: ‘This game is a marathon, not a sprint. So pace yourself!’ I know where I\'m headed, and I\'m taking my time, with little breaks here and there. Now I know when to really hit the gas and also when to come off a bit.” **“Standing Ovation”** “I take some time to reflect here, like, ‘Wow, you\'re still here and still going. It’s been a slow burn, but you can afford to give yourself a pat on the back.’ But as well as being in the limelight, let\'s also acknowledge the people on the ground doing real amazing work: our key workers, our healers, teachers, cleaners. If you go to a toilet and it\'s dirty, people go in from 9 to 5 and make sure that shit is spotless for you, so let\'s also say thank you.” **“I See You”** “This is a really beautiful and poetic song on love. Sometimes as artists we tend to draw from traumatic times for great art, we’re hurt or in pain, but it was nice for me to be able to draw from a place of real joy in my life for this song. Even where it sits \[on the album\]: right in the center, the heart.” **“The Rapper That Came to Tea (Interlude)”** “This title is a play on \[Judith Kerr’s\] children\'s book *The Tiger Who Came to Tea*, and this is about me better understanding my introversion. I’m just posing questions to myself—I might not necessarily have answers for them, I think it\'s good to throw them out there and get the brain working a bit.” **“Rollin Stone”** “This cut reminds me somewhat of ’09 Simz, spitting with rapidness and being witty. And I’m also finding new ways to use my voice on the second half here, letting my evil twin have her time.” **“Protect My Energy”** “This is one of the songs I\'m really looking forward to performing live. It’s a stepper, and it got me really wanting to sing, to be honest. I very much enjoy being around good company, but these days I enjoy my personal space and I want to protect that.” **“Never Make Promises (Interlude)”** “This one is self-explanatory—nothing is promised at all. It’s a short intermission to lead to the next one, but at one point it was nearly the album intro.” **“Point and Kill” (feat. Obongjayar)** “This is a big vibe! It feels very much like Nigeria to me, and Obongjayar is one of my favorites at the moment. We recorded this in my living room on a whim—and I\'m very, very grateful that he graced this song. The title comes from a phrase used in Nigeria to pick out fish at the market, or a store. You point, they kill. But also metaphorically, whatever I want, I\'m going to get in the same way, essentially.” **“Fear No Man”** “This track continues the same vibe, even more so. It declares: ‘I\'m here. I\'m unapologetically me and I fear no one here. I\'m not shook of anyone in this rap game.’” **“The Garden (Interlude)”** “This track is just amazing musically. It’s about nurturing the seeds you plant. Nurture those relationships, and everything around you that\'s holding you down.” **“How Did You Get Here”** “I want everyone to know *how* I got here; from the jump, school days, to my rap group, Space Age. We were just figuring it out, being persistent. I cried whilst recording this song; it all hit me, like, ‘I\'m actually recording my fourth album.’ Sometimes I sit and I wonder if this is all really true.” **“Miss Understood”** “This is the perfect closer. I could have ended on the last track, easily, but, I don\'t know, it\'s kind of like doing 99 reps. You\'ve done 99, that\'s amazing, but you can do one more to just make it 100, you can. And for me it was like, ‘I\'m going to get this one in there.’”
In August 2019, New York singer-songwriter Cassandra Jenkins thought she had the rest of her year fully mapped out, starting with a tour of North America as a guitarist in David Berman’s newly launched project Purple Mountains. But when Berman took his own life that month, everything changed. “All of a sudden, I was just unmoored and in shock,” she tells Apple Music. “I really only spent four days with David. But those four days really knocked me off my feet.” For the next few months, she wrote as she reflected, obsessively collecting ideas and lyrics, as well as recordings of conversations with friends and strangers—cab drivers and art museum security guards among them. The result is her sophomore LP, a set of iridescent folk rock that came together almost entirely over the course of one week, with multi-instrumentalist Josh Kaufman in his Brooklyn studio. “I was trying to articulate this feeling of getting comfortable with chaos,” she says. “And learning how to be comfortable with the idea that things are going to fall apart and they\'re going to come back together. I had shed a lot of skin very quickly.” Here, Jenkins tells us the story of each song on the album. **Michelangelo** “I think sequencing the record was an interesting challenge because, to me, the songs feel really different from one another. ‘Michelangelo’ is the only one that I came in with that was written—I had a melody that I wanted to use and I thought, ‘Okay, Josh, let’s make this into a little rock song and take the guitar solo in the middle.’ That was the first song we recorded, so it was just our way of getting into the groove of recording, with what sounds like a familiar version of what I\'ve done in the past.” **New Bikini** “I was worried when I was writing it that it sounded too starry-eyed and a little bit naive, saying, ‘The water cures everything.’ I think it was this tension between that advice—from a lot of people with good intentions—and me being like, ‘Well, it\'s not going to bring this person back from the dead and it\'s not going to change my DNA and it\'s not going to make this person better.’” **Hard Drive** “I just love talking to people, to strangers. The heart of the song is people talking about the nature of things, but often, what they\'re doing is actually talking about themselves and expressing something about themselves. I think that every person that I meet has wisdom to give and it\'s just a matter of turning that key with people. Because when you turn it and you open that door, you can be given so much more than you ever expected. Really listening, being more of a journalist in my own just day-to-day life—rather than trying to influence my surroundings, just letting them hit me.” **Crosshairs** “You could look at this as a kind of role-playing song, which isn\'t explicitly sexual, but that\'s definitely one aspect of it. It’s the idea that when you\'re assuming a different role within yourself, it actually can open up chambers within you that are otherwise not seeing the light of day. I was looking at the parts of me that are more masculine, the parts of me that are explicitly feminine, and seeing where everything is in between, while also trying to do the same for someone else in my life.” **Ambiguous Norway** “The song is titled after one of David\'s cartoons, a drawing of a house with a little pinwheel on the top. It\'s about that moment where I was experiencing this grief of David passing away, where I was really saturated in it. I threw myself onto this island in Norway—Lyngør—thinking I could sort of leave that behind to a certain extent, and just realizing that it really didn\'t matter what corner of the planet I found myself on, I was still interacting with the impression of David\'s death and finding that there was all of these coincidences everywhere I went. I felt like I was in this wide-eyed part of the grieving process where it becomes almost psychedelic, like I was seeing meaning in everything and not able at all to just put it into words because it was too big and too expansive.” **Hailey** “It\'s challenging to write a platonic love song—it doesn\'t have all the ingredients of heartbreak or lust or drama that I think a lot of those songs have. It\'s much more simple than that. I just wanted to celebrate her and also celebrate someone who\'s alive now, who\'s making me feel motivated to keep going when things get tough, and to have confidence in myself, because that\'s a really beautiful thing and it\'s rare to behold. I think a lot of the record is mourning, and this was kind of the opposite.” **The Ramble** “I made these binaural recordings as I walked around and birdwatched in the morning, in April \[2020\], when it was pretty much empty. I was a stone\'s throw away from all the hospitals that were cropping up in Central Park, while simultaneously watching nature flourish in this incredible way. I recorded a guitar part and then I sent that to all of my friends around the country and said, ‘Just write something, send it back to me. Don\'t spend a lot of time on it.’ I wanted to capture the feeling that things change, but it’s nature\'s course to find its way through. Just to go out with my binoculars and be in nature and observe birds is my way of really dissolving and letting go of a lot of my fears and anxieties—and I wanted to give that to other people.”
With their ninth album, melodic black-metal kings Vreid have created a soundtrack to their own movie of the same name. As such, each of the songs on *Wild North West* corresponds to a section of the film, and those sections are music videos for the songs. “We were about halfway there writing the album when we decided on the movie,” Vreid bassist and songwriter Jarle “Hváll” Kvåle tells Apple Music. “Then we started filming and recording at the same time, so there was a lot of back and forth. The movie kind of changed some of the music, and the other way around. It became a very strange way of working.” Below, Kvåle discusses each track on *Wild North West*—and how one song, in particular, finds its roots in the Vreid members’ previous band, Windir, which dissolved in 2004 after the accidental death of its founder, Terje “Valfar” Bakken. **Wild North West** “I wanted there to be no doubt that you’re now listening to a Vreid album. When I had the first riff going, I knew instantly that it would be the opening track. It’s heavy and it’s very melodic at the end there.” **Wolves at Sea** “The first part of the song is very classic, melodic black metal. I would say it’s one of the most black-metal sounding songs on the album, but it ended up a bit different at the end. On the last theme of the song, we have a break and I included piano and different stuff.” **The Morning Red** “When I started this song, it was clearly influenced by Alice Cooper, Scorpions, Maiden, and Metallica—how they do these slow, heavy songs and build into something more intense. When I listened over and over again to my favorite Metallica albums, like *Ride the Lightning* and *Master of Puppets*, they have the faster, more extreme stuff and then the slow song coming in there at the third or fourth song—I love that feeling. It kind of reminds me of what we did on the first album with tracks like ‘Helvete.’” **Shadows of Aurora** “This started out as two songs, but in the last rehearsal before we went in and did our first recordings, I put them together. One of the songs had a very slow, doom-ish kind of Pink Floyd vibe to it, whereas the other was a kind of classic thrash song that very much pays homage to the ’80s and ’90s scene. I think this is something that a lot of people have not seen so much of with Vreid on the previous albums. It’s more in the vein of when we started playing when we were 15 or 16 years old. It’s going back to youth somehow.” **Spikes of God** “When people see this title, they get this blasphemous, black-metal vibe. But it’s something completely different. It’s an even uglier story of lobotomy and how people were treated during much of the 20th century all over the world. It’s a very disturbing theme, and I felt that it really needed a disturbing song. Some of the chords are a bit off and it’s got many weird elements. It’s got such an ugly atmosphere that doesn’t let up. In many ways, it’s the most extreme song we’ve ever done with Vreid.” **Dazed and Reduced** “This is the complete opposite to the track before, and that’s also following the story of the movie: There’s something completely new happening here now. It’s one of the most catchy, straightforward, heavy rock ’n’ roll songs we’ve ever done. There’s completely different vocals than anything else we are used to listening for with Vreid. If we would try to mix more extreme elements into the song, we’d destroy it. This song shows a complete other side of Vreid, and I’m extremely proud of it.” **Into the Mountains** “Early in the process of making this album, I went through all my old hard drives and found some riffs and keyboard parts from 2002 that I had written and forgotten all about. This was in sessions for Windir, when we were making music with Valfar before he died. So, it felt very, very strange to find these things. But I was so inspired, I spent two days in the studio playing these riffs. Then came new ideas, and in many ways, it felt like me and Valfar were sitting there making music again. It was very emotional to take this journey 20 years back in time.” **Shadowland** “It’s by far the longest song of the album. Actually, this organ that’s starting the whole song, this came in while I was making the movie. It wasn’t there in the beginning. But when the drums and guitars come in, I think that was written before we released the previous album, *Lifehunger*. Very early, I had the idea that this was going to be the closing track for the album. It feels like a grand finale, and I’m quite happy with the way it turned out.”
Norwegian metal stalwarts Vreid pay tribute to their homeland with their epic new full-length, ‘Wild North West.’ Inspired by both true events and pure imagination, the album takes the listener on a whirlwind of a journey, diving deep into themes of war, fear, betrayal, loss, anxiety, and madness with thought-provoking lyrics that embody human nature. It captures the Nordic heart at the core of their sound, taking cues from Norway’s rugged landscape as it ricochets between eternal darkness and the solace of bracing light.
As Amyl and the Sniffers came off the road in late 2019, they moved into a house together in Melbourne. “It had lime green walls and mice,” frontwoman Amy Taylor tells Apple Music. “Three bedrooms and a shed out back that we took turns sleeping in. We knew we were going to come back for a long period of time to write. We just didn’t know how long.” Months later, as the bushfires gave way to a global pandemic, the Aussie punk outfit found themselves well-prepared for lockdown. “We’ve always kind of just been in each other’s pocket, forever and always,” Taylor says. “We’ve toured everywhere, been housemates, been in a van, and shared hotel rooms. We’re one person.” With all rehearsal studios closed, they rented a nearby storage unit where they could workshop the follow-up to their ARIA-winning, self-titled debut. The acoustics were so harsh and the PA so loud that guitarist Dec Martens says, “I never really heard any of Amy’s lyrics until they were recorded later on. She could’ve been singing about whatever, and I would have gone along with it, really.” And though *Comfort to Me* shows a more serious and personal side—as well as a range of influences that spans hardcore, power pop, and ’70s folk—that’s not necessarily a byproduct of living through a series of catastrophes. “I was pretty depressed,” Taylor says. “It’s hard to know what was the pandemic and what was just my brain. Even though you can’t travel and you can’t see people, life still just happens. I could look through last year and, really, it’s like the same amount of good and bad stuff happened, but in a different way. You’re just always feeling stuff.” Here, Taylor and Martens take us inside some of the album’s key tracks. **“Guided by Angels”** Amy Taylor: “I feel like, as a band, everyone thinks we’re just funny all the time. And we are funny and I love to laugh, but we also are full-spectrum humans who think about serious stuff as well, and I like that one because it’s kind of cryptic and poetic and a bit more dense. It’s not just, like, ‘Yee-haw, let’s punch a wall,’ which there’s plenty of and I also really love. We’re showing our range a little bit.” **“Freaks to the Front”** AT: “We must’ve written that before COVID. That’s absolutely a live-experience song and we’re such a live band—that’s our whole setup. We probably have more skills playing live than we do making music. It’s the energy that is contagious, and that one’s just kind of encouraging all kind of freaks, all kind of people: If you’re rich or poor or smart or fat or ugly or nice or mean, everyone just represent yourself and have a good time.” **“Choices”** Dec Martens: “\[Bassist\] Gus \[Romer\] is really into hardcore at the moment, and he wanted a really animalistic, straight-up hardcore song.” AT: “Growing up, I went to a fair handful of hardcore shows, and I personally liked the aggression of a hardcore show. In the audience, people kind of grabbing each other and chucking each other down, but then also pulling each other up and helping each other. I also just really like music that makes me feel angry. I constantly am getting unsolicited advice—or women, in general, are constantly getting told how to live and what to do. Everybody around the world is, and sometimes it’s really helpful—and I don’t discount that—but other times it’s just like, ‘Let me just fucking figure it out myself, and don’t tell me what kind of choices I can and can’t make, because it’s my flesh sack and I’ll do what I want with it.’” **“Hertz”** AT: “I think I started writing it at the start of 2020, pre-lockdown. But it’s funny now, because currently, being in lockdown again, I’m literally dying. I just want to get to the country and fucking not be in the city. So, the lyrics have really just come to fruition. I was thinking about somebody that I wasn’t really with at the time. It’s that feeling of feeling suffocated—you just want to look at the sky, just be in nature, and just be alive.” **“No More Tears”** DM: “I was really inspired by this ’70s album called *No Other* by Gene Clark, which isn’t very punk or rock. But I just played this at a faster tempo.” AT: “And also inspired heaps by the Sunnyboys, an Australian power pop band. Last year was really tough for me, and that song’s about how much I was struggling with heaps of different shit and trying to, I guess, try and make relationships work. I was just feeling not very lovable, because I’m all fucked in the head, but I’m also trying to make it work. It’s a pretty personal song.” **“Knifey”** AT: “It’s about my experience—and I’m sure lots of other people’s experience—of feeling safe to walk home at night. The world’s different for people like me and chicks and stuff: You can carry a weapon and if somebody does something awful and you react, it comes back to you. I remember when I was a kid, being like, ‘Dad, I want to get a knife,’ and he was like, ‘You can’t get a knife because you’ll kill someone and go to jail.’ But so be it. If somebody wants to have a go, I’m very happy to react negatively. At the start, I was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to do these lyrics. I don’t know if I’d want to play that song live.’ It’s probably the only song that I’ve ever really felt like that about. It hit up the boys in the band in an emotional way. They were like, ‘Fuck, this is powerful. Makes me cry and shit,’ and I was like, ‘That’s pretty dope.’” **“Don’t Need a C\*\*t (Like You to Love Me)”** AT: “It’s a fuck-you song. When I’m saying, ‘Don’t need a c\*\*t like you to love me,’ it’s pretty much just any c\*\*t that I don’t like in general. There could be some fucking piss-weak review of us or if I worked at a job and there was a crap fucking customer—it’s all of that. I wasn’t thinking about a particular bloke, although there’s many that I feel like that about.” **“Snakes”** “A bit of autobiography, an ode to my childhood. I grew up in a small town near the coast—kind of bogan, kind of hippy. I grew up on three acres, and I grew up in a shed with my sister, mom, and dad until I was about nine or 10, and we all shared a bedroom and would use the bath water to wash our clothes and then that same water to water the plants. Dad used to bring us toys home from the tip and we’d go swimming in the storms and there was snakes everywhere. There was snakes, literally, in the bedroom and the chick pens, and there’d be snakes killing the cats and snakes at school—and this song’s about that.”