Louder Than War Albums of the Year 2022

Although Dry Cleaning began work on their second album before the London quartet had even released their 2021 debut, *New Long Leg*, there was little creative overlap between the two. “I definitely think of it as a different chapter,” drummer Nick Buxton tells Apple Music. “I think one of the nicest things was just knowing what we were in for a bit more,” adds singer Florence Shaw. “It was less about, ‘What are we doing?’ and more thinking about what we were playing.” Recorded in the same studio (Wales’ famous Rockfield Studios) with the same producer (PJ Harvey collaborator John Parish) as *New Long Leg*, *Stumpwork* sees Shaw, Buxton, bassist Lewis Maynard, and guitarist Tom Dowse hone the wiry post-punk and rhythmical bursts of their debut. The jangly guitar lines are melodically sharper and the grooves more locked in as Shaw’s observational, spoken-word vocals pull at the threads of life’s big topics, even when she’s singing about a missing tortoise. “When we finished *New Long Leg*, I always felt a bit like, ‘Ah, I’d like another chance at that.’ With this one, it definitely felt like, ‘Really happy with that,’” says Buxton. The quartet take us on a tour of *Stumpwork*, track by track. **“Anna Calls From the Arctic”** Nick Buxton: “It was a very late decision to start the album with this. I think it’s quite unusual because it’s very different from a lot of the other songs on the album.” Florence Shaw: “I quite liked that the album opened with a question: ‘Should I propose friendship?’ In the outro, we were thinking about the John Barry song ‘Capsule in Space,’ from *You Only Live Twice*. There’s quite a bit of that in the outro. At least, it was on the mood board.” **“Kwenchy Kups”** NB: “It’s named after those little plastic pots you get when you’re a kid—pots full of some luminous liquid, and you pierce the film on the lid with a straw.” FS: “We were at a studio in Easton in Bristol, and I wrote a lot of the lyrics on walks around the area. It’s a really nice little area, and there’s lots of interesting shops. We wanted to write a few more joyful songs, at least in tone, and the song is so cheerful-sounding. So, some of the lyrics came out of that, too, wanting to write something that was optimistic, the idea of watching animals or insects being just a simple, joyful thing to do.” **“Gary Ashby”** NB: “This is about a real tortoise.” FS: “On a walk in lockdown, I saw a ‘lost’ poster for ‘Gary Ashby.’ The rest of the story came out of imagining the circumstances of him disappearing and the idea that it’s obviously a family tortoise because he’s got this surname. It’s thinking about family and things getting lost in chaos, when things are a bit chaotic in the home and pets escape. We don’t know what happened to him. We don’t know if he’s alive or dead, which is a little bit disturbing, but hopefully we’ll find out one day.” **“Driver’s Story”** NB: “We were rehearsing at a little studio in the basement at our record label \[4AD\]. It was just me, Tom, and Lewis, and we weren’t there very long, but quite a few ideas for songs came out of that. The main bit of ‘Driver’s Story’ was one. It felt different to anything we’d done on *New Long Leg*. It’s just got such a nice, oozy feel to it. FS: “There’s a bit in the song about a jelly shoe and the idea of it being buried in your guts. A photographer called Maisie Cousins does photos of lots of bodily stuff and liquids, but with flowers and beautiful things as well. I was looking at a lot of those at the time. The jelly-shoe thing is about that—something pretty, plastic-y, mixed with guts.” Tom Dowse: “It’s got my dog barking on the end of it as well. He’s called Buckley. He is credited on the record.” **“Hot Penny Day”** TD: “I’d been listening to a lot of Rolling Stones, so this is an attempt at that. We were jamming it through, and it started to take on a bit more of a stoner-rock vibe. ‘Driver’s Story’ was also meant to be a bit more stoner-rock until John Parish got his hands in it and took the drugs out of it.” Lewis Maynard: “I found a bass wah pedal in my sister’s garage. I just plugged it in and started playing, and I was like, ‘This is fun.’ I’ve unfortunately not stopped playing bass wah.” NB: “It conjures up quite a lot of imagery. I was listening to some of Jonny Greenwood’s music for the film *Inherent Vice*, and it’s got a washed-out, desert-y feel. This sounds like Dry Cleaning in an alternate, parallel universe somewhere.” **“Stumpwork”** FS: “Quite a lot of the lyrics were gleaned from this archive of newspaper clippings that I went to in Woolwich Arsenal. It’s millions and millions of newspaper clippings on different subjects. There’s a bit \[in ‘Stumpwork’\] about toads crossing roads from this little article I found about a special tunnel being built, so that toads could traverse the street without being run over.” NB: “When we were trying to figure out a name for the record, it felt like the best option. We loved it, and it was really succinct. We liked that the word ‘work’ was in the title.” **“No Decent Shoes for Rain”** TD: “This was two of those jams from the basement of 4AD. We were quite unsure about this song. We took it to show John at the pre-production rehearsals, and he really liked it, and he didn’t really have anything to say about it, which is quite unusual. A lot of people ask, ‘Why did you record with John again?’ And it’s things like that—because he notices things that are good about you that you don’t notice. I was really self-conscious that the end section sounded too trad, classic rock. It sounded like the safest bit of guitar I’ve ever written. But once he said he was into it, I started to look at it from a different way, and it grew from that.” **“Don’t Press Me”** FS: “This has some recorder on it, which I had to play at half-time because it was really fast. I was like, ‘Oh, this would be nice if it had this little bit of a recorder on.’ I tried to play it, and I was completely incapable. I’d thought, ‘Oh, I’ll be able to do this. Kids play the recorder all the time. It’s easy.’ Even at half-time, I had to have loads of goes at it. So, it’s me playing the recorder, sped up, because I have no skills.” **“Conservative Hell”** NB: “I think this song’s really important because through the course of the record there’s two different types of song. There’s these upbeat, jangle, poppy ones and then there’s slightly slower, more groovy ones. This song has two very distinct elements that we’re really happy with. It’s nice as well to be so overtly political, which is not usually our scene.” FS: “The reason it ended up being such an on-the-nose phrase is I was thinking it would be really nice to write a song that was something like ‘Conservative Hell.’ And then, after a while, I was like, ‘That’s pretty good.’ I think it almost sounds like a silly headline, but accurate too.” **“Liberty Log”** FS: “The title comes from thinking about spring rolls. They’re like little logs, aren’t they? Then, later, I was thinking about a stupid monument, something that would be a really dumb statue in a town—just a big log and it’s called the Liberty Log.” LM: “This is one of the ones we took to the studio expecting it to be a shit-ton of editing, structuring, and that John would really fuck with it. We jammed it, and it just stayed the same. This one was first-take vibes, playing it in that way, expecting it to be changed.” **“Icebergs”** NB: “I think this is quite a bleak moment for us. Definitely the most icy-sounding track on the album. It feels like a really good end to the record to suddenly have this explosion of brass come in, and then it just peters out very slowly. I like that the album ends on quite an icy tone, even though that doesn’t necessarily represent us in how we feel about things. It’s a slightly more poignant ending rather than a nice, lovely outro.”

TVAM self-released his much-acclaimed debut Psychic Data in the autumn of 2018, something of a cult-classic, the album joined the dots between Suicide’s deconstructed rock ’n’ roll, Boards of Canada’s irresistible nostalgia and My Bloody Valentine’s infinite noise. Psychic Data spawned an ‘Album Of The Day’ at BBC 6Music whilst signature tune ‘Porsche Majeure’ featured in HBO’s smash-hit ‘Succession’. Fast forward the VCR to 2022, High Art Lite takes a different tilt to its predecessor by emphasising the immediate and the personal.The colours are blown-out and the brightness is cranked up.TVAM’s take on role models, fictional movie character tropes, and fables of good and evil, are all tackled with the same suspicious cynicism but this time with an urgent belief in the human condition. A heady mix of Black Mirror’s modern fables, JG Ballard’s gated communities of sun-drenched wealth, and Mulholland Drive’s boulevard of broken daydreams, High Art Lite offers an all-inclusive package of redemption.

'A 4 Letter Word' is the second album by The Shop Window, following their debut album 'The State Of Being Human'. Keen to strike while the iron was hot, the band were back to recording as soon as the bag of new tunes were rehearsed. The new album captures the buzz from a short but productive flurry of writing focused on love and friendship. Across the ten tracks the band have grown in confidence - the jangly guitars and vocal harmonies are ever present, but with renewed vigour all round. Label mate Beth Arzy from Jetstream Pony and The Luxembourg Signal added backing vocals to four of the tracks (Eyes Wide Shut, Dancing Light, Circles Go Round & Low). Recorded at Raffer Studios in Kent, produced by Callum Rafferty.

NEW ITEM: Pre-Order limited edition cassette from Cruel Nature Records: cruelnaturerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/their-invisible-hands Shipping out on or around December 5, 2022 edition of 45 A big thank you to patrons and all who made this recording possible: Kathleen Adamson, Attila, William Bennett, David Buchta, Joel Cuthbert, Jay Dee, Konstantinos Diamantis, Chris D'Iorio, Andrew Erlich, Nicholas Field, Lys Guillorn, Hannah Heath-Engel, Jane Heath, Marc Hosemann, Brian King, Larry Lamb, Jeff McGivney, Taylor McLaren, Stephanie Merrin, Daniel Murphy, Jefferson Ogata, Karol Orzechowski, Emmett Pearce, Rob Raymond, Karl Rebsamen, Marley M. Rosen, Jarret Ruminski, Michael Lawrence Senchuk, Wayne Smart, Oliver Strahl, Astor Wolfe, Barrett Wolski, Joel Wukotich.

After punk supergroup Dead Cross recorded their 2017 debut, they enlisted Faith No More’s Mike Patton to replace departing vocalist Gabe Serbian. Patton rewrote an album’s worth of lyrics, rerecorded the vocals, and ultimately saved the day. When writing *II*, guitarist Michael Crain (Retox), bassist Justin Pearson (The Locust, Deaf Club), and drummer Dave Lombardo (ex-Slayer) already knew Patton would be at the helm. “On the first record, we wanted to be more old-school thrash, and that was because of Gabe’s vocal range,” Crain tells Apple Music. “When Patton came in, he completely took it another direction. I didn’t think those songs could sound like that, honestly. The guy’s musicality is otherworldly.” However, recording *II* with producer Ross Robinson had its own difficulties. Crain was recovering from cancer and chemotherapy during the sessions. “I had just finished treatments, but I was still really sick,” he says. “Obviously, it takes a while for all that stuff to wear off and get better. Chemo, the radiation, coming off painkillers—all that shit is a fucking nightmare.” (As if that weren’t bad enough, Serbian passed away suddenly after the album was finished.) Despite his painful ordeal, the band’s insane talent and sly sense of humor shine through. Below, Crain gives a hot take on each track. **“Love Without Love”** “With the riff, I was trying to make it sound like demented dinosaurs. I achieved that with a delay and a pitch shifter. But I love how that riff has its own cadence, its own beat. I really enjoy writing stuff like that. When the song picks up tempo, that’s super fun. It’s a fucking banger, and I love how Patton attacks the song. It’s spooky but romantic. It sounds like a knight riding off into the netherworld to rescue a maiden.” **“Animal Espionage”** “This is my favorite song on the record and the song I wanted to start the record with. But because we are a democratic society, I was outvoted. But I’m really proud of my guitar playing on this one. I had fun writing these riffs, and I love Patton’s vocal hook. I’d say this song is our Dear John letter to my cancer.” **“Heart Reformer”** “This song is a mosh pit stirrer. It’s definitely a beer-drinking, fist-pumping adrenaline ride. I like the ending on this one a lot. I’m not sure what Patton is talking about in the lyrics, but I think it’s his mental state at the time of writing this, which I think was during deep COVID isolation. Let’s say this is Mike Patton’s Dear John letter to COVID.” **“Strong and Wrong”** “For my guitar parts, I drew a lot of inspiration for this from our favorite Southern Californian punk forefathers—Drive Like Jehu, Black Flag, and Christian Death. There was such a big time span when Patton was writing lyrics for these songs—a lot of it was during COVID, the Black Lives Matter movement, the George Floyd riots, all that. So, I’m not sure exactly where he’s coming from in this one, but I feel like it’s somewhere in there.” **“Ants and Dragons”** “For me, this was really Daniel Ash-influenced, guitar-wise. I really drew on Bauhaus. I drew on that darkness. I went back into the shooting gallery for this one. You could say I went back to the ’90s, dyed my hair black, and got strung out on heroin again. That’s exactly what it sounds like.” **“Nightclub Canary”** “This is another banger. Ross definitely helped make that magic with the arrangements. I had the riff for a long time—I think we started working on that one in 2018. But then it completely changed, and Patton really spun it into another dimension—the fourth dimension. It’s like a fucking magic carpet ride through Mike Patton’s demented portals and possessed vocal cords.” **“Christian Missile Crisis”** “For me, this was like an homage to the first record, musically and riff-wise, at the time we wrote it. But now, hearing it finished with the lyrical content and the vocals, it sounds like something law enforcement would listen to on their way to execute a raid. If the song is about gun nuts, it sounds like something that the gun nuts would listen to on their way to use their guns.” **“Reign of Error”** “This song wrote itself. I had the riff written the night before, but when Dave and JP came in the room, \[former Slayer guitarist\] Jeff Hanneman’s hands wrote the song, not mine. I think it was actually a Slayer song. So, yeah, the ghost of Hanneman actually wrote this.” **“Imposter Syndrome”** “This song has some fucking good lyrics. Patton’s got a way with words, doesn’t he? He’s good at what he does. I think he’s established that by now. I feel like this song is about struggling still, despite your age. Still not knowing who you really are. It’s like a split personality disorder at its finest. Or maybe it’s about communication, emotions, and honesty. It’s couples counseling.”

A great Yeah Yeah Yeahs song can make you feel like you’re on top of the world and have no idea what you’re doing at the same time. The difference here—on their first album since 2013’s *Mosquito*—is a sense of maturity: Instead of tearing up the club, they’re reminiscing about it (“Fleez”), having traded their endless nights for mornings as bright and open as a flower (“Different Today”). And after spending 20 years seesawing between their aggressive side and their sophisticated, synth-pop side, they’ve found a sound that genuinely splits the difference (“Burning”). Listening to Karen O’s poem about watching the sunset with her young son (“Mars”), two thoughts come to mind. One is that they’ve always been kids, this band. The other is that the secret to staying young is growing up.

It could only be called alchemy, the transformative magic that happens during the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ most tuned-in moments in the studio, when their unique chemistry sparks opens a portal, and out comes a song like “Maps” or “Zero” or the latest addition to their canon, “Spitting off the Edge of the World featuring Perfume Genius” — an epic shot-to-the-heart of pure YYYs beauty and power. A thunderstorm of a return is what the legendary trio has in store for us on Cool It Down, their fifth studio album and their first since 2013’s Mosquito. The eight-track collection, bound to be a landmark in their catalog, is an expert distillation of their best gifts that impels you to move, and cry, and listen closely.

Lorena Quintanilla’s journey as J. Zunz continues with her third solo release, and her second for Rocket Recordings after 2020’s ‘Hibiscus’. Recorded in a vociferously windy area of Enseneda, Mexico, where Lorena spent a strict lockdown, ‘Del Aire’ exorcises the troubles she encountered during the period, in the process creating both what she describes as a “continuity and discontinuity” from ‘Hibiscus’, and extracting a similar, yet fresh strain of emotional complexity. With the atmospheric and natural theme of air at the heart of the creative process, Lorena has created an extraordinarily spacious work. The synths of ‘Lineal’ thrive on pulse-like repetition, gathering from a luscious sweeping panorama into a bruising orchestral crescendo. Elsewhere, as on ‘Del Aire’ the discordant-meets-melodic sonics dwell somewhere adjacent to Gazelle Twin. Both Lorena’s vocals and her distinctive crystalline avant aesthetic are writ large throughout the reverberations of ‘Cruce’ and ‘Horizonte’ as well as on the anxiety-rending exhortations closing the surreally meditative ‘Outsides’. Parts beautifully reflects organic instrumentation through Lorena’s electronic prism. ‘Ráfaga’, meanwhile, sees caustic drums enact glitchy, stop-start rhythms. Here, and on the hypnotic ‘Nina’, Lorena gilds the narcotic power of Miles Davis’s ‘On The Corner’ – with trumpet recorded by Freddie Murphy (Father Murphy) – into electronically contorted shapes. Through the mellifluous repetition, the cathartic buzzsaw moments and the elemental force of the album’s conceptual core, ‘Del Aire’ acts as an intimate echo chamber vicariously healing the listener’s wounds besides Lorena’s own. ---

Folky, direct soul-pop and balladry made Paolo Nutini famous as a teen during the mid-2000s, but it was his adventurousness that quickly separated him from other British singer-songwriters emerging at that time. When second album *Sunny Side Up* arrived in 2009, he was drawing on ska, Dixieland jazz, country, and doo-wop, before 2014’s *Caustic Love* played out like an expansive history of soul and R&B. From the start, *Last Night in the Bittersweet* reveals the Scotsman’s horizons have only broadened during the intervening eight years. “Afterneath” begins the album with feedback, motorik rhythms, and Tarantino samples as Nutini’s spoken-word lyrics herald “a deep dive into an open mind.” From there, the songs circle around New Wave (“Petrified in Love”), epic indie rock (“Shine a Light”), and hymnal, muted electronica (“Stranded Words \[Interlude\]”). At the heart of it all is Nutini’s voice. Precociously expressive and versatile from day one, it’s aged handsomely, sounding more lived-in than ever. Here, he contemplates regret, anxiety, optimism, and love as it both blossoms and falters. When the record ends on its most unadorned moment, the gentle folk ballad “Writer,” Nutini sings, “I am your writer who bleeds indecision.” It’s that restless, capricious spirit that continues to make him such an absorbing artist.

Josh Tillman, aka Father John Misty, has released five albums in the last decade—and each one is an expansion of and challenge to his indie-folk instrumental palette. From the stark rock/folk contrasts of *Fear Fun*’s ballads and anthems to the mariachi strains of *I Love You, Honeybear*’s love notes to the wry commentary and grand orchestrations of *Pure Comedy* and *God’s Favorite Customer*, Tillman has a penchant for pairing his articulate inner monologue with arrangements that have only grown more eclectic and elaborate. *Chloë and the Next 20th Century* builds on all of the above—the micro-symphonies, the inventive percussion, the swift shift from dusty country-western nostalgia to timeless dirges plunked out on a dive-bar piano. A swooning sax solo in a somber jazz number (“Buddy’s Rendezvous”) is immediately followed by the trill of a psychedelic harpsichord (“Q4”); “Goodbye Mr. Blue” recalls the acoustic inclinations of his early work, and warm strings wash over the record, from its first single, the romantic “Funny Girl,” through “The Next 20th Century,” the album’s sardonic closer, which resurfaces the ever-simmering existential dread of *Pure Comedy*. “If this century’s here to stay,” he sings on the track, “I don’t know about you, but I’ll take the love songs/And the great distance that they came.”

Father John Misty returns with Chloë and The Next 20th Century, his fifth album and first new material since the release of God’s Favorite Customer in 2018. Chloë and the Next 20th Century was written and recorded August through December 2020 and features arrangements by Drew Erickson. The album sees Tillman and producer/multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Wilson resume their longtime collaboration, as well as Dave Cerminara, returning as engineer and mixer. Basic tracks were recorded at Wilson’s Five Star Studios with strings, brass, and woodwinds recorded at United Recordings in a session featuring Dan Higgins and Wayne Bergeron, among others. Chloë and The Next 20th Century features the singles “Funny Girl,” “Q4,” “Goodbye Mr. Blue,” and “Kiss Me (I Loved You),” and will be available April 8th, 2022 worldwide from Sub Pop and in Europe from Bella Union.

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Adelaide, Australia-based outfit Los Palms will release their debut album 'Skeleton Ranch' on November 25th via Fuzz Club Records. The nine-track collection serves up an infectious and hedonistic cocktail of jangly surf-rock, 1960s garage and 13th-floor psychedelia. Los Palms described their sound as "Desert Jangle", with influences all the way from 60s Peruvian bands like Los Saicos, Los Destellos & Los Holy’s to modern Californian sweethearts Allah-Las & LA dirt shredders Night Beats. Whilst taking a trip through Los Palms' 'Skeleton Ranch', listeners can expect songs drenched in heartbreak, love and mystery: "These are neo-psych ghost stories that create a detailed musical landscape by mixing feedback, fuzz, eerie organs and reverb-soaked guitar and vocals." The group consists of guitarist/vocalist Ant Candlish, guitarist Sam Arthurson, bass player Nathan Solly, drummer/vocalist Code Andrusko and keys player Will Bahnisch.

“Just to be able to get together and make some music was enough of an impetus to pour lots of enthusiasm into recording and writing,” Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor tells Apple Music. “We had so much pent-up energy that came out in the recordings.” The 11 tracks that make up the group’s eighth album see Hot Chip pushing further into thumping, danceable territory on the infectious “Down” and “Miss the Bliss,” while other numbers like “The Evil That Men Do” and “Out of My Depth” touch on a new vein of introspection and social commentary. “We were responding to an uncertain time,” guitarist Al Doyle says. “We were hoping that, with these tracks, we’d all be able to come together and enjoy the music once more.” Read on for Taylor and Doyle’s in-depth thoughts on the album, track by track. **“Down”** Alexis Taylor: “This was the first track we made, as Joe \[Goddard\] came into the studio with a sample from Universal Togetherness Band’s track ‘More Than Enough’ at the start of our session, and we all got to work right away responding to it. The song summarizes what it feels like to be back together with your bandmates and having fun at work, in the studio.” Al Doyle: “It came together very quickly. Everybody was throwing themselves at different instruments, and it didn’t really change from the original demo that we made in two days. It became a touchstone for a lot of the other songs on the record because it has this infectiously raw and raucous energy to it.” **“Eleanor”** AT: “‘Eleanor’ was written towards the end of the album. We were responding to Joe playing a few chords on the CS-80 synth in the studio, and I wrote the words right there and then. We can usually all tell when a song we’re making is going to be a single—we had the same feeling with ‘Over and Over’ and ‘Ready for the Floor.’ There’s an excitement about throwing in as many good ideas as you can and helping to make that single happen. This song was a bag full of hooks and we’re all very proud of it.” **“Freakout / Release”** AT: “Joe had an idea that, the whole way through this song, a bass riff should continue to play, going from loud to quiet and vice versa, in the same way that ‘Seven Nation Army’ by The White Stripes has a riff that drives the whole setup. That led to us getting the instrumental ingredients and the explosive moments of the track together, but we struggled with the rest of it.” AD: “We knew there was a really good song, but we couldn’t figure out how to find the best version of it. Then we had the idea to see what Soulwax would do if they were given the song, and they ultimately came up with something that we all really liked.” AT: “The lyrics are about people being stuck and locked down, and perhaps they’re freaking out at home. But we’re also talking about a moment of release, a moment of being able to freak out publicly with other people in a crowd, and we were projecting forward to when we could do that together by playing this song.” **“Broken”** AT: “I was feeling emotionally quite exhausted at this point in our writing period, and I had a few friends of mine who were going through difficult times in their personal lives too. I wanted to sum up that feeling of approaching desperation and trying to find the language to express yourself, since then somebody might be able to support you. It came together quite quickly in the studio, which was exciting because we all contributed to it as we were recording. Musically, we were thinking of George McCrae, Robyn, and ABBA.” **“Not Alone”** AT: “This was, perhaps, the last song we wrote on the album. Joe had recorded this very heavily processed vocal sound at home, and the words I’m singing in response to him are partly about having your outlook changed by collaborating with somebody new and also about questioning the morals and values of those you might have once idolized. It’s all pretty hidden away in the song, but it was what I was thinking through at the time.” **“Hard to Be Funky” (feat. Lou Hayter)** AT: “I thought of this as a solo track first, before playing it to the band. I came up with the demo and I was imagining Bill Callahan singing it in his low voice, since when I think of giving a track to someone else, I can explore a different facet of how I write. The track is playing with the idea of what it means to be funky and how that is intrinsically linked to the idea of sexiness.” AD: “We collaborated with Lou Hayter quite spontaneously, since she only lives around the corner from the studio. We wanted somebody else’s voice and perspective on the chorus, and we knew she would do a great job, so we called her in. She nailed it all in one afternoon.” **“Time”** AD: “‘Time’ went through a hell of a lot of iterations. Joe and I worked on it a bit as a separate venture, and then Alexis had this very catchy chorus that came out as a response to that. We ultimately let it be something that was quite dance-floor-oriented, since we wanted it to be representative of that side of Hot Chip.” **“Miss the Bliss”** AD: “Joe had been working on this for a while. The track has a choral aspect of group vocals, and he decided that it would be fun to get his brother to come in and do some of the backing for it. Having him in the studio was fantastic because he’s a wonderful spirit that we have known for years.” AT: “Joe’s kids and my daughter and my younger brother and various other friends joined in, too, to create a choir of voices. The song is all about offering support to each other and encouraging people not to be afraid to reach out if they need to.” **“The Evil That Men Do” (feat. Cadence Weapon)** AT: “We have written songs that are political before, but nothing quite so overt as this. The song is telling men that they need to recognize and take responsibility for their own behavior and the behavior of those who came before them. We can’t ignore the atrocities that continue to go on around us. We had Cadence Weapon opening for us on tour in America and Canada years ago, and we got in touch to ask him to add a verse for us based on the themes I was writing about. What he came up with was perfect.” **“Guilty”** AD: “This was a satisfying one to write, as I was just testing my bass guitar in the studio one day and I played the main four chords that we ended up using in this track.” AT: “It sounded really good, and we responded to Al’s bassline with the other elements of the song. It felt like mid-’80s Prince musically, and I was trying to write about the things that go on in people’s heads while they’re asleep—how they can compartmentalize their thoughts to be so different from who they are when they’re awake.” **“Out of My Depth”** AT: “I wrote most of this track at home on the guitar and then came straight into the studio so we could all build on it from there. That was a good way of starting a song because it didn’t already foreground a potential style. We ended up coming up with something quite psychedelic then, with a krautrock feel to it. It’s a good song to end on, as it summarizes a lot of the themes of the record: telling yourself that if you’re approaching a place that’s emotionally bleak, there are ways to get help and get yourself out of that headspace of feeling trapped. It’s a necessary message to end on.”

The 'lost' album - Recorded 2012 soon before the band imploded.

’Skins’ unveils a fascinating, if slightly unnerving, crepuscular world. This is a land of slow motion, beautifully poised electro-ballads comprising vintage synths, drum machines and a scintillating cinematic palette of found sound. Gary is an award-winning DJ (incl. Turnmills and Mixmag), having played extensively on the club circuit across Europe and Brazil since the mid 1990’s. He began experimenting with music production around 2005, as he became increasingly interested in making his own musical mark. This eventually led to a string of well-received releases on a variety of labels, including Giallo Disco, Spun Out Of Control, Dark Leader and Telefuture Records. Technically speaking, Gary’s creative process combines a digital workstation and analogue hardware, intriguingly crafting soundscapes with a myriad of recorded matter: “I like to create quite a layered mix, some sounds or noise are buried deep, barely perceptible but add to the ambience. I love to use recordings of real places, of real moments in time. On one track for example there’s a sample of me rattling an iron gate in the catacombs of Paris. On another, recorded on the Cliffs Of Moher here in Ireland, there's the sound of an electric fence being struck with a branch whilst the wind whips around me." “I can take inspiration from anywhere. Can be a turn of phrase, a scene from a movie or even a conversation with a friend that gives me the initial idea for a track or the concept for an album.
" “This new album is definitely my most personal work to date. I started work on it in 2016. I was going through a break-up, it was quite a sad time so I started to make some really sad music. A bit cliche I know, but it helped. I remember thinking that as life goes by, inevitably we lose people who are very special and close to us, who’ve played a massive role in our lives. Be it through death, break-ups or just through the natural diverging of paths over time. From there I started to write tracks, to dedicate to friends, to capture memories, to reference special moments. And even though they’re not with me anymore, I just want these old friends to know that I look fondly on our time together.“ We can see how this re-examination of the themes of loss and regret create an apparent paradox at the heart of ’Skins’. Indeed, its very fabric is drafted with an almost wistful positivity: “The suffering is obvious yet there's hope. Belief that all is not lost - the memories live on at least. I consciously wrote a few of the songs in D Dorian, a melancholic yet optimistic key signature.” “People's interpretations could vary as the messages are often quite cryptic and abstract. But by watching the video clips on my YouTube channel the audience can pick up overt visual clues. I’d love it though if they could just put the needle on the record, sit back, switch off the lights and go on their own journey. A journey that took me 5 years to complete.”

“This record really came from the ensemble itself,” New York composer and vibraphonist Joel Ross tells Apple Music. “Almost every take is a first take, since our years spent improvising together have shaped these compositions into something with more meaning than even we could know.” At 26, Ross is already on his third release (all of them with pioneering jazz label Blue Note), marking him as one of improvised music’s freshest and brightest stars. Having transmuted the reverb-laden sound of his vibraphone into soul- and hip-hop-referencing tracks on 2019’s *KingMaker* and 2020’s *Who Are You?*, Ross moves into newly collaborative territory on *The Parable of the Poet* with his eight-piece band, The Parables. Crafting the album’s seven tracks from preexisting improvisations Ross made with fellow New School alumnus and saxophonist Sergio Tabanico, The Parables then spent a handful of live shows, pre-COVID, honing their emotional resonances. The result is a seamless suite of music that reflects the arc of a church service. It’s deeply moving yet full of space to allow for the listener’s interpretation, from the meditative calm of opener “PRAYER” to the frenetic melodies of “WAIL” and the polyrhythmic optimism of “DOXOLOGY (Hope).” Here, Ross walks through each of the album’s tracks. **“PRAYER”** “‘PRAYER’ introduces the concept of a praise team, which is a front line of singers in the Black church who help to lead the worship. I see the horns in this track as being like a praise team choir, and I wanted them to serve the music in that same way. Everybody, at one point in the song, takes the responsibility of repeating the theme, while the other players communicate around it. The track focuses on the concept of serving the music through this melodic information.“ **“GUILT”** \"This was an improvisation with Sergio where I felt emotions coming through naturally. The music is supposed to serve as a parable—a story that can be interpreted based on people’s differing perspectives—but to me, it feels like as the song gets faster, it becomes more anxious, the way you can get more anxious if you feel guilty. All of these compositions come from a personal place, but I want to keep them open to interpretation.\" **“CHOICES”** “‘CHOICES’ was originally called ‘Haunting’ and was taken from another improvisation with Sergio where, for 20 minutes, we were droning and looking for this motif, which is an uneven three-bar phrase on top of a five-bar phrase. I arranged it exactly as we discovered it in the improvisation, and we ultimately decided to move away from this idea of a haunting and towards the idea of choices, since you might be equally haunted by your choices.” **“WAIL”** “This started from an improvisation I did by myself on a melodica, where I was trying to evoke that feeling of a wail of despair that comes from the tough emotions that somebody can feel when guilt from their choices piles up. I wanted the band to capture that passion in the first section, and Immanuel Wilkins really came through on sax. The piece starts with his very passionate playing and then moves to a single-line motif that everyone plays as we naturally improvise towards the ending. The emotion of the music truly makes it come to life.” **“THE IMPETUS (To Be and Do Better)”** “We recorded this straight through from ‘WAIL.’ I like to give everybody some time to develop their own sound on the tracks, so on ‘GUILT’ I had Rick Rosato open up on bass, and on ‘CHOICES’ it was Marquis Hill on trumpet, while here it transfers to Kalia Vandever on trombone. It is the expression of passion and emotion in ‘WAIL’ that leads to a decision to do better and be better. Kalia’s part brings us back to make that decision.” **“DOXOLOGY (Hope)”** \"A doxology is a song of praise that’s leading towards the close of our gathering. It is one of the first times in the set where I gave the band specific notes and parts. It is the praise-and-worship part of our church service—the song where we’re supposed to get up and dance in a focus on faith and following the Word. That\'s something to rejoice in.” **\"BENEDICTION”** “At this point, we’re closing our gathering with a good word, a benediction. The pianist Sean Mason is the newest addition to this band, and he has the sound that I was looking for from the Black church that was an integral part of bringing this music to fruition. He gives us a sense of authenticity. The track is influenced by Coltrane since it moves in major thirds, which is also a nod to the Holy Trinity. It doesn’t resolve harmonically because it\'s symbolizing that, in Heaven, we\'re going to be praising and worshiping for eternity. We purposely fade out to evoke that we\'re still going.”

With Sod’s Toastie, Tom Greenhouse and his intrepid band of sonic explorers are more assured and confident than ever throughout this sublime sophomore album. While frontman Tom Greenhouse’s off-kilter observations and bizarro anecdotes remain front and centre, this time round the band up their game with a more vigorous sound that keeps pace with Greenhouse’s wholly distinctive lyrical style. Greenhouse continues to revel in telling increasingly surreal short stories, rejoicing in the power of the deadpan one-liner and bedecking his songs with far-flung cultural references. But now the band employ a variety of techniques with improved pro-duction, from the impulsively bashed keyboards and jubilantly repetitive guitar stabs that have be-come their trademark, to flirtations with–heaven forbid!–melody, chord progressions and arrange-ments which elevate their tried-and-tested blueprint into a more exciting and cohesive whole. Opener Musicians is the perfect embodiment of this conscious development. Here, Greenhouse re-counts a sarcastic tale of half-truths that see him galavanting around town trying to put a band to-gether. Sonically, it begins with a caustic callback to the group’s first EP Crap Cardboard Pet and its über-minimalist aesthetic. But by the end of the song a joyous festival of afrobeat-inspired in-struments including samba whistles, bongos and saxophones are added to the mix as the front-man, ironically, fails in his mission to recruit more players. With Get Unjaded, the band have somehow conjured something close to pop, without abandoning the repetition and wit that’s relished by their early fans. I Lost My Head also adopts a jangle-pop sheen with a luscious synth melody, as the frontman ditches the spoken-word for a surly croon (his first known attempt at actual singing!) that provides a welcome breather from the onslaught of dense recantations that are the band’s bread-and-butter. While the lyrics here are still often humorous and political, Greenhouse has also notably expanded his interests on this album to include a new host of topics. The influence of extraterrestrials, for ex-ample, infiltrates the subject matter frequently. On The UFOs, the mysterious protagonist Blinkus Booth’s isolationist lifestyle is apparently interrupted by the spectres of otherworldly visitors, while closer The Neoprene Ravine feels like an extract from a deep space rock opera. Here, jaunty and angular instruments pile-on as we are fed images of an interstellar Spinal Tap, the titular fictional band “The Neoprene Ravine” who are “the alien equivalent of the Velvet Underground” and include an alien Lou Reed yelping “too busy sucking on my little green ding dong!”. Meanwhile, Hard Rock Potato is propelled by a vortex of keys and synths, a real noise-pop gem comprised of real guitar chords (!) and rock-orientated riffs. Here the stream-of-consciousness lyrics take shots at the sinister financial industry, and include one of the many top-tier one-liners on the album: “It’s not gambling if you’re wearing a tie (even if you’ve got no trousers on)”. On Sod’s Toastie, The Cool Greenhouse have pushed their distinctive flavour of post-punk to the point of perfection – their incongruous riffs, alchemical instrumental chemistry, and irreverent spo-ken-word vocals are a delight throughout. Sod’s Toastie is hilarious at times, and at others just hi-lariously good – a not-so-difficult second album.

Released on Grow Your Own Records. Recorded, co-produced and mixed by Tim Greaves at Southsea Sound.

Championed by Gary Crowley on BBC Radio London and Playlisted on Amazing Radio's A List, with BBC Radio Wales support from Huw Stephens and Adam Walton & BBC 6 Music's Steve Lamacq, North Wales Indie-Psych Band Holy Coves have had quite a year so far. Their highly anticipated new 'Druids and Bards' album is released via Welsh indie label Yr Wyddfa Records on the 14th of October. Through long time friend and Producer David Wrench, 'Holy Coves' were put in touch with Texan Producer Erik Wofford (The Black Angels / Explosions In The Sky) and have built quite a magical working relationship, one where Wofford found himself on Mixing and Mastering duties for the material and certainly contributes to their new sound. The album was produced by Scott Marden and John Lawrence (Gorkys Zycotic Munci) and recorded in Penhesgyn studios Menai Bridge, Isle of Anglesey.

Alongside Moor Mother’s 2021 album, *Black Encyclopedia of the Air*, *Jazz Codes* explores the question of how accessible a generally inaccessible artist can get without sacrificing the density of their ideas. It isn’t to say it’s easy music (45 tightly collaged minutes of spoken word, free jazz, electronic loops, and fragmentary hip-hop)—only that it makes space for the listener in ways she hasn’t always in the past. Given the album’s subject matter—jazz history, the nature and place of Black art—it’s easy to hear the shift as one from personal expression to stewardship and communication: She wants you to understand where she’s coming from as a gesture of respect to those who came before, whether Woody Shaw (“WOODY SHAW”), Mary Lou Williams (“ODE TO MARY”), or Joe McPhee (“JOE MCPHEE NATION TIME”). Her fellow travelers—multi-hyphenate Black artists like AKAI SOLO and Melanie Charles—show you she isn’t alone. And while the difficulty lingers, it gets explicit purpose, courtesy of professor, artist, and activist Thomas Stanley on the outro: “Ultimately, perhaps, it is good that people abandoned jazz/Replaced it with musical products better-suited to capitalism’s designs/Now jazz jumps up like Lazarus if we allow it, to rediscover itself as a living music.”

Called “the poet laureate of the apocalypse” by Pitchfork, Moor Mother is announcing ‘Jazz Codes'. Coming out on July 1, it is her second album for ANTI- and a companion to her celebrated 2021 release ’Black Encyclopedia of the Air‘. ’Jazz Codes’ uses poetry as a starting point, but the collection moves toward more melody, more singing voices, more choruses and more complexity. In its warm, densely layered course through jazz, blues, soul, hip-hop, ’Jazz Codes’ sets the ear blissfully adrift and unhitches the mind from habit. Through her work, Ayewa illuminates the principles of her interdisciplinary collaborative practice Black Quantum Futurism, a theoretical framework for creating counter-chronologies and envisioning Black quantum womanist futures that rupture exclusionary versions of history and future through art, writing, music, and performance. Moor Mother - aka the songwriter, composer, vocalist, poet, and visual artist Camae Ayewa – is also a professor at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music. She released her debut album Fetish Bones in 2016 and has since put out an abundance of acclaimed music, both as a solo artist and in collaboration with other musicians who share her drive to dig up the untold. She is a member of many other groups including the free jazz group Irreversible Entanglements, 700 bliss and moor jewelry. She has also toured and recorded with The Art Ensemble of Chicago and Nicole Mitchell.

If you’ve had any interest in UK hardcore/punk over the past decade you’ll probably know James Domestic from many bands: THE DOMESTICS, who have blazed across Europe several times, plus PI$$ER, TOKYO LUNGS, and half a dozen others. This, however, is a very different beast! Material produced under the JAMES DOMESTIC banner blends post-punk, Krautrock, psychedelia, soul, funk, reggae, and punk, frequently utilising repetition as a bedrock for hook-laden gems. James nestles in that nook of singular British pop where MADNESS, IAN and BAXTER DURY, MARK E. SMITH, KEVIN ROWLAND, IVOR CUTLER, ROOTS MANUVA, BILLY CHILDISH, JOHN COOPER CLARKE, JONA LEWIE, ANDY PARTRIDGE, ROBERT WYATT, and SLEAFORD MODS reside. Add some KING TUBBY, FLIPPER and ESG, and you’re probably pressing your nose against the right window. "Special Edition" version of the Carrion Repeating LP on blue/silver coloured vinyl, with 4 page 12" X 12" lyric booklet, download card, AND two exclusive limited edition postcards AND an exclusive limited edition bookmark. "Standard" Carrion Repeating LP o Black vinyl version with download card and 4 page 12" X 12" lyric booklet. Shipping out on or around April 15, 2022