Recordstore's Albums of the Year 2020

“Life seems to provide no end of things to explore without too much investigation,” Laura Marling tells Apple Music. The London singer-songwriter is discussing how, after six albums (three of which were Mercury Prize-nominated), she found the inspiration needed for her seventh, *Song For Our Daughter*. One thing which proved fruitful was turning 30. In an evolution of 2017’s exquisite rumination on womanhood *Semper Femina*, growing, as she says, “a bit older” prompted Marling to consider how she might equip her her own figurative daughter to navigate life’s complexities. “In light of the cultural shift, you go back and think, ‘That wasn’t how it should have happened. I should have had the confidence and the know-how to deal with that situation in a way that I didn’t have to come out the victim,’” says Marling of the album’s central message. “You can’t do anything about it, obviously, so you can only prepare the next generation with the tools and the confidence \[to ensure\] they \[too\] won’t be victims.” This feeling reaches a crescendo on the title track, which sees Marling consider “our daughter growing old/All of the bullshit that she might be told” amid strings that permeate the entire record. While *Song for Our Daughter* is undoubtedly a love letter to women, it is also a deeply personal album where whimsical melodies (“Strange Girl”) collide with Marling at her melancholic best (the gorgeously sparse “Blow by Blow”—a surprisingly honest chronicle of heartbreak—or the exceptional, haunting “Hope We Meet Again”). And its roaming nature is exactly how Marling wanted to soundtrack the years since *Semper Femina*. “There is no cohesive narrative,” she admits. “I wrote this album over three years, and so much had changed. Of course, no one knows the details of my personal life—nor should they. But this album is like putting together a very fragmented story that makes sense to me.” Let Marling guide you through that story, track by track. **Alexandra** “Women are so at the forefront of my mind. With ‘Alexandra,’ I was thinking a lot about the women who survive the projected passion of so-called ‘great men.’ ‘Alexandra’ is a response to Leonard Cohen’s ‘Alexandra Leaving,’ but it’s also the idea that for so long women have had to suffer the very powerful projections that people have put on them. It’s actually quite a traumatizing experience, I think, to only be seen through the eyes of a man’s passion; just as a facade. And I think it happens to women quite often, so in a couple of instances on this album I wanted to give voice to the women underneath all of that. The song has something of Crosby, Stills & Nash about it—it’s a chugging, guitar-riffy job.” **Held Down** “Somebody said to me a couple of years ago that the reason why people find it hard to attach to me \[musically\] is that it\'s not always that fun to hear sad songs. And I was like, ‘Oh, well, I\'m in trouble, because that\'s all I\'ve got!’ So this song has a lightness to it and is very light on sentiment. It’s just about two people trying to figure out how to not let themselves get in the way of each other, and about that constant vulnerability at the beginning of a relationship. The song is almost quite shoegazey and is very simple to play on the guitar.” **Strange Girl** “The girl in this song is an amalgamation of all my friends and I, and of all the things we\'ve done. There’s something sweet about watching someone you know very well make the same mistakes over and over again. You can\'t tell them what they need to know; they have to know it themselves. That\'s true of everyone, including myself. As for the lyrics about the angry, brave girl? Well, aren’t we all like that? The fullness and roundness of my experience of women—the nuance and all the best and worst things about being a complicated little girl—is not always portrayed in the way that I would portray it, and I think women will recognize something in this song. My least favorite style of music is Americana, so I was conscious to avoid that sound here. But it’s a lovely song; again, it has chords which are very Crosby, Stills & Nash-esque.” **Only the Strong** “I wanted the central bit of the album to be a little vulnerable tremble, having started it out quite boldly. This song has a four-beat click in it, which was completely by accident—it was coming through my headphones in the studio, so it was just a happy accident. The strings on this were all done by my bass player Nick \[Pini\] and they are all bow double-bass strings. They\'re close to the human voice, so I think they have a specific, resonant effect on people. I also went all out on the backing vocals. I wanted it to be my own chorus, like my own subconscious backing me up. The lyric ‘Love is a sickness cured by time\' is actually from a play by \[London theater director\] Robert Icke, though I did ask his permission to use it. I just thought that was the most incredible ointment to the madness of infatuation.” **Blow by Blow** “I wrote this song on the piano, but it’s not me playing here—I can\'t play the piano anywhere near as well as my friend Anna here. This song is really straightforward, and I kind of surprised myself by that. I don\'t like to be explicit. I like to be a little bit opaque, I guess, in the songwriting business. So this is an experiment, and I still haven’t quite made my mind up on how I feel about it. Both can exist, but I think what I want from my music or art or film is an uncanny familiarity. This song is a different thing for me, for sure—it speaks for itself. I’d be rendering it completely naked if I said any more.” **Song for Our Daughter** “This song is kind of the main event, in my mind. I actually wrote it around the time of the Trayvon Martin \[shooting in 2012\]. All these young kids being unarmed and shot in America. And obviously that\'s nothing to do with my daughter, or the figurative daughter here, but I \[was thinking about the\] institutional injustice. And what their mothers must be feeling. How helpless, how devastated and completely unable to have changed the course of history, because nothing could have helped them. I was also thinking about a story in Roman mythology about the Rape of Lucretia. She was the daughter of a nobleman and was raped—no one believed her and, in that time, they believed that if you had been ‘spoilt’ by something like that, then your blood would turn black. And so she rode into court one day and stabbed herself in the heart, and bled and died. It’s not the cheeriest of analogies, but I found that this story that existed thousands of years ago was still so contemporary. The strings were arranged by \[US instrumentalist, arranger, and producer\] Rob Moose, and when he sent them to me he said, ‘I don\'t know if this is what you wanted, but I wanted to personify the character of the daughter in the strings, and help her kind of rise up above everything.’ And I was like, ‘That\'s amazing! What an incredible, incredible leap to make.’ And that\'s how they ended up on the record.” **Fortune** “Whenever I get stuck in a rut or feel uninspired on the guitar, I go and play with my dad, who taught me. He was playing with this little \[melody\]—it\'s just an E chord going up the neck—so I stole it and then turned it into this song. I’m very close with my sisters, and at the time we were talking and reminiscing about the fact that my mother had a ‘running-away fund.’ She kept two-pence pieces in a pot above the laundry machine when we were growing up. She had recently cashed it in to see how much money she had, and she had built up something like £75 over the course of a lifetime. That was her running-away fund, and I just thought that was so wonderfully tragic. She said she did it because her mother did it. It was hereditary. We are living in a completely different time, and are much closer to equality, so I found the idea of that fund quite funny.” **The End of the Affair** “This song is loosely based on *The End of the Affair* by Graham Greene. The female character, \[Sarah\], is elusive; she has a very secret role that no one can be part of, and the protagonist of the book, the detective \[Maurice Bendrix\], finds it so unbearably erotic. He finds her secretness—the fact that he can\'t have her completely—very alluring. And in a similar way to ‘Alexandra Leaving,’ it’s about how this facade in culture has appeared over women. I was also drawing on my own experience of great passions that have to die very quietly. What a tragedy that is, in some ways, to have to bear that alone. No one else is obviously ever part of your passions.” **Hope We Meet Again** “This was actually the first song we recorded on the album, so it was like a tester session. There’s a lot of fingerpicking on this, so I really had to concentrate, and it has pedal steel, which I’m not usually a fan of because it’s very evocative of Americana. I originally wrote this for a play, *Mary Stuart* by Robert Icke, who I’ve worked with a lot over the last couple of years, and adapted the song to turn it back into a song that\'s more mine, rather than for the play. But originally it was supposed to highlight the loneliness of responsibility of making your own decisions in life, and of choosing your own direction. And what the repercussions of that can sometimes be. It\'s all of those kind of crossroads where deciding to go one way might be a step away from someone else.” **For You** “In all honesty, I think I’m getting a bit soft as I get older. And I’ve listened to a lot of Paul McCartney and it’s starting to affect me in a lot of ways. I did this song at home in my little bunker—this is the demo, and we just kept it exactly as it was. It was never supposed to be a proper song, but it was so sweet, and everyone I played it to liked it so much that we just stuck it on the end. The male vocals are my boyfriend George, who is also a musician. There’s also my terrible guitar solo, but I left it in there because it was so funny—I thought it sounded like a five-year-old picking up a guitar for the first time.”

Laura Marling’s exquisite seventh album Song For Our Daughter arrives almost without pre-amble or warning in the midst of uncharted global chaos, and yet instantly and tenderly offers a sense of purpose, clarity and calm. As a balm for the soul, this full-blooded new collection could be posited as Laura’s richest to date, but in truth it’s another incredibly fine record by a British artist who rarely strays from delivering incredibly fine records. Taking much of the production reins herself, alongside long-time collaborators Ethan Johns and Dom Monks, Laura has layered up lush string arrangements and a broad sense of scale to these songs without losing any of the intimacy or reverence we’ve come to anticipate and almost take for granted from her throughout the past decade.

It took Kelly Lee Owens 35 days to write the music for her second album. “I had a flood of creation,” she tells Apple Music. “But this was after three years that included loss, learning how to deal with loss and how to transmute that loss into something of creation again. They were the hardest three years of my life.” The Welsh electronic musician’s self-titled 2017 debut album figured prominently on best-of-the-year lists and won her illustrious fans across music and fashion. It’s the sort of album you recommend to people you’d like to impress. Its release, however, was clouded by issues in Owens’ personal life. “There was a lot going on, and it took away my energy,” she says. “It made me question the integrity of who I was and whether it was ego driving certain situations. It was so tough to keep moving forward.” Fortunately, Owens rallied. “It sounds hippie-dippie, but this is my purpose in life,” she says. “To convey messages via sounds and to connect to other people.” Informed by grief, lust, anxiety, and environmental concerns, *Inner Song* is an electronic album that impacts viscerally. “I allowed myself to be more of a vessel that people talk about,” she says. “It’s real. Ideas can flow through you. In that 35-day period, I allowed myself to tap into any idea I had, rather than having to come in with lyrics, melodies, and full production. It’s like how the best ideas come when you’re in the shower: You’re usually just letting things be and come through you a bit more. And then I could hunker down and go in hard on all those minute nudges on vocal lines or kicks or rhythmical stuff or EQs. Both elements are important, I learned. And I love them both.” Here, Owens treats you to a track-by-track guide to *Inner Song*. **Arpeggi** “*In Rainbows* is one of my favorite albums of all time. The production on it is insane—it’s the best headphone *and* speaker listening experience ever. This cover came a year before the rest of the album, actually. I had a few months between shows and felt like I should probably go into the studio. I mean, it’s sacrilege enough to do a Radiohead cover, but to attempt Thom’s vocals: no. There is a recording somewhere, but as soon as I heard it, I said, ‘That will never been heard or seen. Delete, delete, delete.’ I think the song was somehow written for analog synths. Perhaps if Thom Yorke did the song solo, it might sound like this—especially where the production on the drums is very minimal. So it’s an homage to Thom, really. It was the starting point for me, and this record, so it couldn’t go anywhere else.” **On** “I definitely wanted to explore my own vocals more on this album. That ‘journey,’ if you like, started when Kieran Hebden \[Four Tet\] requested I play before him at a festival and afterwards said to me, ‘Why the fuck have you been hiding your vocals all this time under waves of reverb, space echo, and delay? Don’t do that on the next album.’ That was the nod I needed from someone I respect so highly. It’s also just been personal stuff—I have more confidence in my voice and the lyrics now. With what I’m singing about, I wanted to be really clear, heard, and understood. It felt pointless to hide that and drown it in reverb. The song was going to be called ‘Spirit of Keith’ as I recorded it on the day \[Prodigy vocalist\] Keith Flint died. That’s why there are so many tinges of ’90s production in the drums, and there’s that rave element. And almost three minutes on the dot, you get the catapult to move on. We leap from this point.” **Melt!** “Everyone kept taking the exclamation mark out. I refused, though—it’s part of the song somehow. It was pretty much the last song I made for the album, and I felt I needed a techno banger. There’s a lot of heaviness in the lyrics on this album, so I just wanted that moment to allow a letting loose. I wanted the high fidelity, too. A lot of the music I like at the moment is really clear, whereas I’m always asking to take the top end off on the snare—even if I’m told that’s what makes something a snare. I just don’t really like snares. The ‘While you sleep, melt, ice’ lyrics kept coming into my head, so I just searched for ‘glacial ice melting’ and ‘skating on ice’ or ‘icicles cracking’ and found all these amazing samples. The environmental message is important—as we live and breathe and talk, the environment continues to suffer, but we have to switch off from it to a certain degree because otherwise you become overwhelmed and then you’re paralyzed. It’s a fine balance—and that’s why the exclamation mark made so much sense to me.” **Re-Wild** “This is my sexy stoner song. I was inspired by Rihanna’s ‘Needed Me,’ actually. People don’t necessarily expect a little white girl from Wales to create something like this, but I’ve always been obsessed with bass so was just wanting a big, fat bassline with loads of space around it. I’d been reading this book *Women Who Run With the Wolves* \[by Clarissa Pinkola\], which talks very poetically about the journey of a woman through her lifetime—and then in general about the kind of life, death, and rebirth cycle within yourself and relationships. We’re always focused on the death—the ending of something—but that happens again and again, and something can be reborn and rebirthed from that, which is what I wanted to focus on. She \[Pinkola\] talks about the rewilding of the spirit. So often when people have depression—unless we suffer chronically, which is something else—it’s usually when the creative soul life dies. I felt that mine was on the edge of fading. Rewilding your spirit is rewilding that connection to nature. I was just reestablishing the power and freedoms I felt within myself and wanting to express that and connect people to that inner wisdom and power that is always there.” **Jeanette** “This is dedicated to my nana, who passed away in October 2019, and she will forever be one of the most important people in my life. She was there three minutes after I was born, and I was with her, holding her when she passed. That bond is unbreakable. At my lowest points she would say, ‘Don’t you dare give this up. Don’t you dare. You’ve worked hard for this.’ Anyway, this song is me letting it go. Letting it all go, floating up, up, and up. It feels kind of sunshine-y. What’s fun for me—and hopefully the listener—is that on this album you’re hearing me live tweaking the whole way through tracks. This one, especially.” **L.I.N.E.** “Love Is Not Enough. This is a deceivingly pretty song, because it’s very dark. Listen, I’m from Wales—melancholy is what we do. I tried to write a song in a minor key for this album. I was like, ‘I want to be like The 1975’—but it didn’t happen. Actually, this is James’ song \[collaborator James Greenwood, who releases music as Ghost Culture\]. It’s a Ghost Culture song that never came out. It’s the only time I’ve ever done this. It was quite scary, because it’s the poppiest thing I’ve probably done, and I was also scared because I basically ended up rewriting all the lyrics, and re-recorded new kick drums, new percussion, and came up with a new arrangement. But James encouraged all of it. The new lyrics came from doing a trauma body release session, which is quite something. It’s someone coming in, holding you and your gaze, breathing with you, and helping you release energy in the body that’s been trapped. Humans go through trauma all the time and we don’t literally shake and release it, like animals do. So it’s stored in the body, in the muscles, and it’s vital that we figure out how to release it. We’re so fearful of feeling our pain—and that fear of pain itself is what causes the most damage. This pain and trauma just wants to be seen and acknowledged and released.” **Corner of My Sky (feat. John Cale)** “This song used to be called ‘Mushroom.’ I’m going to say no more on that. I just wanted to go into a psychedelic bubble and be held by the sound and connection to earth, and all the, let’s just say, medicine that the earth has to offer. Once the music was finished, Joakim \[Haugland, founder of Owens’ label, Smalltown Supersound\] said, ‘This is nice, but I can hear John Cale’s voice on this.’ Joakim is a believer that anything can happen, so we sent it to him knowing that if he didn’t like it, he wouldn’t fucking touch it. We had to nudge a bit—he’s a busy man, he’s in his seventies, he’s touring, he’s traveling. But then he agreed and it became this psychedelic lullaby. For both of us, it was about the land and wanting to go to the connection to Wales. I asked if he could speak about Wales in Welsh, as it would feel like a small contribution from us to our country, as for a long time our language was suppressed. He then delivered back some of the lyrics you hear, but it was all backwards. So I had to go in and chop it up and arrange it, which was this incredibly fun challenge. The last bit says, ‘I’ve lost the bet that words will come and wake me in the morning.’ It was perfect. Honestly, I feel like the Welsh tourist board need to pay up for the most dramatic video imaginable.” **Night** “It’s important that I say this before someone else does: I think touring with Jon Hopkins influenced this one in terms of how the synth sounded. It wasn’t conscious. I’ve learned a lot of things from him in terms of how to produce kicks and layer things up. It’s related to a feeling of how, in the nighttime, your real feelings come out. You feel the truth of things and are able to access more of yourself and your actual soul desires. We’re distracted by so many things in the daytime. It’s a techno love song.” **Flow** “This is an anomaly as it’s a strange instrumental thing, but I think it’s needed on the album. This has a sample of me playing hand drum. I actually live with a sound healer, so we have a ceremony room and there’s all sorts of weird instruments in there. When no one was in the house, I snuck in there and played all sorts of random shit and sampled it simply on my iPhone. And I pitched the whole track around that. It fits at this place on the record, because we needed to come back down. It’s a breathe-out moment and a restful space. Because this album can truly feel like a journey. It also features probably my favorite moment on the album—when the kick drums come back in, with that ‘bam, bam, bam, bam.’ Listen and you’ll know exactly where I mean.” **Wake-Up** “There was a moment sonically with me and this song after I mixed it, where the strings kick in and there’s no vocals. It’s just strings and the arpeggio synth. I found myself in tears. I didn’t know that was going to happen to me with my own song, as it certainly didn’t happen when I was writing it. What I realized was that the strings in that moment were, for me, the earth and nature crying out. Saying, ‘Please, listen. Please, see what’s happening.’ And the arpeggio, which is really chaotic, is the digital world encroaching and trying to distract you from the suffering and pain and grief that the planet is enduring right now. I think we’re all feeling this collective grief that we can’t articulate half the time. We don’t even understand that we are connected to everyone else. It’s about tapping into the pain of this interconnected web. It’s also a commentary on digital culture, which I am of course a part of. I had some of the lyrics written down from ages ago, and they inspired the song. ‘Wake up, repeat, again.’ Just questioning, in a sense, how we’ve reached this place.”

Fontaines D.C. singer Grian Chatten was with bandmates Tom Coll and Conor Curley in a pub somewhere in the US when the words “Happy is living in a closed eye” came to him. It was possibly in Chicago, he thinks, and certainly during their 2019 tour. “We were playing pool and drinking some shit Guinness,” he tells Apple Music. “I was drinking an awful lot and there was a sense of running away on that tour—because we were so overworked. The gigs were really good and full of energy, but it almost felt like a synthetic, anxious energy. We were all burning the candle at both ends. I think my subconscious was trying to tell me when I wrote that line that I was not really facing reality properly. Ever since I\'ve read Oscar Wilde, I\'ve always been fascinated by questioning the validity of living soberly or healthily.” The line eventually made its way into “Sunny” a track from the band’s second album *A Hero’s Death*. Like much of the record, that unsteady waltz is an absorbing departure from the rock ’n’ roll punch of their Mercury-nominated debut, *Dogrel*. Released in April 2019, *Dogrel* quickly established the Irish five-piece as one of the most exciting guitar bands on their side of the Atlantic, throwing them into an exacting tour and promo schedule. When the physical and mental strains of life on the road bore down—on many nights, Chatten would have to visit dark memories to reengage with the thoughts and feelings behind some songs—the five-piece sought relief and refuge in other people’s music. “We found ourselves enjoying mostly gentler music that took us out of ourselves and calmed us down, took us away from the fast-paced lifestyle,” says Chatten. “I think we began to associate a particular sound and kind of music, one band in particular would have been The Beach Boys, that helped us feel safe and calm and took us away from the chaos.” That, says Chatten, helps account for the immersive and expansive sound of *A Hero’s Death*. With their world being refracted through the heat haze of interstate highways and the disconcerting fog of days without much sleep, there’s a dreaminess and longing in the music. It’s in the percussive roll of “Love Is the Main Thing” and the harmonies swirling around the title track’s rigorous riffs. It drifts through the uneasy reflection of “Sunny.” “‘Sunny’ is hard for me to sing,” says Chatten, “just because there are so many long fucking notes. And I have up until recently been smoking pretty hard. But I enjoy the character that I feel when I sing it. I really like the embittered persona and the gin-soaked atmosphere.” While *Dogrel*’s lyrics carried poetic renderings of life in modern Dublin, *A Hero’s Death* burrows inward. “Dublin is still in the language that I use, the colloquialisms and the way that I express things,” says Chatten. “But I consider this to be much more a portrait of an inner landscape. More a commentary on a temporal reality. It\'s a lot more about the streets within my own mind.” Throughout, Chatten can be found examining a sense of self. He does it with bracing defiance on “I Don’t Belong” and “I Was Not Born,” and with aching resignation on “Oh Such a Spring”—a lament for people who go to work “just to die.” ”I worked a lot of jobs that gave me no satisfaction and forced me to shelve temporarily who I was,” says Chatten. “I felt very strongly about people I love being in the service industry and having to become somebody else and suppress their own feelings and their own views, their own politics, to make a living. How it feels after a shift like that, that there is blood on your hands almost. You’re perpetuating this lie, because it’s a survival mechanism for yourself.” Ambitious and honest, *A Hero’s Death* is the sound of a band protecting their ideals when the demands of being rock’s next big thing begin to exert themselves. ”One of the things we agreed upon when we started the band was that we wouldn\'t write a song unless there was a purpose for its existence,” says Chatten. “There would be no cases of churning anything out. It got to a point, maybe four or five tunes into writing the album, where we realized that we were on the right track of making art that was necessary for us, as opposed to necessary for our careers. We realized that the heart, the core of the album is truthful.”

The West Midlands-born and London-based electronic duo Delmer Darion (comprising Oliver Jack and Tom Lenton) announce their debut album ‘Morning Pageants’ will be released on the 16th October via Practise Music. Their debut album has been five years in the making: a sprawling, industrial ten-track account of the death of the devil, inspired by a line in the Wallace Stevens poem ‘Esthétique du Mal’: “The death of Satan was a tragedy for the imagination.” A vast aural landscape is covered from the opening melodies coded in the constructed language of Solresol. When sequenced together, ‘Morning Pageants’ is shrouded in the same intricate noise of self-sampling and tape degradation. De-centred rhythmic assemblies of analogue drum machines play through a series of guitar pedals, thunderous bass swells from a self oscillating filter feedback patch, and folk songs dissolve into thin air. The artwork for Morning Pageants was designed by Oliver, based from a series of 16th Century prints called “The Dance of Death” by Hans Holbein, depicting different people being led away by Death. Recreating one of the prints, he replaced the figure being led away with an original drawing of Satan. The final artwork is printed on Nepalese Lokta paper, a waxy yellow paper that has been used for lots of sacred texts. Even if you’re not following the descent of the devil step by step through their unspooling archives, you’ll have little chance not to be transfixed.

You don’t need to know that Fiona Apple recorded her fifth album herself in her Los Angeles home in order to recognize its handmade clatter, right down to the dogs barking in the background at the end of the title track. Nor do you need to have spent weeks cooped up in your own home in the middle of a global pandemic in order to more acutely appreciate its distinct banging-on-the-walls energy. But it certainly doesn’t hurt. Made over the course of eight years, *Fetch the Bolt Cutters* could not possibly have anticipated the disjointed, anxious, agoraphobic moment in history in which it was released, but it provides an apt and welcome soundtrack nonetheless. Still present, particularly on opener “I Want You to Love Me,” are Apple’s piano playing and stark (and, in at least one instance, literal) diary-entry lyrics. But where previous albums had lush flourishes, the frenetic, woozy rhythm section is the dominant force and mood-setter here, courtesy of drummer Amy Wood and former Soul Coughing bassist Sebastian Steinberg. The sparse “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is backed by drumsticks seemingly smacking whatever surface might be in sight. “Relay” (featuring a refrain, “Evil is a relay sport/When the one who’s burned turns to pass the torch,” that Apple claims was excavated from an old journal from written she was 15) is driven almost entirely by drums that are at turns childlike and martial. None of this percussive racket blunts or distracts from Apple’s wit and rage. There are instantly indelible lines (“Kick me under the table all you want/I won’t shut up” and the show-stopping “Good morning, good morning/You raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in”), all in the service of channeling an entire society’s worth of frustration and fluster into a unique, urgent work of art that refuses to sacrifice playfulness for preaching.

Jarvis Cocker’s band Pulp might have been one of the defining groups of the mid-’90s Britpop era, but there was something distinctly different about them. In a sea of bands fixated on the past, Pulp’s landmark 1995 album *Different Class* was, musically and lyrically, a step forward. They weren’t the only band taking a critical look at British society, but Cocker was constantly turning his gaze inward. In his songwriting, relationships were messy, memories weren’t always to be trusted, the drugs often had the opposite of their intended effect, and even the losers got lucky—more than just sometimes. On two albums to follow, the Sheffield group would cut further left—and Cocker would go on to explore many more avenues of expression. Two solo albums in 2006 and 2009 (as well as writing most of Charlotte Gainsbourg’s beautiful *5:55*) only further showcased his range—and that’s before he occupied himself as a book editor, a BBC radio host, and, during the COVID-19 shutdown, a housebound orator of great literary works. (Google “Jarvis Cocker’s Bedtime Stories” to hear his soothing baritone recite Brautigan and Salinger.) On the heels of his collaborative project with Chilly Gonzales, 2017’s *Room 29*, Cocker was invited by Sigur Rós to perform at a festival in Reykjavík. He quickly assembled an entirely new London-based group of musicians to work through song sketches he’d developed over the last few years, which became the band-in-progress JARV IS…—emphasis on those three trailing dots. “Usually you put that into a sentence when you are implying that something isn\'t quite finished,” Cocker tells Apple Music. “The whole point of this band was to finish off these ideas for songs that I\'d had for quite a long time but wasn\'t able to bring to fruition on my own.” At a trim seven songs, *Beyond the Pale* still manages to explore a range of themes, most of which revolve around the modern human condition—from aging to FOMO and self-doubt to living in the wake of a bygone era. Evolution plays a big part, too—not just in the subject matter, but in how the music took shape: “Because we were doing this experiment of trying to finish off a record by playing it to people, it seemed logical that we should record the shows so we could see how we were getting on,” he says of what would become “Must I Evolve?”, which was recorded live in an actual cave in Castleton, Derbyshire. “A light bulb went off in my head then, because that\'s every artist\'s dream, really—to make a record without even realizing it. To not go through that self-conscious phase where you go into a studio and start questioning things and the song gets away from you.” Here, Cocker tells us how the rest of the songs came together. **Save the Whale** \"You\'re not the first person to say there\'s a similarity to Leonard Cohen, which I take as a massive compliment, because he\'s really been an artistic touchstone for me, all through my career. There are some artists that show you different ideas of what a song can be, and open up your perceptions of what a song can be. Especially for someone like me, who was basically brought up on pop radio, which lyrically isn\'t very adventurous. So what Leonard Cohen did with words in songs was something that really had an effect on me. But what\'s exciting for me was all the time that I was in Pulp, I was the only person in the band who sang. And in this band, basically everybody sings, especially Serafina \[Steer, harpist\] and Emma \[Smith, violinist/guitarist\]. Rather than it being a monologue, I can tie in other viewpoints with what they say. And sometimes it will reinforce it, sometimes it will undercut it, sometimes it will just comment on it. And it\'s a lot of fun writing that way, because suddenly you\'re writing a dialogue or conversation rather than just me, me, me all the time.\" **Must I Evolve?** \"The starting point for it was me thinking about the development of a relationship, from meeting someone to moving in with them and stuff like that. You could draw a parallel with evolution itself, of two cells splitting and then those cells divide more and then you start to get organisms and eventually you\'ve got some fish and then the fish grows legs and somehow comes out... I guess I was just remembering biology textbooks from school. The idea of the ascendant man, stuff like that. The Big Bang. That was a bit of a joke I had with myself, with the meanings of \'bang.\' Banging, like \'Who\'ve been banging lately,\' and the Big Bang that started the whole of human creation off. Two of the longest songs on the record are questions: \'Must I Evolve?\' and \'Am I Missing Something?\' I guess I\'m at an age where I ask myself those kind of questions, and the songs were some type of attempt on my part to answer those questions. But this really was the key song because it was the first one that we finished and released, and also the call-and-response theme came from this song, because I\'d already written the \'Must I evolve? Must I change? Must I develop?\' But there was no answer to that. We were just rehearsing and I think it was Serafina started going, \'Yes, yes, yes,\' I think as a bit of a joke. And then I thought, \'That\'s such a great idea, let\'s just do that.\' That totally added a new dimension to the song.\" **Am I Missing Something?** \"It\'s in that tradition, I suppose, of those long songs where it very directly addresses the listener. This is the oldest song on the record; the lyrics were written pretty much eight years ago. I wanted to try a bit of a different approach, and so the lyrics aren\'t so much a through narrative; it\'s not just one story. It jumps around a bit. And that seemed appropriate because it\'s about this idea of \'Am I missing something?\' It could mean there\'s something really interesting going on but I don\'t know about it, which is like a modern disease: Too many entertainment and information options to choose from. It can also be like, \'Do I lack something? Is there something missing in me? Do I need to fill some gaping psychological hole within myself or whatever?\' Or actually, ‘Am I overlooking something, am I not getting something?’ That\'s a really important part of a song, that you have to leave some space in it for the person listening to do what they want with it.” **House Music All Night Long** \"People have said, ‘Yes, it\'s a COVID anthem,’ but it wasn\'t conceived in that way at all. For a start, it was written two years ago before anybody was really thinking about any pandemic. It was really just one weekend where I was stuck in London. It was a very hot weekend and everyone I knew had left town. I was in this house on my own and some friends had gone to a house music festival in Wales and I was jealous of that. I was having—people call it FOMO, don\'t they? I just thought to myself, \'Don\'t just sit here feeling sorry for yourself, do something to get yourself out of this trough you\'ve found yourself in.\' So I remembered that there was a secondhand keyboard that I\'d bought from a street market just a few weeks before and it was down in the basement of this house. So I went and found it, brought it up, plugged it in, put it through an amp, and just started trying to write bits of music. I came up with the chord pattern that the song starts off with, and because this keyboard—it\'s an old string machine, so it\'s got a quite naive sound to it, which reminded me of some of those early house records where they would use big, almost symphonic-sounding things but on really crap keyboards. The first chord change really reminded me of something like \'Promised Land\' by Joe Smooth or something like that. So maybe it was because I was thinking about my friends who were having a good time at a rave. Again, once I\'ve got that idea of the two meanings of \'house\'—like, house music and then \'house\' as in a building that you live in. I was stuck in a house feeling sorry for myself whilst my friends were out dancing to house, probably having a great time, as far as I was imagining. And so then the song had already half written itself once I got those basic ideas down.\" **Sometimes I Am Pharaoh** \"I developed a fascination with these street entertainers—human statues. You tend to get them outside famous buildings or in tourist hotspots. So you either get somebody dressed up as Charlie Chaplin—that\'s why it\'s \'Sometimes I\'m Pharaoh/Sometimes I\'m Chaplin.\' And they stand still and then a crowd gathers and eventually they move and everybody screams and hopefully gives them some money. It died out a little bit in more recent years. They’ve been superseded slightly by those levitating guys—have you seen those ones? Where it\'s like Yoda floating, and he\'s holding a stick but obviously the stick—there\'s some kind of platform under him. And I feel sorry for the statue guys, because the levitating Yoda, it\'s just like, anybody could do that. You just go and buy the weird frame—which has obviously got some kind of really heavy base so that it doesn\'t topple over—and you\'re in business. Whereas to actually stand still for hours on end must be really difficult. I was just showing some respect and love to the people that were doing that.\" **Swanky Modes** \"My son \[who lives in France\] goes to this once-a-week rock school. It\'s run by a guy from Brooklyn who moved over to Paris. I\'ve become friendly with him, and he asked me if I would come to the class and help the kids write a song in the space of an hour or something. So we met to talk about how that could work, and then we\'re jamming around and he was playing the piano and I was messing around on the bass and then we started playing what became \'Swanky Modes,\' which is really not a kids\' song at all. The piano that you hear on the record is him, Jason Domnarski. And the first half of the song has got my bass playing on it. So it\'s almost like a field recording. This is probably the most narrative-driven song on the record. Somehow all these events that happened to me at very specific periods of time, which was when I was living in Camden in London, just towards the end of my time at Saint Martins art college, so we\'re talking about 1991. I was only living there for maybe eight months, and all these images from my time of living there suddenly came into my mind really, really clearly. The title of the song, \'Swanky Modes,\' it\'s the name of the shop. It was a women\'s clothes shop that was near where I was living at the time. Again, that\'s one of the mysteries of songwriting—why suddenly, almost 30 years later, these words would come to me that summed up a fairly minor chapter in my life. But it came back in really minute detail and I\'m really glad it did, because now I\'ll never forget that period on my life, because I\'ve got a souvenir of it.\" **Children of the Echo** \"A few years ago I was asked to write a review of a book called *The John Lennon Letters*. I\'m a Beatles fan, and particularly of John Lennon, so I thought if John Lennon wrote lots of letters, I\'d really like to see them. So I was sent an advance copy of the book, and it was just weird. They weren\'t letters. Some of them were just \'Tell Dave to get lasagna from supermarket. Walk dog.\' They were just to-do notes, like a Post-it note that you would put on your refrigerator to remind you to do something. They weren\'t letters. So I was really, really disappointed with this book, so I tried to express this in the review. And this phrase \'children of the echo\' came into my mind, which in the context of the article was talking about how someone in my position—I can\'t really remember The Beatles, because I was a kid. I was born in 1963, when they first broke through, and then they broke up in 1970 when I was seven. They were there, but I couldn\'t really be actively a fan or anything like that. But they left such a mark and they made such an impact that the ripples obviously were coming out and affected everybody a lot. And this made me think of this idea of an echo, of a sound which would be like The Beatles, this amazing sound that changed everything. And then I consider myself to be a child of the echo because I was brought up in the aftermath of that. And I was thinking, \'Well, we\'ve got to get beyond that,\' because that was the problem with that thing that got called Britpop in the UK—that it was so in thrall to the \'60s and The Beatles in particular that it killed it. It stopped it from being what could\'ve been a really forward-thinking and exciting and innovative thing into a retro thing. And you can\'t make another period of history happen again, it\'s just impossible. It seemed like it was exciting, and \'here we come, here\'s the revolution, the world\'s going to change.\' And then it just went into this horrible nostalgic morass of nothing. That\'s when I jumped ship. I think now it\'s so long ago that there is a chance now to do something new, because we have to transcend the echo now, we have to make another thing happen. We can\'t keep living on this echo that gets fainter and fainter and fainter and fainter. Because there\'s nothing to live on anymore.\"

Keleketla! is an expansive collaborative project, reaching outward from Johannesburg to London, Lagos, L.A. and West Papua, “Keleketla!” started as a musical meeting ground between Ninja Tune cofounders Coldcut and a cadre of South African musicians (introduced by the charity In Place Of War), including the raw, South African-accented jazz styles of Sibusile Xaba, and rapper Yugen Blakrok (Black Panther OST). From those initial sessions, the record grew to encompass a wider web of musical luminaries, including Afrobeat architects, the late pioneer Tony Allen and Dele Sosimi, legendary L.A. spoken word pioneers The Watts Prophets, and West Papuan activist Benny Wenda. The album collaborators are as follows: South Africa sessions: Yugen Blakrok, Nono Nkoane, Thabang Tabane, Tubatsi Moloi, Gally Ngoveni, Sibusile Xaba, Soundz of the South Collective, DJ Mabheko London sessions: Tony Allen, Shabaka Hutchings, Dele Sosimi, Ed ‘Tenderlonious’ Cawthorne, Tamar Osborn, Miles James, Joe Armon-Jones, Afla Sackey, Benny Wenda, The Lani Singers, Eska Mtungwazi, Jungle Drummer, DeeJay Random Additionally, The Watts Prophets (Los Angeles) and Antibalas (New York) have contributed to the album. The final product is a future-facing assemblage of influences, drawing connections between different points in a jazz-tipped, soulfully-minded spectrum; it builds outwards, from the solid musical foundations of those first sessions, featuring the likes of Thabang Tabane, esteemed percussionist and son of the legendary Phillip Tabane. On the one hand, there are gqom beats, interlaced with activist chants and and Tony Allen’s live Afrobeat drums; on the other, there are warm, lyrical meditations, aided by horns and keys. The name “Keleketla” means “response”, as in “call-and-response”, a title which speaks to the project’s aim: to build out a shared musical ground, traced across different recording sessions, continents apart. It all started with Johannesburg’s Keleketla! Library, an independent library and media arts initiative, stocked since its 2008 inception with donated items from the local community. Run by artists and musicians Rangoato Hlasane and Malose Malahlela, they met Ruth Daniels of the charity In Place of War (where a portion of the proceeds from the record will go to) who asked who they would choose for a musical collaboration with South African artists. Ra and Malose named Coldcut. The UK duo responded to the invitation to make a trip to South Africa for the recording sessions (supported by the British Council) and so the story started to grow. The duo had long nurtured an interest in South African jazz, and it was through Mushroom Hour Half Hour co-founder Andrew Curnow, whose label and collective have been part of the vanguard of a new generation of jazz-influenced acts from Jo’Burg and beyond, that they were connected to the players for the sessions. The main sessions took place at Soweto’s Trackside Studios, where they started a set of songs and settled down to rehearse and record them. Upon returning to the UK, Black and More sought out extra collaborators, setting up sessions with musicians who could expand and re-imagine the album’s horizons. In many cases, this meant building on the sessions in Soweto, such as in ‘Crystallise’, where Tamar Osborn’s sax parts were added to the lyrics that Yugen Blakrok laid down in Trackside. In other cases, they led to new tracks altogether, such as ‘Freedom Groove’, which came out of an off-the-cuff jam between Tony Allen and Matt Black; Allen’s drum part was taken to build a new track, overlaid with fat, battle-cry brass from Antibalas, and a powerful call to freedom from The Watts Prophets in L.A. Music and politics is a recurring theme on the record, most notably on ‘Future Toyi Toyi’, recorded in Khayelitsha, which features a recording Black and More made of hip-hop activists Soundz of the South, singing a revolutionary chant, referenced in the title, combined with – amongst other elements – a gqom track by Durban producer DJ Mabheko for the single version. Their creation was partly inspired by their experiences with the Keleketla! Library, who held a party during their stay. At the party, they saw the library’s co-founder Hlasane mix a recording of a student chant into a fiery, uptempo moment in his set, sending the crowd into a frenzy. It was a moment where they were reminded of how closely entwined politics and music can be. “It was almost a religious experience,” recalls Black, “to see the effect music could have in galvanising the audience like this.” Likewise, ‘Papua Merdeka’ centres around a political invocation. Led by Benny Wenda, it’s a call for freedom for the nation of West Papua from Indonesia, which Wenda fled in 2004 after being persecuted by the Indonesian military. He now leads a campaign from his home in Oxford, where the vocals for the track were recorded. Tony Allen, the rhythm behind Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat revolution, recorded the drums, along with Miles James, a guitarist who’s played with Michael Kiwanuka and Yussef Dayes, and who – as the son of an old family friend – featured in a Coldcut video when he was just a year old. “Keleketla!” is about finding musical connections. Starting with the tight community around the Keleketla! Library, this project has grown out of those closely forged bonds that can develop around music. Recalling the records he was introduced to and friends made while in South Africa, More says, “There’s music lovers everywhere and that’s what we thrive with.” “Keleketla!” is about embracing that call-and-response tradition, and seeing where it takes you.

A psychotherapist by day, Laura Fell’s upcoming debut album, ’Safe from Me’, is a search for answers from a woman always expected to have them to hand, and the self-punishing frustration that assumption brings. Fell’s dedication to this journey of self-discovery was unquestionable from the off, so much so that her peers questioned her sanity. Holding down three jobs to fund the record, Fell was determined that the songs would go far beyond their acoustic guitar genesis, assembling classically trained musicians to fully realise her vision. London-based, Fell only started playing music at 25 when the poetry she had been writing for almost a decade began to feel more like songs. This talent stretches throughout ‘Safe from Me’; Fell invites you to claw at the soil until you strike gold, and the meaning eventually becomes unearthed. ‘Safe from Me’ will be released on 20th November through Balloon Machine Records.

A few years before the release of *Songs of an Unknown Tongue*, Zara McFarlane travelled to her ancestral home of Jamaica. It was a research trip for a musical she was writing about an old Jamaican legend: The White Witch of Rose Hall—a twisted love story about a white woman who learns obeah, kills her lovers and enslaved peoples before eventually being killed by an enslaved labourer. This experience—travelling the country, conducting field research and interviews—sowed the seeds for this, her extraordinary fourth album. “It’s allegory of my personal journey exploring how the effects of colonialism resonates within my life today being Black and British,’’ Zara—who grew up in Dagenham, east London— tells Apple Music over the phone. Across the album’s 10 tracks we journey through semi-imagined histories spanning pre-colonialism, through enslavement and (the official) emancipation, to the present afterlife of slavery. It\'s not a linear timeline. McFarlane performs a kind of historical wake work here: Tending to unacknowledged histories, the living and the dead, the spirit and material worlds. “The story of the White Witch is set on the cusp of emancipation around 1834,” she says. “There were uprisings leading up to that moment, and I wanted to know what was happening musically at that time and to draw from those traditions. Most people think about ska as the beginning of Jamaican music, but there’s so much more, especially on the folk side.” Sonically, she encountered living folk traditions that largely came via enslaved peoples, and later indentured labourers from Africa and Asia. These rhythms—including Bruckins, Kumina, Ettu and many others—formed the basis of the album. “I wanted to make an album that was led by rhythm, percussion and vocals,” she says. She worked with celebrated producers and instrumentalists, Kwake Bass and Wu Lu to explore electronic expressions of these folk forms. It is an album of self-affirmation and witnessing, using music as a site for retrieving and pushing back on colonial histories. Here’s Zara’s track-by-track guide. **Everything is Connected** “This track was inspired by the cotton tree—it\'s vast and can grow ridiculously high. Mythically, it’s a place that holds the spirit of death through the creatures that live in it. Often these traditions are held by these trees in communion between sets of spirits. You hear those voices in that song, with the whispers I sing. These are the whispers of history and of those ancestors. This whole album takes you on a journey, from freedom and enslavement to emancipation. This part of the album is saying that everything is connected: it\'s exploring the idea of the cycle of life, the fact that life and death exist together in the same space.” **Black Treasure** “’Black Treasure’ is us: Black people. But on a wider level, it\'s speaking to everyone. To the essence of who you are. I primarily wanted it to be an anthem for Black people to feel empowered by. It’s also a reflection on the fact that the connotation of Black is always negative in the British language and in the media. I’m saying that Black is my history, my culture, my skin, my soul, my thoughts, my music, my words. All of it is treasure. Museums are filled with Black treasures—despite the fact that we’re called primitive and barbaric, so I\'m exploring ideas of voyage, treasure hunting and the British Empire. I’m making comment on the taking that’s been done. The way that I like to write is that I like to have two parallel things happening at the same time—so this track could be about not being taken seriously in a relationship, not being treated as treasure. From the angle I’m writing from, I’m saying that I’m Black treasure and I don’t need you to tell me that. It\'s also speaking specifically to Black women, as we are not always celebrated. We are treasure.” **My Story** “I had this vision of seeing myself walking down the street. I met a book that told me it had lost its pages, and asked me to help it find them, so I did. I realised it was my story. It represents Black history: the seeking that I have done and want to continue to do to understand what happened, and to better understand my identity. It\'s about recognising and acknowledging and owning the past: I don\'t think that happens here in this country. When I was researching in Jamaica I found that the histories were spoken about in a different way—people were much more vocal and open about it. It\'s their reality and they live it. It was interesting to meet those people and ask myself how I might do that in the same way. In the UK we don’t recognise Britain’s association with slavery. I think about it sheepishly: can I even talk about it? So, to me the song is about finding a way to own and acknowledge those histories and move forward with it. Musically, it\'s based on the revivalist tradition, which is related to Chrisitianity and has a religious context to it. I like the upbeat side to it: with church music you’re praising and uplifting, so it\'s got a driving rhythm to it.” **Broken Water** “I made a conscious decision that I wanted the melody to feel disjointed. I heard the tracks as disjointed sentences with a kind of call and response. The sentences are constructed across two voices: You can’t get the full message without the two voices together. I wanted an element of dissonance—that feeling and that mood. It\'s about that sense of displacement after travelling across the waters, and the loss that people went through. This track has a nyabinghi rhythm, there’s a religious connotation here, too. Christianity was a tool for enslavement—enslaved people weren’t allowed to practice their traditions and Christianity was taught to hold them down. The track is also fragmented lyrically—and that speaks to the idea of languages being broken down and lost.” **Saltwater** “This is one of the ballads on the album—at this point in the story, we’re in enslavement. I use the imagery of being abandoned and stranded on an island. I chose to talk about these feelings in the context of a relationship. Saltwater is reference to the ocean tears from the frustration of feeling trapped. With the instrumentation, melodically, the synth sound that you hear is directly related to the Bruckins party rhythm. I love what Kwake did with this version: it\'s so open and spacious, it feels like water. There is a sense of loss because you don’t have the driving force of the rhythm to hold you down, so there’s that sense being stuck out in the middle of nowhere and feeling alone, either by yourself or in the context of the relationship.” **Run of Your Life** “Here we’re escaping from slavery—it’s the thing that’s going to get you to freedom in order to have a life. It\'s a mantra to keep pushing forward through adversity in general. I grew up in a single parent household, and learnt from the women around me to keep pushing forwards. This track is played on a drum machine. Kwake and Wulu recorded the percussion live and created a MIDI imprint and then used purely electronic sounds. It\'s basically about an escape to freedom.” **State of Mind** “This is based on the Kumina rhythm and tradition. Kumina was developed as neo-traditional African practice among freed peoples, and the indentured labourers who came to Jamaica after emancipation. The rhythm has a hypnotic trance like effect, and can cause people to do superhuman feats, like walking up trees. I love the idea of the hypnotic trance, and the idea of the heartbeat. For me, this song is about the power of the rhythm and how it can have an effect on one’s state of mind. I wanted to use it as a channeling force for healing and guidance. For Kwake, it was also a homage to ‘90s dance as well, he liked the beat and the pulse of that sound—that whole scene was almost spiritual for some people! The drums in Kumina celebrations are said to be particularly important because of the control they have over the spirit. That was partly how I wanted to use this as well. I wanted to draw from that in a positive way.” **Native Nomad** “At this point, we’ve come out of ‘Run of Your Life\', where you’ve been escaping to freedom, into ‘State of Mind’ where you’re now on the other side and you’re asking where you go and what to do—you need to channel and get into a process of healing and guidance to be able to move forwards. ‘Native Nomad’ is about being in this new place and space and trying to fit in and understand what freedom is—you’re asking yourself how life then continues. Here, I’m literally writing about my experience of not fitting in as an English person, and not fitting in as a Jamaican person. It\'s about diaspora and how that feeling of displacement lingers across generations: This affinity with both worlds, and a yearning to go back to a homeland that was never our homeland. But it\'s ultimately about accepting who you are.” **Roots of Freedom** “This track takes us back to the idea of the tree again. This time it\'s about sowing seeds, and we are the seeds. We’ve accepted where we are now \[at this point in the story\]—we’re free. In being free we have the chance to improve the future for others. It\'s the idea of moving forward and the importance of a sense of unity for people: Black people, but also people throughout the world. It\'s about sowing the seeds for positive change. We own our future and we aren\'t limited. In leaning on history, we have the power to move better to move our forwards with strength.” **Future Echoes** “This track is about emancipation. We’re free. ‘Roots of Freedom’ is channeling freedom and getting the strength to move forward. ‘Future Echoes’ is also based on the Bruckins party tradition. It\'s about the future. What happens next. How we move forward. It\'s also about your relationship with yourself, and owing everything that has happened. Past hurts, future dreams, and directing the narrative of our own stories. It points to the fact that Black histories have always been told incorrectly: I’ve had to relearn my history. This track is about owning my story. I don’t need someone else to tell me my story: I’ve come through all of this. My history, my narrative, \[so now it\'s about\] my future for myself. It\'s a celebration of self-acceptance and rewriting the narrative. We realised that we’re not alone, and never have been.”

Brownswood are delighted to present Zara McFarlane’s, Songs of an Unknown Tongue a masterful work that underlines her continuous growth as an artist. Zara’s fourth studio album pushes the boundaries of jazz adjacent music via an exploration into the folk and spiritual traditions of her ancestral motherland, Jamaica. The album is a rumination on the piecing together of black heritage, where painful and proud histories are uncovered and connected to the present. Partnering with cult South London based producers Kwake Bass and Wu-lu, Zara has created a futuristic sound palate, electronically recreating the pulsing, hypnotic rhythms Kumina and Nyabinghi – and the music played at African rooted rituals like the emancipation celebration Bruckins Party, and the lively death rites of Dinki Minki and Gerreh. These richly patterned electronic rhythms are balanced throughout by McFarlane’s distinctive, clear vocal tones, and vivid song writing. Zara’s critically acclaimed third studio album ‘Arise’ met with universal critical praise, and was supported by an impressive live tour performing at festivals such as Love Supreme, Field Day and SXSW. Zara is the winner of multiple awards including a Mobo, 2 Jazz FM Vocalist of the Year Award (2018 & 2015), an Urban Music Award, and Session of the Year at Worldwide Awards. Drawing respect from a wide range of artists, Zara has collaborated with Gregory Porter, Shabaka Hutchings, Moses Boyd and Louie Vega. These new sonic explorations signal an exciting direction of travel for this innovative founding member of the UK’s vibrant homegrown jazz scene.

Ultraísta have announced their first new album since 2012's self-titled debut with the release of “Tin King.” The trio will release Sister on March 13, 2020. It’s a collection that defies easy categorization, and one that proves that Ultraísta — GRAMMY-winning producer/engineer/musician Nigel Godrich, best known for his two decades helming Radiohead’s groundbreaking studio output; celebrated drummer Joey Waronker, who’s toured and recorded with everyone from R.E.M. and Beck to Roger Waters and Elliott Smith; and singer Bettinson, an acclaimed solo artist whose work combines synth-driven electropop and dreamy vocal looping — is far more than just the sum of its remarkable parts.

On the eponymously titled final song of her debut album Land of No Junction, Irish songwriter Aoife Nessa Frances (pronounced Ee-fa) sings “Take me to the land of no junction/Before it fades away/Where the roads can never cross/But go their own way.” It is this search that lies at the heart of the album, recalling journeys towards an ever shifting centre – a centre that cannot hold – where maps are constantly being rewritten. The songs traverse and inhabit this indeterminate landscape: the beginnings of love, moments of loss, discovery, fragility and strength, all intermingle and interact. Land of No Junction is shot through with a sense of mystery – an ambiguity and disorientation that illuminates with smokey luminescence. Navigated by the richness of Aoife’s voice, along with the layers gently built through her collaborators’ instruments (strings, drums, guitars, keys, percussion) gives a feeling of filling up space into every corner and crack. A remarkable coherent sonic world: buoyant and aqueous, with dark undercurrents. Where nostalgia and newness ebb and flow in equal measure.

**COPIES STILL AVAILABLE THROUGH THE FOLLOWING. BANDCAMP NOW SOLD OUT** ROUGH TRADE www.roughtrade.com/gb/total-wkts/running-tracks RESIDENT RECORDS www.resident-music.com/productdetails&path=34000&product_id=71383 NORMAN RECORDS www.normanrecords.com/records/182914-total-wkts-running-tracks DRIFT RECORD SHOP driftrecords.com/products/total-wkts-running-tracks?_pos=1&_sid=f467eccab&_ss=r RECORDSTORE.CO.UK www.recordstore.co.uk/recordstore/recordstore/Running-Tracks-Signed-Exclusive-Frosted-Glass-Vinyl/6N8I0000000 Made in the gap between March and May 2020, John Newton (vocalist/drummer of London based two-piece JOHN) presents ’Running Tracks' under the guise ‘Total Wkts’. An album embracing the limitations and possibilities of a spell away from his usual surroundings in South London. Having moved back into his childhood town in the rural South West of England, the tracks are treated as playful collages, incorporating various sampled sounds in each composition: bird noises become stuck in the programming of drum tracks, inhalation between spoken lines is left to remain. The incidental is encouraged throughout the entire project, opener ‘HP Envy’ taking its name from the household printer that sets its rhythm, offering overlaid lyrics that repurpose the words of a spam email received during its production. 'Animal Dream' and 'Miniature Police' follow the same vein, the songs built from the verbal retellings of dreams. The name 'Total Wkts' becomes an emblem of his approach. The two words taken from a sign seen on his daily run through the rural landscape, with most of the tracks also written and arranged whilst on this repetitive circuit. Following online correspondence regarding an unrelated and unrealised project in March 2020, 'HP Envy' was sent to Graeme Sinclair of label Outré Disque. He premiered the track whilst guesting on James Endeacott's Soho Radio show on the 19th May 2020. Newton felt that it was important for the music to be released in the same spirit of its making, choosing to release the full collection of songs shortly after on June 11th (also his birthday).

A Powys trio whose free-spirited invention and exuberant intensity flows through experimental pop: hypnotic, exhilarating and defiantly unique. The Welsh band Islet return with the release of their long-awaited new album. 'Eyelet' was recorded at home tucked away in the hills of rural Mid Wales. It took form the months following the birth of band members Emma and Mark Daman Thomas’ second child and the death of fellow band member Alex Williams’ mother. Alex came to live with Emma and Mark, and the band enlisted Rob Jones (Pictish Trail, Charles Watson) to produce. Winner of 2020 Neutron Prize www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2020/09/30/news-islet-win-the-neutron-prize-2020/ Shortlisted for Welsh Music Prize 2020

They began by just playing the hits. In 2017, nearly eight years after Doves had last picked up their instruments together, drummer Andy Williams and his twin brother, guitarist Jez, gave bassist/singer Jimi Goodwin a call. Come over to Andy’s studio, they said, and let’s see if we can remember how to play “Black and White Town” and “There Goes the Fear”—just for fun. “It came back really quickly,” Andy tells Apple Music. “We were all laughing and having fun. As a drummer, hearing that bass—*his* bass—instantly felt very familiar, in a good sense. Pretty soon, there was a real enthusiasm and hunger from us to work together.” When they went on hiatus after 2009’s excellent *Kingdom of Rust* album, Doves were fatigued. They’d been together for a quarter of a century, serving up four albums as one of Britain’s best and more adventurous indie-rock trios—plus one before that as house specialists Sub Sub. They were never meant to disappear for a decade, but when you’ve got families and side projects (the Williams brothers as Black Rivers, Goodwin with his 2014 solo album *Odludek*), life gets in the way. “I don’t want to sound boastful, but I think there’s a chemistry between us three that you don’t run into every day,” Andy says. “That time away from each other has helped us appreciate that.” Fizzing with that chemistry, *The Universal Want* sounds like a Doves album precisely because it doesn’t sound like any other Doves album. The exquisitely measured mix of euphoria and sorrow is familiar, but by experimenting with Afrobeat, dub, and keyboards foraged from behind the Iron Curtain, the trio continues to expand their horizons on every song. “We didn’t attempt to resurrect another ‘The Cedar Room’ or ‘There Goes the Fear,’ because it’s a recipe for disaster when you chase your own tail,” says Andy. “It’s really important for us three to be excited and feel like we’re moving forward.” Let him guide you through that evolution, track by track. **Carousels** “Originally, it started life as Black Rivers and we couldn’t get it to work. We put it down for a while, then Jez had a look at it again. He’d bought a Tony Allen breakbeat album and just sampled some breaks. It just clicked—the song came alive. We felt it was a bit of a progression for us, so it felt like a good song to introduce ourselves back to people again. Lyrically, it’s a bit of a nostalgia thing. We all used to go out to funfairs as kids up here in the North West, and every summer we’d go to a place called Harlech in North Wales and there’d be a funfair near there. It’s a nostalgic look back at that era when you used to hear music for the first time, loud, on loudspeakers, and that excitement at the fair—trying to recapture that feeling. The music’s trying to push it forward, but lyrically, it’s looking back, so there’s that juxtaposition.” **I Will Not Hide** “Really fun memories of making this. Jimi loves his sampling, so when he played it to us, it was like, ‘Wow! What’s going on there?’ I couldn’t really fathom out the lyrics. I mean, I put a couple of lines in there myself, but I still don’t fully understand what it’s about. I don’t think Jimi does. But we quite like that place sometimes, where it’s almost a train of thought. Jimi’s demo stopped, I think, at chorus two. We just looked at the chords, me and Jez, and tacked the guitar section onto the end. That’s the nice thing about Doves—when people present ideas to the band, it goes through the filter of all three of us and it can change. That’s when it’s working well between us three, when someone has an initial idea and then the other two run with it.” **Broken Eyes** “Early doors, we found an old hard drive with loads of material on, stuff we hadn’t actually ever managed to finish, and this was one \[from the *Kingdom of Rust* sessions\]. We were like, ‘Oh, that’s got real heart and soul. Let’s tackle that again.’ Last time, we were maybe overcomplicating it, so we stripped it away and kept it simple. It always had a different lyric, right up until the 11th hour, actually. It had a very different vibe. Jimi sounds brilliant on this. When he did the vocal, it was hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck stuff. That’s when you know you’re on the right path. You just hit a brick wall sometimes with songs. I read a Leonard Cohen book and I think he was talking about ‘Tower of Song,’ that it took him 20 years to finish. Started it, put it down, picked it up again, kept going back to it. If a song’s got strength in it, it will keep knocking on your door. We’ve got other songs which I’m hoping we can look at again at some point. There’s a couple of things where I’ve gone, ‘Do you remember this one?’ And it was, ‘Oh no, I can’t.’ Because we’d absolutely hammered it at the time and not made it work, and no one’s ready to go back to that place.” **For Tomorrow** “Again, we had those chords for the chorus kicking round for a while but we never really had a song. The high string in the verses, we were like, ‘Oh god, look, it’s got that kind of Isaac Hayes classic soul thing we were going for.’ I know it didn’t necessarily end up that way, but that’s what we were going for in our heads. We did it live in the room, and I remember going back in the control room and going, ‘Ah, it’s just coming together.’ I’ve got really fond memories, a couple of moments of like, ‘Yeah.’ It’s a really fun one to play on the drums.” **Cathedrals of the Mind** “Initially it was from a Black Rivers session—another song that, down the line, Jimi heard and really loved and worked on with us. We were booked to go to Anglesey, me and Jez, in 2016. We were due to set off at nine in the morning, but at six o’clock, my wife wakes me up and says, ‘Bowie’s passed.’ I couldn’t take it in—like the whole world, I guess. I remember driving to Anglesey with 6 Music on, they cleared their schedule and were just talking about Bowie. We got to Anglesey and it was like, ‘Fucking hell.’ I’m not saying we wrote this song for him, but I think it was an unconscious thing. Jez had some chords and I tried a couple of different grooves. It didn’t work, and I tried that sort of dub groove, and that was the start of the song. The lyrics, as well—‘In the back room/In the ballroom/I hear them calling your name…/Everywhere I see those eyes.’ I think we were referencing the passing of such a musical icon. He was such a towering figure, cultural figure. Him passing felt like your own mortality, essentially.” **Prisoners** “It’s the love affair with northern soul that we’ve had for years. Very English lyrics. The Jam was one reference when we were doing the lyrics, ‘Town Called Malice.’ It was written way before the situation we’re in \[2020’s lockdown\], but it’s got some sort of resonance. We’ve all been stuck in our houses and we’re only just starting to come out. But it’s also got a sense of hope. The chorus is ‘We’re just prisoners of these times/Although it won’t be for long.’ So there is a sense of hope with that. We let everybody know our struggles, I guess, but it’s good to have a sense of hope in there.” **Cycle of Hurt** “Jez came with that \[robotic voice\] sample and those chords. They’re probably the most direct lyrics \[on the album\]. It’s referencing a relationship really, and just trying to get out of a cycle of hurt—a cycle of thought that you’re trapped in. They’re quite collaborative, these lyrics. A lot of them that are \[about being\] just locked in a cycle of your own thought, really, and trying to break free from that. There’s definite references to trying to keep your own mental health on track. Looking back on it, that’s a subject we’ve definitely returned to on this record. We felt this \[track\] was really good for the album because there weren’t really deep strings on the rest of the record, and it just brings a new sound for your ears to keep your interest up.” **Mother Silverlake** “The end result doesn’t bear any relation to an Afrobeat song, but that’s what we had in our heads—something that felt new to us, we’ve never really attempted that. Jez and Jimi combined \[on the\] vocal—that was really nice to hear those two singing together in the studio, the mix of their two voices. Martin Rebelski’s pianos really uplift the chorus. It’s a feel-good track, but the lyrics are slightly melancholic, almost referencing our mum, who’s still around, thank god. We always try and make music as uplifting as possible, or as joyous as possible. It might be offset with more melancholic lyrics, but overall we always want it to be an uplifting experience.” **Universal Want** “I started it in my studio as a ballad. I never intended it to be like a house workout at the end. I was thinking of just a two-and-a-half-minute song about the universal want—this question of always chasing something, be it consumerism or some aspect of your life where you think you’re going to be happy. But Jez took it away and he obviously saw something else for the end section and thought of welding this house section onto the end. I couldn’t believe it when I heard it, it was just so unpredictable, and I hope that unpredictability carries through to the listener. I guess it’s kind of a reference to our past, our Sub Sub days—a cheeky doff of the cap to that era. It was a very formative era for all of us.” **Forest House** “Again, this had been knocking around for a while and we were never able to master it, didn’t ever find the key to unlock it. It just felt like it was a really intimate way to finish the record—a small way to wind the album down. A simple song, but with Jez’s Russian keyboard in there—this old Russian ’60s monster of an analog keyboard. It’s almost got a dystopian sound. Once that got brought into the song, it was like, ‘Yeah.’”

If there is a recurring theme to be found in Phoebe Bridgers’ second solo LP, “it’s the idea of having these inner personal issues while there\'s bigger turmoil in the world—like a diary about your crush during the apocalypse,” she tells Apple Music. “I’ll torture myself for five days about confronting a friend, while way bigger shit is happening. It just feels stupid, like wallowing. But my intrusive thoughts are about my personal life.” Recorded when she wasn’t on the road—in support of 2017’s *Stranger in the Alps* and collaborative releases with Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker (boygenius) in 2018 and with Conor Oberst (Better Oblivion Community Center) in 2019—*Punisher* is a set of folk and bedroom pop that’s at once comforting and haunting, a refuge and a fever dream. “Sometimes I\'ll get the question, like, ‘Do you identify as an LA songwriter?’ Or ‘Do you identify as a queer songwriter?’ And I\'m like, ‘No. I\'m what I am,’” the Pasadena native says. “The things that are going on are what\'s going on, so of course every part of my personality and every part of the world is going to seep into my music. But I don\'t set out to make specific things—I just look back and I\'m like, ‘Oh. That\'s what I was thinking about.’” Here, Bridgers takes us inside every song on the album. **DVD Menu** “It\'s a reference to the last song on the record—a mirror of that melody at the very end. And it samples the last song of my first record—‘You Missed My Heart’—the weird voice you can sort of hear. It just felt rounded out to me to do that, to lead into this album. Also, I’ve been listening to a lot of Grouper. There’s a note in this song: Everybody looked at me like I was insane when I told Rob Moose—who plays strings on the record—to play it. Everybody was like, ‘What the fuck are you taking about?’ And I think that\'s the scariest part of it. I like scary music.” **Garden Song** “It\'s very much about dreams and—to get really LA on it—manifesting. It’s about all your good thoughts that you have becoming real, and all the shitty stuff that you think becoming real, too. If you\'re afraid of something all the time, you\'re going to look for proof that it happened, or that it\'s going to happen. And if you\'re a miserable person who thinks that good people die young and evil corporations rule everything, there is enough proof in the world that that\'s true. But if you\'re someone who believes that good people are doing amazing things no matter how small, and that there\'s beauty or whatever in the midst of all the darkness, you\'re going to see that proof, too. And you’re going to ignore the dark shit, or see it and it doesn\'t really affect your worldview. It\'s about fighting back dark, evil murder thoughts and feeling like if I really want something, it happens, or it comes true in a totally weird, different way than I even expected.” **Kyoto** “This song is about being on tour and hating tour, and then being home and hating home. I just always want to be where I\'m not, which I think is pretty not special of a thought, but it is true. With boygenius, we took a red-eye to play a late-night TV show, which sounds glamorous, but really it was hurrying up and then waiting in a fucking backstage for like hours and being really nervous and talking to strangers. I remember being like, \'This is amazing and horrible at the same time. I\'m with my friends, but we\'re all miserable. We feel so lucky and so spoiled and also shitty for complaining about how tired we are.\' I miss the life I complained about, which I think a lot of people are feeling. I hope the parties are good when this shit \[the pandemic\] is over. I hope people have a newfound appreciation for human connection and stuff. I definitely will for tour.” Punisher “I don\'t even know what to compare it to. In my songwriting style, I feel like I actually stopped writing it earlier than I usually stop writing stuff. I usually write things five times over, and this one was always just like, ‘All right. This is a simple tribute song.’ It’s kind of about the neighborhood \[Silver Lake in Los Angeles\], kind of about depression, but mostly about stalking Elliott Smith and being afraid that I\'m a punisher—that when I talk to my heroes, that their eyes will glaze over. Say you\'re at Thanksgiving with your wife\'s family and she\'s got an older relative who is anti-vax or just read some conspiracy theory article and, even if they\'re sweet, they\'re just talking to you and they don\'t realize that your eyes are glazed over and you\'re trying to escape: That’s a punisher. The worst way that it happens is like with a sweet fan, someone who is really trying to be nice and their hands are shaking, but they don\'t realize they\'re standing outside of your bus and you\'re trying to go to bed. And they talk to you for like 45 minutes, and you realize your reaction really means a lot to them, so you\'re trying to be there for them, too. And I guess that I\'m terrified that when I hang out with Patti Smith or whatever that I\'ll become that for people. I know that I have in the past, and I guess if Elliott was alive—especially because we would have lived next to each other—it’s like 1000% I would have met him and I would have not known what the fuck I was talking about, and I would have cornered him at Silverlake Lounge.” **Halloween** “I started it with my friend Christian Lee Hutson. It was actually one of the first times we ever hung out. We ended up just talking forever and kind of shitting out this melody that I really loved, literally hanging out for five hours and spending 10 minutes on music. It\'s about a dead relationship, but it doesn\'t get to have any victorious ending. It\'s like you\'re bored and sad and you don\'t want drama, and you\'re waking up every day just wanting to have shit be normal, but it\'s not that great. He lives right by Children\'s Hospital, so when we were writing the song, it was like constant ambulances, so that was a depressing background and made it in there. The other voice on it is Conor Oberst’s. I was kind of stressed about lyrics—I was looking for a last verse and he was like, ‘Dude, you\'re always talking about the Dodger fan who got murdered. You should talk about that.’ And I was like, \'Jesus Christ. All right.\' The Better Oblivion record was such a learning experience for me, and I ended up getting so comfortable halfway through writing and recording it. By the time we finished a whole fucking record, I felt like I could show him a terrible idea and not be embarrassed—I knew that he would just help me. Same with boygenius: It\'s like you\'re so nervous going in to collaborating with new people and then by the time you\'re done, you\'re like, ‘Damn, it\'d be easy to do that again.’ Your best show is the last show of tour.” Chinese Satellite “I have no faith—and that\'s what it\'s about. My friend Harry put it in the best way ever once. He was like, ‘Man, sometimes I just wish I could make the Jesus leap.’ But I can\'t do it. I mean, I definitely have weird beliefs that come from nothing. I wasn\'t raised religious. I do yoga and stuff. I think breathing is important. But that\'s pretty much as far as it goes. I like to believe that ghosts and aliens exist, but I kind of doubt it. I love science—I think science is like the closest thing to that that you’ll get. If I\'m being honest, this song is about turning 11 and not getting a letter from Hogwarts, just realizing that nobody\'s going to save me from my life, nobody\'s going to wake me up and be like, ‘Hey, just kidding. Actually, it\'s really a lot more special than this, and you\'re special.’ No, I’m going to be the way that I am forever. I mean, secretly, I am still waiting on that letter, which is also that part of the song, that I want someone to shake me awake in the middle of the night and be like, ‘Come with me. It\'s actually totally different than you ever thought.’ That’d be sweet.” **Moon Song** “I feel like songs are kind of like dreams, too, where you\'re like, ‘I could say it\'s about this one thing, but...’ At the same time it’s so hyper-specific to people and a person and about a relationship, but it\'s also every single song. I feel complex about every single person I\'ve ever cared about, and I think that\'s pretty clear. The through line is that caring about someone who hates themselves is really hard, because they feel like you\'re stupid. And you feel stupid. Like, if you complain, then they\'ll go away. So you don\'t complain and you just bottle it up and you\'re like, ‘No, step on me again, please.’ It’s that feeling, the wanting-to-be-stepped-on feeling.” Savior Complex “Thematically, it\'s like a sequel to ‘Moon Song.’ It\'s like when you get what you asked for and then you\'re dating someone who hates themselves. Sonically, it\'s one of the only songs I\'ve ever written in a dream. I rolled over in the middle of the night and hummed—I’m still looking for this fucking voice memo, because I know it exists, but it\'s so crazy-sounding, so scary. I woke up and knew what I wanted it to be about and then took it in the studio. That\'s Blake Mills on clarinet, which was so funny: He was like a little schoolkid practicing in the hallway of Sound City before coming in to play.” **I See You** “I had that line \[‘I\'ve been playing dead my whole life’\] first, and I\'ve had it for at least five years. Just feeling like a waking zombie every day, that\'s how my depression manifests itself. It\'s like lethargy, just feeling exhausted. I\'m not manic depressive—I fucking wish. I wish I was super creative when I\'m depressed, but instead, I just look at my phone for eight hours. And then you start kind of falling in love and it all kind of gets shaken up and you\'re like, ‘Can this person fix me? That\'d be great.’ This song is about being close to somebody. I mean, it\'s about my drummer. This isn\'t about anybody else. When we first broke up, it was so hard and heartbreaking. It\'s just so weird that you could date and then you\'re a stranger from the person for a while. Now we\'re super tight. We\'re like best friends, and always will be. There are just certain people that you date where it\'s so romantic almost that the friendship element is kind of secondary. And ours was never like that. It was like the friendship element was above all else, like we started a million projects together, immediately started writing together, couldn\'t be apart ever, very codependent. And then to have that taken away—it’s awful.” **Graceland Too** “I started writing it about an MDMA trip. Or I had a couple lines about that and then it turned into stuff that was going on in my life. Again, caring about someone who hates themselves and is super self-destructive is the hardest thing about being a person, to me. You can\'t control people, but it\'s tempting to want to help when someone\'s going through something, and I think it was just like a meditation almost on that—a reflection of trying to be there for people. I hope someday I get to hang out with the people who have really struggled with addiction or suicidal shit and have a good time. I want to write more songs like that, what I wish would happen.” **I Know the End** “This is a bunch of things I had on my to-do list: I wanted to scream; I wanted to have a metal song; I wanted to write about driving up the coast to Northern California, which I’ve done a lot in my life. It\'s like a super specific feeling. This is such a stoned thought, but it feels kind of like purgatory to me, doing that drive, just because I have done it at every stage of my life, so I get thrown into this time that doesn\'t exist when I\'m doing it, like I can\'t differentiate any of the times in my memory. I guess I always pictured that during the apocalypse, I would escape to an endless drive up north. It\'s definitely half a ballad. I kind of think about it as, ‘Well, what genre is \[My Chemical Romance’s\] “Welcome to the Black Parade” in?’ It\'s not really an anthem—I don\'t know. I love tricking people with a vibe and then completely shifting. I feel like I want to do that more.”

The songs comprising Keeley Forsyth’s debut are, she states simply, “like blocks of metal that drop from the sky.” With its minimal arrangements placing her recollections and dissections of sometimes harrowing experiences front and centre, Debris showcases her elemental voice and an outpouring of candid, haunting lyrics detailing the seismic ruptures which take place behind closed doors. “There was a lot going on in my life that was heavy and hard,” she adds. “Songs were made under that moment.” Born and raised in Oldham, Forsyth first made her name as an actor, and while the creation of music has been a constant feature in her life, she’s taken the long road to its release. A deeply intuitive and singular musician, she began writing several years ago, accompanying herself on harmonium and accordion. “I came up with lots of songs in a very short space of time,” Forsyth recalls. “Most songs were written in the time it took to sing them. But I held them close, and often thought I needed to do something with them. It never felt right to go out and look for it. I felt like I needed to wait and move when I felt inspired.” That inspiration struck one evening while listening to the radio, where she first encountered pianist and composer Matthew Bourne’s work. “I heard his music and suddenly I could hear them both together,” she says of her songs and his compositions. “I felt compelled to write to him. He got straight back and said he loved what I was doing.” What followed were quick and instinctive collaborations with Bourne and producer and musician Sam Hobbs, with the initial burst of momentum Forsyth felt when writing carried through into the studio, preserving the intricacies and accidents that make an album human.

\"Being a musician for generations is beautiful,\" Will Butler tells Apple Music. \"There\'s nothing wrong with that. It\'s a beautiful history. But there\'s also many thorny and terrible ways in which how we are today is influenced by the last 400 years that\'s going to take some serious undoing.\" The Arcade Fire multi-instrumentalist (and, yes, the son and grandson of renowned musicians) tackles his own privilege throughout the 10 tracks on his second solo album, *Generations*. While it\'s not inherently political, the uncertainty of the past four years directly impacted the project\'s writing and recording. \"I think a lot of us have been like, \'My god, how did we get here?\'\" says Butler. \"Just in a larger political sense, like, \'What the fuck has happened, even?\'\" *Generations* is littered with tracks that explore those feelings. Butler views \"Bethlehem\" as the record\'s most aggressive track. \"I don\'t know if it\'s exactly angry, but it\'s related to anger, and despair, and I don\'t know, it feels very of the time,\" he says. The soulful \"Close My Eyes\" and the satirical opera of \"Fine\" dig deeper into Butler\'s personal history. \"\'Fine\' always felt like an author\'s note, and it made sense at the end,\" he says. \"It touches on everything I\'ve talked about, and then it deepens it and goes in a couple of different directions.\" Ultimately, *Generations* seamlessly meshes both feelings into one vitriolic album. \"\[The album\'s\] structured like a conversation. Something happens, but you feel changed at the end,\" explains Butler. \"But all that happened was a back-and-forth that\'s a little bit mysterious, but there was structure in that end as well, but it\'s hard to figure out why you make certain choices.\"

“I think that what makes you different or what gives you your power is the thing that will destroy you,” Mike Skinner tells Apple Music. “The fact that I was really, really anal about having songs make sense and being really simple was what made those first Streets records stand out. After a while you end up getting weighed down by those ideas for the sake of a concept, rather than just saying some cool shit. So if this album does have a theme, it was a determination to just say some cool shit.” The common thread running through Mike Skinner’s first Streets record in almost a decade (there’s been DJing, The D.O.T. project with Rob Harvey, supergroup Tonga Balloon Gang alongside UK rappers Murkage, and the long-planned Streets film) seems to be technology—mobile phones, specifically. The other big feature is the features. Skinner has handpicked a diverse crew to celebrate the return, taking in gilded UK MCs (Ms Banks, Oscar #Worldpeace), maverick, genre-ambivalent Brits (Hak Baker, Jimothy Lacoste), modern rock heroes (Tame Impala, IDLES), and a fair few more. It’s a dynamic and uncompromising set of songs that reestablishes the importance of Skinner’s voice in British music. “This album was like a rebirth,” he says. “It was painful in the logistical sense—it was much more complicated than I was expecting. By the time it was finally done, I was a new man.” And did the time away teach Skinner anything about himself? “It reminded me that I always found naming songs very weird and continue to do so,” he says. “My songs don’t have titles when I work on them. ‘Blinded by the Lights’ was called ‘Slow Motion’ for ages because it originally had a chorus that said ‘Everything’s going on in slow motion’ and then I changed it in the mastering. Same with these songs. But I have two biggest lessons. One: Until you’ve been in the studio and you’ve recorded the song, you don’t have a song. The other thing I learned is that all artists are really similar. It doesn’t matter where they’re from, they’re just people singing into microphones hoping that it’s good.” Read on for Skinner’s in-depth thoughts on each track. **Call My Phone Thinking I\'m Doing Nothing Better (The Streets & Tame Impala)** “When you do a lot of festivals, you tend to see the same artists over and over again. We did about seven festivals with Tame Impala last year—everywhere from Germany to Australia. So there was a fair bit of watching each other’s shows side of stage. In Belgium, at Rock Werchter, we hung out in their dressing room and set up this song. This one and the Ms Banks song were done in the traditional way, which is—and I know you’re going to think I’m about to say in the studio—but it was done over email, which is more traditional than being in the studio these days, whatever anyone tells you. This album as a whole was very much in the studios—so everyone on the record was recorded in one. There were usually, on average, two days of actual recording per song, and then many months of rewriting and changing stuff about. But I actually flew out to see Kevin \[Parker, Tame Impala’s frontman\], literally just before lockdown. I found that I’m really fascinated by Perth, actually. It’s the most remote city in the world, and there’s a definite vibe, but it’s not what you think. Kevin is the sort of super chilled guy I’d expect people from Perth to be, whereas there’s a lot of people I know from Perth that are incredibly switched on. It also has the smallest Louis Vuitton store I’ve ever seen.” **None of Us Are Getting Out of This Life Alive (feat. IDLES)** “I can’t wait to do this one live. I was reading a lot of sea shanties when I wrote this. If you listen to my verse, I’m talking about fishing, basically. Because it was so existentialist—including the chorus—it needed Joe \[Talbot, IDLES’ frontman\] to bring it all down to earth. If there’s one thing I could change about the album, it’s the first line to this song. ‘I don’t like my country/It’s more of an addiction.’ In the context of Brexit, it’s a fun thing to say, but now, in the context of the NHS saving us, it’s a bit crass. We had a great couple of days in The Pool \[recording studio\] in South London with IDLES. I spent the whole first day playing it and playing it and playing, and then we just sat there and watched them rehearse and rehearse and rehearse. At the end of the day, they got it down. We did a few bits of vocal, and I did that hook with the band. I love IDLES. We’ve got exactly the same sense of humor—very band-y, very tour-y. People who tour a lot, they’re institutionalized and go down strange rabbit holes conversationally. The humor and everything else is very self-reinforcing. It’s a bit like being in the army, but without people trying to kill you.” **I Wish You Loved You As Much As You Love Him (feat. Donae\'o & Greentea Peng)** “This is a club record. It’s massively inspired by ‘Devil in a Blue Dress’ \[Donae’o’s 2008 single\], so I sent it over to Donae’o to sort of let him know that I had basically ripped off his record. I wasn’t expecting him to want to be on it, but thrilled that he was up for it. And Greentea Peng is brilliant—everyone go and listen to her music straight away. I knew this would be a single pretty quickly. That, I’ve realized as I’ve got older, is my job: choosing the best songs. Seeing the wood through the trees. I’m often not very good at it, but I’m getting better. In the case of this album, it was about working on one song for a week, then don’t listen to it again for a few months and keep moving. That way, I was constantly on this merry-go-round of refreshing insights. My other job is knowing when to be unreasonable. Being nice while being unreasonable is the greatest skill you can develop. Plus, picking the *right* moments to be unreasonable. The album artwork is a good example. I took a photo of the chain myself and knew it was the front cover. Then the designer at the label took it and added a few bits. If I was younger, I would have found something wrong. Whereas my honest first instinct was ‘That looks great,’ so we didn’t change a thing. If you know something’s right, don’t make a fuss for the sake of it. You don’t always have to justify yourself.” **You Can’t Afford Me (feat. Ms Banks)** “There’s sometimes a conservatism in rap. Once you’re a full-time rapper and you don’t have to try and get a job, then actually being a wild sort of guy talking about killing your enemies and shagging someone else’s girlfriend is actually fairly conventional. And there’s a lot of pressure to conform to this—I felt it, and I’m not even a rapper, really. But when I was younger, I had to check myself. It becomes a hardest-kid-in-school thing. And then if you’re actually tough, people say, ‘Well, they can’t rap, but it doesn’t matter because they’re tough.’ Different forms of music have different version of this, of course. But whenever you get someone who sidesteps this, it takes a lot. Ms Banks is so powerful in herself. She’s so talented, obviously—but she’s quite soft and…nice. It’s pretty powerful and it’s very unusual. I’m quite good at getting through the rap thing, because I’m older now and also a real rap geek. I’m not a threat to anyone. So I can have conversations with people who feel like they need to inflate themselves. People like Ms Banks don’t really go for that.” **I Know Something You Did (feat. Jesse James Solomon & Eliza)** “Jesse James Solomon is an interesting artist. He has a foot in different worlds. He came up super starry and cool with the *Strata* EP, then had a huge rap hit. He can be fully posted up with the goons—and I love that. I was really pleased when ‘One Way’ \[2018 single by Suspect featuring Solomon and Skepta\] came out because it sort of normalized him. It rooted him in the culture. We did this one on a boat, opposite The O2, at Soup Studios, and it came together really quickly, and then it took years to finish. Which is the case with most of the album. I think it’s a good thing, because they all have an immediacy. They started quickly. They were forged. There was a moment captured quite quickly. Then it was a lot of replacing stuff and mixing, mixing, mixing. Ultimately, I think something that’s good has to be wrong. If it’s not wrong, then you’re really just copying someone else. And when I say good, I mean original, or catchy.” **Eskimo Ice (feat. Kasien)** “Kasien’s ‘6FT UNDER’ record \[2018 single with Kelvin Krash\] changed my life. He’s a good friend of Gianno \[Parris\], who ran Visions Video Bar in Dalston. Greentea Peng worked behind the bar, too, actually. I have something in common with everyone on this album, basically. With this track, it’s about getting waved. Trying to soften that somehow. ‘Blinded by the Lights’ sort of brought me in a back door, because at the time I wrote it, getting waved in a club wasn’t really a thing in rap. But now it is. That’s what everyone sings about now. That’s why I did that song in 2017, ‘Your Wave God’s Wave God,’ because it was an arrogant way of saying there’s a connection that I feel. The swearing that opens up the second verse is from *Quadrophenia*, and even that takes me back to clubs. Unless you’re saying something simple and clear, it gets lost in a nightclub. I’m not going to go outside my house right now and call someone a wanker or a c\*\*t. But I absolutely would do that in a nightclub. It works.” **Phone Is Always in My Hand (feat. Dapz On The Map)** “There are three lines on this song that probably sum up the album. ‘Call and call my phone thinking I’m doing nothing better/I’m just waiting for it to stop so I can use it again.’ Then there’s ‘Phone is always in my hand/If you think I’m ignoring you, I am.’ And finally: ‘You’re ignoring me/But you’re watching my stories.’ Phones ended up featuring really prominently, which gave the album a bit of a theme, which can make things easier. I’ve done quite well with concepts, but also quite badly, if you remember *Everything Is Borrowed* \[The Streets’ 2008 album\]. It was also important here to have Dapz On The Map feature, as a Birmingham artist. Birmingham has really given me life where I wasn’t expecting it. Becoming an adult, for me, is about shedding a lot of those playground meannesses that you sort of internalize, and Birmingham—or leaving Birmingham, rather—helped me do that. I am very much just some guy from London these days, but when I meet a lot of the new Birmingham artists like JayKae, Dapz, and MIST—there’s no baggage and there’s a no nonsense to them. The thing that Birmingham is good at is no nonsense; the thing that Birmingham is bad at is showbiz. Londoners—and even Mancunians or Liverpudlians—understand that hustle and it doesn’t bother them. Brummies are very straight-talking and it’s authentic, and can also be a bit paralyzing. Birmingham and places like it give you a sense of getting above your station, which is very charming at the right time. But it’s also disabling creatively.” **The Poison I Take Hoping You Will Suffer (feat. Oscar #Worldpeace)** “People have asked me about the line ‘Every girl has a dude in their inbox talking to himself.’ There’s also a line on the final track \[‘Take Me as I Am’\] where I say, ‘Men are weird at the close of the PM/Just ask a pretty girl to show you their DMs.’ The big things to have happened in the last few years here, I think, are Brexit, coronavirus, and Harvey Weinstein. Now that we’ve had some time to digest the horrific Weinstein case, we know we have to get rid of the power that’s involved with these situations. I also feel like it’s often to do with the pathetic lack of power, too. Lack of power and pathetic ego is what leads to a guy talking to himself in a girl’s DMs. I know I did ‘Don’t Mug Yourself’ \[2002 single\], but I actually think all boys have that sort of moment. And they sort of *should* have that moment where they go, ‘Oh, I need to be a bit more savvy. Because I’m not going to make this work if I keep embarrassing myself.’ And then they hopefully become decent people from that point. Girls are that much more mature from a younger age, and they have to put up with boys taking about 20 years to catch up.” **Same Direction (feat. Jimothy Lacoste)** “I find Jimothy so deep, so psychedelic as a person. His background is super interesting. It’s like Primrose Hill, but council estate. His background is confusing—and not yet figuring out who you are can be bad for mental health but really good for music. A couple of weeks before lockdown we went and filmed him at a chicken shop opposite Koko \[music venue in Camden, North London\] and spent hours in there talking. I feel like him and M.I.A. are kind of similar. It’s like they exist outside the normal realm, because that’s the life that they have experienced.” **Falling Down (feat. Hak Baker)** “Hak is another super interesting person. From the Isle of Dogs, which is sort of an island and right by the City of London. It feels like you’re in the ’60s, but in a different way. It’s like their mentality is from a different era—and I think they’d be the first to admit that. When you get an indie rock person and put them on a rap song, it’s a blessing because they aren’t trying to copy anyone. It reminds me of when Pete Doherty was on \[2006 Streets single\] ‘Prangin’ Out’—it’s a gift across the creative frontiers. It’s inspiring to see what’s possible if you come at something without your baggage. Hak could have easily been a rapper—and in some ways he is a rapper—but instead he shows what can happen if you pick up a guitar in prison for drug dealing and then comes over to your world. He’s so interesting because he doesn’t agree with a lot of the stuff that rappers come out with. There’s a conflict for him that a lot of people feel, but he voices. When you put rap music into context, I think it excuses a lot of things that other people maybe can’t get away with. But he doesn’t excuse people, and that’s fascinating.” **Conspiracy Theory Freestyle (feat. Rob Harvey)** “Rob is one of my best friends. He sang at my wedding. He helped me at a strange time of my life, when I was basically trying to be defined by *not* being The Streets. And that’s not a good energy to have with anything. Whenever you’re anti-something, that’s not a good energy. Working with Rob on The D.O.T. really helped me. And this song is at least 10 years in the making. Rob made the demo back then, I made a beat out of it, and every few years we’d revisit it until I loaded it up for this album and found the files had corrupted. So I asked Rob to get after it and I finished it off after a decade. All of Rob’s family are in the building trade, and we both share a similar mentality where we try and turn music into a normal job. Because we were brought up to think that if you don’t have a job, you might as well fuck off, right? He tries to turn music into a normal job by writing songs every day, and I try and talk about normal stuff. It’s very probably a recipe for some sort of mental health problems at some point in your life.” **Take Me as I Am (The Streets & Chris Lorenzo)** “This was as simple as Chris sending me a load of big drum and bass stuff and immediately thinking this was an absolute banger. It made me think of ‘Bricks Don’t Roll’ \[2014 DJ Hazard single\], and I knew I wasn’t going to let this one get away. So I emailed him straight back and said I needed to be on it. I’m just really, really confident about this one. No one can tell me it doesn’t work, because I know. I’m fully aware of what doesn’t work. And this works.”

SONGHOY BLUES is a band whose experiences in Mali have opened their eyes to universal problems plaguing people everywhere. Using the pain and lessons learned from having to leave their hometowns in northern Mali, the band realizes that human rights is a concept that extends far beyond what they have seen with their own eyes and far beyond just the borders of Mali. In order for the band to see their homes restored, they understand the fight must be fought on all fronts, for everybody across the spectrum. They are no longer refugees or exiles or four people with instruments—they are SONGHOY BLUES, a musical voice for empowerment and equality. Working with Matt Sweeney, who encouraged the band to make the album they want to make, OPTIMISME confronts our world today. On “BADALA” and “GABI,” SONGHOY BLUES seeks the empowerment of women, asking for centuries-old misogynistic practices to be done away with. With “WORRY,” the band advises both the young and the old that positive vibes and persistence are the best tools to fight our struggles. In “ASSADA,” the band praises and thanks the everyday warriors who wake up everyday to sweat for the betterment of their communities and in “DOURNIA,” the band laments the lack of compassion and empathy between humans today in the face of increasing materialism and selfishness. “BON BON” warns of being fooled by shiny promises, and in “BARRE” the band asks for the youth to get involved at home for change while warning off those who wish to divide in “FEY FEY.” Each time SONGHOY BLUES steps to the mic on OPTIMISME the band confronts, consoles, praises, thanks, and encourages the listener toward a better world tomorrow.

On his first LP of original songs in nearly a decade—and his first since reluctantly accepting Nobel Prize honors in 2016—Bob Dylan takes a long look back. *Rough and Rowdy Ways* is a hot bath of American sound and historical memory, the 79-year-old singer-songwriter reflecting on where we’ve been, how we got here, and how much time he has left. There are temperamental blues (“False Prophet,” “Crossing the Rubicon”) and gentle hymns (“I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You”), rollicking farewells (“Goodbye Jimmy Reed”) and heady exchanges with the Grim Reaper (“Black Rider”). It reads like memoir, but you know he’d claim it’s fiction. And yet, maybe it’s the timing—coming out in June 2020 amidst the throes of a pandemic and a social uprising that bears echoes of the 1960s—or his age, but Dylan’s every line here does have the added charge of what feels like a final word, like some ancient wisdom worth decoding and preserving before it’s too late. “Mother of Muses” invokes Elvis and MLK, Dylan claiming, “I’ve already outlived my life by far.” On the 16-minute masterstroke and stand-alone single “Murder Most Foul,” he draws Nazca Lines around the 1963 assassination of JFK—the death of a president, a symbol, an era, and something more difficult to define. It’s “Key West (Philosopher Pirate)” that lingers longest, though: Over nine minutes of accordion and electric guitar mingling like light on calm waters, Dylan tells the story of an outlaw cycling through radio stations as he makes his way to the end of U.S. Route 1, the end of the road. “Key West is the place to be, if you’re looking for your mortality,” he says, in a growl that gives way to a croon. “Key West is paradise divine.”

“I just wanted people to see me broken down and to know that I’m not afraid to be broken down,” Angel Olsen tells Apple Music. “In fact, my whole life had broken down.” The singer is discussing why she chose to release *Whole New Mess*—a collection of raw, unvarnished tracks largely made up of demo-like recordings of the songs that would later become souped up and string-laden on 2019’s stunningly ambitious *All Mirrors*. “Originally, I wanted both to come out at the same time,” she explains. “But I wanted to make an honest account—untampered with by anybody. This was just me, the way that I would make demos.” Recorded at a church-turned-studio in Anacortes, Washington (“I couldn’t do it at home; I was still sitting in a lot of the feelings from the songs and I wanted to have a place to cook them”), *Whole New Mess* is a world away from the drama of *All Mirrors*, those galloping melodies and theatrical strings stripped away to leave a lone guitar, the occasional organ, and Olsen’s unmistakable vocals. *Whole New Mess* is, as the singer put it, “ragged,\" at times crackling as though it were an old vinyl LP. “It’s purposefully a mess,” she says, “because that’s how things are. A lot of the time, cleaning it up is the process. And I like to show where things start and how messy they are before they get to a point where they’re digestible for people when they come out.” Still, the record is as haunting as you’d expect, Olsen’s voice taking on an almost celestial quality on songs like “(Summer Song),” “Too Easy (Bigger Than Us),” or “Chance (Forever Love)” as it carries the full weight of the experiences and emotions that fueled these tracks. The dissolution of a relationship may have hit before they were written, but Olsen bristles at the idea that any of them document that alone. “I find it really infantilizing the way people just look at my work as heartbreak,” she says. “All I’m asking is for people to look a little further. That’s all.” Instead, this is an album “inspired by what I’ve been doing, by traveling constantly, by writing constantly for the last seven years and the things that I’ve learned,” she says. “It’s about the hardship that I’ve had to confront with people—not just romantically but just by accidentally \[building\] a business from the ground up and having to learn a lot of things along the way, the hard way.” By drawing the walls of her music in, she hopes people will see another side to her. “When I go out into the music world and I build my platform, I’m putting on wigs and glam dresses and putting on tons of makeup. Normally, when I get home, it’s a different story. It’s a different person. It’s a different life. I wanted to do something that was a little bit closer to who I actually am.” *Whole New Mess* is the first time the singer has delivered an album without a band since 2012’s *Half Way Home*. Doing it this way was, in part, a way of going back to her early songs and rediscovering how to, as she says, “feel strong in myself again outside of relying on so many band members or collaborators.” But it was also a necessary step to emancipate herself from these tracks, in order to let those same people back in to help her create the majesty of *All Mirrors*. And sitting in—and then letting go of—darker times to pave the way for something more beautiful chimes well with Olsen’s world view. “There’s a lot of hatred and anger and frustration happening in the world right now, and there’s a lot of destruction,” she says. “But all of that needs to happen before there can be progress. We really need to reexamine the way that we live, because we want to continue to live in this world and continue to be able to share the things that we enjoy. I really stand by ‘whole new mess’ as a phrase. I want to inspire people to think about what that means, whether it has to do with me personally and what I intended, or whether it inspires them to want to reexamine or look at those things in their own reality. I think there\'s a huge reckoning going on, and I\'ve been really inspired.”

“I get really emotional when I talk about it,” Melanie C tells Apple music of her self-titled eighth album. “I\'ve had well-documented issues \[with eating disorders and depression\], but this record finds me in a more self-accepting place.” In order to get there, she had to go right back to the beginning, joining her former bandmates for a sold-out stadium tour in summer 2019. “Like a lot of people, I\'ve spent time feeling not good enough. But when I was onstage with the Spice Girls, I had this moment of realization about the impact we had on a generation of young people, and it blew me away. It felt like it was time to acknowledge that I\'m part of something really incredible.” Embracing her past—Sporty Spice and all—inspired a return to pop following experimentations in rock and electronica. “I knew I wanted to dance, but it can be hard to write uptempo tracks with lyrical depth,” she says. “So I was listening to artists like Robyn and Mark Ronson, who are amazing at sad disco.” Sure enough, the featherlight pop of single “In and Out of Love” jostles alongside ruminations on toxic relationships (the tropical-tinged “Overload”) and panic attacks (the Billie Eilish-indebted “Nowhere to Run”). Key to that evolution was working with a fresh raft of co-writers, including Jonny Lattimer (Ellie Goulding, Rag’n’Bone Man), Future Cut (Little Mix, Lily Allen), Tom Neville (Dua Lipa, Calvin Harris), Nadia Rose, and Shura. “I loved getting back in the studio with youthful, talented people who had influences that were quite different to mine,” says Melanie. “They encouraged me to experiment more, and I feel reinvigorated. This is a new chapter.” Read on as Melanie talks us through her revelatory eighth record, track by track. **Who I Am** “I wrote this with Biff Stannard, who I\'ve written with since my Spice Girls days, and Bryn Christopher, who I hadn\'t worked with before. So it was a really nice combination of having that history and the security to be vulnerable, and then having someone new and fresh in the mix. It\'s about how I\'ve spent a lot of time not speaking up for myself, and now that I do, it confuses people who are used to me going with the flow. Instead of feeling embarrassed or ashamed of those things, it\'s time for me to own them, and be proud that I overcame them. The whole album is a massive healing process.” **Blame It on Me** “I was bitching and moaning with Niamh Murphy, one of the co-writers, about friends who had let us down, and the lyrics came out of that. It\'s about having someone who you rely on, and then something happening which rocks your world and makes you think, ‘That was the dynamic of our friendship and I never even saw it.’ I\'m not confrontational, I don\'t really fall out with people, so being able to express those feelings in songs is a great way of getting my emotions out. It\'s one of the tracks where I\'ve used my voice quite differently—it\'s a lower tone and a bit more aggressive on the mic than I\'d normally be.” **Good Enough** “I wrote this with Future Cut and Shura, who is an artist that I adore. She\'s another Northern lass with very similar musical influences to me. It was the first time that the three of us had worked together, so it was a bit like an awkward first date. Again, I was bitching and moaning—I do a lot of that in the studio—about someone who was driving me to distraction, finding fault in everything, nitpicking and saying nothing is ever good enough. Sometimes I feel nervous to do things I deem youthful, because I don\'t want to be trying to be something I\'m not. But working with younger artists has been a great way to push me out of my comfort zone.” **Escape** “I came into the studio and was having one of those days when I was feeling overwhelmed and didn\'t know what I wanted. I was feeling like life is such a treadmill, and we\'re all on it working so hard to achieve certain things. But what if it\'s all bollocks? What if we just did something completely different? That\'s where the idea for ‘Escape’ came from. It\'s weird because since we wrote it, COVID has happened, and we\'ve all had the opportunity to stop, or at least slow down. Now I\'m getting back to work, I can identify with the sentiment again.” **Overload** “I like to have references to my other songs—song titles or lyrics—in my work. And on ‘Overload,’ the lyric ‘I don\'t want to be your acceptable version of me’ harks back to my last album, *Version of Me*. It\'s about feeling under a lot of pressure, and people driving you mad. There\'s a big theme of people driving me mad on this album (funnily enough, I was writing it during Spice Girls tour rehearsals!). This was written in one of the first sessions, with Jonny Lattimer. I loved his work with Ellie Goulding, so it was brilliant to get in the studio, just the two of us. I\'ve worked in a more modern way on this album, with bigger teams, so it was nice to go back to something a bit more intimate.” **Fearless (feat. Nadia Rose)** “I\'d seen Nadia Rose being interviewed on Kathy Burke\'s *All Woman* documentary and kind of fell in love with her. Then I watched her video for ‘Skwod’ and thought she had such a great, tongue-in-cheek sense of humor, as well as being a brilliant rapper. About two weeks later I was DJing at a Fashion Week party, and as I was heading for the exit, someone came running after me—and it was her. I took it as a sign that we should collaborate, which she was super excited to do. We set up a session with Paul O\'Duffy and drove up to his place in Hertfordshire together, chatting in the car. We were talking about being a woman in music, and how, in order to pursue your dreams, you have to do petrifying things—whether that\'s going onstage in front of thousands of people or turning up at a stranger’s house for a session. Out of that came the idea of encouraging people to be fearless and go for their dreams, like we both have. I love how lush and expensive this one sounds.” **Here I Am** “This is a really important song for me. I was in the studio with Tom Neville and Poppy Bascombe to re-vocal something, and when we\'d finished we thought, ‘Shall we have a crack at another song?’ I\'d had a mad dream the night before where I was tumbling down in water. I could see my boyfriend, but he was obscured and I didn\'t know if he could see me or knew that I needed help. I\'m always reading stuff into dreams, and I thought it would make a good starting point for a song. For me, the dream was about how so often you feel like you can\'t keep your head above water, but at some point you have to help yourself.” **Nowhere to Run** “I was listening to and getting quite obsessed with Billie Eilish, so I was inspired to look at doing some darker production. I wrote it with Biff, who also loves to write songs that are very \'up\' and dancy, and which then go really dark. Something that I\'d never explored in a writing capacity, but which felt comfortable to do with him, was the experience of having panic attacks. We\'d written the first verse and chorus, but I didn\'t have any words for the second verse. I hadn\'t had a panic attack for months, and then I went out to a restaurant and had one in public for the first time ever, which was terrifying. But as soon as it passed I thought, ‘That’s brilliant, I\'ve got a great idea for the second verse now.’ Weirdly, one of the lyrics that we\'d already written was ‘I see exit signs, but there\'s no way out.’ Then, when I was having the panic attack, I could see the exit, but would\'ve had to cross through the restaurant to leave. So there really was no way out. Life was imitating art.” **In and Out of Love** “I wanted to do something really fun and disco. It\'s about being on the pull, inspired by the days when I had no responsibilities and would go on a night out and find romance on the dance floor. It\'s super frivolous, which I think is a welcome change of pace after \'Nowhere to Run.’ My daughter is 11 and she\'s in control of the dial when we\'re in the car, so I\'d been listening to a lot of her pop playlists, a lot of Dua Lipa.” **End of Everything** “This was written in an early session with Sacha Skarbek, who comes from a much more traditional songwriting background. Lyrically, it\'s about all the changes that I\'ve been through, including leaving my manager of 18 years and changing most of my team, and all of the emotions that come with that. I wanted to explore the feeling of something ending in your life and being left void of any emotion. It\'s an interesting space to inhabit. This song was always earmarked to close the album.”

“My music is not as collaborative as it’s been in the past,” Jeff Parker tells Apple Music. “I’m not inviting other people to write with me. I’m more interested in how people\'s instrumental voices can fit into the ideas I’m working on.” As his career has evolved, the jazz guitarist and member of post-rock band Tortoise has become more comfortable writing compositions as a solitary exercise. While 2016\'s *The New Breed* featured a host of contributors, *Suite for Max Brown* finds the Los Angeles-based player eager to move away from the delirious funk-jazz of earlier works and towards something more unified and focused on repetition and droning harmonies. “I used to ask my collaborators to bring as much of the songwriting to the compositions as I do. Now, I’m just trying to prove to myself that I can do it on my own.” Parker handles most of the instruments on *Max Brown*, but familiar faces pop up throughout. The opening track, “Build a Nest,” features vocals from Parker’s daughter, Ruby, and “Gnarciss” includes performances from Makaya McCraven on the drums, Rob Mazurek on trumpet, and Josh Johnson on alto saxophone. Other frequenters of Parker’s orbit, like drummer Jamire Williams, appear throughout. But *Max Brown* is Parker’s record first and foremost, and the LP finds him less willing to give in to jazz’s typical demands of dynamic improvisation and community-oriented song-building. Here, Parker asserts himself as an ecstatic solo voice, where on earlier albums the soft-spoken musician may have been more willing to give way to his fellow bandmates. *Suite for Max Brown* is an ambitious sonic experiment that succeeds in its moves both big and small. “I like when music is able to enhance the environment of everyday life,” Parker says. “I would like people to be able to find themselves within the music.” Above all, *Suite for Max Brown* pays homage to the most important figures in Parker’s life. *The New Breed*, which was finished shortly after Parker’s father passed away, took its title from a store his father owned; *Max Brown* is derived from his mother’s nickname, and Parker felt an urgent desire to honor her while she was still able to hear it. “My mother has always been really supportive and super proud of the work I’ve done,” he says. “I wanted to dedicate an album to her while she’s still alive to see the results. She loves it, which means so much.” It’s an ode to his mother’s ambition, and a record that stands in awe of her achievements, even though they’re quite different from Jeff’s. “She had a stable job and collected a 401(k). My career as a musician is 180 degrees the opposite of that, but I’m still inspired by her work ethic.”

“I’m always looking for ways to be surprised,” says composer and multi-instrumentalist Jeff Parker as he explains the process, and the thinking, behind his new album, Suite for Max Brown, released via a new partnership between the Chicago–based label International Anthem and Nonesuch Records. “If I sit down at the piano or with my guitar, with staff paper and a pencil, I’m eventually going to fall into writing patterns, into things I already know. So, when I make music, that’s what I’m trying to get away from—the things that I know.” Parker himself is known to many fans as the longtime guitarist for the Chicago–based quintet Tortoise, one of the most critically revered, sonically adventurous groups to emerge from the American indie scene of the early nineties. The band’s often hypnotic, largely instrumental sound eludes easy definition, drawing freely from rock, jazz, electronic, and avant-garde music, and it has garnered a large following over the course of nearly thirty years. Aside from recording and touring with Tortoise, Parker has worked as a side man with many jazz greats, including Nonesuch labelmate Joshua Redman on his 2005 Momentum album; as a studio collaborator with other composer-musicians, including Makaya McCraven, Brian Blade, Meshell N’Degeocello, his longtime friend (and Chicago Underground ensemble co-founder) Rob Mazurek; and as a solo artist. Suite for Max Brown is informally a companion piece to The New Breed, Parker’s 2016 album on International Anthem, which London’s Observer honored as the best jazz album of the year, declaring that “no other musician in the modern era has moved so seamlessly between rock and jazz like Jeff Parker. As guitarist for Chicago post-rock icons Tortoise, he’s taken the group in new and challenging directions that have kept them at the forefront of pop creativity for the last twenty years. As of late, however, Parker has established himself as one of the most formidable solo talents in modern jazz.” Though Parker collaborates with a coterie of musicians under the group name The New Breed, theirs is by no means a conventional “band” relationship. Parker is very much a solo artist on Suite for Max Brown. He constructs a digital bed of beats and samples; lays down tracks of his own on guitar, keyboards, bass, percussion, and occasionally voice; then invites his musician friends to play and improvise over his melodies. But unlike a traditional jazz session, Parker doesn’t assemble a full combo in the studio for a day or two of live takes. His accompanists are often working alone with Parker, reacting to what Parker has provided them, and then Parker uses those individual parts to layer and assemble into his final tracks. The process may be relatively solitary and cerebral, but the results feel like in-the-moment jams—warm-hearted, human, alive. Suite for Max Brown brims with personality, boasting the rhythmic flow of hip hop and the soulful swing of jazz. “In my own music I’ve always sought to deal with the intersection of improvisation and the digital era of making music, trying to merge these disparate elements into something cohesive,” Parker explains. “I became obsessed maybe ten or fifteen years ago with making music from samples. At first it was more an exercise in learning how to sample and edit audio. I was a big hip-hop fan all my life, but I never delved into the technical aspects of making that music. To keep myself busy, I started to sample music from my own library of recordings, to chop them up, make loops and beats. I would do it in my spare time. I could do it when I was on tour—in the van or on an airplane, at a soundcheck, whenever I had spare time I was working on this stuff. After a while, as you can imagine, I had hours and hours of samples I had made and I hadn’t really done anything with them “So I made The New Breed based off these old sample-based compositions and mixed them with improvising,” he continues. “There was a lot of editing, a lot of post-production work that went into that. That’s in a nutshell how I make a lot of my music; it’s a combination of sampling, editing, retriggering audio, and recording it, moving it around and trying to make it into something cohesive—and make it music that someone would enjoy listening to. With Max Brown, it’s evolved. I played a lot of the music myself. It’s me playing as many of the instruments as I could. I engineered most it myself at home or during a residency I did at the Headlands Center for the Arts [in Sausalito, California] about a year ago.” His New Breed band-mates and fellow travelers on Max Brown include pianist-saxophonist Josh Johnson; bassist Paul Bryan, who co-produced and mixed the album with Parker; piccolo trumpet player Rob Mazurek, his frequent duo partner; trumpeter Nate Walcott, a veteran of Conor Oberst’s Bright Eyes; drummers Jamire Williams, Makaya McCraven, and Jay Bellerose, Parker’s Berklee School of Music classmate; cellist Katinka Klejin of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; and even his seventeen-year-old daughter Ruby Parker, a student at the Chicago High School of the Arts, who contributes vocals to opening track, “Build A Nest.” Ruby’s presence at the start is fitting, since Suite for Max Brown is a kind of family affair: “That’s my mother’s maiden name. Maxine Brown. Everybody calls her Max. I decided to call it Suite for Max Brown. The New Breed became a kind of tribute to my father because he passed away while I was making the album. The New Breed was a clothing store he owned when I was a kid, a store in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where I was born. I thought it would be nice this time to dedicate something to my mom while she’s still here to see it. I wish that my father could have been around to hear the tribute that I made for him. The picture on the cover of Max Brown is of my mom when she was nineteen.” There is a multi-generational vibe to the music too, as Parker balances his contemporary digital explorations with excursions into older jazz. Along with original compositions, Parker includes “Gnarciss,” an interpretation of Joe Henderson’s “Black Narcissus” and John Coltrane’s “After the Rain” (from his 1963 Impressions album). Parker recalls, “I was drawn to jazz music as a kid. That was the first music that really resonated with me once I got heavily into music. When I was nine or ten years old, I immediately gravitated to jazz because there were so many unexpected things. Jazz led me into improvising, which led me into experimenting in a general way, into an experimental process of making music.” Coltrane is a touchstone in Parker’s musical evolution. In fact, Parker recalls, he inadvertently found himself on a new musical path one night about fifteen years ago when he was deejaying at a Chicago bar and playing ‘Trane: “I used to deejay a lot when I lived in Chicago. This was before Serrato and people deejaying with computers. I had two records on two turntables and a mixer. I was spinning records one night and for about ten minutes I was able to perfectly synch up a Nobukazu Takemura record with the first movement of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme and it had this free jazz, abstract jazz thing going on with a sequenced beat underneath. It sounded so good. That’s what I’m trying to do with Max Brown. It’s got a sequenced beat and there are musicians improvising on top or beneath the sequenced drum pattern. That’s what I was going for. Man vs machine. “It’s a lot of experimenting, a lot of trial and error,” he admits. “I like to pursue situations that take me outside myself, where the things I come up with are things I didn’t really know I could do. I always look at this process as patchwork quilting. You take this stuff and stitch it together until a tapestry forms.” —Michael Hill

“East London to me just sounded honest. It was garage, jungle, and then grime, and pirate radio blaring through windows on my estate.” Dizzee Rascal, one of the UK’s most important MCs, is talking through his seventh studio album as if it’s a time capsule. Titled *E3 AF*—a nod, he says, to his identity as a West African East Londoner—it is an homage to London, and the Lincoln Estate he grew up in. On it, he returns to the production thrill of the first beats he made on his 2003 debut *Boy In Da Corner*, only this time it’s his own home studio, built as a reaction to COVID-19. Now, he invites the best in the industry—Kano, Ghetts, Chip, Frisco, and others—to join him as if nothing had changed from the days squeezed together in the small spaces of underground radio stations across London. The result is a frenetically paced, humor-packed offering now characteristic of Dizzee, with grime, jungle, and garage running through it as its life force. “I was like, ‘OK, I\'m just going to make a grime album, make beats and bring your favorite MCs together,” he says. “It’s about where I am now, but looking back on where I came from with respect.” Here, Dizzee talks us through the album, track by track. **God Knows (feat. P Money)** “There’s a reason that it\'s an album opener. It\'s a declaration, coming in dirty and hard. I made the beat myself, then thought about what type of person I would want on my beat who I knew could deliver, and P Money is reliable like that. When the pandemic hit, I had to learn to record myself, because I never had a home setup before. I never knew how to do any of that stuff by myself with other engineers. I\'m cutting a few uncomfortable truths on this. It\'s a powerful way to start. A bit frantic, very hard. P Money just comes in with the straight kick in the face.” **That\'s Too Much (feat. Frisco and D Double E)** “Some of these tunes are like old-school Dizzee, which only some people know now, I suppose. Like recently someone saw me and was like, ‘Ah, it\'s the geezer from the Ladbrokes advert!’ I had to laugh, because it basically just means that I’ve really been making music for a really long time. I\'m happy with how I went in. You can hear the effort. I\'m happy that we all sound good together.” **L.L.L.L. (Love Life Live Large) (feat. Chip)** “The title comes from the chorus. I was just vibing with that. A lot of the artists I like, like JAY-Z or Young Jeezy, have been ones that are getting you going and motivational. I\'ve always been about that, too. Getting Chip on it was another moment. I think I just hit him up on DM on Instagram, which is how I contacted most of the people on this album. I got really into using it after Snoop Dogg introduced it to me in LA a few years ago. I like the half rhymes in it. They\'re not words you hear a lot in rap songs as well. I think they’re the ones that set you apart. Like, we all know that hip-hop came from America and from Jamaica as well, but those cockney words that came from here, I like them. I grew up around all that, so it\'s nice to be able to stick them in there.” **Body Loose** “I worked with Splurgeboys on ‘Still Sittin\' Here’ so I knew them already. This era takes me back MCing in youth clubs in Bow and Newham and South London. It takes me back to pirate radio. I was around Nasty Crew or a young Kano on Flava FM. When ‘Body Groove’ came out around 2000, I was either in my last year at school or going into college. That shit was big on the TV. It was big on pirate radio. So it was them times. Garage was the sound of London.” **You Don\'t Know** “This is more observation than a criticism. It’s just saying that\'s where we are. I\'ve always got those social commentary tunes, where I\'m just kind of like just summing up the vibe of today, like I did on ‘Dirtee Cash’ as well. It’s just about how the world\'s kind of working now, how much social media means to people. I like to keep it minimal, like I say on the song.” **Energies + Powers (feat. Alicaì Harley and Steel Banglez)** “I like that this is a bit of a reflective moment. A good album has to have a bit of light and dark—have a minute to feel something. Most of it was recorded in Miloco \[recording studios\], in South London, and I was having a little break in the kitchen with Tinie Tempah\'s manager. Alicaì came in and she was just bold and kind of just started rapping and singing like on the spot. I was like, ‘Wow, how come I never heard this girl? Her music is sick.’ So I went next door, called her in, was like, ‘Yo, what do you think of this?’ She came and just laid it down, man. Steel Banglez did the beat. He was perfect, because anyone else on that beat might have made it a club tune.” **Eastside (feat. Ghetts and Kano)** “The title comes from Ghetts saying ‘Live and direct from the East Side,’ which stuck. We\'re not from the same direct area, but it\'s next door, so we rolled around with the same people growing up. Back in the day we used to call Ghetts ‘Reggie.’ So that\'s what I\'m talking about when I talk about ‘me and Reggie’ in this. Especially because those times, when we were younger, Ghetts was not an MC. He caught up, though. It’s always sick to be with the best in the game who are given 32 bars to fully express what they want. It\'s almost, in a way, harder because we already decided there was no chorus. I was like, ‘Fuck it. Just roll off the back of it.’” **Act Like You Know (feat. Smoke Boys)** “The vibe of that tune was kind of just cold when I was approaching it. It\'s not the most loud, aggressive tune—it\'s almost a bit murky and sinister. It\'s me just banging my chest, really. I know some of the stuff sometimes sounds like I\'m saying really simple, easy stuff like ‘papaya’ and whatever, but I’m always thinking of the pattern and flow of what I\'m saying, thinking about metaphors and words. I don’t cut corners where it comes to vocal delivery. It’s fun to rhyme simple words like ‘trolley’ and ‘dolly.’ Sometimes you might know a word but you don\'t necessarily know the context.” **Don’t Be Dumb (feat. Ocean Wisdom)** “I had to keep up with Ocean Wisdom, because he\'s technically one of the fastest rappers in the world, I think he held the record for that. To be fair, though, I started off as a jungle MC, so I learnt at that tempo. I\'ve slowed down over the years, through grime or whatever. You have to think about the diction. It\'s like, ‘OK, how long can I go without running out of breath?’ So I kind of rap to the point where I get out of breath, then I\'ll stop for a second, and then I might punch in and carry on. It\'s usually at the last three takes that sound the best. It’s an art, man.” **Be Incredible (feat. Rob Jones TV)** “The chorus almost sounds a bit like John Legend. The beat started off because I was looking for Japanese music, like Japanese massage music on YouTube, and I sampled it and quite liked it. It’s almost a bit ballad-y. I love having them ones which are an emotional wind-down. I came up listening to 2Pac and Nas and shit like that who do the same. It’s them tunes that get people through stuff. The amount of times people come up to me and say, ‘Your music got me through prison or a hard time,’ or whatever. It\'s them emotional moments. I like ending like that.”

Over the last decade, Khruangbin (pronounced “krung-bin”) has mastered the art of setting a mood, of creating atmosphere. But on *Mordechai*, follow-up to their 2018 breakthrough *Con Todo El Mundo*, the Houston trio makes space in their globe-spinning psych-funk for something that’s been largely missing until now: vocals. The result is their most direct work to date. From the playground disco of “Time (You and I)” to the Latin rhythms of “Pelota”—inspired by a Japanese film, but sung in Spanish—to the balmy reassurances of “If There Is No Question,” much of *Mordechai* has the immediacy of an especially adventurous pop record. Even moments of hallucinogenic expanse (“One to Remember”) or haze (“First Class”) benefit from the added presence of a human voice. “Never enough paper, never enough letters,” they sing from inside a shower of West African guitar notes on “So We Won’t Forget,” the album’s high point. “You don’t have to be silent.”

“I want to get to that point where I can just write one lyric and people understand what I’m about,” IDLES singer Joe Talbot tells Apple Music. “Maybe it’s ‘Fuck you, I’m a lover.’” Those words, from the song ‘The Lover,’ certainly form an effective tagline for the band’s third album. The Bristol band explored trauma and vulnerability on second album *Joy as an Act of Resistance.*, and here they’re finding ways to heal, galvanize, and move forward—partly informed by mindfulness and being in the present. “I thought about the idea that you only ever have now,” Talbot says. “\[*Ultra Mono*\] is about getting to the crux of who you are and accepting who you are in that moment—which is really about a unification of self.” Those thoughts inspired a solidarity and concision in the way Talbot, guitarists Mark Bowen and Lee Kiernan, bassist Adam Devonshire, and drummer Jon Beavis wrote music. Each song began with a small riff or idea, and everything that was added had to be in the service of that nugget. “That’s where the idea of an orchestra comes in—that you try and sound, from as little as possible, as big as you can,” Talbot says. “Everyone hitting the thing at the same time to sound huge. It might also be as simple as one person playing and everyone else shutting the fuck up. Don’t create noise where it’s not needed.” The music’s visceral force and social awareness will keep the “punk” tag pinned to IDLES, but *Ultra Mono* forges a much broader sound. The self-confidence of hip-hop, the communal spirit of jungle, and the kindness of jazz-pop maestro Jamie Cullum all feed into these 12 songs. Let Talbot explain how in this track-by-track guide. **War** “It was the quickest thing we ever wrote. We got in a room together, I explained the concept, and we just wrote it. We played it—it wasn’t even a writing thing. And that is about as ultra mono as it gets. It had to be the first track because it is the explosion of not overthinking anything and *being*. The big bang of the album is the inner turmoil of trying to get rid of the noise and just be present—so it was perfect. The title’s ‘War’ because it sounded so violent, ballistic. I was really disenfranchised with the internet, like, ‘Why am I listening to assholes? You’ve got to be kind to yourself.’ ‘War’ was like, ‘Yeah, do it, actually learn to love yourself.’ That was the start of a big chapter in my life. It was like the war of self that I had to win.” **Grounds** “We wanted to write a song that was like AC/DC meets Dizzee Rascal, but a bit darker. It’s the march song, the start of the journey: ‘We won the first battle, let’s fucking do this. What do you need to stop apologizing for?’ That’s a conversation you need to have when all these horrible people come to the forefront. I was being criticized for speaking of civil rights–whether that be trans rights or gay rights or Black rights, the war on the working classes. I believe in socialism. Go fuck yourselves. I want to sleep at night knowing that my platform is the voice of reason and an egalitarian want for something beautiful—not the murder of Black people, homophobia at the workplace, racist front lines. We were recording in Paris and Warren Ellis \[of The Bad Seeds and Grinderman\] popped in. He sat with us just chatting about life. I was like, ‘It would be insane if I didn’t ask you to be on this record, man.’ I just wanted him to do a ‘Hey!’ like on a grime record.” **Mr. Motivator** “\[TV fitness guru\] Mr Motivator, that’s my spirit animal. We wrote that song and it felt like a train. I wanted to put a beautiful and joyous face to something rampantly, violently powerful-sounding. ‘Mr. Motivator’ is 90% lethal machine, 10% beautiful, smiley man that brings you joy. The lyrics are all cliches because I think *The Guardian* or someone leaned towards the idea that my sloganeering was something to be scoffed at. So I thought I’d do a whole song of it. We’re trying to rally people together, and if you go around using flowery language or muddying the waters with your insecurities, you’re not going to get your point across. So, I wanted to write nursery rhymes for open-minded people.” **Anxiety** “This was the first song where the lyrics came as we were writing the music. It sounded anxiety-inducing because it was so bombastic and back-and-forth. Then we had the idea of speeding the song up as you go along and becoming more cacophonous. That just seemed like a beautiful thing, because when you start meditating, the first thing that happens is you try to meditate–which isn’t what you’re supposed to do. The noise starts coming in. One of the things they teach you in therapy is that if you feel anxious or scared or sad or angry, don’t just internally try to fight that. Accept that you become anxious and allow yourself the anxiety. Feel angry and accept that, and then think about why, and what triggered it. And obviously 40-cigarettes-a-day Dev \[Adam Devonshire\] can’t really sing that well anymore, so we had to get David Yow of Jesus Lizard in. He’s got an amazing voice. It’s a much better version of what Dev used to be like.” **Kill Them With Kindness** “That’s Jamie Cullum \[on the piano\]. We met him at the Mercury Prize and he said, ‘If you need any piano on your album, just let us know.’ I was like, ‘We don’t, but we definitely do now.’ I like that idea of pushing people’s idea of what cool is. Jamie Cullum is fucking cooler than any of those apathetic nihilists. He believes in something and he works hard at it—and I like that. When I was working in a kitchen, we listened to Radio 2 all the time, and I loved his show. And he’s a beautiful human being. It’s a perfect example of what we’re about: inclusivity and showing what you love. I didn’t write the lyrics until after meeting him. It was just that idea that he seemed kindhearted. Kindness is a massive thing: It’s what empathy derives from, and kindness and empathy is what’ll kill fascism. It should be the spirit of punk and soul music and grime and every other music.” **Model Village** “The part that we wrote around was something that I used to play onstage whenever Bowen was offstage and I stole his guitar. So it had this playfulness, and I wanted to write a kind of take-the-piss song. I’m not antagonistic at all, but I do find things funny, like people who get so angry. I wanted this song to be taking yourself out of your own town and looking at it like it’s a model village. Just to be like, ‘Look how small and insignificant this place is. Don’t be so aggressive and defensive about something you don’t really understand.’ It’s a call for empathy—but to the assholes in a non-apologetic way.” **Ne Touche Pas Moi** “I was getting really down on tours because I felt a bit like an animal in a cage. Dudes are aggressive, and it’s boring when you see it in a crowd. Someone’s being a prick in the crowd and people aren’t comfortable—it’s not a nice feeling. So I wanted to create that idea of a safe arena with an anthem. It’s a violent, cutting anthem. It’s like, ‘I am full of love, but that doesn’t mean you can elbow me in the face or touch my breasts.’ We can play it in sets to give people the confidence that there is a platform here to be safe. I said to Bowen, ‘I really wish there was a woman singing the chorus, because it’s not just about my voice, it’s more often women that get groped.’ A couple of days later, we were in Paris recording Jehnny Beth’s TV show and I told her about this song. It was a nice relief to have someone French backing up my shit French.” **Carcinogenic** “Jungle was a movement based around unity—very different kinds of people getting together under the love of music. It was one of the most forward-thinking, beautiful things to happen to our country, \[and it\] was shut down by police and people who couldn’t make money from it. I wanted to write a song that was part garage rock, part jungle, because both movements have their part to play in building IDLES and also building amazing communities of people and great musicians. Then I thought about jungle and grime and garage and how something positive gets turned into something negative with the media. Basically, any Black music that creates a positive network of people and communities, building something out of love, is dangerous because it’s people thinking outside the box and not relying on the government for reassurance and entertainment and distraction. So then it got me thinking about ‘carcinogenic’ and how everything gives you cancer, when really the most cancerous thing about our society isn’t anything like that, it’s the class war that we’re going through and depriving people of a decent education, decent welfare, decent housing. That’s fucking cancer.” **Reigns** “This was written around the bass, obviously. Again, another movement—techno—and that idea of togetherness and the love in the room is always apparent. Techno is motorik, it’s mesmeric, it is just a singularity—minimal techno, especially. It’s just the beat or the bassline and that carries you through, that’s all you need. Obviously, we’re a chorus band, so we thought we’d throw in something huge to cut through it. But we didn’t want to overcomplicate it. That sinister pound just reminds me of my continual disdain for the Royal Family and everything they represent in our country, from the fascism that it comes from to the smiley-face racism that it perpetuates nowadays.” **The Lover** “I wanted to write a soul song with that wall-of-noise, Phil Spector vibe—but also an IDLES song. What could be more IDLES than writing a song about being a lover but making it really sweary? When I love someone, I swear a lot around them because I trust them, and I want them to feel comfortable and trust me. So I just wrote the most honest love song. It’s like a defiant smile in the face of assholes who can’t just accept that your love is real. It’s like, ‘I’m not lying. I am full of love and you’re a prick.’ That’s it. That song was the answer to the call of ‘Grounds.’ That huge, stabby, all-together orchestra.” **A Hymn** “Bowen and I were trying to write a song together. I had a part and he had a part. Then my part just got kicked out and we wrote the song around the guitar line. We wanted to write a song that was like a hymn, because a hymn is a Christian, or gospel, vision of togetherness and rejoicing at once for something they love. I wanted to write the lyrics around the idea that a hymn nowadays is just about suburban want, material fear. So it’s like a really subdued, sad hymn about materialism, suburban pedestrianism. And it came out really well.” **Danke** “It was going to be an instrumental, a song that made you feel elated and ready for war—and not muddy it with words. A song that embodies the whole album, that just builds and pounds but all the parts change. Each bit changes, but it feels like one part of one thing. And I always finish on a thank you because it’s important to be grateful for what people have given us—so I wanted to call the song ‘Danke.’ Then, on the day of recording it, Daniel Johnston died. So I put in his lyrics \[from ‘True Love Will Find You in the End’\] because they’re some of the most beautiful ever written. It fits the song, fits the album. He could have only written that one lyric and it’d be enough to understand him. I added \[my\] lyrics \[‘I’ll be your hammer, I’ll be your nail/I’ll be the house that allows you to fail’\] at the end because I felt like it was an offering to leave with—like, ‘I’ve got you.’ It’s what I would have said to him, or any friend that needed love.”

Even before 2020 began to do its worst, Everything Everything’s Jonathan Higgs was tired of reflecting on the world’s horrors. He’d done it on his band’s third album *Get to Heaven* in 2015, and again on 2017’s Mercury-nominated *A Fever Dream*. “I hit a brick wall and thought, ‘I don\'t want to talk about how I’m miserable all the time,’” he tells Apple Music. “I don\'t want to talk about how crap the world is. I want to talk about something new, something a bit more hopeful and something a bit more rejuvenated.” That something revealed itself when Higgs read about bicameral mind theory in psychology and neuroscience, which proposes that the human mind was once divided into two separate chambers—one that spoke and one that listened. As the hypothesis goes, the evolution of those two minds into one marked the dawn of human consciousness. “It blew my mind in a new way and made me think about big questions,” he says. Soon, songs about detachment, resurrection, bogeymen, and deities composed of congealed fat began to form for this, the band’s fifth album. With these new lyrical ideas blossoming, the four-piece also found new ways to make music. Previously they would methodically build perfection: recording multiple takes of one song and binding together the best bits and snippets. *RE-ANIMATOR* embraces a looser, faster process—without sacrificing their knack for fusing art-rock experimentation with pop hooks. “We just got everything done in two weeks,” says multi-instrumentalist Alex Robertshaw. “We forced ourselves to move on before we ended up with 60 bass takes. There’s loads of mistakes all over the record, but we left them in because it’s real. I think people like us as a live band, and I never felt like we’ve really managed to get that across on record before.” Here, the pair talk us through the album track by track. **Lost Powers** Alex Robertshaw: “This was just a piano thing, almost like a sad ballad, that existed on my laptop for ages. I played it to Jon and we tried to turn the whole thing on its head. It went through a few different lives.” Jonathan Higgs: “There was a very grungy version, almost like *The Bends*, that we really liked but it was just too much of a pastiche. We modernized it a bit, and it came out sounding so positive even though it’s about being insane and being a conspiracy person. ‘It’s all right, you’ve just gone mad, don’t worry about it’—that’s the sort of rousing theme. It feels like it’s putting its arm round you, where in the past we tried to scare you or dazzle you with the first song. This is more like, ‘Don’t worry about it, this is going to be a good album, I know everything is a bit mental at the moment.’” **Big Climb** JH: “It has this theme of climate change and nihilism and was meant to be like a teen anthem for kids that don’t care that the world’s going to go, because they didn’t fuck it up—the boomers, the previous people, did. It’s saying, ‘We don\'t even want to survive in your crappy world that you’ve messed up.’ But there’s a core hope that someone’s going to save the day. And it’s up to the young people to save it as well.” AR: “Musically, it’s inspired a little bit by Peter Gabriel, Thomas Dolby, and that kind of stuff. There’s even a nod, in the fact it’s called ‘Big Climb,’ to Gabriel with ‘Big Time.’ It’s like we’re answering the message of ‘Big Time’: how that generation has totally screwed everything up.” **It Was a Monstering** AR: “I like what we’ve managed to get in the end with this; it’s important to the record. We kept going back to it, because we were really into the middle eight—it’s one of our finest, and we kept on wanting that not to be left off the record. We were just a bit worried about connotations of sounding like this or that, the usual stuff. We work at everything far too much in terms of how the music is perceived. People just want to hear what we like and what we like doing. We need to remember to not care as much.” JH: “Across the record there’s quite a few references to urban myths, bogeymen. It’s painting myself as this outsider, like a monster. There’s loads of references to me being a vampire or an old Universal villain, Frankenstein or whatever. And then it descends into a big list of awful urban myths. Then there’s some bicameral mind stuff about how I want them to be able to inhabit my brain. It’s not very clear-cut, that one; it’s more about painting a feeling, really.” **Planets** JH: “I think I heard an advert or something that was like this really slow triplet-y synth thing. I really liked the feel of it. So I tried to recreate it and it went wrong, as it always does. But it was an unusual feel for us musically—this *really* slow 6/8 feel. And then it goes double-speed for the chorus. It’s just a really fun feel to play with. It’s about crying out for acceptance, really. A lot of \[the songs\] are like that, but there’s a lot more humor in play here. The lyrics are really ridiculous. They were some of the last ones I did, and I realized that a lot of the album was quite somber and I should throw all of my fun into this last song, so that there is that color on this record.” **Moonlight** AR: “My wife gave birth in the middle of the night and I was up all night while she was going through this thing. It was just a really bizarre feeling for our first child, and I just wanted to capture that with music. There’s a bit of rehashed harmonies from Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, and that’s why I named it, as a demo, ‘Moonlight.’” JH: “Lyrically it’s about feeling a bit stuck in life and not making any progress. But, again, there’s lots of hope in there and lots of references to Britain in the early ’90s, things I remember from my childhood. Not even specifics, but just the feeling of smoking in pubs and the old pound coins…and I don\'t even know why I’m saying that, because it isn’t even in the lyrics, but this is what it makes me feel like when I sing that song. There’s something about never moving on from the village in the ’90s, which isn’t my story at all. It’s a bit like a prayer, that song.” **Arch Enemy** JH: “I was reading about fatbergs, and something about them struck me as incredibly potent as a metaphor for greed and waste. We’ve thrown away so much fat that it’s blocked up the sewerage \[system\]. And this idea arose of a person applying the status of god to the fatberg and saying, ‘Just cover all of us in your fat grossness, because it’s what we deserve for creating you in the first place.’ And at the same time knowing that I had a huge role to play in it myself and I don’t really do enough to counter my own stuff. Musically, I was inspired by the Saint Etienne cover of ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart,’ this ’90s reggae-ish loop that I fell in love with. The harmony was essentially based on Allegri’s ‘Miserere,’ a really famous thing that Mozart heard \[at the Sistine Chapel\] when he was a kid and copied down. It’s a really holy Catholic piece of music and I’ve always loved the harmony. So, I just put it over this beat. So, there’s this holy undertone to this song about this fatberg deity. And it’s been recontextualized into this grotesque new god for the 21st century. And then Alex did an obscene guitar solo over the end of it and called it a day.” **Lord of the Trapdoor** AR: “I was listening to \[John Coltrane’s\] ‘Giant Steps’ and just enjoying how it’s got this really strong melody, and then the chords are moving key every chord. I wanted to write something that had a bit more jazz influence on it. I was also trying to write something that was much more noisy than we’ve done before, more Sonic Youth, some chaos in there. So I manipulated John’s voice and scrambled him up. I wanted it to feel really manic and really chaotic—something that, live, would be really rowdy and really intense.” JH: “It’s about internet trolls. Those are the baddies of our time. I’m just fascinated as to why people get into those headspaces. And the elements of myself that are reflected in that and how easy it is to fall into that, a human trap you fall into—why discourse has become like this. There’s a really weird little sidestep at the end where I say ‘Turning sunlight into flesh,’ which is me trying to boil down the entirety of the human story into one line—the process of energy coming from the sun and making life—but it sounds like nonsense taken out of context. I wanted that somewhere on the record, so it appears as almost another voice in your head. ‘What the hell is that?’ Then the song crashes back in and ruins that little moment of enlightenment that you might have had.” **Black Hyena** JH: “This is the last lyric that I did. I had already written a demo called ‘Re-Animator’ at the start of the process, but that song didn’t work out for whatever reason. But I loved the title. I liked the fact that there were two ways of being reanimated. You could come back as something dark, as a zombie, or you could be reborn. So I wrote these lyrics about someone tinkering with animals, literally bringing them back—a Frankenstein-type character, messing with nature, which comes up a hell of a lot on the record. It’s a warning about fucking around with nature too much, I guess. The demo was just drums and the bass and that vocal at the top. And I really wanted it to stay like that. Then eventually we were like, ‘Well, we could do this, but we won’t really be a band if we do.’” **In Birdsong** JH: “I wrote this as a more traditionally orchestral thing, with all these lyrics about becoming conscious and the beginning of time, and staring into your own soul, really deep shit. It was an overblown, quite filmic, soundtrack-y type thing. Then Alex took it away and just completely reanimated it with his modular synth—influenced by Floating Points and all his weird shit he listens to—with this detached level to it, of feeling like you were out of time, in the future, in the past, which was really, really great. When it came to mixing it, I said to John \[Congleton, producer\], ‘Can you make it sound like a mastering error has occurred, like we’ve actually accidentally fucked this song?’ Really early on in the process, me and Alex talked about making a record that sounded like it was too big to be recorded, like it was the sound of planets hitting each other. I guess that’s the closest we got to it, that little bit of distortion in the end.” **The Actor** JH: “This had quite a traditional beginning: ‘Let’s write a song, with chords, on a guitar, then sing over it’—which isn’t what we ever do. So we did it and felt really good about it. But then we started to worry that it was maybe too normal. So we started to make it much weirder and much more of a swimmy, trippy kind of song. The lyrics were basically about being a bit disconnected; it was very much an *OK Computer*-type song about finding somebody who looks exactly the same as you and giving over your life to them so you can just disappear, give up all your responsibilities. The vocal is set quite back and obscured so it’s got a ‘I’m not here’ feel.” AR: “I get similar feelings from Talking Heads, like ‘there’s a party going on,’ but there’s this sad guy on top, almost disconnected from the world. It’s like being in an airport or something: you have no sense of time. We were trying to go for that feeling on every record, that jet-laggy ‘I feel disconnected, I’m in the wrong time of the day’ feel, but it has been most successful, I think, on this record.” **Violent Sun** JH: “I wanted to write a song that gave you that feeling of time running out, and that desperate feeling when you’re in the club and you’re really excited but you know the night is coming to an end and the DJ is only going to play one more song. You only have the time of that song to do whatever you came here to do: to hold on to that feeling or tell someone you love them, or whatever it is. The lyrics flowed out of me quickly, getting a feeling down rather than ‘I must tell this very elaborate story about a fatberg and make sure everyone understands it, while keeping it pop.’ This is: ‘They’re all against us, we’re standing together and I’ve only got this moment to tell you that something is coming and I want to be here with you when it does come.’ We were absolutely adamant that we shouldn\'t have a letup in it, that the middle eight should go harder. Because we always have respite and we always have concern for the listener, we’re always like, ‘Oh, you can’t have that, you’ve got to keep it in moderation.’ No, this is just a song that starts and keeps going—like other bands do and people enjoy. There’s this whole feeling of hitting the ground running: I start with the word ‘and’ like the song has already been going.”

Stephen Bruner’s fourth album as Thundercat is shrouded in loss—of love, of control, of his friend Mac Miller, who Bruner exchanged I-love-yous with over the phone hours before Miller’s overdose in late 2018. Not that he’s wallowing. Like 2017’s *Drunk*—an album that helped transform the bassist/singer-songwriter from jazz-fusion weirdo into one of the vanguard voices in 21st-century black music—*It Is What It Is* is governed by an almost cosmic sense of humor, juxtaposing sophisticated Afro-jazz (“Innerstellar Love”) with deadpan R&B (“I may be covered in cat hair/But I still smell good/Baby, let me know, how do I look in my durag?”), abstractions about mortality (“Existential Dread”) with chiptune-style punk about how much he loves his friend Louis Cole. “Yeah, it’s been an interesting last couple of years,” he tells Apple Music with a sigh. “But there’s always room to be stupid.” What emerges from the whiplash is a sense that—as the title suggests—no matter how much we tend to label things as good or bad, happy or sad, the only thing they are is what they are. (That Bruner keeps good company probably helps: Like on *Drunk*, the guest list here is formidable, ranging from LA polymaths like Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Louis Cole, and coproducer Flying Lotus to Childish Gambino, Ty Dolla $ign, and former Slave singer Steve Arrington.) As for lessons learned, Bruner is Zen as he runs through each of the album’s tracks. “It’s just part of it,” he says. “It’s part of the story. That’s why the name of the album is what it is—\[Mac’s death\] made me put my life in perspective. I’m happy I’m still here.” **Lost in Space / Great Scott / 22-26** \"Me and \[keyboardist\] Scott Kinsey were just playing around a bit. I like the idea of something subtle for the intro—you know, introducing somebody to something. Giving people the sense that there’s a ride about to happen.\" **Innerstellar Love** \"So you go from being lost in space and then suddenly thrust into purpose. The feel is a bit of an homage to where I’ve come from with Kamasi \[Washington, who plays the saxophone\] and my brother \[drummer Ronald Bruner, Jr.\]: very jazz, very black—very interstellar.\" **I Love Louis Cole (feat. Louis Cole)** \"It’s quite simply stated: Louis Cole is, hands down, one of my favorite musicians. Not just as a performer, but as a songwriter and arranger. \[*Cole is a polymathic solo artist and multi-instrumentalist, as well as a member of the group KNOWER.*\] The last time we got to work together was on \[*Drunk*’s\] \'Bus in These Streets.\' He inspires me. He reminds me to keep doing better. I’m very grateful I get to hang out with a guy like Louis Cole. You know, just me punching a friend of his and falling asleep in his laundry basket.\" **Black Qualls (feat. Steve Lacy, Steve Arrington & Childish Gambino)** \"Steve Lacy titled this song. \'Qualls\' was just a different way of saying ‘walls.\' And black walls in the sense of what it means to be a young black male in America right now. A long time ago, black people weren’t even allowed to read. If you were caught reading, you’d get killed in front of your family. So growing up being black—we’re talking about a couple hundred years later—you learn to hide your wealth and knowledge. You put up these barriers, you protect yourself. It’s a reason you don’t necessarily feel okay—this baggage. It’s something to unlearn, at least in my opinion. But it also goes beyond just being black. It’s a people thing. There’s a lot of fearmongering out there. And it’s worse because of the internet. You gotta know who you are. It’s about this idea that it’s okay to be okay.\" **Miguel’s Happy Dance** \"Miguel Atwood-Ferguson plays keys on this record, and also worked on the string arrangement. Again, y’know, without getting too heavily into stuff, I had a rough couple of years. So you get Miguel’s happy dance.\" **How Sway** \"I like making music that’s a bit fast and challenging to play. So really, this is just that part of it—it’s like a little exercise.\" **Funny Thing** \"The love songs here are pretty self-explanatory. But I figure you’ve gotta be able to find the humor in stuff. You’ve gotta be able to laugh.\" **Overseas (feat. Zack Fox)** \"Brazil is the one place in the world I would move. São Paulo. I would just drink orange juice all day and play bass until I had nubs for fingers. So that’s number one. But man, you’ve also got Japan in there. Japan. And Russia! I mean, everything we know about the politics—it is what it is. But Russian people are awesome. They’re pretty crazy. But they’re awesome.\" **Dragonball Durag** \"The durag is the ultimate power move. Not like a superpower, but just—you know, it translates into the world. You’ve got people with durags, and you’ve got people without them. Personally, I always carry one. Man, you ever see that picture of David Beckham wearing a durag and shaking Prince Charles’ hand? Victoria’s looking like she wants to rip his pants off.\" **How I Feel** \"A song like \'How I Feel’—there’s not a lot of hidden meaning there \[*laughs*\]. It’s not like something really bad happened to me when I was watching *Care Bears* when I was six and I’m trying to cover it up in a song. But I did watch *Care Bears*.\" **King of the Hill** \"This is something I made with BADBADNOTGOOD. It came out a little while ago, on the Brainfeeder 10-year compilation. We kind of wrestled with whether or not it should go on the album, but in the end it felt right. You’re always trying to find space and time to collaborate with people, but you’re in one city, they’re in another, you’re moving around. Here, we finally got the opportunity to be in the same room together and we jumped at it. I try and be open to all kinds of collaboration, though. Magic is magic.\" **Unrequited Love** \"You know how relationships go: Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose \[*laughs*\]. But really, it’s not funny \[*more laughs*\]. Sometimes you—\[*laughing*\]—you get your heart broken.\" **Fair Chance (feat. Ty Dolla $ign & Lil B)** \"Me and Ty spend a lot of time together. Lil B was more of a reach, but we wanted to find a way to make it work, because some people, you know, you just resonate with. This is definitely the beginning of more between him and I. A starting point. But you know, to be honest it’s an unfortunate set of circumstances under which it comes. We were all very close to Mac \[Miller\]. It was a moment for all of us. We all became very aware of that closeness in that moment.\" **Existential Dread** \"You know, getting older \[*laughs*\].\" **It Is What It Is** \"That’s me in the middle, saying, ‘Hey, Mac.’ That’s me, getting a chance to say goodbye to my friend.\"

GRAMMYs 2021 Winner - Best Progressive R&B Album Thundercat has released his new album “It Is What It Is” on Brainfeeder Records. The album, produced by Flying Lotus and Thundercat, features musical contributions from Ty Dolla $ign, Childish Gambino, Lil B, Kamasi Washington, Steve Lacy, Steve Arrington, BADBADNOTGOOD, Louis Cole and Zack Fox. “It Is What It Is” has been nominated for a GRAMMY in the Best Progressive R&B Category and with Flying Lotus also receiving a nomination in the Producer of the Year (Non-Classical). “It Is What It Is” follows his game-changing third album “Drunk” (2017). That record completed his transition from virtuoso bassist to bonafide star and cemented his reputation as a unique voice that transcends genre. “This album is about love, loss, life and the ups and downs that come with that,” Bruner says about “It Is What It Is”. “It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, but at different points in life you come across places that you don’t necessarily understand… some things just aren’t meant to be understood.” The tragic passing of his friend Mac Miller in September 2018 had a profound effect on Thundercat and the making of “It Is What It Is”. “Losing Mac was extremely difficult,” he explains. “I had to take that pain in and learn from it and grow from it. It sobered me up… it shook the ground for all of us in the artist community.” The unruly bounce of new single ‘Black Qualls’ is classic Thundercat, teaming up with Steve Lacy (The Internet) and Funk icon Steve Arrington (Slave). It’s another example of Stephen Lee Bruner’s desire to highlight the lineage of his music and pay his respects to the musicians who inspired him. Discovering Arrington’s output in his late teens, Bruner says he fell in love with his music immediately: “The tone of the bass, the way his stuff feels and moves, it resonated through my whole body.” ‘Black Qualls’ emerged from writing sessions with Lacy, whom Thundercat describes as “the physical incarnate of the Ohio Players in one person - he genuinely is a funky ass dude”. It references what it means to be a black American with a young mindset: “What it feels like to be in this position right now… the weird ins and outs, we’re talking about those feelings…” Thundercat revisits established partnerships with Kamasi Washington, Louis Cole, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Ronald Bruner Jr and Dennis Hamm on “It Is What Is Is” but there are new faces too: Childish Gambino, Steve Lacy, Steve Arrington, plus Ty Dolla $ign and Lil B on ‘Fair Chance’ - a song explicitly about his friend Mac Miller’s passing. The aptly titled ‘I Love Louis Cole’ is another standout - “Louis Cole is a brush of genius. He creates so purely,” says Thundercat. “He makes challenging music: harmony-wise, melody-wise and tempo-wise but still finds a way for it to be beautiful and palatable.” Elsewhere on the album, ‘Dragonball Durag’ exemplifies both Thundercat’s love of humour in music and indeed his passion for the cult Japanese animé. “I have a Dragon Ball tattoo… it runs everything. There is a saying that Dragon Ball runs life,” he explains. “The durag is a superpower, to turn your swag on. It does something… it changes you,” he says smiling. Thundercat’s music starts on his couch at home: “It’s just me, the bass and the computer”. Nevertheless, referring to the spiritual connection that he shares with his longtime writing and production partner Flying Lotus, Bruner describes his friend as “the other half of my brain”. “I wouldn’t be the artist I am if Lotus wasn’t there,” he says. “He taught me… he saw me as an artist and he encouraged it. No matter the life changes, that’s my partner. We are always thinking of pushing in different ways.” Comedy is an integral part of Thundercat’s personality. “If you can’t laugh at this stuff you might as well not be here,” he muses. He seems to be magnetically drawn to comedians from Zack Fox (with whom he collaborates regularly) to Dave Chappelle, Eric Andre and Hannibal Buress whom he counts as friends. “Every comedian wants to be a musician and every musician wants to be a comedian,” he says. “And every good musician is really funny, for the most part.” It’s the juxtaposition, or the meeting point, between the laughter and the pain that is striking listening to “It Is What It Is”: it really is all-encompassing. “The thing that really becomes a bit transcendent in the laugh is when it goes in between how you really feel,” Bruner says. “You’re hoping people understand it, but you don’t even understand how it’s so funny ‘cos it hurts sometimes.” Thundercat forms a cornerstone of the Brainfeeder label; he released “The Golden Age of Apocalypse” (2011), “Apocalypse” (2013), followed by EP “The Beyond / Where The Giants Roam” featuring the modern classic ‘Them Changes’. He was later “at the creative epicenter” (per Rolling Stone) of the 21st century’s most influential hip-hop album Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp A Butterfly”, where he won a Grammy for his collaboration on the track ‘These Walls’ before releasing his third album “Drunk” in 2017. In 2018 Thundercat and Flying Lotus composed an original score for an episode of Golden Globe and Emmy award winning TV series “Atlanta” (created and written by Donald Glover).

\"When we were finishing everything up and getting this music finalized, this record feels like all of our previous stuff wrapped up together, which you don\'t always end up with,\" vocalist/guitarist Brett Campbell tells Apple Music about Pallbearer\'s fourth album. Equally cathartic and melancholic, the record\'s eight tracks grapple with the strangeness of memory and the concept of time, with heavy subjects surrounding disease, death, and loss anchoring songs like \"Caledonia\" and the title track. Produced by Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth), *Forgotten Days* incorporates moments of soaring prog-rock (\"Stasis\" and \"Silver Wings\"), furious thrash (\"The Quicksand of Existing\"), and sweeping aggression (\"Vengeance & Ruination\") into the band\'s relentless doom metal sound, threaded together in a cohesive collection that showcases Pallbearer at their darkest. \"I like the dynamism in general,\" says Campbell. \"I feel like on this album, each song is notably different from each other while maintaining some similar elements as well.\" Below, Campbell walks Apple Music track by track through *Forgotten Days*. **Forgotten Days** “This song was inspired by these ideas of identity and memory, sort of inspired by seeing my grandmother go through Alzheimer\'s over the last several years and just watching her slip away. She\'s still alive, but there are fewer and fewer recognizable moments of her being in there. I just used it to explore the themes of how much your memories of your life or your conception of yourself—how does that define who you are? If you can only remember versions of yourself from long ago, are you lost in time? A lot of Alzheimer\'s patients seem like they are displaced, because they have these memories that to them seem current, but it could be from 50 years ago. I feel it\'s got to be a very strange way to exist.” **Riverbed** “The skeleton of that song is from \[bassist\] Joe \[Rowland\]. So he demoed it and sent it to us, and I really liked it from the very initial moment. It sounds new, it sounds different than our old stuff. It\'s got the trade-off vocals—Joe does the softer vocals, and I do my typical thing. It will probably end up being a live staple, if we ever get to play shows again.” **Stasis** “I\'ve been flirting with writing more rock-ish songs lately. I wanted to have more of a swagger and groove to it rather than either something that hammers or big sweeping sort of stuff that we often do. I just wanted to test the limits of the Pallbearer format. The lyrics on that are essentially a reminder to not get stuck in shitty behavioral patterns that just drag down. Because you really only have so long to live, and if you waste lots of time just wallowing in misery or just the patterns that you\'re comfortable with, you don\'t get that time back.” **Silver Wings** “I always like to write at least one long, epic song per album. That\'s probably my favorite of mine on the album. And it\'s kind of concerned with similar ideas as \'Forgotten Days.\' I think I sort of have a fixation with this sort of concept in general. Just the idea of the unstoppable march of time and the inevitability of change. You find a person at a time that they\'re much different than they once were.” **The Quicksand of Existing** “We ended up really kind of having a ball over Devin \[Holt\]\'s guitar solo. We do a trade-off in the middle. Mine is the sort of more florid-sounding one, and then Devin just comes in with the fucking face-melting, fucking *Reload* guitar. You can hear the black-nail-polish-era Kirk Hammett rocking out. We were losing our minds in the studio when he recorded that, laughing our asses off. It\'s probably our simplest song we\'ve ever done, but it\'s a lot of fun to play.” **Vengeance & Ruination** “I\'ve had kind of a difficult time coming up with lyrics for that song because the music itself is so aggressive. I was kind of trying to approach it almost like a hardcore song, although it really ended up not sounding like that. I saw these pictures from probably 120 years ago of these victims of the death by a thousand cuts where they\'d like flay you alive, this Chinese capital punishment. It\'s horrifically, incomprehensibly cruel. And I use that as a jumping-off point as a kind of discussion of a state-sponsored cruelty.” **Rite of Passage** “Solstice is kind of one of our influences from early on. And we\'ve always really enjoyed that stuff, just kind of classic epic doom. And we haven\'t really done a straightforward Solstice-esque song before. So we just went for it. I think that the chorus ended up being pretty cool in that, because once we got to the studio, one of Randall\'s suggestions was to play the chorus on the toms instead of just playing it through, which I think was a really great suggestion and it opened up the chorus a lot.” **Caledonia** “It\'s pretty fucking weird. The really bizarre guitar solo from Devin, quadruple-track harmonies on there, I think it\'s pretty rad. But it\'s also just crushingly sad. That was another one of those songs about dealing with his mother\'s death. It\'s pretty heavy subject matter, but I like all the various textures and directions that that song goes in. It feels inherently progressive in the sense that there are so many different sonic directions throughout that song. It flows really well together and doesn\'t seem disjointed, which it could have felt with all the different things going on.”