The London five-piece Tom Dougall, Dominic O’Dair, Maxim Barron, Charlie Salvidge and Max Oscarnold release their first album on Tough Love and their fourth for the world. It’s recorded in home studios, mixed at Studio B in South London and completely self-produced. This extra material recorded and commisioned around the same time the original album was made. The deluxe version of Toy’s fourth album, “Happy In the Hollow”, is now available online. It includes the original album alongside new artwork and four rare or previously unavailable songs, as below.
Happy in the Hollow
The Willo (Sonic Boom remix)
Strangulation Day (Cosey Fanni Tutti remix)
Move Through the Dark (Daniel Melero & Yuliano Acri remix)
London’s Tugboat Captain, who named themselves after a Galaxie 500 song, are more than a little twee, making the kind of cute, shiny, horn-inflected indiepop that politely yells “striped tees and cardigans.” (They describe themselves as a “folk orchestra of ruffians.”) It’s pretty charming stuff and the band independently crowdfunded their trip to the USA only to have SXSW canceled, The impressive rise of Tugboat Captain has already taken them from home recording in their front room to Abbey Road, and is showing no signs of slowing down. The London-based quartet recently decamped to the iconic studios to work on their upcoming third album. With that release in mind the band will soon be heading to the other side of the Atlantic to play at both SXSW and the New York-based New Colossus Festival.
For the past few years, London four-piece Honey Lung have quietly been making some of the most satisfyingly melodic guitar music available. The band recently signed to Big Scary Monsters (American Football, Beach Slang) for the release of a forthcoming EP, the follow-up to their singles and demos collection, Memory, which landed on the list of best EPs of 2019. There’s something vaguely classic and deeply meaningful about their lo-fi rock songs. File Honey Lung under heartfelt, yearning lyrics and eccentric, dynamic instrumentals.
Led by singer/guitarist/songwriter Jamie Batten, Honey Lung’s sound pulls from ’90s indie rock, alt-rock and shoegaze and puts equal emphasis on melody and hooks and wild guitar squalls. Honey Lung released their debut album, Memory, via Kanine Records last year and recently returned with new single “Nothing”:
Honey Lung are: Jamie Batten, Harry Chambers, David Sherry, Omri Covo.
Lauren Auder’s Byronic take on the King Krule template washes away the ooz and replaces it with a breezy romanticism and just the right amount of snarl. It’s hackneyed to juxtapose an artist’s age with the maturity of their music, but when it comes to Lauren Auder, the disconnect is almost startling. At first glance, the 19-year-old London producer and singer-songwriter seems indubitably of the moment: his waif-like appearance, gender-fluid fashion sense and close relationships with some of the U.K.’s hottest underground rappers—including slowthai and Jeshi—feel custom-built for youth culture ubiquity. Modeling spreads in Another Man and Dazed alongside a glowing Vogue profile have established him as a rising darling in the fashion world, and his signing to True Panther Sounds,.
The sonics of Auder’s debut EP, Who Carry’s You, place him in an entirely different universe. The five tracks on the record, driven by his resonant, Scott Walker-like baritone, evoke a primal darkness utterly at odds with his visual aesthetic—long hair, painted nails, gender-bending outfits and the occasional bit of eyeshadow. In his music, Auder creates an immersive world where Christian iconography jostles with pagan mysticism, and classical strings fade into menacing trap percussion and frenetic electronic maximalism. Beautiful and harrowing by turn, the music on Who Carry’s You is a cathartic expression of raw emotion imbued with a lyricism closer to romantic poetry than pop.
“Girl” is the second album from the North London band Girl Ray, via Moshi Moshi Records. Recorded at Electric Beach Studios in Margate with Ash Workman (Christine and the Queens, Metronomy), the album is a delightful, sun-kissed tribute to their love of pop and R&B.
It was Ariana Grande’s explosion into pop culture that kickstarted a new era for Girl Ray, as well as the realisation that their most-listened-to Spotify playlists contained pure pop music. When Poppy began experimenting with writing songs on a computer using keyboards, a collection of shimmering, foot-tapping, sparkling pop bangers poured out. With this new set of songs, Girl Ray have been brave enough to completely change their sound rather than play it safe, yet still remain unmistakably themselves – it’s Girl Ray, but with added synths.
If their debut, Earl Grey, was a hot cup of tea and a cuddle on the sofa,Girl is being in a cab with the windows down on the way to a beach bar for sundowners. It’s the excitement of Rihanna’s If It’s Lovin’ That You Want, combined with the eye-rolling, impenetrable sardonic humour of a girl gang. Among the grin-inducing, trepidatious and intensely courageous R&B-style tracks on the album, are also beautifully composed piano ballads steeped in the sadness and unrequited love that made Earl Grey feel like a knowing look from an old friend.
Girl is expertly-crafted pop, created by dedicated artists on a mission to make music for people to really enjoy. Music that doesn’t look to confuse or patronise. Music to fall in love to, to dance to. Songs you’d want to send to your friends. They have used the universal, happy medium of pop music to put across joyous, accessible messages of love, friendship and life to the world, like some of the best songwriters before them.
Last year, Natasha Khan released her fifth album as Bat For Lashes — the gorgeous ’80s nostalgia fever dream Lost Girls. She toured a bit behind it through the fall, and some shows featured covers that felt like they were the spiritual forebears to the world Khan was trying to create on the album. There was her take on Cyndi Lauper’s version of “I Drove All Night,” a not-so-surprising cover of Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work,” and a perhaps-more-surprising cover of Don Henley’s “The Boys Of Summer.”
The latter has now received an official release, by way of a live EP Bat For Lashes quietly let out into the world today. The recording is taken from her set at EartH, the Evolutionary Arts Hackney theater in London, last November. This was a spare, stripped back set, and the EP also features introspective, intimate readings of Lost Girls highlights “Desert Man” and “The Hunger,” as well as perennial Bat For Lashes favorite “Daniel.”
Khan’s interpretation of “The Boys Of Summer” is similarly sparse. Gone is the iconic drumbeat, and the song’s desert highway pulse. Instead, key melodic elements and synth parts are reproduced in an airy epilogue-type take on the song that amplifies the yearning and desperation of the track. While it would’ve been fun to hear a Bat For Lashes version that was as blown-out as the original, this iteration makes sense not just in the context of Khan’s EartH show but also the Lost Girls era — she renders it like a fading dream, drawing out beautiful aspects of the song you might not have known were there.
Khan’s interpretation of “The Boys Of Summer” is similarly sparse. Gone is the iconic drumbeat, and the song’s desert highway pulse. Instead, key melodic elements and synth parts are reproduced in an airy epilogue-type take on the song that amplifies the yearning and desperation of the track. While it would’ve been fun to hear a Bat For Lashes version that was as blown-out as the original, this iteration makes sense not just in the context of Khan’sEartH show but also the Lost Girls era — she renders it like a fading dream, drawing out beautiful aspects of the song you might not have known were there.
Live at EartH, London, 2019 · Bat For Lashes license to AWAL Recordings Ltd
“GHUM gloss over dark pop with ghostly grunge” – The Line of Best Fit
“Immediately astonish with their electrifying brand of post-punk, but with a bitter and biting edge. The best goth pop that never was but could still be. Band of the night for me” – The Vapour Trail
“Morphing atmospheric pop through a smokey veil of haunting new wave guitar” – Hard of Hearing Music
“Playing Indietracks this summer, the band’s poised, intense set caught the imagination of everyone on site…A taut, wiry performance, ‘I’m The Storm’ matches their post-punk squall to a gothic sheen” – Clash Magazine
“Ghum’s sweeping dark-pop proves they’re a band who deserve to be heard” – Get in her Ears
“This super slice of moody noise pop encapsulates all of the phases of love from obsession and infatuation to giddiness to a fevered masochism”- God is in the TV
Now settled in fertile east London, Snapped Ankles maintain the feral energy of the forest. Fight or flight. Primal motorik rhythms, the rush of white noise and post-punk angles; an aural onslaught played out on homemade log synths, electrified guitars and sticks beating hell on taut animal skin. Snapped Ankles might technically be from London, but their Twitter profile lists their location as Epping Forest, a stretch of ancient woodlands between London and Essex. This fact would seem strange to anyone who hasn’t seen photos of the band dressed as bulky brown and green trees. Their electronic post-punk is as boisterous and enjoyable as it is surreal. Their 2019 sophomore album, Stunning Luxury, is a must-listen for punk fans or anyone who enjoys wonky, off-beat art.
Snapped Ankles have flourished in the sub-tropical climes of warehouse and squat parties, moving onto performance art collaborations with filmmakers and shows in unlikely locations such as barber shops, games arcades and the forests they once called home. They plough a singular furrow at improbable angles.
We’re excited London band Snapped Ankles live at Rough trade Records Nottingham on Friday 29th September, from 7pm. the band will be signing copies of their debut record, ‘Come Play The Trees’ .
Following on from the release of two well received EPs, London-based songwriter Brooke Bentham returned this week with her latest single, “All My Friends Are Drunk”. Brooke is just off the back of a tour with Bill Ryder-Jones, who produced this single, and will be following it up next month with huge shows supporting Sam Fender.
Much of the appeal of Brooke’s songwriting lies in her impressive lyricism, a songwriter detailing the post-university fog of your early 20s, a time when insecurity looms large and the world is simultaneously full of opportunity and utterly terrifying. All My Friends Are Drunk is a musing on growing apart, an attempt to capture “that wishful longing for what was”,set to a backing of driving rhythm guitars and the steady clatter of cymbals. Sliding in neatly alongside the likes of Soccer Mommy or Hazel English, Brooke Bentham creates a world of hazy, tumbling emotions, this feels like the start of something huge.
The Fat Angel Sings 