Tag Archives: indie

Penelope Scott & Lincoln live at the Deaf Institute review – agonisingly unprepared
27
Oct

A dejected, overwhelmed Lincoln set the scene for a thoroughly unprofessional showing from Penelope Scott, whose pitchy vocals and underwhelming songs made the hour feel like two.

Somewhere between Leeds and Manchester, the knot of anxiety in my stomach tightened. As the light outside the train window weakened, my apprehension of what was to come – namely a solo traversal of Manchester city centre by bus – strengthened. I am lucky to have travelled to far more exotic places than this, but something about the task of negotiating a ticket on the number 1 towards Wythenshaw from a no-nonsense Mancunian bus driver sent shivers down my spine. An egg sandwich bolted at a shady bus stop felt like battle fuel. Of course, as is almost always the case, there was absolutely nothing to worry about, although I had cut things finer than I anticipated, joining good friends Ewan and Isaac in the Deaf Institute’s bar queue with just enough time for hugs and Coke orders before the crowd cheered the night’s first performer onto the stage.

I wasn’t the only one feeling anxious that Wednesday night. Lincoln, a singer-songwriter from Ohio dealing in neatly packaged emo rock and painfully poetic lyrics, is the man responsible for what remains the finest EP I’ve ever heard, 2017’s A Constant State of Ohio. At five songs and 16 minutes long, there isn’t a single minute on Ohio where Lincoln loses his burning sense of creativity, with consistently thrilling songwriting and staggeringly stylish rock arrangements that belied the fact that it was his first – and for many years, only – official release, produced when he was still a teenager. It was this set of five tracks that caught the imaginations of 14-year-old Ewan and I, and we took to playing it in our high school’s only practice room, me bashing out the chords and bass lines on piano, Ewan playing guitar and singing along with all the heartfelt devotion that lyrics like these demand.

The fact that, somewhat out of the blue, Lincoln had booked a brief debut UK tour in support of Penelope Scott seemed too good to be true, and for those initial few minutes settling down in the beautifully restored Deaf Institute it still seemed ridiculous that this random American artist, adored by us and (more or less) us only, was just a matter of metres away from us. But there he was, plodding onto stage alone, head hung low and letting his now chest-length scraggly brown hair fall away in front of him, covering a wiry moustache that almost made Lincoln unrecognisable from the few, aged photos Ewan and I had seen of him online. Immediately, alarm bells were ringing. “There’s a lot of you here and… I’m not ready for this,” were his first tentative words, the crowd’s reaction gradually switching from laughter to intermittent cheers of encouragement as it became clear Lincoln wasn’t joking.

Right from those first words, it was obvious that Lincoln wouldn’t have the conviction to produce a satisfying support set, although circumstances didn’t help. Sat down and hunched over a guitar, he looked crushingly lonely on stage and needed other musicians not just for more visual interest but to beef out his songs – opener Smokey Eyes was a different song altogether without the spectacular drum fill intro that lights the touchpaper of the studio recording. Instead, Lincoln battled on alone, admirably pushing through what seemed like a genuine personal crisis but leaving little musical substance for the few fans like Ewan and I to cling to, even if Ewan proudly belted out every lyric in support anyway.

Lincoln had to battle through his set at the Deaf Institute.

Instrumentation aside, the lyrics remained extraordinary even if Lincoln often didn’t seem to enjoy delivering them. Lines like “quiet lies that you’re telling to those black and screaming skies” were appropriately spat out with disgust from the singer, as was Lincoln’s poetic assertion that “the sky is what we leave behind” on Downhill, which wrapped up this set powerfully as it did on the original EP. Not that Lincoln seemed at all aware of the effortless flow of his rhymes, instead rolling his eyes to the ceiling when they weren’t glued to his feet. He didn’t realise it, but they were songs that he had every right to be proud of.

It soon became clear exactly what he meant by “not ready”, too. Part of Lincoln’s apparent terror was the fact he had walked onto the stage without a plan, improvising a set list and often forgetting his lyrics. Every song seemed like a challenge to be overcome, and with awkward gap came the genuine risk that Lincoln might no longer be able summon the courage to continue at all. He needed the direct help of Ewan – easy to hear over a meek guitar intro – to find the opening line of Banks, a song that shouldn’t have been so difficult to remember; the stunning final four lines about the power and limitations of music and art in general remain etched in my memory since I first heard them years ago. As I would have the chance to insist on Lincoln later, if I was into tattoos, the lyric sheet of Banks would be my first point of call.

It wasn’t just Ewan unwaveringly powering Lincoln through this set, although they made up a big proportion of the most vocal supporters. Every song was cheered, every mumbled apology batted away with whoops and laughter and shouts of “we love you!” dotted around the room. When Lincoln cut his finger whilst strumming, one audience member even offered a plaster, symbolic of the band-of-friends atmosphere that had emerged in the Deaf Institute as we watched what felt like a mutual friend crumble in front of us. Of course, Lincoln declined the offer.

He finished the set with a subversion of the usual showman’s routine of lines like “I’m so sorry we’ve ran out of time” or “I can’t wait to see you all again soon!” Instead we got “I’m gonna get down off the stage. Can I do that?” It was a measure of the crowd’s sympathy that instead of the usual pantomime groans, the audience gave a loving, appreciative yes. With that Lincoln wiped his brow a final time, unplugged his guitar and slunk backstage.

Then something remarkable unfolded. Improbably, Ewan had acquired Lincoln’s personal email address in a thorough online trawl of the deepest corners of his elusive online presence in the weeks leading up to the gig, and had managed to persuade Lincoln into an exclusive interview for Ewan’s YouTube channel. After such a forlorn performance, the three of us wondered if he would appear after all, but sure enough Lincoln snuck out from a side door five minutes after leaving the stage, trailed by a lowkey stage manager. Venue security prohibited us from going outside, so the Deaf Institute’s atmospheric, gloomy stairwell would have to do for an interview venue. Lincoln Lutz from Cincinnati, Ohio is hardly Ed Sheeran, but meeting the creator of one of my most treasured works of art felt special. Ewan asked the questions (just as disbelieving as me), Isaac filmed and I positioned myself in a corner, trying to take it all in. Conversation veered chaotically from allusions to years of drug addiction and a sharp decline in mental health (about which Lincoln described himself as becoming “not a person”) to his newfound appreciation of the Manchester fruit juice delicacy Vimto. He was so addicted to nicotine that the transatlantic flight to the UK was a huge struggle, he would later tell me. When asked for wise words from Ewan, “don’t do crack!” was the half-jokey response, a sadness detectable in his muted laughter.

Ewan managed to grab a signature on their vinyl sleeve of Ohio before returning to the concert hall just in time for the appearance of the night’s main act, Penelope Scott. She is one of a new breed of TikTok star, unusual for having gained millions of monthly listeners with little to no mainstream coverage. Perhaps her wild success is down to just how much the Internet age dominates her music, which sounds like a corrupted, freakish video game soundtrack, restlessly lurching from punk rock to cutesy acoustic guitar to plodding 8-bit synths with a joyous disregard for the traditional rules of hit making.

There’s a limit to the mind-boggling numbers, though. The Deaf Institute, for one thing, is a humbling venue, housing just 250 fans at its capacity. Artists with her volume of streams – albeit largely coming from American shores – can at least aim for Gorilla’s 550 capacity, or perhaps even the 1,500 capacity O2 Ritz across the road (incidentally a venue which hosts the abysmally named Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs at the end of the month, a traditionally established metal band with a poxy 60,000 monthly listeners on Spotify). Alas, it seems streaming numbers aren’t everything in today’s gigging circuit. In fact, often they can be completely misleading.

Penelope Scott was in desperate need of a band to support her songs.

Scott’s lack of a backing band was perhaps even more underwhelming than Lincoln’s, largely neutering the tumultuous edge of much of Scott’s louder tracks. Feel Better, for instance, is home to Scott’s most impolite punk riff and was duly screamed in Manchester, but ended up sounding impotent with minimal support behind Scott’s vocals. More often the songs resembled a campfire singalong on a school residential trip, complete with awkward chat between songs and a proudly singing crowd that often drowned out Scott’s weedy amplification. The whiny vocals, invariably pitchy and occasionally nauseating, would have been acceptable from an overconfident middle schooler, but at a show like this were simply below the bare minimum required from a headline act. It was a shame there was no supervising schoolteacher to tell Scott that maybe it was time to give it a rest.

It didn’t help that the songs Scott was singing lacked much of Lincoln’s depth, often reading like stream of consciousness posts from a 15-year-old American girl’s Tumblr page. American Healthcare was typical of Scott’s general rage at the establishment without being able to pin down any specifics beyond scorn towards all those “corporate fucking pricks”. “I bet my shit all sounds the same to you,” she railed at an unappreciative ex on genuinely promising new piano number Cabaret, unaware that, at least when she restricts herself to plonky piano songs and flimsy mid-range vocals, the guy might actually have a point.

The real nail in the coffin, though, was the dearth of professionalism on show. Like Lincoln, although with a less obvious excuse, Scott seemed to have no plan when it came to a set list, nor even when it came to what key to play her songs in; at one point she completely restarted a song after deciding the starting note ought to be a bit lower. Instrumental sections were needlessly injected with lines like “just bear with me here” and “ooh I like this bit” as her tempos veered faster and slower like a bucking bronco.

The evening’s nadir came when Someone Like You began playing through the speakers after Scott left her laptop playing on shuffle after one backing track had finished. I say nadir – it might have been the musical highlight of the night had Scott just sat back and let the Adele classic ring out. Instead, she fumbled her way to the back of the stage and instructed us to talk amongst ourselves as she wrangled with her audio files for two excruciating minutes. As Isaac and Ewan pointed out, it was hardly Mitski-level artistry. With a bored-looking Soap, Scott’s set was over, an hour long reminder that sometimes TikTok success just doesn’t make sense.

The three of us lingered in the venue until security told us to leave. I was surprised by how much passionate Scott fans Ewan and Isaac agreed with my general disappointment. The gig had left a bitter aftertaste for us all given the toils involved in getting to Manchester on a Wednesday night in the first place. Ewan slipped backstage and bumped into both performers whilst Isaac and I waited outside, Ewan eventually emerging with a pizza-hungry Lincoln following behind. We stood in line with Lincoln at Domino’s – a genuinely surreal experience – before relocating to a shady bench where we chatted happily despite the growing chill and the unsettling number of beggars approaching us. We said our goodbyes to Lincoln at midnight and walked to Piccadilly still in disbelief. Ewan seemed dazed after a meaningful conversation with a deeply influential musical hero, leaving Isaac and I to be giddy on their behalf. The journey home would be gruelling, but discussing the most impossible events of the night – Lincoln referring to Ewan as a friend, the fact the embattled Lincoln had even agreed to chat in the first place – it was clear to all of us that this venture had been worth it, albeit for everything besides the music.

Theo Katzman live at Òran Mór review – Vulfpeck’s showman gets spiritual
16
Oct

On a damp and dreary night in Glasgow, Theo Katzman showcased his exemplary songwriting and impressive technique despite a set bloated with solos in one of those gigs overshadowed by my own circumstances.

Another gig, another nervous train journey. This time I was gazing out the window somewhere on Scotland’s central belt, the outside world so uniformly dark it was genuinely difficult to tell whether or not the train was passing through one very long tunnel on the way to Glasgow. I’d already had plenty of excitement for a Tuesday night – I sprinted in a failed attempt to catch an earlier train in Edinburgh, my overnight bag bouncing uncomfortably on my back – but the biggest challenge was to come: making it to the renovated church of Òran Mór in Glasgow’s West End before American singer-songwriter Theo Katzman took to the stage bright and early at 8.15 p.m.. Glasgow was damp and gloomy but jogging through the dimly glowing backstreets in search of the flat where my friend Fionn was waiting for me felt enjoyably like a movie, at least until I soaked my trainers in a puddle. I buzzed in to find a nervous Fionn, and understandably so. He’d had to buy a dodgy ticket online in the days leading up to the gig and was, crushingly, denied entry on the door. Neither of us had the guts to do a runner – this was, in truth, hardly a high-security venue – so we just stood there stunned for a few minutes, waiting for a solution to reveal itself which never came. Only when we heard the cheers heralding Katzman’s punctual appearance were we triggered to say a sad goodbye and part ways. Fionn made the 10 minute walk home alone whilst I shuffled into the already stuffy Òran Mór to find almost nowhere to get a good view. I settled on a spot just in front of the bar, my view of the main man largely obscured by pillars, and tried to focus on the music.

It was in these circumstances that I first saw Theo Katzman in person. His was the third name on my bucket list of Vulfpeck members to see live after prolific guitarist Cory Wong and fabled bassist Joe Dart, who happened to be stood right next to Katzman in Glasgow, the glints from his customary sunglasses dazzling even in the short glimpses I got from the back of the room. A guitarist, vocalist and drummer for Vulfpeck, Katzman’s showmanship instincts have sometimes felt squashed in that band by the zany presence of frontman Jack Stratton, but whilst Vulfpeck have taken an extended hiatus Katzman has grasped the opportunity to show the world exactly what he’s made of. Showing up tonight sporting a skew-whiff oversized baseball cap and loose, exposing denim jacket, Katzman has always felt a little different from the rest of the Vulfpeck gang, even if he can funk just as hard as the rest of ‘em. His distinctive take on country rock has only the barest resemblance to Vulfpeck, the link most clear in those moments he opts for a particularly perky funk bass line or indulges in a gleeful, improvised falsetto run. Lyrically, Katzman’s solo discography is so smartly written and heartfelt it makes you wonder what heights that Michigan band might have scaled if they chose to sing about something more stimulating than self aware ducks and whales with feet.

Katzman arrived in this damp Scottish city after, like many of contemporaries, having undertaken something of a creative (and, perhaps, personal) reinvention during the pandemic. He spent much of his chat during this gig discussing a formative year or two alone in the wild woods of the American midwest, doing little else than simply “thinking”. He cut himself off from the Internet for long periods, becoming self-sufficient and discovering the counterintuitive yet ever trendy hobby of extreme cold water swimming. It all amounted to a spiritual awakening that seemed destined to result in either powerfully profound or powerfully pretentious new material. A monologue played through the speakers as the band took to the stage in which a disembodied Katzman espoused the “universal law” that “everything in nature has a cost” and insisted that “we ourselves are nature,” dangerously teetered towards the latter, although in the remaining brief speeches that would pepper the rest of the gig Katzman came across as far more a humbly passionate advocate of spirituality than a self-absorbed ‘enlightened one’.

That said, Katzman’s latest album, Be The Wheel, is hardly a George Harrison-level musical departure from his earlier work, the change instead making itself clear in a notable decrease in the specificity of his lyrics. The title track and Hit The Target got things moving in Òran Mór, and although Katzman’s calls to “be the wheel” and “put down the pistol” seem indecipherable to anyone other himself, there was plenty to love in the consistently interesting composition, particularly than it came to the writhing retro synth in the latter track. 5-Watt Rock was an outlier in its directness – an endearing, self-aware tale about wooing a lover despite an underpowered guitar amp – but was tellingly one of the most enjoyable tracks of the night, the harmonised group vocals in that unforgettable chorus sounding even more glorious in the flesh.

Katzman performed to a sold out Òran Mór.

Katzman was blessed with a stellar live band, not least when it came to Mr. Dart, who is as far as I’m concerned one of the finest bassists active today. They were kept busy with a daunting quantity of solos – almost every song found eight bars to lend to one of the musicians who, whilst clearly very capable performers, occasionally struggled to justify every departure from the standard rock formula. At their best these improvisations were transformative – Dave Mackay’s blues blast on piano on Trump-bashing You Could Be President was a thing to behold – but other times, like on 5-Watt Rock, the solos added little to the original. At least Dart’s superfluous diversion on She’s In My Shoe added a degree of interest to an otherwise uninspiring plodder. Still, we were left wanting more – the cutting of a few solos would have been a small price to pay had Dart or one of his bandmates been given enough airtime to fully explore his instrument within a single song.

The new material may have its fair share of duds, but there’s no disputing what an exceptional songwriter Katzman is – unmatched by any of his Vulfpeck peers. The remarkable What Did You Mean (When You Said Love) is his best song and he knows it, drawing it out in Glasgow with a pretty yet convoluted piano intro followed by a stripped-back, overly theatrical first verse that showcased both Katzman’s expressive vocals and the song’s undulating harmonic foundations. Virtually every phrase was followed by an increasingly dramatic pause, culminating in a lengthy silence that verged on mick-taking before the band’s entry. “Do it, ya bastard!” one unmistakably Glaswegian man couldn’t help but blurt out from the back, somewhat puncturing all the romantic tension Katzman had worked so hard to construct, even if he had been playful about it. He did, eventually, “do it”, throwing in a jazz piano solo and rampaging electric guitar solo for good measure. The song came out perhaps a little overcooked, stretching out into a six minute epic, but if any Katzman song can withstand this sort of abuse, it’s this one. The Death of Us came as a welcome contrast, the sticky funk groove light on its feet yet still offering an electrifying extended jam that had these five musicians operating at the peak of their powers.

Katzman’s unwaveringly earnest inter-song talks about the new worldview he acquired during that forest retreat were hit and miss. A speech about bravery before You Gotta Go Through Me was genuinely compelling, Katzman urging us to take that crucial first step outside our comfort zones, starting tomorrow morning; cue a muted applause. “Yeah, that one never goes down that well,” he admitted. It was a pity that all the oration came as a prelude to one of Katzman’s sleepier numbers, but at least the song gave me a chance to make the most of my back row spot and get hold of a queue-free delayed Coke. There were also a lot of ‘prayers’ at play: The Only Chance We Have was “a prayer for listening”, followed by Corn Does Grow, which was both a “prayer for nature” and “a prayer for us”. Really, Corn Does Grow was just a rollicking country rock song, delivered in Glasgow without the excessive vocal distortion of the studio recording. Instead, there was the most head-banging guitar solo of the night and plenty of intense riffing – by the end, the temperature in an already stifling Òran Mór seemed to have gone up a degree or two.

Rip-roaring new tune Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day was the best surprise of the night, Katzman asking desperately “but how long did it take to fall down?” as chugging drums and guitars gathered pace around him. The other uptempo Rome-themed song in Katzman’s canon, As the Romans Do, would have made for a worthy finale but instead we got That’s The Life, a disappointingly middle-of-the-road choice of closing number but a neat encapsulation of the Katzman appeal, with lyrics about searching for life’s purpose set to the sound of a light-hearted hoe down. Heads bobbed politely in the crowd in front of me, but there was a sense that we weren’t quite seeing Katzman at his uninhibited best.

It was still drizzling when I found Fionn waiting outside for me, needlessly apologetic. I joked that it had been a rubbish gig anyway, but it was true that Fionn’s absence hadn’t been the only disappointment of the night. Katzman remains a consummate entertainer – his free-wheeling falsetto feats were so consistently remarkable it became easy to take them for granted – but it seems when he found himself in the woods he partly lost sight of what made his music so much fun – namely uncomplicated, joyous rock hooks. Unlike a good deal of his contemporaries, Katzman has plenty of worthwhile things to say, but on this sad night in Glasgow I was left wishing he’d let the music do more of the talking.

Vulfmon: Vulfnik review – puts the future of Vulf into question
25
Sep

With rambling tangents and a confused mix of genres, Jack Stratton fails to deliver on an otherwise promising new identity yet again. Matthew Rowe gives a track-by-track rundown on why the latest album doesn’t live up to the potential harboured by Vulfpeck frontman.

To call Vulfmon interesting would be an understatement. Jack Stratton has always been known within Vulfpeck as a wildcard, not standing out musically like Joe Dart and his iconic basslines or Theo Katzman with his incredible vocal range but as a personality, known for doing the unorthodox. From this, you would gather any solo project of his to be very experimental and unlike most of Vulf Records, and you wouldn’t be wrong. The two albums he has released so far, Here we go Jack and the most recent, Vulfnik, do exactly this but have been quite a letdown. Unlike coherent albums where a full listen feels natural, listening to these albums often feels like you’ve hit shuffle on your liked songs, but they don’t hold up to the standard of the genres they’re exploring into.

With the announcement of Vulfnik, I didn’t feel the general excitement I had a few years ago whenever a new Vulf release was announced. Recently they have fallen short of my previous expectations of them, struggling to hit that old, funky minimalistic feel that helped them flourish (The Fearless Flyers being the exception). A while back I looked forward to their weekly releases, but the first song didn’t set my expectations high.

This was I Can’t Party, in which Jack tells us a story about getting hit on at a coffee shop and him having to turn down the offer due to the fact he can’t party. The issue with this song is that it sounds like he’s trying to make a song specifically to become popular with millennials on TikTok; looking this up, you’ll see several videos of millennials frankly embarrassing themselves. For reference, if you’ve heard “coffee shop bop”, it’s a very similar vibe. But you’ve got to give it to him: he has some serious leg strength in the music video.

In the same category of lacklustre songs in the first half, we also have Harpejji I and James Jamerson Only Used One Finger, both of which could not even be seen as songs. Harpejji I does what it says in the title, consisting of Jack playing a harpejji with a basic drum beat in the background. In comparison to the short list of artists who show off this instrument, it falls short of the standard given by artists like Jacob Collier. The latter of these two songs is three and a half minutes of Jack rambling on about Motown bassist James Jamerson. There isn’t much to say about this other than the fact that the Vulf compressor makes a seemingly random speech even worse to listen to, leaving zero replay value.

Listening to Vulfmon feels like you’ve hit shuffle on your liked songs.

There is some redemption in the first half. Louie Zong helped to make an upbeat, beautiful-game-era sounding song in UCLA, with a solid bassline, tight drum beat and fitting keyboard to serve as the hook. The music video for this is quite special since Louie Zong is involved. It’s only right he has complete control over the video, which consists of an animated bear dancing through UCLA and performing in front of a judging frog, who was impressed. With the positive tones the song gives and the good vibes from the music video, it makes for a redeeming second song in the album. This is followed by Bonnie Wait, a very solid song which reminds me of Here We Go Jack, showing Stratton’s ability as a vocalist. Lyrics in this song show both outwards melancholy towards Bonnie’s situation and internal anger and jealousy towards Bonnie’s fiancé but unfortunately this is the only strong instance of Stratton’s vocals in this album.

Unlike the first half of the album, the last 5 songs get released at the same time and during my first listen of this half it was obvious there were too many wildcard songs thrown in there, even for Vulfmon. This side of the album had its fair share of disappointing songs but does have some redeeming factors. The three songs that took me aback were Harry’s Theme (Lite Pullman), Nice to You and How Much Do You Love Me.

The ending brings celebration for getting through Vulfnik and being frankly upset with Stratton.

In the first of these, the first few minutes is a nice chill song made up of two guitars, a bass, and Jack playing the drums using his thighs, naturally. This segment of the song is reminiscent of Grandma and other older Vulfpeck songs. But this isn’t the only part of the song. Seemingly in the middle of nowhere we get Lite Pullman which would probably work as its standalone song given how out of place it is. After some research, a lite pullman is some sort of travel bag, but where is the correlation here to Harry’s theme? Nice to You follows. This is a punch to the gut and Jacob Jeffries’ only new vocal appearance on this album, and he isn’t living up to his potential. On the debut Vulfmon album, he sang How Much Do You Love Me which gave him an impressive start in Vulf. However, this song is a satirical take on the emo genre, where Jacob draws out a lot of words in an unbearable accent, which would probably work fine as a parodical YouTube video, but it doesn’t hold up on an album. As well as this, Bonnie Wait covers similar themes in a much better way.

This album is wrapped up with a new take on the Jacob Jeffries classic How Much Do You Love Me. Seeing this on the announced track list, I was excited to see what they could do with it, expecting a more fleshed-out band version of the song but was let down. I hadn’t done my research on who “Ellis” was before listening to this song and nothing could have prepared me. The song kicks off like the original before dropping into an EDM version. When this happened on my first listen, I was speechless for about 5 minutes. Afterwards, my mix of feelings was a blend of feeling like celebrating getting through Vulfnik and being frankly upset with Stratton for his choice of collaborator and song direction.

Thankfully to save this album from being a complete travesty we have some highlights in the second half. This half opens with some of Vulfpeck’s most influential collaborators – Antwaun Stanley and Joey Dosik – on Lord Will Make a Way. This duo brings much-needed revitalisation to the album and even with a tiny mic, Antwaun’s vocals shine like they usually do and gives a good improvement to the questionable vocal decisions of this album. On top of this, Joey’s sax solo is very well-fitting and brings some good jazz vibes into an otherwise jazz-free project. However, there are drawbacks to this song as, much like a lot of recent Vulf, it’s a cover and I find the Al Green version to have much more impactful instrumentals where Stratton has dulled them down significantly. Another decent song in this half is Blue, is a relatively simple jazzy/blues song. The piano, performed by Jacob Jeffries, slightly redeems his efforts in this project.

I have found that this album is successful in branching out into areas Jack would most likely be too cautious to lead Vulfpeck into. However, in these attempts they haven’t reached the levels I hoped they would, often being too satirical or going too far to fit the theme of Vulf. Comparing this to the first Vulfmon album, it also doesn’t live up to that, with the first album being much more consistent. Stratton needs to pull off a miracle to bring Vulf to its former glory.

Hideki Naganuma’s Jet Set Radio: how a video game helped birth a musical generation
27
Aug

Jet Set Radio was once long forgotten, but following recent news that the game could possibly be making a return, Alex Walden is here to analyse the musical side of the game and the soundtrack’s cultural significance.

I woke up and ate some cereal and began checking the news like any other day. It wasn’t until I opened YouTube and watched a video reviewing an alleged leak from SEGA headquarters that my day began to change. After over 20 painfully slow years, I couldn’t believe that one of my biggest influences on me as a kid Jet Set Radio was supposedly getting a new addition to its catalogue. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if no one who read this had even played the game. I had forgotten about the game until earlier this year. It was a cool game but it lost its popularity very quickly so you can understand why I wasn’t jumping around my room in excitement yet. I was still interested though so I thought I’d see the footage and it wasn’t until I heard that classic tune of Hideki Naganuma’s Humming The Bassline that it all came flooding back to me. It was like a flashbang of nostalgia had blinded me, the rush of how the game used to make me feel came back so suddenly. I instantly knew I had to put on the soundtrack again while I tried to find my PS Vita to play the game one more time.

After playing I realised that Jet Set radio is the same as any action game to come out of the 1990s/2000s era of video games, in being that it includes an incredibly awful set of controls (seriously, the camera controls are almost rage-inducing), no ability to explore without a timer over your head and the equalizer that makes everything bad about it not seem so bad after all: an absolute banger of a soundtrack, courtesy of composer Hideki Naganuma.

Jet Set radio was renamed to Jet Grind Radio in the US due to licensing issues. The US market is also why the game features the New York-based Grind City map.

As I played through the tutorial, all I could think was “damn I used to want to be these people so bad”. I paused and looked around my room. I realised that if young Alex could see himself now, he’d be pretty impressed with how the influence of Jet Set Radio is still rooted within me. But what makes this game so incredibly influential? I mean I played hundreds of video games as a kid yet for some reason this was one of the few that helped shape my life.

The soundtrack – a melting pot of sounds


Don’t get me wrong, tearing around the streets of Tokyo-To on magnetically driven inline skates tagging every wall I see with my own custom graffiti is incredibly cool, however, much like anything I do today, it’s no fun unless I have a killer soundtrack, and Hideki Naganuma takes care of that problem with ease. Yes, the self-proclaimed “CEO of funky fresh beats” manages to gather up numerous genres and cram them into a tiny little mix. For a video game soundtrack, it does an amazing job of putting through your main character’s thought process. It sounds erratic and high intensity, yet it also has this smooth undertone that keeps you collected as you hope and pray that your character skates land on that rail without falling over on the ground incredibly hard. The soundtrack has a good clash of songs that keep you hyped up (e.g., Let Mom Sleep and Grace and Glory) as well as songs that keep you chilled out (e.g. That’s Enough and Moody Shuffle).

Funk, electronica, hip hop, rock and acid jazz are squashed together, fighting for their chance to be admired.

There’s a nice balance of songs that give off a futuristic vibe as well as keeping in style with that classic hip hop sound. A good example would be when the character Combo is introduced and you play your first mission as him. The game’s soundtrack gives you a smooth simple beat on the track Everybody Jump Around that fits well with his 80s New York hip hop reminiscent style, but the song is filled with scratches and chops of audio samples to throw you off. By doing this your brain becomes scattered on what to focus on and gives you this psychological rush to match your character who’s racing down the streets of Tokyo-to.

It doesn’t just stop at hip hop though. Throughout the soundtrack you can notice elements of funk, electronica, hip hop, rock, acid jazz and many more. It feels like this cluster of genres that are all squashed together fighting for their chance to be admired, making the soundtrack sound erratic and abrasive, yet Naganuma is able to make all this work through the magic of sequencing all the songs together one by one so the party in your ears doesn’t stop. This feature is a subtle one, for first-time players you’ll hardly notice it because you’re too busy rolling around the speed of sound trying not to be shot by police. But when you notice it, you can’t help but realise how much it assists in creating a different world that only you and your console are in for a short period of time. You begin to realise that these are no longer just a bunch of street rat vandals whom you get to play as; these are artists who are making their own paths in a city where what they do is not tolerated and they do this by throwing all their interests together and seeing what comes out of it. It feels like you’re hanging out with the cool kids in high school TV shows who smoke behind the schoolyard. You know that they’re kind of bad news but they just look so cool you can’t resist. It’s not often I say this, but as someone who DJs in their spare time, it actually has me looking forward to the end of each song, in a good way of course. Now can you tell me a soundtrack that makes you feel like that? I thought not.

JSR didn’t just break barriers with its soundtrack, it was one of the first video games to use use the now iconic cell shading art style.

Why Jet Set Radio will never die


Although Jet Set Radio had been put away for the past 20 years, the game’s culture, along with the era of the 2000s, lives on – you just have to know where to look. It’s all underground, baby.

Considering the game tapped into cultures like techno music, graffiti and action sports marketed to a bunch of impressionable kids and young adults, it’s no wonder the game has a die-hard fanbase that many artists take inspiration from. A genre of music that resonates heavily with JSR fans today would be the genre breakcore. The genre takes a page out of the book of Naganuma by combining jungle and techno, bringing back this cyber personality to its music that was thought to be long forgotten along with its hard-hitting drum breaks and smooth melodies. With artists like TOKYOPILL, Star Trash and black balloons taking over the scene by storm, we can be assured that music-wise you’re in good hands.

It feels like an insight into the world we were promised as kids but never got because life got in the way.

While I think breakcore captures the cyber aesthetic of what Jet Set Radio was offering us, I have to be honest and say that no matter how amazing and well-crafted the song is, breakcore doesn’t give us that upbeat feeling that we get from the JSR soundtrack. Instead, I’d say that breakcore captures the futuristic unknowing of the 2000s better than the Jet Set Radio Vibe. The beauty of the JSR soundtrack was that it was upbeat but also light-hearted. Yes, you were running around avoiding police, helicopters and in some cases tanks, but it never felt too intense or pressuring. The soundtrack made it seem fun but when I listen to breakcore, I don’t feel like part of a group; I feel like my headphones are my only companion it feels like an exclusive experience just for me, not for anyone else. If you’re looking for something that sounds fresh from your Sega mega drive, look no further than 2Mello’s Memories of Tokyo-to. If having the name of the city where the game is located in the title isn’t enough to convince you, then you only have to listen to hear the odd Jet Set Radio sample here and there. Also, make sure to look out for the soundtrack for the upcoming game Bomb Rush Cyberfunk to hear songs produced by Hideki Naganuma throughout the game’s soundtrack coming August 18th.

The JSR influence is very heavy in BRC, and we’re here for it!

Looking to the future of JSR


Whenever I talk about Jet Set Radio, I always feel a little bit upset or sentimental, though this may have just been a game for some people that they played as a kid. For me, it feels like a reminder of the 2000s era and the culture surrounding it: everything ranging from music and fashion to attitudes towards the future. It almost feels like an insight into the world we were promised as kids but we never got it because life got in the way.

At this point I was going to talk about how not all hope is lost and that the release of JSR’s ‘spiritual successor’ Bomb Rush Cyberfunk was going to save us, but the day after I finished writing this article that whole story got thrown out the window entirely with the news of the new JSR leak. However, I recommend looking into Bomb Rush Cyberfunk if you are looking for some more high-speed combo-building action, Hideki Naganuma decided to bless us with his skills for parts of the soundtrack of that game too. Despite the game not being released yet, fans are already excited about what’s to come.

We can tell from the trailer alone that Mr. Naganuma never stopped perfecting his craft. The way that the drums of the song spit viciously across the track while robotic-sounding lyrics wrestle their way through the song’s techno melody felt as if like all those years that the Jet Set Radio had been forgotten about. All those grooves, those drums, those melodies made me feel as if it had come back with a vengeance and had punched me square in the face. It feels like an explosion of 20 years’ worth of culture that was waiting for me and had just had enough of waiting around.

I feel like the news of the Jet Set Radio leak as well as the announcement of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk best described a comment under Bomb Rush Cyberfunk’s trailer ‘My brain is saying “Nice to meet you” but my heart is saying “welcome home”.’ I can’t wait to rekindle my love for the Jet Set Radio soundtrack once more thanks to Naganuma and Team Reptile. I can look forward to what the future holds, just like how I did as a kid. That’s more than enough for me.

Rianne Downey live at Oporto review – bigger stages await
10
Jul

Her songwriting ability may be still developing, but Rianne Downey already owned the stage at Oporto, a low-key venue that felt far too small for a vocal talent of this calibre.

It was to be a quiet night for the merch stand attendant at Oporto, a relatively low profile bar in central Leeds that is yet to find its feet amongst the famed venues of Leeds’ independent music scene (namely cosy Hyde Park Book Club, the lovably grungy Key Club and my beloved Brudenell Social Club). The presence of the up and coming Scottish singer had attracted a surprising number of blokes who I suspected were more here for the Guinness available than the popstar’s latest batch of t-shirts. Downey will no doubt face bigger crowds than the one that greeted her in Oporto, a venue small enough for drinks in glass to be permissible and for acts to unceremoniously hop off the front of the stage and into the crowd after their sets simply because there is no backstage area to go to. Still, the fact that Downey sold out Oporto – just like the rest of her headline UK tour – shouldn’t be knocked, and there was a feeling during a set filled out by unreleased material that we were witnessing the very first steps of a promising career.

Perhaps even more impressive than the dense crowd that Downey had summoned at Oporto was her remarkable stage presence. If Downey is a small fry in indie pop circles, clearly no one’s informed her; dressed in dazzling white amongst a greenery-strewn set, Downey was a magnetic performer, engaging the crowd with a flash of her giant sleeves during the songs and delivering relaxed banter between songs. “If you want to, you can meet me at the merch stand later… and if you don’t yous can fuck off!” she blurted out at one point in her Glaswegian twang, triggering a roar of laughter from the crowd.

If Downey is a small fry in indie pop circles, clearly no one’s informed her.

Downey was an engaging performer. Image credit: Rianne Downey via Twitter

Luckily Downey also has the voice to match her outstanding stage presence. Her vocals exuded the sort of confidence emerging artists aren’t supposed to have and her vibrato was unusually well controlled, occasionally delivered with a musical theatre sheen. There’s plenty of scope for songs with grander climaxes and more challenging melodies to exploit her vocal talents further, but even on the more straightforward tunes Downey’s vocals were the most impressive part of her act.

And so to the songs, which offered a mixed bag. Vibrant, chugging country rock opener Stand My Ground got the gig off to a strong start, with Downey’s three band members offering bulk to the acoustic twang that supported her memorable chorus. Later, Fuel to the Flame was also a poignant highlight, Downey’s endearingly simple chorus wisely given space to shine with a straightforward, unfussy accompaniment. At times, the only problem was that Downey’s voice was a little too good. Paper Wings, one of a large contingent of unreleased songs, had a lovely melody at its heart but an attempt at a showstopping vocal climax awkwardly received only a few half-hearted whoops from the audience. A weedy, undercooked piano backing didn’t help Downey’s cause, and made for a puzzling match to her glitzy vocal performance. It was the accompaniment that also let Downey down on recent standout single Hard, during which the pre-recorded backing track was played so quietly I wondered whether it had cut out completely mid-song. The result left one of Downey’s most assured tracks feeling rather hollow, dragged along by a few bare guitar chords.

Downey’s vocals alone deserve the nationwide attention she is just beginning to receive.

Where Downey can most improve is in her lyrics, which invariably operate in clichés and observations lacking in insight. “You’re a life jacket on a rainy day,” was one particularly clumsy moment in unreleased Dancing In the Rain, and Start Again boils down to gems like “there’s no point in grudges,” and “resentment’s never worth it.” Her magnetic personality – so evident in the inter-song chat – stopped short of the songs themselves, many of which could be about anyone, performed by anyone. It was telling that the line “it’ll be alright, just give it time,” was considered a lyrical highlight enough to be plastered onto the t-shirt merchandise beside me.

The scene at Oporto during Rianne Downey’s set

Home, an undemanding ode to, well, home, was particularly one-dimensional, but got a surprisingly heartfelt performance in Leeds. Whilst the song had an odd reluctance to build towards a proper, anthemic finale that the percussive guitar strumming begged for, the quietness did at least offer a chance to hear Downey’s fans audibly singing along to the charming little melody. At that moment I realised I had been soundly proved wrong – this wasn’t just a room of men looking for some light entertainment as they down their pints, and Downey’s core of fans very much exists and is no doubt growing. Oporto is undoubtedly humble beginnings but the roots of Downey’s fanbase (which is more varied than my stereotypes allowed) seem firmly set, and her vocals alone deserve the nationwide attention she is just beginning to receive. If she can equip herself with songs that offer a bit more musical bite and lyrics that emulate her exceptional stage presence, much bigger venues and keener crowds await. Takings may be modest for now, but it’s a matter of time before that merch stand becomes a two man job.

Florence + the Machine live at first direct Arena – cult queen reassembles her army
9
Jun

Florence Welch’s outstanding 2022 album Dance Fever dominated proceedings for a thrilling, theatrical Saturday night performance in Leeds. Knowingly the subject of cultish devotion, Welch’s return was a celebration of collective pandemic persistence.

Five songs passed before Florence Welch addressed the elephant in the room. “What the fuck is this?!” she asked, mimicking all the understandably baffled new Florence + the Machine fans in the room. “Is it a cult? Is it safe?” she bellowed with a distinctively melodious voice that has helped secure herself as a mainstay of British pop-rock for over a decade now. The confusion of the uninitiated fans she was gently mocking was easy to understand; virtually every other fan amongst the 13,000 that stood before Welch donned flowy dresses and delicate flower crowns that gave a certain Midsommar undercurrent to proceedings. The adulation in the room towards Welch was not the usual flavour of popstar devotion, but instead a deeper, softer sense of worship, with those that got a close brush with the star on her frequent jaunts off stage preferring to stare lovingly and intensely into her eyes rather than paw at her in desperation or lob a tampon à la Harry Styles. Often alone on the stage in a stunning, flowy white gown, Welch sang of grand Biblical images: resurrections, sacrifices, prayers, demons and societal collapse, her army of followers clinging on to every sharply crafted lyric. For all the new fans worried they’d signed up for some sort of indoctrination, Welch was quick to provide plenty of reassurance. “You’ll be absolutely fine as long as you do everything I say,” she informed us, letting a maniacal giggle slip out.

Experiencing such universal respect for one woman made it easy to forget that Welch’s cult didn’t form overnight. Since instant smash debut album Lungs in 2009, Welch (and it is, for all intents and purposes, just Welch – “the Machine” keep such a curiously low profile I didn’t realise they even existed before researching for this post) has been a regular in UK charts, her success powered by a handful of hits from that first album that hopped onto the broad late-noughties folk revival with its endearing hand claps and prominent harp plucking. Things turned up a notch last year in 2022 with the release of Dance Fever, a No. 1 album and probably her finest to date, with its gritty classic rock bangers balanced skilfully with introspective pandemic-era hymns.

Dozens of feathery white chandeliers rose about Welch during King

Much of the night was rightly dedicated to Dance Fever, the show opening with the fanfare-like chant of Heaven Is Here, Welch appearing with angelic spectacle thanks to the blinding white lights behind her. It was a spectacular start despite coming minutes after I’d assured my friend Isaac that the huge message of “CHOOSE LOVE” displayed on the screen beforehand was not just a message from Welch but the name of a second support act. Perhaps I still wasn’t mentally ready when spine-tingling album opener King kicked into gear, the soaring, earth-shattering finale not sounding as all-encompassing as I had hoped – at least from our perch at the first direct Arena’s third floor. It didn’t help that Welch’s mic cut out mid-song, shattering the sense of grand, serious theatre generated by Heaven Is Here. Welch of course had plenty enough poise to deal with the situation as a panicked stagehand rushed on to help – falling off stage and fracturing her foot didn’t stop her from finishing an entire show in November last year – but the gig had nonetheless got off to an unnervingly shaky start.

The dust of the unsure opening settled to reveal a beautiful, neatly choreographed 100-minute set. Perhaps most beautiful was the stage itself, which had been adorned with an elaborate gothic altar of feathers and bleached white flowers that nicely highlighted the golden sheen of Welch’s silky dress. Thin black sheets of fabric that descended from the roof to surround the isolated singer during Big God were less effective; not opaque enough for a sharp, backlit silhouette but thick enough to leave her peculiarly obscured from view and separate from the front row fans that so craved some sort of personal connection with their queen. It was Welch herself that offered the most visual drama, throwing up her fists (and enormous sleeves) with malice in time to the strobe lights in an awesome rendition of Daffodil or spinning around with glee on dancier numbers like appealing slow burner Choreomania.

It was the Lungs era hits that invariably got the crowd around me up on their feet with the immediate willingness of devoted followers

As enthralling as Dance Fever‘s melodramatic offerings were, it was the Lungs era hits that invariably got the crowd around me up on their feet with the immediate willingness of devoted followers. Dogs Days Are Over was the evening’s first real party starter, a gently plucked opening harp prefacing the stomping folk rock chorus to come. There was subtlety too, with Welch shushing the revellers just in time for a impressively elastic vocal delivery of that fiendish second verse. Isaac and I looked at each other in thrilled shock when original Florence megahit You’ve Got the Love made a surprise appearance later on, even if these days the song doesn’t quite have the same glorious freshness it had when it became a soundtrack to our childhoods. It was also a slight shame that You’ve Got the Love‘s inclusion came at the expense of recent stormy Fleetwood Mac-esque belter Cassandra, which formed the highlight of the latest live album with a bruising new extended cut.

The numerous louder danceable numbers were the most suitable vehicles for Florence’s barnstorming vocals. Hooky singalong Ship to Wreck was an early highlight, and good old fashioned blues rock stomper Kiss With A Fist refreshingly broke out of all the heavy religious imagery with a healthy dose of rock for rock’s sake. Dance Fever standout Dream Girl Evil reached its climax with an astonishingly long vocal note, Welch putting to bed any idea that her distinctive, soul-piercing wail is nothing but exceptional as slippery guitar riffs and a menacingly chugging bass engulfed her. It might have been even more powerful had Welch not spent the entire song holding hands with stunned front-row audience members – touching at first, but static after a few minutes, particularly for the guy watching from the third tier. Welch’s pained cry of “I am nobody’s moral centre!” demanded some suitably monumental shift in staging or lighting that never quite materialised.

Almost all of Dance Fever was given a long-deserved airing in an arena setting. Gently bubbling Free‘s chorus (“picks me up, puts me down”) leant itself nicely to some coordinated crowd hand movements. “You’re too sensitive they said / I said okay but let’s discuss this at the hospital,” Welch delivered with a knowing smile, ceding to the audience to scream those final words back at her in affirmation. An extended version of scintillating dance pop hit My Love turned out to be the highlight of the whole night, with Welch’s onstage dancing and gorgeous chorus melody both delightfully uninhibited.

Morning Elvis was so profoundly serene that one fan near the front fainted.

As strong as Welch’s voice may be, she offered an exquisite softer side too. We were, after all, encouraged to “choose love” and embrace the “collective experience” which, in practical terms, meant Welch imploring us between songs to put down the iPhones and focus on living in the moment. She was, of course, largely obeyed, and the result was an emotional intensity few artists can pull off. With thousands listening in intently, gentle ballad Morning Elvis was so profoundly serene that one fan near the front fainted. Welch’s framing of the song as a mid-pandemic prayer – a manifestation of the very 2020 fear that nights like these may never come again – understandably made the song too poignant to bear for one of us. What’s more, Welch had plenty more affecting ballads up her immaculate flared sleeves. We were encouraged to hold on to each other to absorb the stunning melody at the heart of June, while The End of Love offered a breathtaking strings section. By the time it came to the encore, Welch had to briefly halt proceedings as stewards lifted several stricken superfans over the barriers, cheerily waving goodbye as they left in total awe of their popstar.

It all culminated, naturally, in a mass sacrifice. “We are so well fed this evening!” Welch crooned as fans climbed onto one another’s shoulders as “human sacrifices” before a stellar blast through underrated early hit Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up). “Leave every last piece of you on the dancefloor tonight,” came Welch’s final dictum before a spine-tingling, arena-sized dance piano riff saw the concert home. Far beneath me, thousands of heads bobbed and hands clapped, enthralled and with their phones now long forgotten about. Even up with Isaac and I, many including myself pogoed along, our euphoria tempered slightly by the several-storey drop in front of us (one man near us had already taken a tumble a few feet down the stairs amidst the joy of You’ve Got the Love).

With a final flutter of harp Welch floated off stage, her spell successfully cast upon another arena of worshippers. In the few times she had broken her cult leader persona, Welch had powerfully reminded us that not so long ago this precious, quasi-religious gathering of like-minded souls we call a pop concert had been under threat, and even temporarily destroyed completely. Seeing the ease in which Welch spread a deeply human sense of belonging and loving connection around Leeds Arena reminded me just how important concerts can be in bringing people together. This Florence + the Machine gig had been an excuse to party, yes, but more importantly a chance to heal the scars of loneliness left by the pandemic for all in attendance. That is, all that could remain conscious for the duration.

Songs for solitude: alone on a mountain with Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher
28
May

There’s loneliness and there’s simply being alone, and as I plodded up the final steep slope to the minor peak of Froswick in the Lake District one evening last September, I only felt the latter. I hadn’t seen a soul since leaving the valley earlier that morning, locating with difficulty a faint path that guided me through dense bracken and up a ridge that rose gracefully above the glassy expanse of Haweswater behind me. Even on reaching the summit of High Street, the most significant fell in the area, I could eat a celebratory Wispa with only the company of a handful of disinterested sheep. Having spotted a sharper fin of lower peaks a little distance away from the barren plateau I had arrived at, I had diverted in their direction, enjoying the gloriously gentle wide ridge (High Street was once indeed a passageway for horses and carts, and a spectacular one at that). I found a picturesque tent pitch on Froswick for the night and wondered whether the tiny, potential outlines of people I’d seen earlier on the hill’s larger neighbour Ill Bell had been imaginary.

There were two reasons why listening to the second studio album from Californian singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers felt like the natural thing to do after I’d settled down that evening. The first was fear. I hadn’t seen anyone all day, but something about the prospect of a stranger approaching – particularly without me spotting them in advance – in such an exposed, vulnerable location scared me more than it perhaps should have. After all, I’d met a friendly enough fellow solo camper on a similar overnight trip up Helvellyn last year, and that night spent the first hour of darkness watching specks of headtorch light weave their way up the ridge I was sat on, willing them to turn away from me at the crest perhaps for the sake of a little more solitude. There were no such encounters on Froswick, although I heard the chug of helicopter blades from my tent later that night, which is surely one of the most inexplicably terrifying sounds you can hear when alone in a tent in the middle of nowhere, made worse when accompanied by a search light (camping is, after all, technically illegal in England, but not that illegal). For me, thankfully, there was no such light, and I breathed a sigh of relief as the sounds of the rotor promptly faded into nothing.

The view of Froswick and Ill Bell from the summit plateau of High Street was enticing.

The familiar sound of Punisher was, therefore, a vital extra comfort blanket over my icy sleeping bag and copious layered fleeces. The album exhibits a calmness so intense it can be easy to dismiss the whole thing as insubstantial or boring on first listen. The exceptional quietness of most of the songs invites deeper listening, and meticulous production provides plenty of hidden gems to uncover: alien electric guitar mumblings, minimalist and thoroughly intentional muffled drum grooves, the occasional frissen of electronic vocal manipulation. Bridgers’ vocal performance in particular encourages this tranquil, deep listening. Lyrics are recited patiently and deliberately, and Bridgers’ outstanding poeticism shines as a result. Seemingly one-dimensional lines like “if I could give you the moon, I would give you the moon” are rendered gut-punchingly poignant by Bridgers’ poised delivery, pausing several times for effect before ushering in a final rush of backing vocals. There’s no rush in Punisher, and neither was there in my wonderfully spare few hours atop Froswick.

Cars like fireflies occasionally made their way up the valley beside me, their full beam headlights clearly visible in the gloom.

The other reason was that Punisher seemed to fit the occasion in a way no other album could. Far from a distraction from the beautiful view in front of me – standing on Froswick’s modest summit, Windermere stretched out into the distance towards the barely-visible wind turbines of Morecambe Bay – Punisher is an album pristine enough to enhance that feeling of wonder. Kyoto, for example, includes a rousing trumpet melody that, completely independent of the lyrics, inspires pride and awe that I can quietly indulge in having made it up to the heaven of a Lake District fell entirely on my own steam. Other times, Punisher has an ability to transport me even further away from the problems of the real world than my rural location. Garden Song is one such escape, with Bridgers describing a surreal dream beside a single reverb-soaked guitar, her plaintive melody doubled by an eerie deeper vocal. “What if I told you I feel like I know you / But we never met?” she asks uneasily a few songs later. Nothing quite makes sense, but nor should it. Punisher feels like its own fantasy world with its own rules, and perhaps that’s why its meditative qualities resonated with me so strongly as day became night on Froswick. My perch on the summit gave a god-like perspective of the flat plain below. Cars like fireflies occasionally made their way up the valley beside me, their full beam headlights clearly visible in the gloom. Gradually, the residents of Windermere turned on their lights, which flickered gently as they proceeded with their Wednesday evenings. Being so high and so alone with my magnificent view of the land already felt blissfully unreal and gave a chance to momentarily untangle myself from the constant preoccupations of day-to-day life; Bridgers’ vivid world of strange, purring guitars and ghostly strings felt like just one step further into unreality.

Standing from the summit of Froswick, Ill Bell loomed over my tent, which looked out towards Windermere and the distant lights of Morecambe.

A sheep brought me back down to earth during Chinese Satellite, giving me a start when it appeared a few feet behind me, calmly munching some grass. It was a good prompt to stand up and turn towards the mountain range behind me for a few songs. Together we watched the colossal, boulder strewn slope of Mardale Ill Bell during Moon Song, the mountain’s valley base more and more thrillingly abyss-like as the darkness thickened. I was reminded why the song was one of my favourites of the album, largely thanks to Bridgers’ deeply evocative lyrics that offer a searing edge of resentment and melancholy to the lilting melody. “You pushed me in and now my feet can’t touch the bottom of you,” she tells us, apparently pointing out how comparatively tiny I am both amongst the mountains and the towns of people below, as god-like as I may like to feel. Being a mere drop in the ocean can be just as liberating as omnipotence, I was reminded.

A sheep brought me back down to earth during Chinese Satellite, giving me a start when it appeared a few feet behind me.

It was so dark by the time I reached louder, anthemic standout ICU the outlines of the great Cumbrian peaks to the west that I’d enjoyed during the day were beginning to become difficult to pick out. Truthfully, I grew so tired that the great musical explosives of closing track I Know The End washed over me. Beginning to shiver, I shuffled through the two fabric doorways of my tent and wrestled with my sleeping bag as Bridgers finished her finely crafted masterwork not with more acoustic musings but with a shocking, chest-rattling scream over a soul-stirring horn melody.

I would have preferred for Bridgers to somehow have continued through the night; even after many uneventful nights camping, the wind’s uncanny ability to shake the tent fabric in a way that sounds exactly like a sheep gnawing at guy ropes or, worse, footsteps of a wayward stranger, has always unsettled me. Of course, the logical part of me knew there was no one else nearby, and likely no one else on the entire mountain range. I couldn’t have been further from the buzzing confines of Leeds’ Brudenell Social Club, where Scottish new wave/post-punk band Altered Images were wrapping up their headline set to a no doubt rapt, sweat-drenched audience. Places of community like Brudenell give music their own ritualistic edge, whether one is hamonising as a collective in an improvised choir or colliding with bodies in a cathartic mosh pit. But on Froswick I learned that experiencing music in total solitude can feel every bit as life-affirming and vulnerable. It was quieter and more personal, but hearing Punisher that night provided all the feelings that come with a brilliant live gig: euphoria, awe and an unstoppable sense of freedom.

Phoebe Green live at the Cluny review – strong material fails to come alive
12
Apr

Touring the UK on the back of daringly original debut album Lucky Me, Phoebe Green’s attention-grabbing pop creations deserved a keener reception in Newcastle. Seemingly put out by the poor attendance and lacking in conviction, Green’s performance struggled as a result.

It was an inhospitable, wintry Monday night and in the valley of Ouseburn, a mile east of Newcastle’s city centre, the dense fog was spectacular. The enormous road bridge I’d descended from looked otherworldly, its graffiti-strewn brick columns almost disintegrating completely into the streetlight-stained sky above. Cars rumbled above and a stream trickled below, both hidden from view but making their presence known as I approached the sanctuary of the pub I had been looking for. I was unfamiliar and unsettled by the street’s quietness, but eager to explore a part of town well-renowned as a funky cultural highlight of the city, with welcoming studenty bar and popular little venue The Cluny at its heart. Only two people walked in before me as I approached the venue shortly before Phoebe Green’s headline show, and both of which apparently knew the bar staff personally. The place felt cosy and communal, but with a distinct lack of clientele (it was, of course, a Monday night, and one lacking in a tasty World Cup fixture) it was clear I wasn’t seeing the Geordie institution at its best.

Two Phoebe Green fans approach the Cluny in foggy Ouseburn

A dispiriting lack of punters came to be the theme of the night. The ticket steward seemed to be nodding off as I approached him and Green and her band ended up constituting a big portion of the front row watching support act Nell Mescal, who tried and failed to get some audience participation going for one song. In the end, a big synthy intro for Lucky Me to start Green’s set felt incongruous without the added sound of at least a few dozen fans cheering in excitement. In a night that should have been full of sweaty dancing and passionate singalongs, the onstage cooling fans weren’t used once, and for the first time at a gig I had no problem keeping on my thick coat for the duration.

Of course, the lack of atmosphere wasn’t entirely Green’s fault, and she was always facing an uphill battle at the Cluny. It was a shame because there’s lots to enjoy in her music, not least that incisive bass riff that tore through the opening number. Sweat had a catchy bounce, and like most of Green’s songs gave her sister Lucy plenty of work to do on synths, but she always seemed completely in control of vast range of sounds her keys produced in every song. Leach was the sort of song that might have whipped up some moshing in front of a more enthusiastic crowd with its restless bass synth and pounding kick drum. A noise rock finale with a wonderfully messy guitar solo played ludicrously fast was one of the night’s highlights. It was early single Easy Peeler that turned out to be the best of the bunch and one of the few songs that sounded as manic and wildly creative as Green’s studio performances. Any of Green’s reluctance to commit to the performance momentarily vanished for the rough-and-ready alt rock track, with the crunchy bass lines penetrating beneath the clutter of competing distorted synths and guitar. It was the sort of simple crowd-pleaser that the rest of Green’s set sorely lacked.

The turnout at the Cluny was disappointing.

Elsewhere, Green’s performance seemed to suffer due to the tepid audience responses. Pulse-raising album highlight Crying in the Club now had frustratingly mumbled spoken vocals that crucially lacked confidence and ended up buried under a heavy kick drum. Green’s vocals when singing were also mediocre, and the somewhat high notes on the chorus were disappointingly swapped for an easier, lower edit. Diediedie was another track that wasn’t helped by Green’s unimpressive vocal performance and, as sharp as Green’s lyricism may be, any sense of building menace on the original was lost in the one-dimensional recreation at the Cluny.

Even Just a Game, on paper the best song from the debut album, felt lacking. A euphoric up-tempo number, the song needed conviction from Green to get the most out of it, but instead there was more mumbled vocals in spoken sections that felt like an afterthought and a tendency to cling onto the mic stand, barely swaying to the energising percussion groove. A clearer duet partner to sing the vocal harmony so integral to that anthemic chorus would have also really lifted the track. The original may be brilliant, but it was remarkable how Green and her band managed to make Just a Game sound like nothing more than bland set-filler on the night.

An encore was clearly out of the question. In fact, it was all wrapped up in a half-hearted 50 minutes, making it undoubtedly the shortest gig I’ve attended to date. The end of relatively strong closer IDK came perhaps as a relief for all involved, and Green was prompt in hopping off the stage during the polite applause. It had been by no means a car crash of a performance and Green’s potential is huge, but there was a lingering disparity between the Green’s in-your-face, delightfully idiosyncratic debut album and the somewhat timid performance she gave in Newcastle. The music industry is brutal and despite some mainstream attention, it seems Green’s days of filling out a buzzing Cluny are yet to come. Until then, I think I’ll stick to Spotify for my Phoebe Green fix.

Black Country, New Road live at Brudenell Social Club review – a sublime resurrection
27
May

When frontman Isaac Wood left Black Country, New Road just days before the release of what may become one of the best albums of the decade, the survival of the band looked far from guaranteed. The now six-piece chamber rock outfit return just months later for an intimate UK tour with a remarkable set of unreleased music, regrouped, revitalised and ready to take on the world once more.

Of all the places to be in the UK in the early evening of Sunday 22 May 2022, the beer garden of Brudenell Social Club must surely have been one of the most thrilling. The entire city, in fact, was in party mode with the news of Leeds United’s dramatic and successful finish to the season, and as I walked to meet my friend Joe at the train station, cheering boozy blokes and chants of “we are staying up!” outnumbered the usual motorbike revs and ambulance sirens. The atmosphere outside the Brudenell – a universally adored Leeds institution and the beating heart in the student-filled Hyde Park area – was doubly electrifying: Black Country, New Road were in town for one night only.

What made this gig in particular so exciting was the feeling that BC,NR seem capable of much bigger venues. Their debut album For the first time rapidly earned them a passionate core following of on the pulse young post punk and jazz fans, and the acclaim only grew with February’s unbelievable and more radio friendly Ants From Up There, an album venerated by just about every music critic in the land. Take your pick of any national newspaper, the chances are they gave Ants From Up There all five stars, and deservedly so. It was seemingly all going so smoothly for the Cambridge band until days before that album’s release, when frontman Isaac Wood abruptly left the band, citing mental health difficulties. Just as they were reaching their all time high, it looked like it might all come crashing down on BC,NR. Every song that they had built their career on so far was rendered unperformable in the absence their idiosyncratic lead vocalist. Ants From Up There is a devastating listen as it is, but the fact that such a popular masterpiece will never reach the stage added a piercing undercurrent of tragedy. Planned shows – including several gigs in the US plus a visit to Leeds – were suddenly cancelled, Covid-style. Announced last month, this modest UK tour was billed as an intimate warm-up to a summer of festivals across Europe, and an opportunity for the band to regroup and road test an hour long set of completely new music before taking it to the continent and eventually the recording studio. Joe and I may have been disappointed about missing out on hearing material from the albums we both so loved (I’m convinced Basketball Shoes would have been nothing short of life-changing live), but instead the gig at the Brudenell offered an almost as riveting showcase of what might come next for BC,NR.

May Kershaw, on piano, accordion and lead vocals, was a standout performer

The applause from the packed crowd (tickets sold out in a few hours) was long and enthusiastic when the six remaining members of BC,NR took to the stage. When cheers subsided, Lewis Evans opened with some quiet saxophone, soon joined by singing bassist Tyler Hyde (a candidate for new lead vocalist easily predicted by the most well-informed BC,NR superfans). Suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, all six musicians kicked into gear with startling synchronicity, with May Kershaw’s hands bouncing high on the piano and Nina Lim’s violin bow already beginning to fray under the weight of the heavy rock groove. The distant yelps of giddy fans could be heard over the cacophony. It all felt like beautiful confirmation of what we had all hoped; their frontman may have gone, but the unmatched creativity and exhilarating volatility of BC,NR’s music isn’t going anywhere.

One key silver lining was that, in Wood’s absence, several band members were finally given a voice. Hyde led the way, her passionate and often pained lead vocals one of the night’s many highlights. Underrated pianist Kershaw and her pristine, silky smooth voice was perhaps even better, and a nice change of pace from Wood’s abrasive sprechgasang. She was well appointed for the night’s quieter moments, impressing with an ambitious episodic folk piece early in the set which saw her play both accordion and piano at the same time. The most surprising lead vocalist of the night was Evans who, plonked front and centre of stage, often looked and sounded worryingly diffident, invariably clutching the mic stand beside him for support. It may take time for Evans’ wobbly vocals to shore up, but his songs seemed strong. “In my dream you came running to me / Can’t you fall back into my arms?” was one particularly touching moment, Evans’ introversion highlighting the song’s pained vulnerability. Drums swelled at the end of the track and chaos briefly ensued and as Evans quietly put the mic back on its stand and picked up his flute, the impulse was to hug him and tell him he’s doing great.

Tyler Hyde’s bowed bass guitar gave added menace in the crucial moments

Stylistic suprises were to be expected, and BC,NR didn’t disappoint. Beyond Kershaw’s accordion shanty, there were occasional splashes of classical music, including Tyler conducting her own ensemble of flute, violin and piano at one point. The saxophone/violin combo continues to be an intoxicating one (see the stunningly quiet opening minutes of Basketball Shoes, or the closing passages of Mark’s Theme), and Evans blended beautifully with Lim, who stood in for Georgia Ellery on the night as she embarks on her own UK tour with popular electronic duo Jockstrap. It was a shame that technical issues and incessant screeches from mic feedback tainted these quieter, acoustic moments in the first half of the set.

Pianist May Kershaw is classically-trained, and it’s not difficult to tell. She was the star of the penultimate song, a sublime piece that stood head and shoulders above the evening’s other excellent compositions. The rest of the band sat and listened intently as she played and sang on her own, her delicate, deliberate piano playing a marvel throughout. Later, the other five returned to their instruments to support Kershaw as the song swelled and sighed, before building once more in a final, monumental climax. “I’m only a pig,” Kershaw sang over and over, the final word spat out with increasingly bitter vehemence as the dense orchestration materialised around her. Hyde’s bowed bass guitar underpinned it all brilliantly, generating a mighty, floor-shaking rumble that propelled Kershaw’s subtle little piano ballad to new heights. The long wait to hear a studio verson of this “pigs” song begins now.

A gig like this was never going to be about the songs alone, and BC,NR set out to prove that they could still shine even without Wood. They did so magnificently in a show that revealed new aspects of a band bursting with ideas – to come up with such a strong 60-minutes of material just three months after releasing an album is an astonishing feat. The whole night was summed up best during the opening song, when the rollicking power pop paused for a moment of group vocals. “Look at what we did together / BC,NR, friends forever,” they sang in unison. It was an adorably earnest and perhaps cheesy moment that neatly put into words the unmistakable bond of this talented group of friends. After all the uncertainty of the spring, there’s nothing that can get in the way of BC,NR now. Let the good times roll.

Sam Fender: Seventeen Going Under review – arena-worthy classics to feed the soul
24
Feb

Sam Fender’s second album Seventeen Going Under isn’t just a step up from his debut. It’s a leap. Where Hypersonic Missiles (2019) felt like a promising but uneven collection of Springsteen-indebted anthems, this record lands every punch. It’s tighter, braver, and somehow both more personal and more universal. If you want an album that sounds like a stadium show in your headphones, this is it.

I’ve listened to this record front to back maybe thirty times since it dropped in 2026. It hasn’t aged a day. Here’s why it works, track by track, and why you should care.

Why Seventeen Going Under hits harder than Hypersonic Missiles

The difference is focus. Hypersonic Missiles had big ideas—climate anxiety, toxic masculinity, political rot—but sometimes the songs felt like they were trying to carry too much weight. Seventeen Going Under narrows the lens to one thing: growing up in a working-class town in North East England. That specificity is its superpower.

Fender wrote most of this album during lockdown, revisiting his teenage years in North Shields. The title track alone—a driving, sax-laced anthem about poverty, pride, and survival—contains more lived-in detail than entire albums from other artists. “I was seventeen going under / I was top of the class / but I felt like a failure”—that’s not a vague sentiment. It’s a specific memory, and it lands because of it.

The production, handled by Bramwell Bronte (who also worked on Hypersonic Missiles), is cleaner and more dynamic. The guitars bite harder. The drums hit like a punch. The saxophone—a signature Fender move—is used sparingly but perfectly. It never feels like a gimmick.

If you only know Fender from radio singles, this album will surprise you. It’s not just louder. It’s smarter.

The three songs that define the album

Not every track is essential. But these three are. If you’re short on time, start here.

“Seventeen Going Under” (the title track)

This is the mission statement. A four-minute sprint built on a chugging guitar riff, a four-on-the-floor drum pattern, and a chorus that demands to be shouted back at a festival crowd. Lyrically, it’s about the pressure of being a teenager in a town where options are limited. “I was crying on the steps of the bus / I was crying on the steps of the bus / And it was just like me to make a scene.”

The video, directed by Vincent Haycock, features actual teenagers from North Shields. It’s not sentimental. It’s raw. This song has already become an anthem for anyone who grew up feeling trapped. It deserves to be.

“Spit of You”

The most moving song on the album. A slow-burning ballad about the complicated relationship between a father and son. Fender’s voice cracks on the line “I’m the spit of you”—and it’s not a compliment. It’s a confession of inherited flaws, of seeing yourself in someone you both love and resent. The arrangement is minimal: acoustic guitar, strings, a quiet build. Then the drums crash in for the final chorus. It’s devastating.

This song is the emotional core of the record. If you don’t feel something during the last minute, check your pulse.

“Aye”

The closer. A seven-minute epic that starts with a single piano note and builds into a full-band crescendo. Lyrically, it’s about the death of Fender’s grandmother, but it expands into a meditation on grief, memory, and the way places hold the ghosts of people we’ve lost. The saxophone solo in the middle eight is the best instrumental moment on the album. It sounds like crying.

This is the kind of song that makes you want to see the band live. It’s built for a room full of people singing along.

How the album works as a live experience

I saw Sam Fender at the O2 Academy in Brixton in 2026. The room was packed. The energy was electric. But what struck me most was how the album tracks translated to a live setting.

Seventeen Going Under was written with the stage in mind. The dynamics are theatrical. The quiet parts are very quiet. The loud parts are deafening. Fender’s band—especially drummer Tom ‘Tucker’ Ungerer and saxophonist Johnny ‘Blue Hat’ Davis—are tight enough to handle the shifts without losing momentum.

Key live moments that beat the studio versions:

  • “Getting Started” — the intro builds for a full minute before the band kicks in. In a live setting, that tension is unbearable. When the drums hit, the crowd erupts.
  • “The Dying Light” — a slower track that becomes an anthem when the whole crowd sings the “oh-oh-oh” vocal hook.
  • “Howdon Aldi Death Queue” — yes, that’s the real title. A punk-influenced rant about supermarket queues during lockdown. Live, it’s chaos. In a good way.

If you’re considering seeing him on tour, do it. The album is excellent. The live show is something else.

Where the album stumbles (and one track you can skip)

No album is perfect. Seventeen Going Under has one clear weak spot: “Mantra”. It’s not a bad song. It just doesn’t belong here. The production is too clean, the chorus too generic. It sounds like a leftover from Hypersonic Missiles. When I listen to the album front to back, I skip it.

Another minor issue: “The Leveller” is good but not great. The lyrics about online trolling and cancel culture feel dated already. Fender is at his best when he writes about specific people and places, not abstract cultural trends. This song tries to be clever but lands as preachy.

That’s it. Two tracks out of eleven. That’s a hit rate most artists would kill for.

Here’s a quick breakdown of every track so you know what to expect:

Track Length Vibe Rating (out of 5)
Seventeen Going Under 4:00 Anthemic, driving, cathartic 5
Getting Started 4:49 Slow build, explosive chorus 4.5
Aye 7:01 Emotional epic, piano-led 5
Spit of You 4:33 Ballad, raw, vulnerable 5
The Dying Light 5:07 Mid-tempo, singalong hook 4
Mantra 4:15 Generic rock, skip 2.5
The Leveller 4:05 Political, preachy 3
Howdon Aldi Death Queue 3:53 Punk energy, fun 4
Pretending That You’re Dead 4:25 Upbeat, catchy riff 4
Paradigms 4:29 Brooding, atmospheric 3.5
Long Way Off 4:50 Hopeful closer 4

Who this album is for (and who should skip it)

Seventeen Going Under is for you if:

  • You like Bruce Springsteen, The War on Drugs, or Arctic Monkeys’ AM era
  • You want lyrics that feel real, not poetic for the sake of it
  • You’re okay with a British accent on your rock vocals (Fender’s Geordie twang is strong)
  • You appreciate a good saxophone solo

This album is not for you if:

  • You prefer polished pop production (think Dua Lipa or Harry Styles)
  • You hate earnest, emotional songwriting
  • You can’t stand songs that build slowly to a loud climax
  • You want your rock to be ironic or detached

This is a sincere album. It wears its heart on its sleeve. If that makes you cringe, move along.

How to listen to this album for maximum impact

Don’t just throw it on shuffle. This album has a deliberate arc. The order matters.

Here’s my recommended listening method:

  1. Put on good headphones. The production rewards close listening. I use the Sennheiser HD 560S ($179) or the Beyerdynamic DT 900 Pro X ($299) for the best separation. Budget option: the Audio-Technica ATH-M50x ($149) still does the job.
  2. Start at track one. No skipping. The opening riff of “Seventeen Going Under” sets the tone. Let it play through.
  3. Pay attention to the lyrics. Fender is a writer first. The melodies are good, but the words are where the magic lives. Read along on Genius if you need to. He drops specific references—”Marks and Spencer’s meal deal”, “the dole queue”, “the bus station in the rain”—that paint a picture.
  4. Don’t stop after “Aye”. The album ends on “Long Way Off”, which is a quieter, more hopeful note. It’s a necessary comedown after the intensity of the final tracks.
  5. Then listen to it again. The second time, you’ll hear things you missed. The backing vocals. The guitar fills. The way the saxophone weaves through the mix.

This is not background music. This is a record that demands attention. Give it that, and it will reward you.

Why this album matters in 2026

Four years after release, Seventeen Going Under has aged better than almost any other rock album from the early 2026s. Why? Because it’s not chasing trends. It’s not trying to sound like TikTok. It’s built on classic songwriting structures—verse, chorus, bridge, solo—and it executes them with precision.

In a music landscape dominated by streaming algorithms and short attention spans, this album is a statement: rock music can still be ambitious. It can still tell stories. It can still make you feel something.

Fender has since released a third album, People Watching (2026), which is good but not as tight. The songs are longer. The production is bigger. It feels like a victory lap. Seventeen Going Under is the one that will last. It’s the album where everything clicked.

If you haven’t heard it yet, fix that. If you have, listen again. It’s even better than you remember.

Seventeen Going Under is the best British rock album of the 2026s so far. Full stop.