Author: Andrew Trendell

The Smiths tribute band re-opening Brixton Academy: “We’re grateful and humble”

Following a crowd crush that left two dead in December 2022, the iconic London venue opens its doors again tonight with a tribute band show. The Smyths’ Graham Sampson tells NME about what it means, what to expect, and the legacy of The Smiths outside of Morrissey’s politics

The post The Smiths tribute band re-opening Brixton Academy: “We’re grateful and humble” appeared first on NME.

NME

The Smiths tribute band set to play at the re-opening gig of the O2 Academy in Brixton tonight (Friday April 19) have spoken to NME about what to expect from the show and what it means it be gracing the stage at the iconic London venue after tragedy closed its doors.

The legendary South London venue has been shut since December 2022 after a fatal crowd crush that left two people dead. The tragic incident occurred at an Asake concert, which resulted in the deaths of Gabrielle Hutchinson, aged 23, and 33-year-old Rebecca Ikumelo. A third was left in a critical condition.

The future of the iconic London venue had been uncertain since then, before it was announced in December 2023 that the venue was allowed to retain its licence and re-open if it can meet “robust” safety rules. See the full list of 77 measures put in place here. The Academy Group declined to be interviewed about what changes had been made to the venue ahead of this weekend’s re-opening.

Police forensic investigators seen outside the O2 Academy Brixton in London after a crowd crush during an Asake concert at the venue. CREDIT: Thabo Jaiyesimi/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Back in March, a run of gigs to mark the return of the venue were announced – kicking off tonight with Nirvana UK (a tribute to Nirvana) and Smiths tribute band The Smyths. Next week will see a follow-up with Definitely Mightbe (a tribute to Oasis) and Foos tribute UK taking to the stage, before normal gigs kick off with the likes of Editors, The Black Keys, Kamasi Washington, Arcade Fire and Vampire Weekend all set to perform at the Academy in the coming months.

Smyths frontman Graham Sampson said that they were “grateful and humble” to be offered the opportunity, noting that the opening gigs with tribute bands were “about easing as you go”.

“You’d have to speak to the Academy Group about why, but I’d say that going carefully is what they’ve done,” said Sampson. “Given the backdrop of what’s happened, to return with a full-on show would be a lot more pressure.”

Already moved by the tragic events of December 2022, Sampson said that the gig would be all the more “poignant” as he was at Brixton Academy back in December 1986 for what would turn out to be the last ever gig performed by The Smiths.

“Back then, it was just another gig you were going to,” he remembered. “We now know what that turned into.

“In a funny way, I’m not thinking about it too much because I can’t allow myself to. Remarkable things keep happening for us and I overthink it too much then I either won’t live in the moment or I would start second-guessing myself. I’ll just approach it like any other show. I know that to get on a stage that I’ve been looking at from the audience for years will be overwhelming, but after that it’s just about doing what we do and not reflecting on it too much.”

He continued: “It’s another one of those ‘pinch me’ moments. Stephen Street, the legendary producer of The Smiths, is now a friend of mine. Sometimes I have to pinch myself and sometimes pinch him when I think about how I grew up watching The Old Grey Whistle Test with The Smiths and Stephen Street in the studio making ‘Meat Is Murder’ as a 15-year-old. Now all these years later, it’s very unexpected but very welcome.”

Asked if their setlist would pay homage to that final Smiths show at Brixton Academy, Sampson replied: “We were wrestling with that one. We know that the audience is going to be made up of die-hards and the casual fan.

“Because this particular show brings together two audiences who will have appreciate of each band’s material is something that we’ll have to be aware of. There will also be some people there just in a capacity of celebrating the venue itself. What we have to do is sprinkle the set with some unexpected curios and the expected tunes.”

While Sampson said that The Smyths had never played with Nirvana UK before, he was excited as both tribute acts were honouring “groundbreaking and iconic” bands.

“When both bands arrived on the scene, they were fully armed and loaded,” said Sampson. “Both had a gravitas and majesty, they seemed immediately iconic. It took their peers years to accumulate yet, which is why they’re both the definitive bands of their era.

“I confess to not know a great amount of Nirvana’s back catalogue because at that point in time I was far more of a Suede boy. I like the dark, romantic side of things, but I still remember the exhilaration of hearing them for the first time. I couldn’t believe the guy’s voice.”

Now in their 21st year as a band, The Smyths have gained a reputation as one of the world’s premiere tribute acts after playing over 900 shows in the UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand and appearing at Glastonbury, The Isle of Wight and Bestival.

They also recently gained the approval of former Smiths frontman Morrissey, who shared one of the band’s gig posters on his official website.

“It was the first time we’d had genuine cast-iron acknowledgement,” said Sampson. “We’d heard some third person reports from someone known to his band and his security guards that he thought we were brilliant, but we never knew for sure – now we do!

“Johnny [Marr, guitarist] has acknowledged us before in print and on radio, and Mike [Joyce, drummer] and Andy [Rourke, bassist] we’d met several times at our own shows. Morrissey’s acknowledgement was the last to come, but it was thrilling nonetheless.”

Noel Gallagher joins Johnny Marr at Brixton Academy on October 23, 2014 in London, England. (Photo by Ollie Millington/WireImage)

While many Smiths fans may struggle to come to terms with Morrissey’s often divisive political views, Sampson said that his tribute band were there for them to “celebrate the music, and to celebrate the artist as a young man”.

“The music is preserved in an aspic or an amber,” he said. “You can pick it up and cherish it for what it was, and for what it still means now – particularly for a teenage audience. The Smiths lyrics are universal to the human condition, which is why people still find The Smiths and Morrissey’s writing so relevant. Everything rushing through the teenage mind is there in those words.”

As a result, Sampson said that they were finding that their audiences continue to attract younger and younger Smiths fans.

“The older generation is there and they are bringing their children and grandchildren,” he admitted. “We’re now seeing a massive influx of youth, and the front dozen or so rows of our shows are populated by a much younger generation. It confirms everything that [writer and former NME journalist] Nick Kent said all those years ago in The Smiths’ Southbank Show documentary that one day the band would be viewed in the same way as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. He was absolutely correct. I felt it then in 1986 and I feel it now.

“They’ve stood the test of time. Back then, one week I was into Cocteau Twins and next it was The Smiths. I was also listening to The Velvet Underground and The Doors even though they were long gone. It’s the same thing for this generation – they’re finding the classics.

He added: “The Smiths occupy a very interesting space because I find that they are both in that alternative sphere as The Doors and the Velvets, but then you’ve got Bowie as that bit in-between the ‘establishment’ of The Stones and The Beatles.

“The Smiths belong among all of those, which is quite remarkable.”

The Smyths and Nirvana UK perform a co-headline show at London’s O2 Academy Brixton tonight (Friday April 19), before UK Foo Fighters and Definitely Mightbe take to the stage next week on Friday April 26. Visit here for tickets and more info on these and other upcoming Brixton Academy shows.

The hearing into the future of the venue began took place in September, to determine whether or not the Academy Music Group (AMG) could continue to operate their licence at the music venue. After the fatal crowd crush, the Metropolitan Police then reportedly made a push for the location to close its doors for good.

The hearing was told of the venue’s refusal of racial profiling and AMG’S ambitious plans to improve ticketing and safety, before things concluded with Lambeth Council saying that they supported the re-opening of Brixton Academy “in principle” if a series of conditions are met. The Met Police meanwhile, denied that they were actually looking to close the venue – but said that they believe current operator AMG “shouldn’t be the licensee” if the Academy is to open its doors again.

Since the venue’s closure in December, an online petition was launched to counteract the closure while various artists and industry professionals also spoke out against the potential shutting down of the venue. It has attracted over 116,000 signatures.

The post The Smiths tribute band re-opening Brixton Academy: “We’re grateful and humble” appeared first on NME.

The Smiths tribute band re-opening Brixton Academy: “We’re grateful and humble”

Following a crowd crush that left two dead in December 2022, the iconic London venue opens its doors again tonight with a tribute band show. The Smyths’ Graham Sampson tells NME about what it means, what to expect, and the legacy of The Smiths outside of Morrissey’s politics

The post The Smiths tribute band re-opening Brixton Academy: “We’re grateful and humble” appeared first on NME.

NME

The Smiths tribute band set to play at the re-opening gig of the O2 Academy in Brixton tonight (Friday April 19) have spoken to NME about what to expect from the show and what it means it be gracing the stage at the iconic London venue after tragedy closed its doors.

The legendary South London venue has been shut since December 2022 after a fatal crowd crush that left two people dead. The tragic incident occurred at an Asake concert, which resulted in the deaths of Gabrielle Hutchinson, aged 23, and 33-year-old Rebecca Ikumelo. A third was left in a critical condition.

The future of the iconic London venue had been uncertain since then, before it was announced in December 2023 that the venue was allowed to retain its licence and re-open if it can meet “robust” safety rules. See the full list of 77 measures put in place here. The Academy Group declined to be interviewed about what changes had been made to the venue ahead of this weekend’s re-opening.

Police forensic investigators seen outside the O2 Academy Brixton in London after a crowd crush during an Asake concert at the venue. CREDIT: Thabo Jaiyesimi/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Back in March, a run of gigs to mark the return of the venue were announced – kicking off tonight with Nirvana UK (a tribute to Nirvana) and Smiths tribute band The Smyths. Next week will see a follow-up with Definitely Mightbe (a tribute to Oasis) and Foos tribute UK taking to the stage, before normal gigs kick off with the likes of Editors, The Black Keys, Kamasi Washington, Arcade Fire and Vampire Weekend all set to perform at the Academy in the coming months.

Smyths frontman Graham Sampson said that they were “grateful and humble” to be offered the opportunity, noting that the opening gigs with tribute bands were “about easing as you go”.

“You’d have to speak to the Academy Group about why, but I’d say that going carefully is what they’ve done,” said Sampson. “Given the backdrop of what’s happened, to return with a full-on show would be a lot more pressure.”

Already moved by the tragic events of December 2022, Sampson said that the gig would be all the more “poignant” as he was at Brixton Academy back in December 1986 for what would turn out to be the last ever gig performed by The Smiths.

“Back then, it was just another gig you were going to,” he remembered. “We now know what that turned into.

“In a funny way, I’m not thinking about it too much because I can’t allow myself to. Remarkable things keep happening for us and I overthink it too much then I either won’t live in the moment or I would start second-guessing myself. I’ll just approach it like any other show. I know that to get on a stage that I’ve been looking at from the audience for years will be overwhelming, but after that it’s just about doing what we do and not reflecting on it too much.”

He continued: “It’s another one of those ‘pinch me’ moments. Stephen Street, the legendary producer of The Smiths, is now a friend of mine. Sometimes I have to pinch myself and sometimes pinch him when I think about how I grew up watching The Old Grey Whistle Test with The Smiths and Stephen Street in the studio making ‘Meat Is Murder’ as a 15-year-old. Now all these years later, it’s very unexpected but very welcome.”

Asked if their setlist would pay homage to that final Smiths show at Brixton Academy, Sampson replied: “We were wrestling with that one. We know that the audience is going to be made up of die-hards and the casual fan.

“Because this particular show brings together two audiences who will have appreciate of each band’s material is something that we’ll have to be aware of. There will also be some people there just in a capacity of celebrating the venue itself. What we have to do is sprinkle the set with some unexpected curios and the expected tunes.”

While Sampson said that The Smyths had never played with Nirvana UK before, he was excited as both tribute acts were honouring “groundbreaking and iconic” bands.

“When both bands arrived on the scene, they were fully armed and loaded,” said Sampson. “Both had a gravitas and majesty, they seemed immediately iconic. It took their peers years to accumulate yet, which is why they’re both the definitive bands of their era.

“I confess to not know a great amount of Nirvana’s back catalogue because at that point in time I was far more of a Suede boy. I like the dark, romantic side of things, but I still remember the exhilaration of hearing them for the first time. I couldn’t believe the guy’s voice.”

Now in their 21st year as a band, The Smyths have gained a reputation as one of the world’s premiere tribute acts after playing over 900 shows in the UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand and appearing at Glastonbury, The Isle of Wight and Bestival.

They also recently gained the approval of former Smiths frontman Morrissey, who shared one of the band’s gig posters on his official website.

“It was the first time we’d had genuine cast-iron acknowledgement,” said Sampson. “We’d heard some third person reports from someone known to his band and his security guards that he thought we were brilliant, but we never knew for sure – now we do!

“Johnny [Marr, guitarist] has acknowledged us before in print and on radio, and Mike [Joyce, drummer] and Andy [Rourke, bassist] we’d met several times at our own shows. Morrissey’s acknowledgement was the last to come, but it was thrilling nonetheless.”

Noel Gallagher joins Johnny Marr at Brixton Academy on October 23, 2014 in London, England. (Photo by Ollie Millington/WireImage)

While many Smiths fans may struggle to come to terms with Morrissey’s often divisive political views, Sampson said that his tribute band were there for them to “celebrate the music, and to celebrate the artist as a young man”.

“The music is preserved in an aspic or an amber,” he said. “You can pick it up and cherish it for what it was, and for what it still means now – particularly for a teenage audience. The Smiths lyrics are universal to the human condition, which is why people still find The Smiths and Morrissey’s writing so relevant. Everything rushing through the teenage mind is there in those words.”

As a result, Sampson said that they were finding that their audiences continue to attract younger and younger Smiths fans.

“The older generation is there and they are bringing their children and grandchildren,” he admitted. “We’re now seeing a massive influx of youth, and the front dozen or so rows of our shows are populated by a much younger generation. It confirms everything that [writer and former NME journalist] Nick Kent said all those years ago in The Smiths’ Southbank Show documentary that one day the band would be viewed in the same way as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. He was absolutely correct. I felt it then in 1986 and I feel it now.

“They’ve stood the test of time. Back then, one week I was into Cocteau Twins and next it was The Smiths. I was also listening to The Velvet Underground and The Doors even though they were long gone. It’s the same thing for this generation – they’re finding the classics.

He added: “The Smiths occupy a very interesting space because I find that they are both in that alternative sphere as The Doors and the Velvets, but then you’ve got Bowie as that bit in-between the ‘establishment’ of The Stones and The Beatles.

“The Smiths belong among all of those, which is quite remarkable.”

The Smyths and Nirvana UK perform a co-headline show at London’s O2 Academy Brixton tonight (Friday April 19), before UK Foo Fighters and Definitely Mightbe take to the stage next week on Friday April 26. Visit here for tickets and more info on these and other upcoming Brixton Academy shows.

The hearing into the future of the venue began took place in September, to determine whether or not the Academy Music Group (AMG) could continue to operate their licence at the music venue. After the fatal crowd crush, the Metropolitan Police then reportedly made a push for the location to close its doors for good.

The hearing was told of the venue’s refusal of racial profiling and AMG’S ambitious plans to improve ticketing and safety, before things concluded with Lambeth Council saying that they supported the re-opening of Brixton Academy “in principle” if a series of conditions are met. The Met Police meanwhile, denied that they were actually looking to close the venue – but said that they believe current operator AMG “shouldn’t be the licensee” if the Academy is to open its doors again.

Since the venue’s closure in December, an online petition was launched to counteract the closure while various artists and industry professionals also spoke out against the potential shutting down of the venue. It has attracted over 116,000 signatures.

The post The Smiths tribute band re-opening Brixton Academy: “We’re grateful and humble” appeared first on NME.

Fontaines D.C. share pummelling new single ‘Starburster’ and announce new album ‘ROMANCE’

Check out the brutal first taster of the band’s James Ford-produced fourth album, dealing in “falling in love at the end of the world”

The post Fontaines D.C. share pummelling new single ‘Starburster’ and announce new album ‘ROMANCE’ appeared first on NME.

NME

Fontaines D.C. have shared their pummelling new single ‘Starburster‘ and announced details of their fourth album ‘ROMANCE’. Check it out below.

Having been teasing the follow-up to 2022’s acclaimed ‘Skinty Fia‘ over the past week, now the Irish five-piece have announced that they’ve signed to XL Recordings (Radiohead, King Krule, The xx) for fourth album ‘ROMANCE’ – produced by James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Foals, Depeche Mode) and due this August.

The record comes launched by ‘Starburster’ – a song inspired by frontman Grian Chatten suffering a panic attack and accompanied by a sinister and cinematic video directed by Aube Perrie (Megan Thee Stallion, Harry Styles, The Hives).

Reviewing the track, NME noted how it appears to mark how the band have “taken a perfect left turn”, adding: “Leaning on the Massive Attack trip-hop noir vibes first hinted at on ‘Skinty Fia’’s title track, ‘Starburster’ is a pensive art-rock beast that fuses elements of electronica and hip-hop more akin to their fellow striking countrymen (and recent collaborators) KNEECAP as Chatten spits: “I’m gon hit your business if it’s momentary blissness *BREEEAAAATHE*”.

“Bravado meets psychedelia as the frontman says he’s “over harder than a turned up challenger” and “the pig on the Chinese calendar”. The video, too – a fever dream of blood, animals and a cast of misfits trying to find their way – further supports their referencing of Shygirl and Sega Bodega as key inspirations.”

Read the full review here.

Fontaines D.C., 2024. Credit: Theo Cottle

Speaking about the title of the album, bassist Conor Deegan said: “We’ve always had this sense of idealism and romance. Each album gets further away from observing that through the lens of Ireland, as directly as ‘Dogrel‘. The second album (‘A Hero’s Death‘) is about that detachment, and the third (Skinty Fia) is about Irishness dislocated in the diaspora. Now we look to where and what else there is to be romantic about.”

He added: “This record is about deciding what’s fantasy – the tangible world, or where you go in your mind. What represents reality more? That feels almost spiritual for us.”

Chatten meanwhile, added that the album was inspired his “fascination” with “falling in love at the end of the world”.

“The album is about protecting that tiny flame,” he said. “The bigger armageddon looms, the more precious it becomes.”

Turning away from any “retro aesthetic”, Chatten added that ‘ROMANCE’ sees the band “say things we’ve wanted to say for a long time. I never feel like it’s over, but it’s nice to feel lighter.”

Fontaines D.C. – ‘Romance’

Fontaines D.C. release ‘ROMANCE’ on August 23 via XL Recordings. Pre-order it here and check out the tracklist below:

1. ‘Romance’
2. ‘Starburster’
3. ‘Here’s The Thing’
4. ‘Desire’
5. ‘In The Modern World’
6. ‘Bug’
7. ‘Motorcycle Boy’
8. ‘Sundowner’
9. ‘Horseness Is The Whatness’
10. ‘Death Kink’
11. ‘Favourite’

‘Romance’ will mark Fontaines D.C.’s first original music since their third album, 2022’s ‘Skinty Fia’. Since then, they’ve also covered Nick Drake’s ‘Cello Song’ for a compilation album.

In December, the band teamed up with Massive Attack and Young Fathers to announce the release of a limited edition 12” single to support Médecins Sans Frontières in their relief efforts in Gaza.The ‘Ceasefire’ EP will arrive on June 1.

The band will be touring Europe for festival appearances throughout summer, including a slot headlining Friday’s Park Stage at Glastonbury in June, and a return to Reading & Leeds’ main stage in August. UK and US headline dates will be announced shortly.

The post Fontaines D.C. share pummelling new single ‘Starburster’ and announce new album ‘ROMANCE’ appeared first on NME.

Fontaines D.C.’s daring comeback single ‘Starburster’ is their most experimental work yet

Giving a taster of ‘Romance’ – the fourth album from Ireland’s finest and new XL signees – Grian and co tackle anxiety on their most experimental turn yet

The post Fontaines D.C.’s daring comeback single ‘Starburster’ is their most experimental work yet appeared first on NME.

NME

Take a deep breath. The shock of the new, the anxiety of the everyday, increasing screams in a shrinking universe – the world can be a lot sometimes. You hear that on ‘Starburster’ with Fontaines D.C. frontman Grian Chatten’s every sharp inhale, every piercing drum beat over a noxious soundscape.

Inspired by a panic attack suffered by Chatten in London’s St Pancras station, ‘Starburster’ captures that shock of trying to grasp reality amidst all the chaos. The fuckery of what it is to human in these bin fire times has always been central to the music of Fontaines, but they always seem to find the light. As bassist Conor Deegan says of James Ford-produced fourth album ‘Romance’, released August 23: “We’ve always had this sense of idealism and romance. Each album gets further away from observing that through the lens of Ireland”. Now settled in London, the boys are searching for “where and what else there is to be romantic about.”

Chatten says it’s a record driven by the idea of “falling in love at the end of the world” and “protecting that tiny flame”. “The bigger armageddon looms,” he adds in a statement, “the more precious it becomes”. That sense of wonder and dread can only come from pushing the extremities of their sound to the Nth degree. It’s been a long time coming. From a group of scrappy upstarts aping The Strokes and The Ramones before they were signed, to the assured rush of debut ‘Dogrel’ and the punchy grace of ‘A Hero’s Death’ (which paved the way for them being named Best Band In The World at the 2022 NME Awards), evolution is an inevitable, crucial part of their story.

The seeds were planted a while back. At the band’s 2021 show at London’s Alexandra Palace NME marked it a moment that saw Fontaines “transcend their punk roots to become true rockstars”. That became further manifest on their immaculate third album ‘Skinty Fia’ – an experimental and assured landmark record from a band with crosshairs dead between the eyes of the future.

Freshly signed to XL, a breeding ground for artful weirdness and home to the likes of Radiohead, King Krule, The xx and Burial, it seems that instead of jumping on a major label bandwagon, they’ve taken a perfect left turn. Leaning on the Massive Attack trip-hop noir vibes first hinted at on ‘Skinty Fia’’s title track, ‘Starburster’ is a pensive art-rock beast that fuses elements of electronica and hip-hop more akin to their fellow striking countrymen (and recent collaborators) KNEECAP as Chatten spits: “I’m gon hit your business if it’s momentary blissness *BREEEAAAATHE*”.

Bravado meets psychedelia as the frontman says he’s “over harder than a turned up challenger” and “the pig on the Chinese calendar”. The video, too – a fever dream of blood, animals and a cast of misfits trying to find their way – further supports their referencing of Shygirl and Sega Bodega as key inspirations.

This could be a very bloody special time for Fontaines D.C. In the coming months, there’s potential for a ‘I was there moment’ when they headline Friday’s Park Stage at Glastonbury, and a joyous collection of their flowers when they return to Reading & Leeds’ main stage on the week of album release in August, celebrating would could be yet another definitive record from the band of their generation. It’s shit out there, but here’s some music to make sense of it; music that matters. Take a deep breath.

The post Fontaines D.C.’s daring comeback single ‘Starburster’ is their most experimental work yet appeared first on NME.

Foals’ Yannis Philippakis tells us about The Yaw and his record with Tony Allen: “Our spirits got on”

Check out first single ‘Walk Through Fire’ from ‘Lagos Paris London’ as Philippakis tells NME about dealing the death of Allen, imbuing the record with a “Parisian protest spirit”, the future of Foals, and being pals with David Schwimmer

The post Foals’ Yannis Philippakis tells us about The Yaw and his record with Tony Allen: “Our spirits got on” appeared first on NME.

NME

Foals‘ Yannis Philippakis has shared the first taster of his long-awaited project with late Fela Kuti legend Tony Allen – as well as launching new collaborative project Yannis & The Yaw. Check out the single ‘Walk Through Fire’ below, and watch our interview with the frontman above.

Philippakis has been teasing the project for some years, first revealing news of sessions with the drummer to NME back in 2017. The pioneering Afrobeat musician, who played with both Fela Kuti and The Good, The Bad & The Queen, died in 2020 at the age of 79 and the music had been in development for some time ahead of his passing.

Now, Philippakis has announced that their work together will be released this August on the ‘Lagos Paris London’ EP. Completed with Allen’s regular collaborators Vincent Taeger (percussion, marimba), Vincent Taurelle (keys) and Ludovic Bruni (bass, guitar), the collection is also launched today with the funk-driven single ‘Walk Through Fire’, and marks the start of a new collaborative arm for the Foals singer: The Yaw.

With a yaw defined as “the twisting or oscillation of a moving ship or aircraft about a vertical axis”, this shall be the first of future projects with an ever-revolving set of collaborators.

To mark the launch of the project, NME met Philippakis in Damon Albarn’s 13 Studios in West London – a place he described as “Tony Allen’s spiritual home in London” having done much of the recording for The Good, The Bad & The Queen there, with the drummer even living upstairs for a period.

“I feel unburdened now,” said Philippakis about finally having the music with Allen out done. “There has been this unfinished business that has been occupying my vision for the future. I had to finish it. Especially after Tony passed away and in the midst of COVID; it became much more of a serious project. We had to try and do it justice. It feels good, and I just people to hear it and for it to be out.”

Philippakis’ love affair with Allen’s music first started when Foals would party to Fela Kuti’s music when they shared a house together in their early days in the ’00s.

“We’d listen to a bunch of old Afrobeat records,” he recalled. “The record we’d listen to the most was a compiled Tony Allen ‘best of’ that had ‘Progress’, ‘Afro Disco Beat’, all of his classic tracks from throughout the years. That record got absolutely hammered – it got worn out.

“Fast forward a few years later and somebody we knew in common was trying to get Tony to collab with more and different people; some more unexpected collaborations. They called me and said, ‘Do you want to go over to Paris to write some tracks with Tony?’ I jumped at the opportunity, but down the line we were on tour. Time passed, the tour took its toll, I came back knackered and I almost didn’t go.”

He added: “I was just broken by the end of the tour, and the idea of schlepping my guitar and going to Paris for a session seemed insane, but I was encouraged to go and it changed my life. It was one of the best musical experiences of my life.”

 

Check out our full interview with Philippakis below, where he told NME about dealing with the death of Allen, imbuing the record with a “Parisian protest spirit”, what’ to come from The Yaw, his work in theatre, the future of Foals, and being pals with David Schwimmer.

NME: Hello Yannis. Tell us about that first meeting with Tony Allen. 

Philippakis: “I went to Paris, and I walked nerdily and nervously through this studio where everyone was smoking – obviously because it was France. We were in this big basement studio that was very 1970s, kind of naff, but full of amazing instruments. There were a lot of Air’s synths in there, a bunch of different West African percussion, and Tony was just sitting there in a fog of smoke.

“I don’t think the whiskey bottles had been opened yet but they were in proximity. He wasn’t super friendly straight away! He was writing with these French guys – the Vincents – and they’re the Frenchest men in the world. They set me up, we chatted and we all got in the room. I pulled out the riff that is ‘Walk Through Fire’, Tony came into his drum area and just started playing. It was crazy. I just felt like I was lifting off slightly. We just jammed it and by the end of that day we had cut the majority of the first three tracks on the EP.

“I went back the next morning, we did a couple of quick structural things, some handclaps, and that was kind of it. It was set it motion. We became friends just through that initial jam. It felt like the whole room warmed up.”

At what point did it feel like you’d broke the walls down and Tony became a friend?

“We came out of that jam and Tony was like, ‘Actually, this guy is kind of alright’ – rather than just some random dude that’s walked in off the street. It felt like the music connected us. He didn’t expect me to sing the way that I did. I really don’t think he was even that familiar with who I was when we went in.

“Once that happened we had ‘Rain Can’t Reach Us’ and ‘Walk Through Fire’ – those first two tracks had been played then we were smoking a spliff, sharing whiskey and getting on.”

Foals’ Yannis Philippakis with Tony Allen. Credit: Kit Monteith

How did you land on the sonic DNA of this record? You obviously didn’t want it to sound like ‘Foals featuring Tony Allen’ or vice versa…

“We didn’t have any pre-destined idea for it. The first riff was just one that I thought would be cool, and we guided everything through intuition and followed the creative impulse. With the mix of the influences of Tony and I, it was bound to be something slightly ‘other’.

“There are obviously aspects of what people might identify as ‘a Foals sounding riff’ because it’s me playing guitar. One of the tracks has a loop that was written in the same era as some of the [2019 albums] ‘Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost [parts one and two]’ stuff, and it just didn’t make it into the room with the boys.

“Obviously his style of drumming is inimitable and you know it’s Tony Allen, but by virtue of the collab it’s something slightly other.”

Did Foals drummer Jack Bevan get jealous of what you were up to?

“Tony is one of his favourite drummers so he was always super positive about it! Maybe he wished that it could have been something with the whole band. Tony and I did one improv gig at [Philippakis’ club night] Milk in Paris and Jimmy [Smith, guitarist] joined in. We were hoping that we’d do more together live, but alas…”

Once we spoke and you said you were walking through Paris during one of the many strikes – trash was piled high and things were burning. A lot of what Tony did was quite socially-minded, so how did you approach the lyrics to this record and bake in that very French defiance?

“I needed to not write the lyrics from the same perspective as I would more intimate Foals tracks. I wanted it to be more protest-driven. The language that Tony and I shared was him encouraging me to write lyrics that were more socially-engaged.

“You couldn’t shy away from it, and Tony encouraged me not to. There were literally mice peaking out at you from garbage piles on the way to the studio. That sense of combat and social decay permeates the record. By virtue of it being a collaboration between the two of us, I probably felt empowered to write a certain type of lyric that perhaps wouldn’t feel quite right within Foals. It has that Parisian protest spirit to it.”

What does the EP tell us about that?

“There should be a feeling of galvanisation, and that all isn’t lost. You can create beauty around and outside of things being on fire. The record is soundtracking this feeling of precipice. It doesn’t impart a specific message other than being the soundtrack to the protest. It isn’t didactic in any way – that isn’t my style.”

Foals’ Yannis Philippakis. Credit: Tom Oxley for NME

When Tony died in 2020, how did that impact your relationship to the songs?

“We had done a couple of other sessions where I would stay on in the studio and Tony would leave some days. Then COVID struck and we lost all momentum. It became something that was on the back-burner. It probably could have quite easily dissolved into the ether. We had plans to pick stuff up again after COVID, then I was just hit with this news that he passed away. It was quite sudden and no one expected it. He wasn’t young, but he was healthy and he was strong. It just shocked everyone.

“After feeling grief and putting his records on for a couple of days, it just became clear to me that we had to finish it. There was something crushing about not having completed it while he was alive. It was so close to completion and I just feel like it needed doing justice – just to finish it off, get it out and to show people what a cool thing we had made. It needed to be done right and in his memory, out of respect for what was a chance encounter with him in a way.”

What made it feel like fate?

“We met in a studio, he didn’t really know who I was, he didn’t give a fuck, we smoked some hash together then we wrote some wicked tunes. It sounds a bit hippie, but our spirits got on. It was like something larger than the realities of our lives. We wouldn’t exchange stories. There was a lot that we didn’t have in common, but what we had in common was  a shared language that was separate to your everyday experience of making a friend. That’s why it’s such a special experience for me in my life.”

How did you overcome that challenge of finishing this without Tony and keeping it imbued with his spirit? Did you hear his voice in the studio?

“Thankfully the Vincents had worked with him a bunch so they could say what Tony would and wouldn’t have wanted. They guided a lot of that principle, but a lot of the tracks were almost finished and most of what needed completing were my parts.  We didn’t actually mess with that much of the original tracking. Most of the tracks were done from a jam done twice – they weren’t replayed, there weren’t multiple takes.

“We didn’t make this EP like a record or an album where there’s a defined destination and an idea of perfection that we were striving for. It was liberated. It was very rough and ready and very fast. Once the instrumentals had been captured, they weren’t tinkered with much at all.”

Tony Allen (Picture: Bernard Benant / Press)

How did it feel when it was finished? Did you feel like you had a record that Foals would have partied to in your house back in 2008?

“Yeah, probably! Some of it felt like me being invited into a Tony track and getting to do karaoke over it. I felt like we’d made something precious and rare. It’s one of his final recordings and is a collaboration that can never exist at any other time. It can never be recreated. I love combination of cultures and generations of me being born in 1986, Tony being 70-something when we started recording and from Lagos with an incredible life story before being based in Paris.

“All of these cultural and generational components and experiences that we brought in while looking at life through two different lenses. It just feels like a treasure to me.”

And your mother is South African, so you’ve always had this music in your life?

“I have. I came into Fela Kuti a bit later, but there’s definitely been a lot of Soweto music and South African music that I grew up with. That’s partly why I play guitar like I do. I took more inspiration from records my mum was playing than I ever did from Jimmy Page or any rock guitarist – that’s not really my lineage.

“I play the guitar in a very crude way where it’s not schooled in the canon of rock music from the UK or anywhere else. The sound that I chase with the guitar is one that comes from more of an African place. Whether Marley, Nigeria or wherever, there’s a shared style of guitar playing that gets me out of my seat.”

What can you tell us about the context of ‘The Yaw’ and what you’re launching here? What happens next?

“I don’t have the answer to that, and that in itself excites me. I just wanted to put this record out. To me, the Yaw is a kind of collaborative orbit that exists going forwards. I like the idea of it being on this axis that spins: members can rotate, future collaborations can occur, but there’s no pressure for anything. I want this to be something that is fluid and solely driven by freedom and creativity, and not by any concerns. The Yaw is just an open parachute, and we’ll see when it gets deployed.”

Foals’ Yannis Philippakis. Credit: Tom Oxley for NME

Anyone on your bucket list to pull into The Yaw’s orbit, or Yawbit?

“Yawbit – I like that! I’ve been talking to a Malian guitarist called Gimba so I might do some sessions with him. I’ve got some old recordings with Karl Hyde from Underworld and I think it would be cool to revisit those and do some collaborations there. Maybe even some Greek musicians? I like the idea that The Yaw would be a culturally diverse project, so it’s not staying in one place for too long.”

“This record is called ‘Lagos Paris London’, maybe the next will be ‘Berlin Athens Burundi’ or something. We could have these triangular locations and see how the records come about.”

There are live shows on the way too, right?

“There will be some live performances of the music. The band will probably be made up of the collaborators who worked on the record, and then some players that used to play with Tony or are from that lineage.

“It’ll be the EP and maybe some other bits that were floating around at the time or stuff from those Milk nights, but it’ll have quite a wild and free improvised spirit to it. It’s going to be a jam.”

This is more of a collective, right – and not the launch of ‘Yannis Philippakis – solo artist’?

“No, not at all. If I was to do a solo record it would probably not be this. This is meant to be an archival presentation of an amazing thing that happened. I very much believe that I want it to be out now in 2024, but if I was to record something from scratch right now, it wouldn’t be this.

“This is definitely meant to be a homage and a release of the work that happened with Tony Allen; it’s not like ‘The Yannis Philippakis Experience’.”

The last time we spoke was before The Confessions, a play that you wrote the music for. The show was great, and we hung with Friends star David Schwimmer at the afterparty. Are you getting a taste for that world?

“The Schwim! He’s been coming to Foals shows for a few years now. I like the creative world of it, and I want to have a hydra-headed creative output. I want to be able to just be expressive, creative and productive in different disciplines. Being in the theatre world or the film world where the music has this supporting role is really interesting. It’s just as creatively challenging and as musically inspiring, but it lives in this other shape that isn’t to do with being in a band or playing on stage.

“It’s to do with my identity. I like that you can write music that’s discreet and much more based on how it interacts with actors and the stage.”

Foals’ Yannis Philippakis. Credit: Andy Ford/NME

Do you have anything else in the works right now?

“I’m doing the music for another play. It’s by the same director Alexander Zeldin, it’s about Antigone, it’s going to be on at The National Theatre next year, it’s got Tobias Menzies [The Crown, Outlander, Game Of Thrones] in it, Emma D’Arcy [Wanderlust, Truth Seekers, House Of The Dragon] and Emma Mackey [Sex Education, Death On The Nile, Emily].

“It’s set in present-day Britain, steeped in the housing crisis and in the tragedy of our time. It’s going to be intense, dark, heavy and cathartic, and I’m just starting the music for it now.”

And The Schwim will be there?

“The Schwim will be there”

Is he the most famous Foals fan?

“I’m not sure, actually. It’s either him or one of the Royal Family or something.”

Is Foals’ Jimmy still working on his ‘Cosmonaut’ solo project?

“He is The Cosmonaut, so it’s hard to hear what he’s up to. I spoke to him the other day and he’s definitely writing some stuff. The thing with Jimmy’s stuff is that it’s so good I always just want to harvest it for Foals records.”

Has there been much progress on the follow-up to Foals’ last album ‘Life Is Yours’?

“Absolutely none, which is fine. We just finished touring it in January, and before we make another Foals record we really want to have some time at home and apart to individually get replenished and be inspired – not make one out of a knee-jerk sense of obligation. We want the next record to be really special.

“We’ve been busy so it’s good to go out and smell the roses for a bit. I think we’ll make something special. It’s fucking great that Walter [Gervers, bassist] is back and it will feel great when we’re writing in the room together. I think it could be the best Foals record yet. This space that we’re going to have over the next year will be crucial. The only thing we know is that it won’t be anything like ‘Life Is Yours’ – as is the Foals way. I’m pretty sure we’re going to subvert and get into some interesting, new place.”

Yannis & The Yaw’s ‘Lagos Paris London’ featuring Tony Allen

‘Lagos Paris London’ will be released on August 30 via Transgressive, and is available to pre-order or pre-save here. Check out the tracklist below:

1. ‘Walk Through Fire’
2. ‘Rain Can’t Reach Us’
3. ‘Night Green, Heavy Love’
4. ‘Under The Strikes’
5. ‘Clementine’

The post Foals’ Yannis Philippakis tells us about The Yaw and his record with Tony Allen: “Our spirits got on” appeared first on NME.

Foals’ Yannis Philippakis tells us about The Yaw and his record with Tony Allen: “Our spirits got on”

Check out first single ‘Walk Through Fire’ from ‘Lagos Paris London’ as Philippakis tells NME about dealing the death of Allen, imbuing the record with a “Parisian protest spirit”, the future of Foals, and being pals with David Schwimmer

The post Foals’ Yannis Philippakis tells us about The Yaw and his record with Tony Allen: “Our spirits got on” appeared first on NME.

NME

Foals‘ Yannis Philippakis has shared the first taster of his long-awaited project with late Fela Kuti legend Tony Allen – as well as launching new collaborative project Yannis & The Yaw. Check out the single ‘Walk Through Fire’ below, and watch our interview with the frontman above.

Philippakis has been teasing the project for some years, first revealing news of sessions with the drummer to NME back in 2017. The pioneering Afrobeat musician, who played with both Fela Kuti and The Good, The Bad & The Queen, died in 2020 at the age of 79 and the music had been in development for some time ahead of his passing.

Now, Philippakis has announced that their work together will be released this August on the ‘Lagos Paris London’ EP. Completed with Allen’s regular collaborators Vincent Taeger (percussion, marimba), Vincent Taurelle (keys) and Ludovic Bruni (bass, guitar), the collection is also launched today with the funk-driven single ‘Walk Through Fire’, and marks the start of a new collaborative arm for the Foals singer: The Yaw.

With a yaw defined as “the twisting or oscillation of a moving ship or aircraft about a vertical axis”, this shall be the first of future projects with an ever-revolving set of collaborators.

To mark the launch of the project, NME met Philippakis in Damon Albarn’s 13 Studios in West London – a place he described as “Tony Allen’s spiritual home in London” having done much of the recording for The Good, The Bad & The Queen there, with the drummer even living upstairs for a period.

“I feel unburdened now,” said Philippakis about finally having the music with Allen out done. “There has been this unfinished business that has been occupying my vision for the future. I had to finish it. Especially after Tony passed away and in the midst of COVID; it became much more of a serious project. We had to try and do it justice. It feels good, and I just people to hear it and for it to be out.”

Philippakis’ love affair with Allen’s music first started when Foals would party to Fela Kuti’s music when they shared a house together in their early days in the ’00s.

“We’d listen to a bunch of old Afrobeat records,” he recalled. “The record we’d listen to the most was a compiled Tony Allen ‘best of’ that had ‘Progress’, ‘Afro Disco Beat’, all of his classic tracks from throughout the years. That record got absolutely hammered – it got worn out.

“Fast forward a few years later and somebody we knew in common was trying to get Tony to collab with more and different people; some more unexpected collaborations. They called me and said, ‘Do you want to go over to Paris to write some tracks with Tony?’ I jumped at the opportunity, but down the line we were on tour. Time passed, the tour took its toll, I came back knackered and I almost didn’t go.”

He added: “I was just broken by the end of the tour, and the idea of schlepping my guitar and going to Paris for a session seemed insane, but I was encouraged to go and it changed my life. It was one of the best musical experiences of my life.”

 

Check out our full interview with Philippakis below, where he told NME about dealing with the death of Allen, imbuing the record with a “Parisian protest spirit”, what’ to come from The Yaw, his work in theatre, the future of Foals, and being pals with David Schwimmer.

NME: Hello Yannis. Tell us about that first meeting with Tony Allen. 

Philippakis: “I went to Paris, and I walked nerdily and nervously through this studio where everyone was smoking – obviously because it was France. We were in this big basement studio that was very 1970s, kind of naff, but full of amazing instruments. There were a lot of Air’s synths in there, a bunch of different West African percussion, and Tony was just sitting there in a fog of smoke.

“I don’t think the whiskey bottles had been opened yet but they were in proximity. He wasn’t super friendly straight away! He was writing with these French guys – the Vincents – and they’re the Frenchest men in the world. They set me up, we chatted and we all got in the room. I pulled out the riff that is ‘Walk Through Fire’, Tony came into his drum area and just started playing. It was crazy. I just felt like I was lifting off slightly. We just jammed it and by the end of that day we had cut the majority of the first three tracks on the EP.

“I went back the next morning, we did a couple of quick structural things, some handclaps, and that was kind of it. It was set it motion. We became friends just through that initial jam. It felt like the whole room warmed up.”

At what point did it feel like you’d broke the walls down and Tony became a friend?

“We came out of that jam and Tony was like, ‘Actually, this guy is kind of alright’ – rather than just some random dude that’s walked in off the street. It felt like the music connected us. He didn’t expect me to sing the way that I did. I really don’t think he was even that familiar with who I was when we went in.

“Once that happened we had ‘Rain Can’t Reach Us’ and ‘Walk Through Fire’ – those first two tracks had been played then we were smoking a spliff, sharing whiskey and getting on.”

Foals’ Yannis Philippakis with Tony Allen. Credit: Kit Monteith

How did you land on the sonic DNA of this record? You obviously didn’t want it to sound like ‘Foals featuring Tony Allen’ or vice versa…

“We didn’t have any pre-destined idea for it. The first riff was just one that I thought would be cool, and we guided everything through intuition and followed the creative impulse. With the mix of the influences of Tony and I, it was bound to be something slightly ‘other’.

“There are obviously aspects of what people might identify as ‘a Foals sounding riff’ because it’s me playing guitar. One of the tracks has a loop that was written in the same era as some of the [2019 albums] ‘Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost [parts one and two]’ stuff, and it just didn’t make it into the room with the boys.

“Obviously his style of drumming is inimitable and you know it’s Tony Allen, but by virtue of the collab it’s something slightly other.”

Did Foals drummer Jack Bevan get jealous of what you were up to?

“Tony is one of his favourite drummers so he was always super positive about it! Maybe he wished that it could have been something with the whole band. Tony and I did one improv gig at [Philippakis’ club night] Milk in Paris and Jimmy [Smith, guitarist] joined in. We were hoping that we’d do more together live, but alas…”

Once we spoke and you said you were walking through Paris during one of the many strikes – trash was piled high and things were burning. A lot of what Tony did was quite socially-minded, so how did you approach the lyrics to this record and bake in that very French defiance?

“I needed to not write the lyrics from the same perspective as I would more intimate Foals tracks. I wanted it to be more protest-driven. The language that Tony and I shared was him encouraging me to write lyrics that were more socially-engaged.

“You couldn’t shy away from it, and Tony encouraged me not to. There were literally mice peaking out at you from garbage piles on the way to the studio. That sense of combat and social decay permeates the record. By virtue of it being a collaboration between the two of us, I probably felt empowered to write a certain type of lyric that perhaps wouldn’t feel quite right within Foals. It has that Parisian protest spirit to it.”

What does the EP tell us about that?

“There should be a feeling of galvanisation, and that all isn’t lost. You can create beauty around and outside of things being on fire. The record is soundtracking this feeling of precipice. It doesn’t impart a specific message other than being the soundtrack to the protest. It isn’t didactic in any way – that isn’t my style.”

Foals’ Yannis Philippakis. Credit: Tom Oxley for NME

When Tony died in 2020, how did that impact your relationship to the songs?

“We had done a couple of other sessions where I would stay on in the studio and Tony would leave some days. Then COVID struck and we lost all momentum. It became something that was on the back-burner. It probably could have quite easily dissolved into the ether. We had plans to pick stuff up again after COVID, then I was just hit with this news that he passed away. It was quite sudden and no one expected it. He wasn’t young, but he was healthy and he was strong. It just shocked everyone.

“After feeling grief and putting his records on for a couple of days, it just became clear to me that we had to finish it. There was something crushing about not having completed it while he was alive. It was so close to completion and I just feel like it needed doing justice – just to finish it off, get it out and to show people what a cool thing we had made. It needed to be done right and in his memory, out of respect for what was a chance encounter with him in a way.”

What made it feel like fate?

“We met in a studio, he didn’t really know who I was, he didn’t give a fuck, we smoked some hash together then we wrote some wicked tunes. It sounds a bit hippie, but our spirits got on. It was like something larger than the realities of our lives. We wouldn’t exchange stories. There was a lot that we didn’t have in common, but what we had in common was  a shared language that was separate to your everyday experience of making a friend. That’s why it’s such a special experience for me in my life.”

How did you overcome that challenge of finishing this without Tony and keeping it imbued with his spirit? Did you hear his voice in the studio?

“Thankfully the Vincents had worked with him a bunch so they could say what Tony would and wouldn’t have wanted. They guided a lot of that principle, but a lot of the tracks were almost finished and most of what needed completing were my parts.  We didn’t actually mess with that much of the original tracking. Most of the tracks were done from a jam done twice – they weren’t replayed, there weren’t multiple takes.

“We didn’t make this EP like a record or an album where there’s a defined destination and an idea of perfection that we were striving for. It was liberated. It was very rough and ready and very fast. Once the instrumentals had been captured, they weren’t tinkered with much at all.”

Tony Allen (Picture: Bernard Benant / Press)

How did it feel when it was finished? Did you feel like you had a record that Foals would have partied to in your house back in 2008?

“Yeah, probably! Some of it felt like me being invited into a Tony track and getting to do karaoke over it. I felt like we’d made something precious and rare. It’s one of his final recordings and is a collaboration that can never exist at any other time. It can never be recreated. I love combination of cultures and generations of me being born in 1986, Tony being 70-something when we started recording and from Lagos with an incredible life story before being based in Paris.

“All of these cultural and generational components and experiences that we brought in while looking at life through two different lenses. It just feels like a treasure to me.”

And your mother is South African, so you’ve always had this music in your life?

“I have. I came into Fela Kuti a bit later, but there’s definitely been a lot of Soweto music and South African music that I grew up with. That’s partly why I play guitar like I do. I took more inspiration from records my mum was playing than I ever did from Jimmy Page or any rock guitarist – that’s not really my lineage.

“I play the guitar in a very crude way where it’s not schooled in the canon of rock music from the UK or anywhere else. The sound that I chase with the guitar is one that comes from more of an African place. Whether Marley, Nigeria or wherever, there’s a shared style of guitar playing that gets me out of my seat.”

What can you tell us about the context of ‘The Yaw’ and what you’re launching here? What happens next?

“I don’t have the answer to that, and that in itself excites me. I just wanted to put this record out. To me, the Yaw is a kind of collaborative orbit that exists going forwards. I like the idea of it being on this axis that spins: members can rotate, future collaborations can occur, but there’s no pressure for anything. I want this to be something that is fluid and solely driven by freedom and creativity, and not by any concerns. The Yaw is just an open parachute, and we’ll see when it gets deployed.”

Foals’ Yannis Philippakis. Credit: Tom Oxley for NME

Anyone on your bucket list to pull into The Yaw’s orbit, or Yawbit?

“Yawbit – I like that! I’ve been talking to a Malian guitarist called Gimba so I might do some sessions with him. I’ve got some old recordings with Karl Hyde from Underworld and I think it would be cool to revisit those and do some collaborations there. Maybe even some Greek musicians? I like the idea that The Yaw would be a culturally diverse project, so it’s not staying in one place for too long.”

“This record is called ‘Lagos Paris London’, maybe the next will be ‘Berlin Athens Burundi’ or something. We could have these triangular locations and see how the records come about.”

There are live shows on the way too, right?

“There will be some live performances of the music. The band will probably be made up of the collaborators who worked on the record, and then some players that used to play with Tony or are from that lineage.

“It’ll be the EP and maybe some other bits that were floating around at the time or stuff from those Milk nights, but it’ll have quite a wild and free improvised spirit to it. It’s going to be a jam.”

This is more of a collective, right – and not the launch of ‘Yannis Philippakis – solo artist’?

“No, not at all. If I was to do a solo record it would probably not be this. This is meant to be an archival presentation of an amazing thing that happened. I very much believe that I want it to be out now in 2024, but if I was to record something from scratch right now, it wouldn’t be this.

“This is definitely meant to be a homage and a release of the work that happened with Tony Allen; it’s not like ‘The Yannis Philippakis Experience’.”

The last time we spoke was before The Confessions, a play that you wrote the music for. The show was great, and we hung with Friends star David Schwimmer at the afterparty. Are you getting a taste for that world?

“The Schwim! He’s been coming to Foals shows for a few years now. I like the creative world of it, and I want to have a hydra-headed creative output. I want to be able to just be expressive, creative and productive in different disciplines. Being in the theatre world or the film world where the music has this supporting role is really interesting. It’s just as creatively challenging and as musically inspiring, but it lives in this other shape that isn’t to do with being in a band or playing on stage.

“It’s to do with my identity. I like that you can write music that’s discreet and much more based on how it interacts with actors and the stage.”

Foals’ Yannis Philippakis. Credit: Andy Ford/NME

Do you have anything else in the works right now?

“I’m doing the music for another play. It’s by the same director Alexander Zeldin, it’s about Antigone, it’s going to be on at The National Theatre next year, it’s got Tobias Menzies [The Crown, Outlander, Game Of Thrones] in it, Emma D’Arcy [Wanderlust, Truth Seekers, House Of The Dragon] and Emma Mackey [Sex Education, Death On The Nile, Emily].

“It’s set in present-day Britain, steeped in the housing crisis and in the tragedy of our time. It’s going to be intense, dark, heavy and cathartic, and I’m just starting the music for it now.”

And The Schwim will be there?

“The Schwim will be there”

Is he the most famous Foals fan?

“I’m not sure, actually. It’s either him or one of the Royal Family or something.”

Is Foals’ Jimmy still working on his ‘Cosmonaut’ solo project?

“He is The Cosmonaut, so it’s hard to hear what he’s up to. I spoke to him the other day and he’s definitely writing some stuff. The thing with Jimmy’s stuff is that it’s so good I always just want to harvest it for Foals records.”

Has there been much progress on the follow-up to Foals’ last album ‘Life Is Yours’?

“Absolutely none, which is fine. We just finished touring it in January, and before we make another Foals record we really want to have some time at home and apart to individually get replenished and be inspired – not make one out of a knee-jerk sense of obligation. We want the next record to be really special.

“We’ve been busy so it’s good to go out and smell the roses for a bit. I think we’ll make something special. It’s fucking great that Walter [Gervers, bassist] is back and it will feel great when we’re writing in the room together. I think it could be the best Foals record yet. This space that we’re going to have over the next year will be crucial. The only thing we know is that it won’t be anything like ‘Life Is Yours’ – as is the Foals way. I’m pretty sure we’re going to subvert and get into some interesting, new place.”

Yannis & The Yaw’s ‘Lagos Paris London’ featuring Tony Allen

‘Lagos Paris London’ will be released on August 30 via Transgressive, and is available to pre-order or pre-save here. Check out the tracklist below:

1. ‘Walk Through Fire’
2. ‘Rain Can’t Reach Us’
3. ‘Night Green, Heavy Love’
4. ‘Under The Strikes’
5. ‘Clementine’

The post Foals’ Yannis Philippakis tells us about The Yaw and his record with Tony Allen: “Our spirits got on” appeared first on NME.

Garbage’s Shirley Manson: “We’re losing bands from working class beginnings and risk-takers”

The iconic frontwoman on the reissue of 2005’s ‘Bleed Like Me’, the magic of Dave Grohl, plans for new material, and how “what’s happening to young musicians is a fucking outrage”

The post Garbage’s Shirley Manson: “We’re losing bands from working class beginnings and risk-takers” appeared first on NME.

NME

Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson has spoken to NME about the reissue of their 2005 album ‘Bleed Like Me’, the worsening conditions of the music industry, and the band’s plans for new material.

This week sees the alt-rock veterans drop their fourth album on vinyl for the first time, along with a raft of b-sides, remixes and rarities hitting streaming for the first time. While containing the singles and fan favourites ‘Sex Is Not The Enemy’, ‘Why Do You Love Me’ and ‘Run Baby Run’, the album arrived to mixed reviews and didn’t perform as well as its hugely commercially successful predecessors.

“To be a frank, I never had a particularly good relationship with that record until relatively recently,” Manson told NME. “We released it at a time of immense strife within the band, and dwindling interest from our record label and the general public.”

While the rock-leaning record has since become a cult favourite and sits warmly in the hearts of Garbage and their fans, ‘Bleed Like Me’ was made during a period of much inner-band tension and “unpleasant interference” from their label, Interscope Records.

“We were nobody’s child at that record label because they hadn’t wanted us there necessarily,” Manson admitted. “They had bought our label Almo, who had been a small independent label, and we had been sucked into this situation where we were a tiny fish in a massive pond. Interscope at the time were arguably the biggest player in the industry, and there we were stuck without an A&R that was interested in us.

“It was really stressful. They kept on pushing for us to work with people that we didn’t feel were the right fit. As a result of our resistance to that, they decided that we were being really difficult. It was at a time in the entertainment industry when people were much more pliable than we were.”

Relations then turned particularly sour when Manson had “a fortunate or unfortunate incident” on a flight from Los Angeles to London, when she was sat next to “a really famous rockstar” who let slip that Interscope had prioritised No Doubt over Garbage.

“I shan’t name [said rockstar] because I don’t want to cause too many ruptures,” said the frontwoman. “He’s really gorgeous and I love this person, but we got drunk together and he told me that he’d been present at an Interscope meeting where our future as a band had been discussed and there was a vote taken at the table where they decided if they were going to spend money on No Doubt or on Garbage. They decided to invest in No Doubt.

“No Doubt are friends of ours, we love them dearly and this has no bearing on them whatsoever, but to hear that from a well-known and highly regarded rockstar was devastating. He told me this story, and then it was war. I wasn’t going to do fuck all for that record label ever again.”

Manson explained how this led to a feeling of the industry only seeing space for one “female-fronted rock band” on the scene.

“We were meeting the same resistance at radio stations too; they were also saying, ‘Well we’ll be playing No Doubt, we won’t be playing Garbage’,” she recalled. “The domino effect was devastating. It caused us to turn in on each other because we were so frustrated.

“We couldn’t really move anywhere and we felt like we were playing with our hands tied behind our backs. That will drive a person insane, and it did. We all went mad and we took the pressure out on each other. It caused a lot of heartbreak.”

Garbage. Credit: Frank Ockenfels III

Check out our full interview with the NME Icon Award winner below, where she also pointed out how circumstances are only worsening for new and rising artists, and revealed the band’s plans for an incoming new album.

NME: Hello Shirley. Having the rug pulled out from beneath you before the release of ‘Bleed Like Me’ must have done serious damage to the band’s confidence?

Manson: “When you release a record, you’re really leaving yourself vulnerable to criticism, to disappointment, to shame, to embarrassment. When you open yourself to public criticism, yes you can enjoy great praise, which is wonderful and lovely – but it doesn’t touch you like the negative criticism does.

“Although the record sold pretty well – I think it actually sold a million copies in the end – it was received disastrously! We’d got the most damning reviews we’d ever had telling us that our career was over, nobody wanted to hear from us, and there were a lot of cruel comments.”

Bust still you had to soldier on?

“We had a tour planned, so we just went on tour and forgot about the criticism, but things had got so bad between us as a band. We were in Australia and due to come to the UK. Our manager called to tell us that the tickets weren’t selling very well so I just sat down with the band and said, ‘I love you, but I’m done and I’m going home – cheerio, goodbye!’

“The band wanted to go into the studio to make another record, but I literally said, ‘It wouldn’t even matter if we wrote [The Beatles’] ‘Sgt Peppers’ – they would piss on it anyway’. I didn’t feel like we were being judged on the music, it was all on people’s bigotry towards us and who they believed we were.”

“I went home and I stayed home, and then the shit hit the fan. My life fell apart and we didn’t get back together for five years after that.”

Dave Grohl plays drums on ‘Bad Boyfriend’ on the album. Did that not give you guys a boost at the time?

“Dave Grohl is the most incredible expanse of joy that you can hope to meet as a human being. Him stepping in and playing on ‘Bad Boyfriend’ was a big boost to the male members of the band. He was a really good friend with Butch [Vig, drummer], of course, through their work with Nirvana [Vig produced ‘Nevermind’].  I had very little to do with it, but I had very little to do with the members of the band at this point. That’s the eternal loneliness of being the only female in a male band, but that’s a whole other story.

“I love Dave Grohl with a passion, as does the world. He’s really something. He came in and bolstered the flagging spirits of my male counterparts and sprinkled his fairy dust on our record. We have that for all eternity.”

How would you describe that impact of being told, ‘There’s no room for you’?

“It was devastating. ‘There’s no seat at the table’, was what we were being told. Yet we were still expected to fulfil our contract and to go around the world on tour to garner an audience for the record. It was soul-destroying. We all knew there was no point to it. If your label does not give a shit about you then the rest of the world is not going to give a shit about you.”

And the industry had changed so dramatically since the ‘90s too…

“Yes, this was also the period of Napster and file-sharing that we were unaccustomed to. Nowadays, we’re all used to it. We’ve been beaten down and forced to accept the shit sandwich that we’ve been offered. Back then, we had been used to releasing records, records being sold and there being a transactional relationship. Then all of a sudden our music was literally stolen.

“I think I can speak for so many musicians: it was devastating to have your music leaked and have no control over how you’d release a record. You had no idea of how it would drop, who had access to it. That would affect your chart positions, and you were judged by your chart positions. We felt like we were getting shysted at every turn, and we didn’t believe in ourselves enough to think that we’d have a future beyond that.”

Metallica received a lot of backlash for their war on file-sharing at the turn of the century, but does that all seem fair enough now with hindsight?

“It was outrageous, because poor old Lars [Ulrich, drummer] was painted as a greedy capitalist. To be frank, I was also in that fight, I was very vocal about it, and I received a lot of flak too. It’s not my story to talk about Lars, and I wouldn’t take anything away from him for being a hero, but I did have the foresight to see where this was going, and the people who criticised Lars did not.

“We’ve seen a horror story develop, basically. Those of us who emerged in the ‘90s and before have been lucky enough to weather this with a lot of resentment in our hearts. We can still survive, but people have to understand that when you make music and it is taken from the musician for free by a record label who make billions of dollars from it and shares it with a streaming company who also make billions, then there’s some discrepancy here.”

Do you see an uneven playing field in music?

“Now what you have are musicians who are independently wealthy – maybe they come from a wealthy family – and they can start to carve out a career for themselves in the music industry. You have the old guard who made records before 1995; they themselves can survive. Then the artists who enjoy phenomenal success also survive. What you lose are the baby starter bands coming from working class beginnings and any middle class of musicians. They’re not the ones who are making really accessible, mainstream-sounding music – but the ones who take risks. Perhaps they’re making music that’s perhaps super heavy, that’s esoteric and strange.

“You can hear that capitalist and economic strain in today’s music. It’s nonsense and it’s a heartbreak. Everyone is losing out. What’s happening to young musicians – and I underline the word young – is a fucking outrage. Somebody in government needs to go and help them out, because this is not right. It’s abusive.”

A lot of bands have been speaking out on the financial strain – English Teacher and Another Sky to name just two. People are saying the government are ‘hostile’ towards creatives.

“It’s not that they’re hostile to them existing, it’s just that they don’t give a fuck about them existing. We’re talking about a capitalist system and all they care about is profit. Not only do they care about profit, but they want more profit. Nothing works like that in the long-term. You can’t make infinite wealth. Things reach their apex and they can’t go beyond that.

“These record labels are unwilling to accept that there is a limit to what a musician or an artist can make for them. They’re created this system that’s akin to throwing so many bodies at this problem – one will get to the other side, many will not, and they’ll pump enough money into the lucky artist to reach global saturation and squeeze as many pennies from it as possible.”

Garbage’s Shirley Manson, winning the 2018 NME Icon Award. Credit: Dean Chalkley for NME

And it’s getting worse?

“We used to think that the record labels were bad enough back when we were coming up, but they were angels compared to what’s going on now. It’s really frightening and depressing. You see all these kids in mainstream pop and they look wrung-out and exhausted in their late teens and early 20s. They’re pitted against each other like racetrack dogs and they’re working every hour that god sends.”

This and your own experience seems to echo what’s happened to RAYE. She was held hostage by a label who wanted things their way, then she spoke out, broke out, and then cleaned up at the BRITS…

“That’s a glorious story. What a fantastic triumph of art over industry. It’s really a thrill. I heard that record last year and thought it was really interesting. She’s talking about very different things to the factory-made pop stars, and as a result she’s fucking swept the board.

“Record labels have algorithms and patterns. They want homogenisation. They don’t want the individual. It’s Orwellian. There are always people who break that mould and make exciting music, but when you listen to modern radio you can really hear the impact of those logarithms and expectations. It’s stifling.”

Do you see huge change incoming?

“There is a practical side of me that wants to believe there’s always a reckoning on the way. I want to believe that, and perhaps there will be. The fabric of a society is reliant on the morality of the people. We the people need to stop accepting these shit sandwiches. We’ve become a society that has become very cowed and scared to speak out. We’ve become accustomed to a lot of cruelty from our governments around the world. It will be dependent on the people if we’re going to hold anyone to account.”

Is that likely?

“I don’t know if society gives enough of a shit about musicians to save them. Very soon we’ll have AI-generated music. It’s happening already. We’re going to lose something very beautiful in the process. Even if you think back to the ‘70s and the incredible artists we had then, I don’t see them now.

“There are a few absolute jewels – really exciting and wonderful people – but that’s an exception to the rule rather than the artists you tend to see.”

Your last album ‘No Gods No Masters’ got some of the best reviews of your career. Has that given you a certain compulsion for your next album?

“I was really delighted that ‘No Gods No Masters’ was received so well because we had no expectations whatsoever. Going into this next record, I feel a shift. I’m trying to dampen my outrage. As a society, we’ve become so beaten down and broken-hearted. I’m trying to reach for something that’s a little bigger than me, because if I don’t then I’m going to drown in my own dismay.”

Where has that dismay come from?

“I had a hip replacement last year. I feel amazing and wish I’d done it earlier. I was in excruciating pain for so long after falling off the stage at KROQ’s Weenie Roast about eight years ago. I also lost my dog, which doesn’t sound like much but it has literally ruined my life. The loss of her has coloured everything. Having a body that didn’t work, losing the joy of my life, it’s been a real challenge to try and get myself back up and not be destructive with my depression and my rage. They always need to be tempered.

“I’ve been managing to go through that struggle and meet the world, which is demonic. Everything I’m seeing on my social feeds feels demonic. All of us are fighting that on a daily basis and it’s poisoning everything. We all need to fight to not let our hearts become ice-cold.”

So the next album is the calm after the storm?

“It’s a searchlight, this record. After scorching the earth, we’re coming out of a filthy cave with a searchlight. We’re looking for shards of life and humanity.”

Do you think we’ll hear new material this year?

“We are in the studio as we speak, actually. It’s supposed to be done by the end of May, and we’re on target. It’s amazing; we are the little engine that could but nobody ever thought would.

“No one ever bet on us. We are the classic underdog in a way. Our public success was a long, long time ago – and since then we’ve operated from an underdog status. It feels like we’re really earned our spot on the team, which brings with it a way to enjoy that I didn’t when I was young.”

And you get to return to Wembley Arena on your upcoming tour?

“Can I just say that coming to London to play Wembley for the first time since 1999 feels extraordinary? I never ever thought I’d get back there. To come back to the United Kingdom and play that venue, which we played at the absolute height of our success, as a 57-year-old woman in the music industry with very little support but based solely on the connection we have made with other human beings. I couldn’t be looking forward to it more.

“What I remember about the last time we played was that we had been Number One in various countries around the world, my idol Chrissie Hynde came and sang with me on stage, my mum and dad were there, my sisters were there, it was a glorious moment in our career and really exciting.”

“I can’t imagine how it’ll feel because last time I didn’t feel I deserved it. This time around, however… This is our hard work, this our tenacity, this is our ability to survive a fucking unbelievable and treacherous industry that doesn’t exactly lend a hand to veteran musicians – especially older women.”

The reissue of ‘Bleed Like Me’ is out now. Garbage will be touring the UK and Europe throughout the summer. Visit here for tickets and more information.

The post Garbage’s Shirley Manson: “We’re losing bands from working class beginnings and risk-takers” appeared first on NME.

Ed Harcourt talks “reflective” new album and his work with Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Lisa Marie Presley

Harcourt tells NME what went into “all bangers no mash” album ‘El Magnifico’, and his regular appearances with “family” The Libertines

The post Ed Harcourt talks “reflective” new album and his work with Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Lisa Marie Presley appeared first on NME.

NME

Ed Harcourt has spoken to NME about what went into his “reflective” new album ‘El Magnifico’, as well as his work with The Libertines, the success of Sophie Ellis-Bextor and his unheard music with Lisa Marie Presley.

Released last week, ‘El Magnifico’ marks Harcourt’s 16th studio album – following the two instrumental records ‘Beyond The End’ and ‘Monochrome To Colour’, and the full-bodied spiritual successor to 2016’s acclaimed and rock-leaning ‘Furnaces’.

“It’s been an interesting eight years,” Harcourt told NME. “I got out of London and moved out to the countryside to a little village in Oxfordshire. After ‘Furnaces’, I proceeded to take stock a little bit – but I didn’t really write any lyrics. I made two cinematic instrumental records, but once I had those out of my system around 2020, that’s when I started writing ‘El Magnifico’.”

With the “apocalyptic dad rage” of ‘Furnaces’ drawing on the ominous nature of where world politics was headed, Harcourt noted that many themes of the record became more of a tragic reality.

“What can I say? I’m a sage, I’m a prophet, I’m a soothsayer!” he joked. “After that, I had no desire to write lyrics. The fallout of ‘Furnaces’ was quite heavy-hitting, so I just had to ruminate and take a step back. The meditative aspect of doing ‘Beyond The End’ and ‘Monochrome To Colour’ was a nice reinvigorating process – it was like a reset button.”

He added: “I also had ‘Loup GarouX’ [side-project with  Gorillaz and Senseless Things’ drummer Cass Browne and The Feeling bassist Richard Jones] – which was great because I could continue the madness and chaos of the post-’Furnaces’ sound.

“What was great about that band was that it meant I could go straight back to writing songs on the piano, because you’re always reacting against something else. ‘Oh, I’ve just been writing some loud and angry guitar music, now I better get onto the piano for some sweet, romantic songs’.”

Ed Harcourt. Credit: Steve Gullick

The years between also saw the past Mercury Prize nominee complete his trilogy of albums produced for Sophie Ellis-Bextor, make some more high-profile appearances with his “sort-of brother law” Carl Barat‘s band The Libertines, and the sad passing of his friend and collaborator, Lisa Marie Presley. Harcourt spoke to us about taking stock, and unheard music in the vault with the latter.

NME: Hello Ed. When you came to start writing lyrics again after ‘Furnaces’, what were you reaching for? 

Harcourt: “We’d gone into COVID and lockdown, and I had a lot of time to write! ‘El Magnifico’ came out of the ashes of that because a lot of the songs touch on escapism, mortality and elements of grief. There are songs about near-death experiences, fever dreams, daydreaming. It’s a very self-ruminative record. For my next album, I probably won’t focus on my own thoughts as much and will maybe be more of a storyteller.”

How did that sense of reflection inspire the sound of ‘El Magnifico’? 

“When I sit behind a piano and sing, it feels like an extension of me – like it’s where I’m meant to be. That’s where I’m most happy. I fell into that happy place behind the piano and took it from there. That’s what I’m known for, and this record is an amalgamation of everything that I’ve done. It’s got the fiery elements of ‘Furnaces’ but then touches of my earlier stuff in the lo-fi piano pop. You follow the white rabbit down the hole and see what happens.”

…To make a greatest hits record?

“Well, you know! It’s all bangers no mash, man.”

Ed Harcourt – CREDIT: Press

Having worked so closely with Sophie Ellis-Bextor, what’s it been like to see her become such a global phenomenon with the resurgence of ‘Murder On The Dancefloor‘ after featuring in Saltburn?

“It’s incredible. Who’d have thought? It just shows the power of viral memes and TikTok. It was inescapable, but good for Sophie. If people listen to that then they’ll hopefully listen to the albums that we did! I’ll be the little stain on her golden coattails. I’ll be in Abbey Road with Sophie soon, doing some writing with a mystery collaborator – which is really exciting. More on that soon…

“The real Sophie is an incredible woman. She’s a polymath and a renaissance woman. She’s a very loving and brilliant mother who has managed to juggle that with an amazing career. With that comes experience. Like everyone, she’s had her peaks and her troughs. To finally have this beautiful second wind is fantastic. If you stick it out for long enough, it’ll come for you.”

Are you hanging on for a Saltburn moment of your own?

“I’m waiting! I’ll be ready. I’m in the wings and poised to soar into the heady heights of viral meme-dom!”

Just keep your clothes on.

“No, I’m gonna get naked, I think.”

@bbcradio2 The Libertines perform an incredible cover of Alone Again Or by Love! #R2PianoRoom | Listen on BBC Sounds | Watch on BBC iPlayer #thelibertines #petedoherty #carlbarat #garypowell #johnhassall ♬ original sound – bbcradio2

You recently joined The Libertines on stage again for their recent BBC Radio 2 Piano Session. Were you involved in their new album ‘All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade‘? 

“No, I was just asked to come along and be MD on that session and just help the guys with the Love cover. I was impressed by them, and they did such a good job on that – especially Carl. Carl just nailed that guitar part. He was amazing. I’ve known them for so long, and Carl’s obviously family. I enjoy working with the guys; it’s always quite an experience. I just get a call on the day. I call myself ‘The Fibertine’.”

Speaking of legends, you worked with Lisa Marie Presley on her 2012 final album ‘Storm & Grace’. After she sadly died last year, you wrote about unearthing an unheard song you made together… 

“I was just going through the stuff that we’d done, and I found this song called ‘Light Of Day’. It’s so beautiful and hymnal, and she sounds incredible on it. It’s just sitting there. I’m not sure what we could do with it. It would be amazing for people to hear it because it’s truly beautiful. I would love people to hear it because the tone and inflection in her voice is quite beautiful. You can even hear a bit of her father [Elvis] in there. It’s really quite special.”

This is a big question, but what was she like?

“She was great – she swore like a sailor and could drink 15 pints of Guinness and still be standing. She was quite petite, so that was quite impressive. She was really open to everything when we were working, and we clicked really well. I really enjoyed working with her. It was quite mental; she came to my studio in London with her ex (Michael Lockwood) and they’d literally been chased through the city by paparazzi in their taxi. When you live that kind of life, it can be quite hard to be normal and stay grounded because it’s just a complete circus sometimes.”

And you felt that presence – ‘I’m in the room with a Presley’? 

“Yeah! I had a great time with her on New Year’s Eve once with her and Priscilla. That was all quite fun, but I’ll have to tell you more about that on a later date…”

‘El Magnifico’ by Ed Harcourt is out now. He plays at in-store show at Banquet Records in Kingston-Upon-Thames on Monday April 8, before a run of European summer headline shows and US dates with The Afghan Whigs.

The post Ed Harcourt talks “reflective” new album and his work with Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Lisa Marie Presley appeared first on NME.

English Teacher – ‘This Could Be Texas’ review: a band who dare to dream

The fantastic and the everyday collide on this landmark debut – an adventure in sound and words

The post English Teacher – ‘This Could Be Texas’ review: a band who dare to dream appeared first on NME.

NME

“Not everybody gets a time to shine,” muses English Teacher’s Lily Fontaine on the suitably star-gazing ‘Not Everyone Gets To Go Space’ from their long-awaited debut ‘This Could Be Texas’. It’s a tongue-in-cheek line that also pragmatically lays out the logistical nightmare and societal issues that a free-at-the-point-of-delivery intergalactic travel system would create for us normies. A pretty perfect encapsulation of the band’s marriage of the fantastic and the everyday, and a pithy reminder of where we’re at.

There have been a lot of headlines of late about how totally impossible it’s becoming for musicians, artists and creatives to exist – let alone thrive. Venues closing, streaming services not paying out, shareholders laughing at us, and opportunities disappearing: see some sad-but-true points made by James Blake, Another Sky, BRITs champion RAYE and The Last Dinner Party in their correction of those out-of-context “cost of living” comments.

Yes, doom surrounds us, but so does talent. If you’re mourning a drought of decent new bands, please find the nearest bin. The year is still young and you’ve already been spoiled with stellar first albums from NewDad, Sprints, Whitelands and Lime Garden, for starters. The odds are stacked against these bands, and yet they deliver. Leading the charge are Leeds’ own English Teacher.

Another set of dry and talky post-punkers, they are not. Heavenly album opener ‘Albatross’ lays the table nicely with some gorgeous indie-prog string and piano work with a smack of ‘90s peak Radiohead. Buzz-generating single ‘The World’s Biggest Paving Slab’ delivers a rollocking ode to the little guys with big ideas – namely fellow Northern legends the Pendle Witches, John Simm, Lee Ingleby and The Bank Of Dave – vowing that “no one can walk over me”.

That defiance carries through to the lilting ‘fuck the Tories’ vibe of ‘Broken Biscuits’ as Fontaine demands someone take responsibility: “Can a river stop its banks from bursting? Blame the council, not the rain”. ‘R&B’ is a jagged fiery revenge song that sees the singer spit back at misplaced presumptions about her race and place in music: “despite appearances, I haven’t got the voice for R&B”.

The utterly gorgeous ‘Albert Road’ will speak to anyone who remembers bittersweet moments of boredom and frustration, and teenage daydreaming themselves out of the wire in working class neighbourhoods. As Fontaine offers: “So don’t take our prejudice to heart, we hate everyone” and refreshingly concludes without irony or patronisation: “That’s why we are how we are, and that’s why we don’t get very far”.

You’ve probably heard English Teacher compared to Squid and Black Country, New Road, but there’s so much colour on the palette of this record than you may have thought. The moments of weight are always lifted by joyful and curious twists, the pathos by a human humour, and the mathier bits are never too wanky. ‘The Best Tears Of Your Life’ sees cyborg sounds and an orchestra totally in harmony, while the pure soulful balladry of ‘You Blister My Paint’ is a totally different approach to a tearjerker.

‘I’m Not Crying, You’re Crying’ glistens like The Smiths’ ‘The Headmaster Ritual’ put through the prism of Jonny Greenwood as Fontaine rolls through a stream of consciousness of her doubts. The album centrepiece is the title track, however, as it carries that lightness of touch with its nursery rhyme feel before building into kaleidoscopic art-rock wig-out and drifting back down to earth. What a ride.

What you have in ‘This Could Be Texas’ is everything you want from a debut; a truly original effort from start to finish, an adventure in sound and words, and a landmark statement. Poised for big things? Who knows if this industry even allows that anymore. Here are a band already dealing in brilliance, though – who dare to dream and have it pay off. Not everyone gets to go to space, but at least English Teacher make it a damn site more interesting being stuck down here.

Details

  • Release date: April 12
  • Record label: Island Records

The post English Teacher – ‘This Could Be Texas’ review: a band who dare to dream appeared first on NME.

Ryuichi Sakamoto – ‘Opus’ review: a man alone with a piano and his genius

The late composer says one final, breathtaking farewell

The post Ryuichi Sakamoto – ‘Opus’ review: a man alone with a piano and his genius appeared first on NME.

NME

“I need a break,” sighs Ryuichi Sakamoto between takes on Opus, his hauntingly beautiful final performance that’s been immortalised as a feature-length film. “This is tough – I’m pushing myself.”

It’s the only sign throughout the Neo Sora-directed film that he may be struggling. Before the composer lost his battle with cancer in March 2023, Sakamoto found himself too unwell to perform. Everything he had left went into this – one last portrait of a man, his piano and his genius.

Sakamoto selected these 20 songs, knowing that this would be his last goodbye and swansong. “The project was conceived as a way to record my performances – while I was still able to perform – in a way that is worth preserving for the future,” he said in a statement prepared prior to his passing. “In some sense, while thinking of this as my last opportunity to perform, I also felt that I was able to break new grounds. Simply playing a few songs a day with a lot of concentration was all I could muster at this point in my life.”

Pulling from his work with pop pioneers Yellow Magic Orchestra through to his many film scores and final album ‘12’, Sakamoto carves out a career-spanning setlist that not only showcases his breathtaking catalogue, but the arc of a life well lived. Every piece was performed at his own home and – staggeringly – recorded on an iPhone. The camera positions and lighting subtly change throughout to show the move from morning to night. If you thought that Nick Cave’s Idiot Prayer live film of the Bad Seed alone in Alexandra Palace showed an artist stripped bare, you ain’t seen nothing yet. This is a man inviting you into his 11th hour, and giving you all he has left.

You can see the dedication on his face as he squeezes out every ounce of feeling from each press of a piano key. Just the sight of his iconic glasses resting on sheet music is enough to bring a tear to your eye, but the tenderness with which he plays ‘Andata’ and ‘Bibo No Aozora’ is even more affecting. Just as they did for the films they were originally written for, ‘The Last Emperor’ and ‘Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence’ create whole new worlds at the tips of Sakamoto’s fingers – blockbusters in their own right.

Ryuichi Sakamoto in ‘Opus’. Credit: Modern Films

It’s one gut-punch after another when you realise what it means as Sakamoto lets every note breathe until it fades out. The work presented is an opus, and this is as intimate and human a concert film as you’ll ever see. As with his recent posthumous mixed-reality gigs in London and his final film score on Monster, Opus is yet another priceless gift from a once-in-a-lifetime talent – and a reminder of what we’ve lost. Goodbye maestro – and thank you.

Details

  • Director: Neo Sora
  • Release date: March 29 (in cinemas)

The post Ryuichi Sakamoto – ‘Opus’ review: a man alone with a piano and his genius appeared first on NME.

Exit mobile version