Having already made the Manchester music scene take note with a bombardment of gripping live shows, toward the end of last year King Violetunleashed their debut EP to the rest of the world, and boy does the world need to hear it! Wielding riot grrl energy, the group have created their own darkly textured cosmos filled with hauntingly emotive guitar solos, post-punk drive and gothic soundscapes.
In the band’s own words: “The EP talks of our experiences as young women coming face to face with misogyny, the growing pains of leaving home and challenging relationships.”, singer Mai Anderson delivering her exposition of gritty 21st century life over the band’s complex and shadowy compositions.
Lead single ‘The Pedant’ is a storm of searing riffs, jagged drums and an accusing, chant-along, powerfully catchy chorus aimed at a cheating ex. ‘Brightest Eyes’ is a slow and sorrowful comedown, questioning the merit of a shaky relationship. ‘Tya’ seems to be about a temperamental cat, with a deep, pounding bass and drum ambiance that becomes a severe and unforgiving reprimand to a once cherished feline, unless we’re no longer still talking about the cat here?
Seamlessly, the track leads into final song ‘Do Me a Favour’, boasting jabbing guitar beats and a jaunty rhythm that make way to a spectral, assertive anthem against male bigotry and abuse. King Violet posses a 360 talent for commanding alt-rock singles and brooding atmospherics, not shying away from tackling mettlesome subject matter. Across their ‘Do Me a Favour’ EP, they have crammed the whole damned lot into one explosively powerful record.
The ‘Do Me A Favour’ EP was released on 25th November 2022 and is available to hear on all streaming platforms now. Find the video for ‘Tya / Do Me A Favour’ below:
It’s an absolute wonder the South Wales valleys aren’t a total hotbed of nihilistic, angry young punk rock groups, given the deep political and social history of the locale and the fact that even today driving up the Heads of the Valleys road can conjure a sense of melancholic angst in the pit of your belly. Up until now, Blackwood, Caerphilly, has only really had the one gang of musical sons to brag of (we’re talking about Manic Street Preachers, obviously) but Primitive Soul are having a go at changing all that.
Their second single ‘Euphoria’ is a capricious, low slung, punk rock hymn to the blasé joy of wayward wondering, full of gunshot guitar assaults, surging solos and frenzied drumming. The four-piece assail their instruments with a blitzkrieg of fury but the overriding atmosphere ends up being one of a refreshing, if reluctant, optimism for “this new day dawning” rather than despair and destruction.
‘Euphoria’ was released on 1st August 2022 – soz, we missed it at the time! It’s available to hear on all the streaming sites now. We’ve put the Spotify link below:
2022 saw the 20th anniversary of one of British alternative music’s landmark releases, the one and only‘Up The Bracket’ by The Libertines. A record that grabbed the baton tossed on by The Jam, The Smiths and Oasis. What made it a landmark release? Try and picture the scene: The drabness of the early 21st century music landscape has been well documented, Britpop’s last party having taken place yonks before, Melody Maker magazine sinking under the mammoth responsibility of building something tangible out of the Manics, Mansun, Placebo, King Adora and JJ72, and a lacklustre new breed of Radiohead/Jeff Buckley fanatics were trying to get heard. Thank fuck, then, for The Strokes, Interpol, The White Stripes, The Vines and Yeah Yeah Yeahs for igniting a million young guitar loving hearts. But up until 2002 Britain was still missing out on the fun.
When The Libertines bounded onto the scene with their debut long player the party this side of the Atlantic truly began in a sweaty furore of Camden Town toilet venue gigs and sticky floored clubnights. The 20th Anniversary edition of ‘Up The Bracket’ documents the party well, with a pristinely remastered version of the original release, a record that took the rawness of 70s punk rock and fused it with elements of Romani-Belgian jazz, dub and sixties melody, whilst the band still managed to come across as barely able to play three chords on their Epiphone Coronets. Lyrically the album plundered William Burroughs, Tony Hancock and Jean Genet to sound criminally drugged up, comedic yet erudite, spinning romanticised yarns of rock’n’roll, riots, heroin, sickness and a lust for life, all played out in the back streets and whisky cafes of East London. In the half-arsed first half of the 2000s the oomph of The Libertines and ‘Up The Bracket’ was desperately needed.
‘Live at The 100 Club’
So we’ve gushed enough about the LP itself and its notability, what about the boxset? Our first stop in the big container of audible goodies is the ‘Live at The 100 Club’ disc: Hearing the best bands through the intricately honed artform of a studio album is only ever half of the story and to fully understand the brilliance of The Libertines you need to know what they were like onstage between 2002-2005. Their gig at Oxford Street basement venue the 100 Club on 4th October 2002, scene of the Sex Pistols era-defining shows three decades earlier, is The Libertines at their top-throttle finest.
We’ll need to set the scene visually for you, the boys looking the stylish street urchin part in uniform of torn t-shirts, leather jackets and drain pipe jeans held together at the knee with gaffa-tape, scruffed up floppy barnets and cigarettes permanently hanging from their lips as the sweat of three hundred and fifty pogoing souls drips off the venue’s iconic red walls. Choosing to swiftly hammer through their early sets, the show clocks in at a sprightly 26 minutes, The Libs showcasing the best of their still-to-be-released debut album, kicking off with a rendition of ‘Horrorshow’ peppered with barks and stop-start guitar.
Non-album b-side, and one of their best tracks, ‘The Delaney’ gets a rowdily canorous outing with Pete Doherty sounding as if he’s having a go at devouring the mic at the same time as singing into it. Carl Barat wrangles the vocals for a hearty, feedback dappled execution of ‘Begging’, with lead duties passing back and forth between the duo throughout the whole tumultuously spirited performance, backed by the assuredness of Gary Powell’s deliberately rudimentary drumming and John Hassall’s stalwart presence on the bass. The LP’s stand-out single ‘Time For Heroes’ gets dedicated to Scottish poet and early Libertines drinking buddy Jock Scot, ‘Boys in the Band’ a suggestive celebration of the perks of being in a band that feels forever on a knife edge, and ‘I Get Along’ descends into a clamour of nosediving microphones, cheers and whoops as the set fades to a close. The Libertines epochal live show committed to wax.
‘Up The Bracket: Studio Outtakes’
It’s well known that ‘Up The Bracket’s producer, Mick Jones of punk icons The Clash, had the band take a live approach to recording sessions, getting the group to play the tracks shoulder to shoulder, capturing the whole caboodle on tape and picking the best of the crop for the final track list. The existence of leftover tracks from the cutting room floor fell into Libertines fandom folklore from that day to this, helped along by a scribbled out inclusion of early song ‘Breck Road Lover’ on the release’s back cover, so to have this goldmine included as another disc in the box set is, crudely put, every hardcore Lib’s fan’s wet dream. We’ve picked out out favourite noticeable tracks from the set that you should really get your ears around:
Ha Ha Wall – Although present in a few Libertines setlists around the 2002-2003 era, it wasn’t until their second, eponymously titled album that ‘The Ha Ha Wall’ received a full release. This version is largely an instrumental with bare bone lyrics and an alternative second verse. A version of an eventual classic in it’s infancy.
Bangkok – Cropping up in demo form on the b-side of ‘Time For Heroes’, this version of ‘Bangkok’ is speeded up further than the original with lyrical changes and additional guitar noodling. Arguably the definitive version, although a rerecorded version from the second album sessions is floating about the internet somewhere.
What A Waster – Originally produced by ex-Suede guitarist and solo legend Bernard Butler and put out as The Libertines first single, ‘What A Waster’ has gone down in musical infamy. The UTB version is more in keeping with their debut LP’s rough n ready stylings, removing Butler’s conventional sheen and is the only Mick Jones produced version of the song available.
Breck Road Lover – A clear near-inclusion on the album’s final tracklist, ‘Breck Road Lover’ was pilfered from the Libertines pre-Rough Trade Filthy McNastys era output, a 1999 version with Pete in full David Bowie mode having leaked in the late 2000s. The swooning background “Ahhhhhs” from Mick Jones and lilting guitar solo evidence why the song was so close to being part of the record.
The Domestic – Another of the pre-Rough Trade songs but one that never wrangled it’s way onto the internet and so remained largely unheard to the Libertines fandom until now. ‘The Domestic’ is a darker, bluesier, Doors-like song than we’re used to from the boys in the band, earnestly debating how to dispose of a corpse from some ‘domestic incident’, choosing to chuck the old sod to the waves of “old father Thames”.
Don’t Talk To Me – “Mick, we’ve just written a song”… what follows is the blueprint for ‘Up The Bracket’ b-side ‘Skag & Bone Man’ with radically embryonic words, even scrappier sounding than the legendary finished product, ending with Carl asking Gary if he’s embarrassed cos he took his t-shirt off – if only Gary knew they’d barely keep their tops on for the next ten years.
The Wolfman – In their early days The Libertines weren’t just a band, they were a whole cast of Dickensian characters woven into a tale told through NME interviews, internet message board posts and gig support slots. The most high profile of this gang was poet and singer Wolfman, featured in Libs-lore like some mesmerising and lovable doped-up pantomime villain. The song bearing his name was much performed in Wolfman’s own sets and early Babyshambles shows but The Libertines version had been shrouded until now. An 8 minute epic including a lot of howling and verse from the artist himself.
Radio America – The prettiest, most fragile tune on ‘Up The Bracket’ and a version that doesn’t feature a worse for wear Carl Barat falling over into his mic stand half way through. Their ‘Stay Free’.
7 Deadly Sins – The Libertines at their most Django Reinhardt, a beautiful acoustic strum of a number about being damned if you do and damned if you don’t with some tender guitar picking and a more delicate vocal take from Barat than the demo version on the other side of the ‘Time For Heroes’ 7” vinyl.
‘Up The Bracket: Early Demos‘
When The Strokes burst onto the scene The Libertines upped their game from writing romantic 60s indebted lullabies, deciding instead to semi-consciously splice their Velvet Underground leanings onto a punk aesthetic, challenging their New York counterparts head-on, a process that gave birth to songs that would get them signed to Rough Trade and made up their debut album. The early demos collected here span the December 2001 – March 2002 time frame, an essential insight into the genesis of the band they would become.
We’re especially fascinated by the March 2002 demos. Referred to at one time as the ‘Ruff Enuff Stuff’ demos, they were recorded during a hinterland period where the lads were sans-drummer, so feature a drum machine all through ‘Time For Heroes’, ‘I Get Along’, ‘Horrow Show’, ‘Boys In The Band’ and ‘General Smuts’, the version of ‘General Smuts’ ending up as the nuttiest thing The Libertines have ever put their name on.
‘Up The Bracket: Demos, Radio Sessions, B-Sides & Live‘
A ragtag selection of sundry others, kicked off with undated demos, including a version of ‘All At Sea (Misty)’ – a gorgeously airy ditty that popped up in various unofficial forms throughout the Libertines history, until receiving a proper release on Peter Doherty & The Puta Madres album way off in the future of 2019.
A slew of Radio 1 Evening Session and Live Lounge features follow covering the LP’s singles, topped off by the curiously titled ‘Christmas Time’ – a contrarily festive rendition of Seigfried Sassoon’s sombre wartime poem ‘Suicide In The Trenches’ backed with chirruping harmonica and a chuckling Doherty and Barat. A total gem, followed by their iconic performance of Dame Vera Lynn’s wartime mood-lifter ‘We’ll Meet Again’.
All of the b-sides from the album’s single releases get thrown in, as well as three incendiary live tracks showcasing The Libertines at their punky, speed-freak, oblivion-hurtling finest – ‘Up The Bracket’ – live at the ICA, ‘Mayday’ – Radio 1 Live in Nottingham and, beginning with Doherty taunting the crowd, and now the boxset listening audience in 2022, asking “D’you want some more?”, a rambunctious, full blast rendering of ‘The Boy Looked At Johnny’ live from The Libertines second home of Paris – venue unspecified.
We’ve stumbled across many an artist in 2022, but Harri Larkin have been one of our clear standout faves, so who better to celebrate the festive season with? Teaming up with fellow Sheffield maestroSam Scherdel, the yuletide troop have given an all-time December anthem a dazzlingly illuminated live makeover on their own version of ‘Fairytale Of New York’.
Putting a respectful sheen on The Pogues absolute classic, Sam and Harri pick up the roles of Shane McGowan and Kirsty McColl, imparting their timeless story of squandered dreams, Scherdel’s surliness plausibly countered by Harri’s exasperation, their tender tale backed all the way with lump-in-your-throat angelic violin and keyboard alongside Sam’s virtuoso guitar strum.
If you’re looking for a tune to wrap presents and scoff chocolate to over the next few days, you need look no further than this bauble festooned gem. Merry Christmas!
You can find Sam Scherdel and Harri Larkin’s live version of ‘Fairytale Of New York’ on all streaming sites now. You can also see the performance video below:
Laid back indie-pop couple Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley, better known by the moniker: Tennis, return to the public arena with an easy going, DIY soul groover. ‘One Night With The Valet’ packs in keyboard, drums and a fuckload of synthesiser, with Moore’s voice at it’s breathy, supernal sweetest over Riley’s immaculately unblemished production.
Not even nudging the two minute ribbon, the song’s lyrics abstractly contemplate temptation with imagery of white doves and scattered pearls, a spotless vision that neatly shapes the record’s clean aesthetic, complimented further by a promo video that sees the vocalist cavorting among goats, sheep and horses on a blue sky, sun-drenched country farm as twilight descends.
Pollen – Album Cover
The sixth album from Tennis – ‘Pollen’ has been given a release date on 10th Febuary 2023. You can pre-order it now. See the tracklist below:
1. Forbidden Doors 2. Glorietta 3. Let’s Make a Mistake Tonight 4. One Night with the Valet 5. Pollen Song 6. Hotel Valet 7. Paper 8. Gibraltar 9. Never Been Wrong 10. Pillow for a Cloud
There is no upside to a brutal music industry, unstable economy and cruel political environment. No upside at all. A world where these factors weren’t in play would be an infinitely better world. Thank fuck, however, that in amongst the chaotic miasma of shite that is the modern age we still have total punk rock heroes likeYNESwho are willing to make sense of and shout out stuff that needs to be noted with utter flare and pizazz.
The ‘Born Loser EP’ sees YNES gather together her latest vicious sideswipes at some deserving and very guilty targets. Lead single ‘I Wanna Be Overrated’ turns The Ramones ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’ on it’s anti-aloof head, advocating for brash, outspoken and seen over unimpressed and overlooked with little more than three chords. ‘Fake What Your Mama Gave Ya’ begs the embarrassed middle classes to stop ripping off working class culture and ‘The Daily Male’ begs misogynists and a certain newspaper to just stop.
The final two tracks trade in the short, spiky sneers for rueful melody, ‘Dizzy’ swerves its attention away from the world and instead angrily toward an ex who sounds like a nobhead, before leaving the way clear for the cut throat tender analysis of ‘Veneer’, picking the meat off the bones of latter-day capitalist culture and crying over the corpse of a million victorious but long-dead revolutionaries whose faces now sell on cheap t-shirts hawked by bots all over facebook. Rarely does bleak social commentary sound so deliciously energetic and vital.
The ‘Born Loser EP’ is available to buy in physical form at daemon.tv on CD with a stunning looking Zine. You can also hear the record on all streaming services now. Take a look at the ‘I Wanna Be Overrated’ vid below:
Some bands write songs, other bands manage to inject the essence of an entire novel into a sub-five minute piece of music. London purveyors of debauchDead Writers have managed the second feat on new single ‘Lisa’, a magnificent, vaudevillian chronicle inspired by ‘Notes From The Underground’ that recounts a Dostoevsky-style tale set in pre-revolution Russia, “the story of isolation, self-reliance and eventual salvation of Lisa – the ultimate quiet strategist”.
A deceptively jaunty piano line makes way for harrowing guitar and bittersweet, elegiac lyrics which in turn make way for a brash, unforgettable chorus, then the entire shebang becomes a lawless knees-up in some 1920s backstreet Montmartre jazz cabaret, frontman Paul Shine captaining the whole affair with the effortless finesse of Patrick Duff (Strangelove) or Brett Anderson (Suede) at the height of their powers.
‘Lisa’ was released on 9th December and is available on all streaming platforms right now. And if you’re mesmerised by Dead Writers wonderful latest single then you have to check out it’s incredible video that manages to bring Lisa’s tale to vivid life:
Years, scenes, SZNZ come and go, butWeezer remain. A band who have inspired many a scene but never been a part of any. And why have they managed to stick around? Because at some point over the past three decades they hit upon, if not pioneered, a winning formula that includes: 80s metal riffs, walloping hooks, occasional hints of orchestration and Rivers Cuomo’s voice that veers eternally between operatic power and breaking apart. ‘I Want A Dog’ showcases the entire gamut.
The LA band’s latest album project, ‘SZNZ’ – pronounced seasons – has seen the group shamelessly wield more creative freedom than ever before over the space of 4 EPs named after the seasons of the year, with ‘I Want A Dog’ being our first sample of final EP ‘Winter’. After a brain-frazzling 16 records of wild hits and misses, big singles and tanking albums, throughout ‘SZNZ’ they’ve taken pleasure in throwing caution not just to the wind but into a flipping force 10 hurricane and as a product it seems they’re now truly writing whatever the hell they want – chart-toppers be damned.
On their latest single, frontman Cuomo takes a break from writing about his 278th nervous breakdown caused by another dysfunctional relationship (no criticism, btw. That emotional honesty is why we love them), to consider the notion that maybe, rather than chasing down fame and love to achieve happiness, he should have just bought a chocolate lab puppy. And all of the aforementioned ingredients are featured – a sublime melody, tenderly picked acoustic guitar turns into a forceful, celestial, grin-inducing, Weezer-trademark riff before Rivers coos us out by telling us… all he wants is a dog.
‘I Want A Dog’ was released on December 9th 2022, available to hear now on all streaming platforms, along with the entire ‘SZNZ’ project so far – ‘Spring’, ‘Summer’ and ‘Autumn’ EPs. You can also buy them, along with a load of other Weezer merch, over on https://weezer.com.
There actually is a tunnel under Ocean Boulevard, a million reviews have rejoiced in telling the world over the past couple of days. It’s named Jergins Tunnel, leading to Long Beach, California, and having looked at a few pictures it’s a fair bit grubbier these days than the LA songstress would have us believe. But we’re sure thatLana Del Rey’sintention for the song wasn’t to be a lesson in urban geography.
Having almost created her own sub-culture of downbeat female pop starlets that artists like Phoebe Bridgers and Lorde have picked up and legged it away with, Del Rey’s more recent albums, since 2021’s ‘Chemtrails Over The Country Club’, have gone on to develop a cool, cinematic, 1920s Hollywood glamour sheen, first hinted at on third longplayer ‘Honeymoon’. Coupled with her fledgling poetry career (have a listen to her low-key spoken word LP ‘Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass’, if you weren’t aware it existed) and closer ties to folk legends Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell, ‘Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd’ finds our favourite American chanteuse more lyrically daring and timelessly credible than ever before.
With her unmistakable, serenely ethereal vocals backed by reverberant piano and plaintive violins all cast off with a robustly deliberate exhalation of vape smoke, the singer airily considers the notion of hiding your own lamp under a bushel through the imagery of a much romanticised early 20th century construction bricked up by luddite latter generations. Yet rather than bemoan her destined-to-be-overlooked charm, our narrator seeks out oblique hope in Harry Nilsson’s 1974 single ‘Don’t Forget Me’, imagining the record’s producer, one John Lennon, coaxing some genius all the way out of the classic American songwriter, proffering her faith to finding her own similar muse who’ll tell her a heartening “Baby, you can thrive!” in order to soothe a self-doubt riddled internal voice-over that would block in her mosaic ceilinged masterpiece of architecture forever.
Irish alt-pop duo whenyounghave already dished out two massive, expansive and perfectly formed pristine tunes this year with ‘A Little Piece Of Heaven’ and ‘The Laundress’ but before 2022 ends the Limerick twosome have decided to launch possibly the best of the bunch out into the world as well, just for good measure. ‘Unchained’ is as infectious and compelling as pop music gets.
Dreamily enchanting, Aoife Power’s lyrics describe militantly escaping a claustrophobic and disheartening arrangement with faith fully intact, the frontwoman allying with bandmate Andrew Flood to create an electronic effigy of grungy guitars, unabating beats and infective melody with a crepuscular edge and an even more all-embracing icy ambiance than anything they’ve released before.
Along with the new single, whenyoung have also announced the release of their 2nd album, Paragon Songs, due out on 7th April 2023. You can pre-order it now on ltd edition vinyl. The full tracklist is below:
1. Shame Train 2. Rubiks Cube 3. The Laundress 4. Home Movie 5. Ghost 6. A Little Piece Of Heaven 7. Even More 8. Shed My Skin 9. Unchained 10. Gan Ainm
12th April 2023 – McChuills, Glasgow 14th April 2023 – YES (Pink Room), Manchester 15th April 2023 – The Bodega, Nottingham 17th April 2023 – The Louisiana, Bristol 18th April 2023 – Omeara, London 20th April 2023 – Dolan’s, Limerick 21st April 2023 – Connolly’s Of Leap. Cork 22nd April 2023 – Roisin Dubh, Galway 23rd April 2023 – Whelan’s, Dublin 25th April 2023 – Spirit Store Dundalk, Louth
If you want to hear ‘Unchained’ now, you can take a listen on the Spotify link below:
Edge of Arcady 