Chloë And The Next 20th Century Bella Union AAAA
Chloë And The Next 20th Century certain- ly borrows from the previous 20th century; each track is a pastiche of a bygone style, from bossa nova and big band to country and cool jazz. The album has an old Hollywood feel, orchestrated with
music reviews FATHER JOHN MISTY
Paraorchestra bring Peel’s unique compositions to life with their intricate playing, stunning timbres and intuitive interplay. Comprised of both disabled and non-disabled musicians with a range of instruments from voice to recorder to percussion and electronics, they combine to bring forth the pop music elements of Peel’s writ- ing (that can be heard in her collaborations with Paul Weller alongside classical forms of epres- sion, to produce something gloriously individual. JOHN-PAUL DAVIES
MESHUGGAH
strings, piano, sultry double bass, and drums played with brushes throughout. Throw in brass and woodwind ourishes, alongside splashes of marimba and timpani, and you get fully-edged showtunes, most prominently in opening track Chloë and lead single Funny Girl. Goodbye, Mr. Blue is a syrupy, Midnight Cowboy-esque country record incorporating FJM’s typically po- etic lyrics, tinged with the macabre, while Q4 is a regal, Baroque-style affair. The album concludes with The Next 20th Century: a suspenseful, cin- ematic track featuring ominous strings, fit for a Bond soundtrack. These songs are guaranteed to sound spectacular when the crooning wordsmith comes to Cardiff in April, accompanied by a full orchestra, for the 6 Music Festival. ROSANNA LEWIS
FONTAINES DC
Skinty Fia Partisan AAAA
A little over three years since Fontaines DC were the Next Big Things doing their damnedest to dispel this reviewer’s cynicism at a sold-out Car- diff show, the Irish quintet are onto album num- ber three. Skinty Fia effectively picks up where 2020’s A Hero’s Death left off, drifting further away from the youthful piss and vinegar of debut Dogrel into more reective and dare I say ma- ture territory. Bloomsday stalks the rain-slicked Dublin streets at night with collar up, bruised and glowering, the perfect marriage of Joy Di- vision and The Jesus & Mary Chain; opener In ár gCroíthe go deo embraces harmonising vocals to great effect; and The Couple Across The Way – consisting of just vocals and accordion – has the
poignant voyeuristic
of an Arab Strap song, Grian Chatten skew- ering a disintegrating relationship in bitter- sweet terms: “Nice to know that you’re still caring / Well enough to raise your voice.” BEN WOOLHEAD
profundity
HANNAH PEEL & PARAORCHESTRA
Northern Irish com- poser Hannah Peel has created a stunning album of indefinable work in collaboration with the delicately at- tuned Paraorchestra. With hints of musical innovator Hermeto Pascoal and minimal- ist Steve Reich in the
The Unfolding eal World AAAA
yet
Immutable tomic ire AAAAA
Formed 35 years ago in Sweden, nobody could have measured the inuence eshuggah would have on metal. Immutable is their first album since 2016 and sees the band taking a more stripped-down approach, whilst maintaining the bludgeoning grooves they’ve become known and revered for. Where that predecessor, The Violent Sleep Of Reason, was an extremely technical and complex album with more jarring time sig- natures, the main focus of the groove is still very much present on this latest offering. The whole band can be looked at as a rhythm section, where all conventional ideas of what guitar-based music can be are kicked to the kerb. The foundations of the songs are built around mesmerising, blunt- force low-end riffs where the drums fol- low along in a master- class of rhythm punc- tuated by screamed vocals. If you find yourself listening to this album without nodding your head, you need urgent med- ical attention.
GARETH MOULE PANIC SHACK
Baby Shack Brace ourself AAAAA
The enjoyment of making
your friends shouldn’t be reserved to a male, indie, members-only club – but sometimes it certainly looks that way. Panic Shack have been spending the last three years picking up instruments
music with
ers over the age of 21, Homesick should none- theless make for an enjoyable soundtrack for driving in the sunshine and imagining you’re in a 2010s mainstream indie music video, or, inevi- tably, background music for some youthful BBC drama. Lavish produc- tion takes some of the tracks to Killers ter- ritory, and themes of exhaustion at consum- er culture (Sick and alienation (Lonely wrapped up in home- town nostalgia will undoubtedly make for popular singles. ISABEL THOMAS
WARMDUSCHER
At The Hotspot Bella Union AAA
Warmduscher have upped the malformed funk on their third al- bum, produced by Joe Goddard and Al Doyle of Hot Chip. Hot Shot bangs out the filthy funk rock riffs a la N*E*R*D with a gleeful steel- drum Boney M cho- rus. The discofied Wild Flowers and its pottymouthed diatribes reek of Travis Bickle in a paranoid sweat seething in the corner of Studio 54. Sigue Sigue Sputnik and their Suicide/pop pastiche inspire Eight Million Machines, while Gary Numan would be proud of the big synths of Fatso, which is splattered with a few drops of Funkadelic. The warped ge- nius of George Clinton is imitated again on the 80s P-Funky Baby Toe Joe, while Twitchin In The Kitchen mashes up Sleigh Bells with leath- er pants-era Prince. Double Vision manages to blend the hardcore thrash of Dead Kennedys with Melt Yourself Down and Super Cool is as slick with the Detroit beats as LCD Soundsystem. CHRIS SEAL
WET LEG
Wet Leg omino AAAA
and proving that anyone can do it, building up a sizable following through word-of-mouth. This long-awaited EP will surely blow open the gates to a far wider audience. Sarah Harvey’s vocals sound even more charismatic in the studio than in their electric live shows, and Tom Rees of Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard – keeping things in the Cardiff family – lifts everything to a level where there’s very little evidence that this is a band of mostly novice instrumentalists. Some songs make a statement, while others are openly shallow and hilarious for it, like The Ick. Their enjoyment at being in a band is captured in every note, catchy and fun, full and satisfying. ISABEL THOMAS
SEA GIRLS
beautifully delicate woodwind sounds, fragmen- tary ideas and pulsing rhythms, The Unfolding does just what the title says – beginning with the glorious ten-minute The Universe Before Matter and then opening up into a wide-rang- ing, spacious sonic panoply. The musicians of
Homesick Polydor AAA
Hailed as ones to watch by the UK music estab- lishment for the last couple of years, Sea Girls release their second studio album, full of an- themic indie-pop. Most of the lyrics, though, are inescapably adolescent, and it’s not clear whether this is intended to satisfy a certain audience or is simply the result of mediocre writing. While this may get tiresome rather quickly for most listen-
Few artists scoop up the popularity Wet Leg have only after their first singles Chaise Longue and Wet Dream, though hian Teasdale and Hester Chambers’ “sad music for party people”, with its dry humour and lyrical delivery, caught the affection and acclaim of listeners and critics in 2021. Recorded in the spring of last year, before the world had even been introduced to the music of Wet Leg, the debut album amps up the playful- ness of their initial singles and keeps it running throughout the record, which is one for fans of Hinds and The Orielles. The album’s final track, single Too Late Now, is the duo at their finest, a brilliant closing note to a long-awaited record, and an embodiment of the uniqueness of Wet Leg’s music – high- lighting the pair’s abil- ity to combine witty lyrics with infectious instrumentals that cel- ebrate and encapsu- late the group’s sound and the messiness of young urban life.
CHLOË EDWARDS
More Music Reviews at
buzzmag.co.uk
39
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64
