The only way to consider Do That Again a critical success is to imagine it as a form of ‘here’s a bunch of statements about me – only one of them is true’. Todd meanders through characters or extrapolations of briefly-held thoughts/feelings and precious few are worth rooting for. He permeates a listlessness and boredom that results in lowbrow humour like fantasising about the hot bisexual woman who’s into guys this week. One track he’ll vibe to his buddy Omar Apollo’s lost-boy vulnerability and then next it’s the toxic situationshipism of R&B singer Brent Faiyaz.

At the center sits the standout “I Saw Your Face”, a track so strong that it almost justifies cobbling an album around it. Amid the album’s hotel-sex fantasies and laborious, Steve Lacy-inspired strumming, Todd’s insecurity and directness about his situation is breathtaking: “Life’s not a movie / I’m not a movie star”. A mix of Love’s “Always See Your Face” and Airborne Toxic Event’s “Sometime Around Midnight”, it also reverently mimics the tone of early Sebadoh classics like “Soul And Fire” or “Two Years, Two Days”. It is the sound of finding one’s sound.

Its dozen companions are superfluous. “I Saw Your Face” needed to be released and the others are, at best, a spiritual repeat of 2025’s self-titled outing and its 2024 predecessor, Sweet Boy. There’s just enough here to merit a quick glance when the next album arrives presumably in another 12 months’ time. Let’s see if he can do it differently.

The band first rose to prominence in the 2000s, but after a sort of garage-y debut album, they released a slew of highly experimental, avant-garde, quirky abstract pop and rock epics, putting out numerous records in a short time span. Then they stopped. And while they both have had robust solo careers, the duo – made of brother and sister Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger – have never made another FF record. And while they did give me at least some hope for another one down the line, this conversation focuses mostly on two of their most acclaimed and beloved LPs: Blueberry Boat and Bitter Tea, which celebrates its 20th birthday this year. We talk all about these two records, as well as what was going on before and around them, and also touch on live shows, songwriting, alter egos, and more. It’s a good chat with two people whose work I’ve been a dear fan of for many, many years. Thank you for listening.

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Thirty years or so on, the Elephant 6 collective is essentially no more, or you could say it’s only there in remnants (even the recent documentary about it is hard to find now). However, Barnes and of Montreal are still around, ever-shifting and changing and remaining in the forefront of some of the best art pop/rock to be heard.

Throughout, and up to aethermead, Barnes has tried on a wide variety of musical outfits, from pop and singer-songwriter fare to electronics and anything that goes in-between. Sure, some of those albums are much better than others – we’re at album number 20 now, after all! – but no matter what approach he’s take, Barnes has been able to avoid making a mess among those musical shifts – and the vast majority of the time has come out with something well worth your time. Throughout, he has been able to garnish the music with some equally detailed and often  intriguing lyrics and incredible visuals as album covers.

So what is new with aethermead – and it is up to each listener to decipher what lies behind it? Well, with the electronics are on the back-burner here. Musically, the 13-song cycle is one of the Barnes’ personally-tinged affairs and in many ways is a sort of a musical recap of what he has done in the 30 years.

Essentially, it covers every art pop element that Barnes has touched upon while maintaining an ebb and flow with out any detriments. Whether it is more succinct songs like “When” or more detailed ones like “From The Font of You”, Barnes picks and choses musical elements with such an ease that often escapes other artists.

And that personal element is of course detailed in the lyrics. It’s as if Barnes is opening up pages of his diary full of free-flowing, zany, and multiply-amusing thoughts: “Out into the jungle I go / I know you’re at work so I won’t bother you / Out into the wilds I climb undefined you’re offline and I’m not supposed to bother you / But I’m already dreaming harm-based entertainment meant to still our nuptial dread/I’m gonna miss you when I’m dead” (“Already Dreaming”).

Making things personal can often stifle artists, and make them come up with music that is not among their best. But Barnes has never had that proble, and still doesn’t seem to have that problem here. The interest in of Montreal might be waning, but aethermead sits not for behind his most accomplished works so far.

Given that the stage was in the middle of the room, I’m still not sure how Roxanne and bassist Nico Leibman (otherwise known as Harmony Index) seemed to suddenly appear on it without walking from any back room – at least that I could see. But it was a perfect introduction to a set that was filled with little miracles, beginning with the opening “The Age Of Innocence”. For this song, the two figures’ backs were towards me, which meant I was more focused on the vaporous delicacy of the piece and allowed me to be transported to a weightless between-states existence.

Roxanne then moved to the piano and was facing our way – a subtle piece of acknowledgement of everyone in the room. “Berceuse in A-flat Minor, Op. 45” lapped at our feet like gentle waves on a shore, until Leibman’s bass made a softly swelling introduction, suddenly making us realise we’d drifted dreamily into deeper waters than we’d realised. For the following “Keepsake”, Leibman donned headphones to keep a close ear on Roxanne’s crystalline piano and featherlight vocals, but as she swayed gently and passionately along she seemed just as wrapt as any of the audience members around.

Around the mid-point of the set, drummer Jem Doulton joined to make a trio that sifted through different dimensions. His subtle but essential work on “Untitled II” added not only rhythm but atmosphere, while he brought more of a chug to the sample-imbued and quietly fiery “Camille”.

The star, however, remained Roxanne, as she toured us through the majority of her stunning recent album Poem 1. While she would never be the kind to seize the spotlight, she is also unafraid to stand up within it and show her talents. On this occasion that was perhaps best exemplified by “One Shall Sleep”, where she essentially spoke her way through a field of aural flowers, her face directly in the spotlight’s tendrils – and everyone else in a simply trance like state, following her wherever she might tell us to go. 

Or perhaps it was “Atonement”, Poem 1’s breathtaking closer brought to impossibly shimmering life by the trio on stage. Doulton’s once again perfectly-light percussion and Liebman’s glistening globules of bass and heart-shaped backing vocals all perfectly set the canvas for Roxanne’s diaphanous and emotive vocal work, which settled on the audience like clouds of falling blossom.

Roxanne posted on her social media after the show that she had been shaken by performing to an attentive, adoring sell-out crowd in London. However, for those of us on the other side, the reaction was the opposite – after spending an hour in her resonance, a sense of stillness and inner peace seemed to take over.

We’ve picked out a few of the ones that have most excited us during this dark and dreary month. Enjoy our BPM Curates playlist for May below.

Below is the track list and some notes from our team about why they’ve selected them for this month’s playlist.

6LACK – “On Me” (with Odeal)

Love is the new Gansta is the album I’ve been waiting for 6LACK to make since East Atlanta Love Letter (his prior best, folks). The album I knew he had in him. It’s playful, boastful, loving, and selfish by turns – fully human R&B. It can also be truly pretty as hell. “On Me” is one of them ones. – Chase McMullen

Boards of Canada – “Father and Son”

Boards of Canada returned with their first album in 13 years this month and while it is unmistakably them, there are also some interesting new angles on the elusive duo’s sound. The use of vocal samples is more prominent than ever and on “Father and Son” they go so far as to chop up and splay out their subject’s words into a quasi-rap. The fact that the words are spoken by a stiff church counsellor type who probably has absolutely no groove makes it all the more fascinating and kinda funny. They might be soundtracking the apocalypse, but there’s still space for humour. – Rob Hakimian

Broken Social Scene – “Life Within The Ground”

I understand the fans balking at “jammier” Broken Social Scene. I dunno. I like it. They could be giving us nothing at all. Or, worse, truly mucking it up like some other Indie legends in their age range. I’ll take the loving, low key, chill shit. This song is a beaut. – Chase McMullen

Charli xcx – “SS26”

The end of the world. But make it high fashion. But also trashy. i.e. Charli xcx is in her element – even if the latest from her upcoming ‘rock’ album is more guitar focused than anything she’s done before. Her diaristic approach to lyricism is just as potent in the warm glow of a strummed six-string as it was doused in beats and BRAT green; but its pathos and honesty hits from a slightly different vantage. It’ll be fascinating to hear how this plays out across a whole album – Rob Hakimian

Christian Ortega – “Malandior II”

Ostensibly just another corrido, “Malandior II” catches the ear the way a burning photograph captures the imagination. Its distorted edges reflect either the pain caused by Christian Ortega (not a direct translation, but a malandron is like a scoundrel), the pain revisited on him, or just the whole inferno of disastrous relationships. The strings are plucked with a venom that misguidedly blames the instruments for the present shitstorm. The beliceño may come from a place separated from Mexico’s coastal strife, but he’s still downwind. – Steve Forstneger

Drake – “Ran To Atlanta” (feat. FUTURE & Molly Santana)

The fifth cut from Iceman, dropped 15 May as one of three albums Drake offloaded the same night, finds him answering Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” line about an unnamed someone running to Atlanta, and answering it, characteristically, by simply running there with Future. It is the first time the two have shared a track since Future’s incendiary verse on “Like That” in 2024, and the chill in the room has plainly thawed. Producer credits aside, the beat is a turbo-charged rage instrumental, distorted melodies, neon synths, devilish 808s — over which Future delivers what Clash’s Joe Simpson rightly called an accomplished performance.

The revelation, though, is Molly Santana, whose “new Hannah Montana” hook is the kind of branding rappers spend whole careers chasing. Petty, victorious, and fittingly Atlantan. – Mary Chiney

Ea Othilde – “I Forgot You”

With the recent single from her upcoming album, You’ll Leave the City (out on June 12), Oslo’s Ea Othilde offers a melancholy vocal that touches on shattered love and the way in which memory transforms the past into something … a bit more romantic, a bit more epic than it really was. Moody and stripped-down during the verses, the track then launches into fuller and more roiling choruses, closing with a well-layered and compelling jam. – John Amen

feeble little horse – “Dior”

“This lipstick is Dior / I pulled it out my pocket” begins Lydia Slocum on “Dior” over a buoyantly jovial melody; a surprisingly high-class seeming moment from the singer of Pittsburgh’s lovably scuzzy feeble little horse. “Pull me up off the floor” is the next line, and that sits more in tune with the DIY/basement sound we associate them with. It’s not long before the song catches up with a pile-on of melodious riffs and distortion and soon Slocum’s decorum has vanished as she points the finger: “you are not David Berman, you are not Kurt Cobain”. A head-spinning verse of “ah ah”s and suddenly we’re back at the Dior lipstick again as if none of that electrifying carnage happened at all. – Rob Hakimian

FISHER x Tones And I – “Favour”

There are countless skits and memes about guys like the toned, un-tatted, and tanned producers like FISHER – the epitome of club music’s bro takeover. Yet despite his penchant for ambulance-siren melodies, off-the-rack vocal accompanists, and general lack of innovation, tracks like “Favour” remain remarkably true to house music’s soul origins. He’s attacked for being a simpleton in a genre where simplicity is the key, an emotionless-looking figure with a keen ear for a heart-tugging hook. As he did with 2023’s “Atmosphere”, he connects. – Steve Forstneger

Foamboy – “LOUD BOY”

Another month, another foamboy track, another soulful electro-pop hit. Dishing out highlights one after the other, on “LOUD BOY” the Portland duo turn annoyance into a bop. “This song is inspired by a super drunk guy who kept dominating the conversation with boring takes about Lord of the Rings. No one could get a word in, and it pissed me off. That’s basically it!” PVC bass, jittery guitar riffs, and and starry synths; the elements are familiar but producer Wil Bakula and vocalist Katy Ohsiek find a way of forming them into something new. Use the hate and turn it into something people will love. A powerful conversion tool for days like these. – Ray Finlayson

Kenny Mason – “COME TRUE”

Kenny Mason has felt like an artist that’s almost there since pretty much the day he hit the scene. So on the precipice of fully breaking through. His new album, BULLDAWG, is doubtlessly his most “complete” artistic statement to date, but it’s also giddily high on its own ideas, spiraling off in different directions. Off first impression I found it charmingly ambitious, but perhaps too scatterbrained. However, after sitting with it, I now believe even its most sudden tangents are all part of a cohesive whole fully representing its creator: a rapper raised equally on, say, Paramore and OutKast.

Choosing a sole track after sinking in is a fool’s errand: there’s the skittering “BOUNCE WIT ME”, the glide of “CITGO”, the scorching Paris Texas collab “BE WHAT I WANT”, the rocking surge of “BLACK FIT”, the epiphany of album closer “7ELEVEN”, and plenty more, but I’ll go with “COME TRUE” as it feels a fair representation of the rush of ideas you’ll experience with this already undersung album. – Chase McMullen

Namasenda – “Alright”

The closer to the elusive (I mean, she must be, right? 1st EP in 2017 and a full length album only now?) Swedish artist’s recent album is a scorcher…of sorts. Think if NewJeans/PinkPantheress were even more deliriously high off PC Music? All I know is I played this track at a friend’s birthday this month and it had the whole room like:

–Chase McMullen

Olivia Rodrigo – “the cure”

There’s nobody that writes about romantic disappointment like Olivia Rodrigo. Combining adolescent anxiety with fatalistic urgency, Livvy is like the spiritual daughter of Billy Corgan and Liz Phair: alt-rock for a new generation! Starting as a sombre guitar-led ballad (think a cross of Placebo’s “Meds” and Smashing Pumpkins’ “Disarm”), the layered composition of “the cure” is augmented with an inventory of feminine insecurities: there’s always the other girls, there’s always imperfection, there’s always emotional distance. “I got toxins in my blood stream you tried hard to suck them out”, she sings, resigning at the impossibility of a partner solving the turmoil. As the song builds further and further, it finally explodes into a string led climax, with Rodrigo pleading: “Why can’t you come stitch me up? / Why can’t it ever be enough?” The anthem for all those whose summer will be a very lonely one, “the cure” is further proof that Livvy is an exceptional writer and performer. Her third album can’t come soon enough! – John Wohlmacher

We The Band – “SECRETS.”

“SECRETS.” is one of the quietest moments on We The Band’s new album 911!, but it lingers longer than many of the album’s bigger gestures. Produced around a hazy, slow-burning groove, the track unfolds with the feeling of a conversation happening after everyone else has left the room. We The Band resist the temptation to over-explain, allowing fragments of doubt, desire and hesitation to hang in the air unresolved. That restraint is what makes the song so compelling. Where much contemporary R&B mistakes confession for depth, “SECRETS.” understands that what remains unsaid can be just as revealing. The production is sparse but never empty, giving every pause and inflection room to land. In the context of 911!, it feels less like an interlude and a late-night groove — the kind of track that subtly becomes a favourite long after the album ends. – Mary Chiney

Widemouth – “Raincoat”

With this single from their just-released debut No Gasoline, Mak Carnahan and Jamie Eder tap into the modish neo-folk movement, nailing harmonies that bring to mind a cross between Phoebe Bridgers and Watchhouse’s Andrew Marlin. Alternately austere and entrancingly atmospheric, the piece captures the yearning that can exist between two people who can’t quite pull it together relationally. The lines “And now you’re wearing that look in your eyes like a firefly in a window / And you’re keeping time” land as potently descriptive, conjuring a desire that never comes to fruition and the way in which time continues to irrevocably pass. – John Amen

Listen to our BPM Curates: May 2026 playlist here.

aja is a poet and songwriter and composer, who has just released her second album of jazzy, inviting, varied, potent spoken word music, entitled the color of rain. And in this conversation, she and I talk a lot about this record. We get into what led to its inception, what some of the songs touch on specifically, as well as the musicality inherent in poetry itself. We talk about the people who worked with her on this record, what inspires her, and more. We also touch on poetry as an art form, and reading and writing moreover, which was especially intriguing for me as an English educator myself. It’s a wide-ranging, warm, intellectual conversation that I’m so happy I got to have, with such a poetic force as aja.

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Attention spans may well be diminishing in the face of instant gratification achieved by the dopamine release that doomscrolling provides, but it’s the erosion of our need to remember that’s perhaps most damaging to a sense of valuable lived experience. It’s erasing our humanity, it’s as simple as that. Even time-faded memories are better than recorded ‘actuality.’ Boards of Canada understand this. I mean, there’s a track here, on their first album in 13 years, called “Memory Death,” so…

The Scottish duo’s work to date has centred on analogue warmth, nostalgic melodies, and the concept of memory as cocoon. There’s an amniotic fluid quality to their back catalogue that’s surprisingly missing here as Inferno has a much more clinical and driven feel overall. That’s not to say it’s cold – it’s anything but. It just feels more aware of the current state of things. It’s a record that is cloaked in their signature audio tones, yet it weirdly feels like a step away as it inhabits the here and now rather than some re-imagined past. Rather than existing as an outlier to contemporary culture, Inferno feels like the most prescient and political work that Boards of Canada have ever produced. Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin have often felt like an anomaly existing within a liminal space of their own making, yet this record feels like a much more pointed statement of intent. This, by the way, is a good thing. 

Anyone familiar with their previous albums will recognise familiar tropes from their catalogue here – lackadaisical beats, samples that sound familiar yet also alien, and a glacial pace to the arrangements that essentially leads each song absolutely nowhere. But there’s a spring in the step of Inferno that places it as the (*deep breath*) pinnacle of their output to date. There’s a clean sound to the production which foregoes their usual haziness, and as oxymoronic as it is, there’s a sense of purpose to the record’s meandering nature. 

The voices across the record are entirely dehumanised: computers either proclaiming “I am God” (“Prophecy at 1420 MHz”) or failing to spell the word marvellous (“Age of Capricorn”), human voices with vocoders placed upon them to make them feel entirely performative and lacking in authenticity (“Father and Son”), and a narration about foetal development on “The Word Becomes Flesh” that is so devoid of any humanity that it feels like it’s sprung from the pages of Aldous Huxley’s dystopian masterpiece Brave New World. The record separates the organic from the organised; human coping is seen as more impressive than computer coding.    

“Hydrogen Helium Lithium Leviathan” is the most quintessentially Boards of Canada-y that Boards of Canada have sounded since Music Has the Right to Children almost 30 years ago. It’s one of many high points on the record, but where this is reverential to the band’s past there are tracks on Inferno that feel like a departure, though not wholesale. 

“Naraka” has a very assured feel to it, almost a swagger, which is contrary to their usual sense of introversion and anxiety. There are still pessimistic chords at the song’s heart, but they feel usurped by the urgent synth bass that is the track’s propulsive epicentre and the twinkling keyboard lines that cascade throughout. The vocal chanting – or appropriation of – are the warmest voices on the record. Where the lines of dialogue across the album feel distended and obfuscated by abstraction, collectivity brings focus. There is power in unity. 

It’s difficult to discuss Boards of Canada without relying on cinematic references – Blade Runner, Silent Running, and Solaris are all present in terms of aesthetic association and visualisation, but where those masterpieces lean into pessimism Inferno remains achingly optimistic (perhaps despite itself). “Prophecy at 1420 MHz” – the lead single from the album – could well be the key that unlocks the intention behind the record as a whole and connects to the concept of science fiction. 1420 MHz is the frequency of the hydrogen line, or the “Wow! signal” that many believe points to extraterrestrial radio transmission communication first observed way back in 1977. This feels a long way from the post-apocalyptic tones on 2013’s Tomorrow’s Harvest as we’re looking up at the stars rather than down at the barren land.   

“Into the Magic Land” has a childlike awe to it with simplistic patterns repeating and swelling, making it reminiscent of the all-too-often overlooked instrumental post-rock band Rothko, while “You Retreat in Time and Space” weaves a nostalgic, 1970s tinged aural tapestry where everything is just slightly out of focus and reminds you – for those old enough – of the tracking function on old VHS players. Album closer “I Saw Through Platonia” is probably/possibly/definitely the best track Boards of Canada have ever produced. Referring (perhaps) to Julian Barbour’s concept of a mathematical notion of a timeless landscape where everything is possible all at once (yeah… I’m not doing a great job of explaining this but no doubt there are tonnes of sexless TED Talks on this matter that you can probably find online – this is a band who are clear that “Music is Math,” after all), the track shimmies and shines before fading into nothingness/everythingness. It’s gorgeous, and if this is to be the last Boards of Canada release then it’s one hell of a bow and statement. 

Inferno centres on the fragmentation and erosion of memory, on the concept of human performativity, and the notion of simulacra as pure distraction. Whereas a masterpiece such as William Basinski’s The Disintegration Loops plays on the concept of time as an incessant eroding factor, there is an optimistic core at the centre of this record that feels juxtapositional to much of their earlier work that places a focus on the past rather than the present. Here, though, Boards of Canada are firmly rooted as documentarians of the ruinous now.  

There is, however, hope. If we lose the ability to remember, then we lose the ability to tell the stories of our lives – and that’s all we have as humans. It’s what it all boils down to. Stop filming and photographing, and start experiencing life like you’re meant to – be a series of tales, not a collection of images. As Maude Chardin said so pointedly and lovingly in 1971, “L-I-V-E – live!”

The above seems relevant re: Iceage’s new album, For Love of Grace & the Hereafter. And yet, the Danish band’s return to basics isn’t necessarily a return to their basics. For Love’s instrumentation and mixes certainly depart from the complex arrangements and higher production values of recent work – 2018’s Beyondless and their last album, 2021’s Seek Shelter.

Iceage’s early releases, however – 2011’s New Brigade and 2013’s You’re Nothing – tilted toward sober hardcore, whereas For Love leans into a mischievous garage-y sound. Also, the band are older, and they’ve evolved considerably; i.e., the basics are one thing when you’re in your teens or early-20s elbowing for attention and quite another when you’re 30-something and six albums into your career.

In other words, there’s plenty of swagger here: choppy guitar strums, slappy drums, vocals that exude a take-it-or-fuck-off vibe. The band, however, can’t quite drop (nor should they) their honed affinity for dynamics and varying tones. Lyrically, Elias Rønnenfelt has long transitioned from nihilistic memes and overt ego posturing (the self-obsession integral to the punk stance) to oblique aphorisms and bird’s-eye observations. After all, he and other members of the band probably have homes, relationships, and/or kids. Life changes, and “attitude” is run through alternate filters, when you have money in the bank and people depend on you for encouragement, food, and a roof.

All this said, For Love is likely the band’s most relaxed and cathartic release. If in the past Iceage occasionally bordered on pretentiousness, here that’s largely gone. Opener “Ember” is more debut-era Strokes than a punk-hauteur blend of Black Flag and Joy Division. In fact, when you hear those Ramones-like riffs, effervescent drums, and Rønnenfelt bantering, “I love you in an ominous way”, you can’t help but flash back to the summer of Is This It. For a little while, rock was fun again. If there were problems or preoccupations, a fizzy rhythm and a catchy tune could banish them for a while.

On “Match Head Girl”, staccato chords complement Rønnenfelt’s drawly declarations. Still, the band manage to navigate a few soft-loud pivots and throw in a downright uplifting and mellifluous bridge. “Holy Water” is mostly janky, shoved forward by crisp drums and guitars that slightly lead the beat, while “True Blue” is built around a warbly, psychedelic roil, Rønnenfelt fusing shock-value antics and mock confessionalism when he slurs, “I am deranged, I am mentally ill”.

The jangly, somewhat frenetic “The Weak” reemploys the twang and rockabilly sounds of 2014’s Plowing into the Field of Love. When Rønnenfelt sings that “none of [his] troubles have gone away”, perhaps he means that the troubles have changed, even if the underlying causes of them (his persistent cravings and expectations) haven’t.

“No Fear” opens with an engaging juxtaposition between a Young Marble Giants-esque bass line and clean guitar runs that trendily cross roadhouse rock and studio country. Rønnenfelt is at once the intellectual slacker and the I-try-not-to-take-this-shit-too-seriously poet. “Tender Blades” is weightier a la recent work, but without abandoning For Love’s organic, live feel. On “Star”, Rønnenfelt offers his version of a love song (“Every inch of my earth and sky you can occupy”) while still exuding tension. Love isn’t the absence of conflict, he seems to suggest, but the willingness to not avoid it. A punchy bass and busy drums give the track a broader, expansive feel.

Following the elaborate approaches used on recent albums, Iceage tap into a rawer vitality that – over generations and in myriad ways – has prompted most of rock’s significant movements. For Love can be considered a “reset” album (rather than a “bridge” project). A soul cleanser. An aesthetic detox. In that surrender, that reopening to “beginner’s mind”, the band rediscover themselves, expanding their synergy, their revisionist leanings, and their distinct take on pop theater.

The band’s vocalist Dara Kiely says: “In this track, the first few sections represent what my general headspace is like. It can be a very scattered and sometimes lonely place. Feeling unloved and finding it difficult to articulate what I’m actually thinking. 

“The outro on the other hand indirectly details a kind of confirmation that affection towards me does exist. While I appreciate it, I still find that hard to believe. “She chased me out the door with a hairbrush demanding that I would wear a suitable jacket.” It’s a very Irish Mammy action. That amount of love is difficult for me to accept but it is a beautiful thing to have in life.”

“Giraffe” starts with a commanding bassline slithering through atmospherics while Kiely unfolds some Joyce-style observations, quickly riling himself up into a right state as his bandmates sharpen their aural fangs. The song shifts into bamboozling post-punk as anxieties overwhelm our singer, who seems to melt down in the middle of the morass. However, for the song’s back half, Gilla Band shift into a dub-type dance punk track where the bass rolls and the drums groove. Kiely’s voice is clearer and somehow kinder – we’re outside of his thoughts now, and realising it’s not all so bad after all.

Listen to “Giraffe” below or find it on streamers.

“Giraffe” is out via Rough Trade. A limited edition 7″ picture disc is also being released (order here).

Gilla Band have announced tour dates for late 2026 and early 2027:

Wed-Oct-14-26 Philadelphia, PA Underground Arts
Thu-Oct-15-26 Brooklyn, NY Elsewhere – The Hall
Sat-Oct-17-26 Allston, MA Brighton Music Hall
Mon-Oct-19-26 Montreal, QC Fairmount Theatre
Tue-Oct-20-26 Toronto, ON Lee’s Palace
Wed-Oct-21-26 Detroit, MI Third Man Records – Cass Corridor
Fri-Oct-23-26 Chicago, IL The Bottom Lounge
Sat-Oct-24-26 Saint Paul, MN Turf Club
Tue-Oct-27-26 Denver, CO Bluebird Theater
Wed-Oct-28-26 Salt Lake City, UT Kilby Court
Fri-Oct-30-26 Portland, OR Mississippi Studios
Sat-Oct-31-26 Vancouver, BC The Pearl on Granville
Sun-Nov-01-26 Seattle, WA Neumos
Tue-Nov-03-26 San Francisco, CA The Independent
Wed-Nov-04-26 Los Angeles, CA Lodge Room Highland Park
Sat-Nov-07-26 Phoenix, AZ Valley Bar
Sun-Nov-08-26 Santa Fe, NM Meow Wolf
Tue-Nov-10-26 Austin, TX 29th Street Ballroom
Wed-Nov-11-26 Denton, TX Rubber Gloves Showroom
Fri-Nov-13-26 Nashville, TN The Blue Room at Third Man Records
Sat-Nov-14-26 Carrboro, NC Cat’s Cradle (Back Room)
Sun-Nov-15-26 Washington, DC The Atlantis

Wed 20/01/2027 Trabendo – Paris, France
Thu 21/01/2027 Le Botanique – Brussels, Belgium
Fri 22/01/2027 Le Grand Mix – Tourcoing, France
Sat 23/01/2027 Tolhuistuin – Amsterdam, Netherlands
Mon 25/01/2027 Ekko – Utrecht, Netherlands
Tue 26/01/2027 Betty – Hamburg, Germany
Wed 27/01/2027 Loppen -Copenhagen, Denmark
Fri 29/01/2027 SO36 – Berlin, Germany
Sat 30/01/2027 Hydrozagadka – Warsaw, Poland
Sun 31/01/2027 Subzero -Prague, Czech Republic
Tue 02/02/2027 Durer Kert – Budapest, Hungary
Wed 03/02/2027 Flucc Wanne – Vienna, Austria
Fri 05/02/2027 Bogen F – Zurich, Switzerland
Sat 06/02/2027 Arci Bellezza – Milan, Italy

Wed 10/02/2027 Trinity – Bristol, UK
Thu 11/02/2027 Heaven – London, UK
Fri 12/02/2027 Band on The Wall – Manchester, UK
Sat 13/02/2027 Grand Classic – Glasgow, UK

Menschen am Sonntag is the focus of The Lost Score, a new soundtrack album from Derbyshire trio Haiku Salut and Melbourne-born London-based pianist Meg Morley. Originally commissioned as a live performance to a screening of the movie by Birmingham’s Flatpack Film Festival in 2019, The Lost Score distills some two hours of music into a 10 track album that captures the essence of both the film and the live show. It also narrows the focus of the music itself to become an independent statement; away from the images of the film it still works as intriguing, interesting, and sometimes arresting music.

Haiku Salut (consisting of Gemma Barkerwood, Sophie Barkerwood, and Louise Croft) are no strangers to soundtracking silent movies. In 2019 they released their fascinating alternative soundtrack to Buster Keaton’s The General. The immediate temptation with The Lost Score is to do the same and to hit play on both the movie and the music at the same time, but the length of The Lost Score and Menschen am Sonntag don’t fit together neatly. Still, it’s easy enough to see how these tracks did work in their original form (even if they have been altered and enhanced in the intervening years between the original live show and now): the sentimental delicacy of “Meine Beste Freundin” adds tenderness to both the female and male leads in the film; the bobbing “Laugh And Cricket” soundtracking the images of everyday German people revelling in a day of leisure; and the bellowing brass on “You Made Sunday” ushering in the final title cards like a factory bell as Monday once again comes by.

At its most alluring, Haiku Salut and Morley tap into the sinister undercurrent the film offers to modern eyes. “There were some elements of the film that we agreed we wanted to musically undermine. The way the men treated the women felt uncomfortable viewing it through a modern lens and we used the score to communicate some of the more sinister elements,” says Haiku Salut’s Barkerwood. “Faces” seeps in with noir-ish EDM arpeggios and matching piano, creating a sinister but unsteady feel, while the inky “Toxic” feels like a deliberate contrast to what (at the time) would seem like whimsical courting but instead is unsettlingly predatory. 

While Menschen Am Sonntag remains an important snapshot of pre-World War II Germany and document of life almost 100 years ago, The Lost Score offers the chance to reframe it. It’s very easy to idealise the olden days when things looked simpler; directors Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer shows both the romanticized image of the city but also the more real side: streets filled with litter, homeless people sleeping on park benches, and misogynistic behaviour in plentiful amounts. The Lost Score taps into this darker vein, choosing not to celebrate what was once framed as quaint and lighthearted.

Haiku Salut and Morley do also capture the joy though. The blissful, spaced out “What Happened Next” twinkles in its stillness, evoking the lackadaisical feeling of sleeping in as sunlight moves across the room through a crack in the curtains. Album highlight “Carousel” has a delightful skip in its step, growing the rippling arpeggios from the opening track and marrying Haiku Salut’s vibrant and colourful electronics with Morley’s piano that leans into a Europop feel. Copper toybox percussion, explorative piano runs, and evocative soundscapes peek their heads up across the album. It’s a dynamic environment, which is fitting for a film about human life and about the film itself. Like the cut of the film itself, life has changed in a whole host of ways since 1930, but the call of the weekend still beckons loudly. Haiku Salut and Meg Morley understand this and find a way of respecting that while simultaneously finding new shades to a document from a century ago.

“B r e a t h e” is a song that seeks to capture the atmosphere of a world gasping for oxygen. Driven by floaty electronic production, bubbling beats, and organ-like synthesizers that carry the polished rhythmic precision of Kevin Parker’s later work with Tame Impala, the track tickles the ear while posing a crucial, literal question: “Are you feeling the air around me? / Are you feeling the breeze?”. It is the perfect essence of the album’s core tension, the organic colliding violently with the synthetic.

Following their 2024 debut, I SHOULD CALL THEM, Saleh retreated to the studio with executive producer Billy Lemos (known for his meticulous work with SZA and Tinashe) to process a period marked by both profound personal romance and inescapable environmental collapse. The conceptual foundation for Of Earth & Wires was laid after a series of natural disasters seemed to dog Saleh’s every move across the globe: rampant wildfires blazing dangerously close to their home in Los Angeles, followed closely by severe climate-related flooding they experienced while living in Cardiff, Wales. On this record, these global catastrophes act as a backdrop and a twisted mirror for the capricious, messy relationship drama revealing in the lyrics.

Nowhere is this synthesis of environmental terror and emotional turbulence more evident than on “Flood”. Built during an unusually fluid, free-flowing jam session in Minneapolis with local producer Psymun, the track features the distinctive, emotive register of Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. Vernon freestyled the song’s hook in the moment, delivering a cathartic performance that pushed Saleh to confront their own buried grief. The resulting track acts as a gorgeous, softer allegory for fighting to stay afloat rather than drowning in the wreckage of the past..

Of Earth & Wires mutates across genres with an erratic, brilliant energy that perfectly matches the album’s themes. On the brief but potent “Cállate”, Saleh masterfully mixes the sway of bossa nova rhythms with the frantic, programmed pace of drum ‘n’ bass to soundtrack a tense, “will-they-or-won’t-they” romantic encounter. The excellent “Firestorm” leans heavily into an earthy, funky R&B groove, finding the pocket even while the threat of actual blazes crackles just out of frame. Saleh anchors the heavy experimentation in this compilation with an undeniable, resonant pop sensibility.

The album also acts as a vital conduit for Saleh’s heritage, seamlessly connecting Sudanese folk traditions and mythic language into the futuristic, club style production. On the upbeat, defiant “I Do, I Do”, they interpolate an ancient Sudanese proverb into the verse: “He who mixes poison is bound to lick his fingers”. It is a stark, ancient warning tucked inside a moment of radical liberation, as Saleh ultimately resigns to the harshness of the elements, singing, “Ain’t no cure for the sun / So let it beat down on you / Maybe you can heal”.

By the time the album reaches its eleventh and final track, the rage and desperation that fueled “5 Days” have alchemized into a hard earned, exhausted peace. The experimental closer “Anemic” follows the fantastic “ALL IS LOVE” and functions like the final, exhaling scene of a fatiguing, beautiful film. It features a breathtaking spoken-word performance from aja monet, who steps into the fading instrumentals to recite, “Truthfully floating in the swamp of eyes / Love is an allness, open-ended sky”. It is a profound declaration of hope that refuses to erase the horrors that preceded it, choosing instead to fully and honestly process them.

Of Earth & Wires is a triumph of both emotional endurance and musical creativity. Dua Saleh has successfully quantified the tensions of 2026, the relentless encroachment of technology, the literal burning of the earth, the messy reality of human connection, and forged it into a definitive record of its time. It is the sound of an artist watching the world catch fire, and finding a way to breathe through the smoke.

Before Love Is the New Gangsta, Valentine tested these waters with 2023’s Since I Have A Lover. That album, which earned a Grammy nomination for Best Progressive R&B Album, marked the end of a nearly five-year hiatus. It was his initial foray into singing about healthy relationships and growth, acting as a transitional step. If that 2023 release was the sound of a man realizing he wanted to change, this 2026 release is the rigorous, often painful documentation of him actually doing the work.

The album’s title is not a casual branding exercise; it serves as a central thesis. In the months leading up to the release, Valentine explicitly stated his new operating procedure. “Love is the answer, love heals and unites, love is really the new cool, and as the title says, Love is the New Gangsta,” he explained in press materials. The 15-track record is a rigorous examination of his own past misdeeds, functioning as a real-time therapy session. The origins of the album are rooted precisely in that therapeutic approach. According to Valentine, the recording process involved deep conversations with his frequent collaborator, the producer Childish Major. They began openly discussing their mental health and personal struggles, turning venting sessions into creative output. That strict accountability is the engine driving the entire project.

The shift in perspective is immediately apparent on “Bird Flu”. Produced by Fwdslxsh, Malik Ninety Five, Sucuki, and Loof, the track maintains the signature atmospheric 6LACK sound but flips the lyrical content entirely. Instead of blaming a partner for a failing romance, he interrogates his own defense mechanisms. “Taking off my cool is such a process, why is that?” he asks, later adding, “Practice makes perfect, need my restitution / You see the leap from Boys to Men / Baby, this just my evolution”. It is a stark admission from a singer who once made a living sounding completely unbothered.

Valentine spends the first half of the record actively excavating his history of disloyal behavior. On the track “I Guess”, he outlines a messy breakup scene, specifically addressing “all the years I thugged it out” and the collateral damage that behavior caused. This introspection hits a critical mass on “TRAUMA”, a brief, two-minute hybrid of hip-hop and R&B. The track acts as the structural fulcrum of the album, finding Valentine digging out the absolute root of his issues. It is an uncomfortable listen, but a necessary one, effectively clearing the air for the second half of the record to move into lighter, more secure territory.

The production across Love Is the New Gangsta is a measured refinement of the alternative hip-hop formula he helped popularize. It relies heavily on muted basslines, sharp hi-hats, and minor-key keyboard progressions provided by musicians like Jesse Tyler and Smile High. However, the inclusion of live instrumentation—like Nikhil Ramnarayan’s cello and Taylor Tookes’ violin on “TRAUMA,” or Noah Sills’ alto saxophone on “On Me”—adds a physical warmth that was often absent from his earlier, colder digital beats.

Valentine also brings a carefully curated roster of guests into this environment. The features add texture without derailing the personal nature of the storytelling. He recruits Young Thug for “Ashin’ the Blunt”, delivering a solid, straightforward rap collaboration. The mood brightens considerably on “Sunday Again”, featuring 2 Chainz. The song explores a sense of community and serenity, leaning into a floaty, optimistic groove that shows Valentine actually enjoying his current stability. Elsewhere, Leon Thomas and AZ Chike provide notable contributions to “All That Matters”, while long-time peers like Mereba and his partner QUIN appear on “Running Late Freestyle” and “Out of Body”, respectively.

The final stretch of the album cements Valentine’s commitment to his family and his own long-term health. The track “Vision” operates with a clear-headed certainty, showcasing an artist who has stopped chasing quick fixes to emotional voids. This newfound maturity culminates on “Bear”. Over a percussive, rap-heavy arrangement, he makes a direct appeal for patience. “Bear with me, yeah, that’s all I ask,” he requests, presenting himself as a man conditioned by his past troubles but no longer defined by them.

Love Is the New Gangsta is a significant marker for modern R&B. It takes the moody, detached aesthetic of the late 2010s and forces it to grow up. 6LACK proves that choosing emotional transparency over a manufactured cool does not dull an artist’s edge; it simply sharpens it into something that can actually cut through the noise. By admitting he needs love just as much as he needs to give it, Valentine brings the concept full circle, standing firm in the belief that absolute vulnerability is the hardest stance an artist can take.

None of his previous efforts has been a dud, and his audience has grown along with his stature. Anyone who lends his music and ear, including many fellow songwriters, can hear his penchant for building each song, whether it is his music or lyrics, with obvious meticulous care. And whether he does it naturally, or through a learned process (probably both) makes no difference, his combination of what some would consider singer songwriter music with a hefty touch of roots and indie ethics has some touches that many other similar artists can only dream of.

For Little Wide Open, his stature among other artists has come into play. Along with the production from The National’s Aaron Dessner, who has become one of the most sought after producers in his own right, he has enlisted cooperation from Amelia Meath, Andrew Barr, Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Katie Gavin (MUNA), Lucinda Williams, Meg Duffy (Hand Habits), and more. They’ve helped him to further stress not only the complexity of his music, which makes it sound so deceptively simple, but also its ability to be so easy to pick up on.

Of course, when other established artists come into play, there is always a possibility that they might overshadow the artist whose project it is. Yet, throughout the 13 songs here, it is Morby who keeps the focus, through his possibly strongest songwriting yet. Additionally, Dessner’s touches give full clarity to what Morby achieves here, with songs like “Natural Disaster” and “100,000” fully exposing the excellence of his music.

It also seems that Morby’s lyrics are growing with each album, with some here able to reach Dylan-esque heights. They could have political and social overtones, like in “100,000”: “Ugly boys, ugly brothers / Die for your country / Or one another / Muscle cars in the front yard / Master of puppets / And kill them all/ Don’t question god / Don’t question mother.” Or they can be more personal and introspective, as on “Bible Belt”: “Well time takes its toll heaven knows why / And I know all that you loved passed by / But don’t cry my child / Life on Earth takes a little while”.

Musically, he shifts from the contamplative to the purposeful. He fires his eye across the American landscape on the devilishly catchy “Javelin”, then we find him under expansive skies on the drawn-out beauty of the eight-minute title track. From the poetic appraisal of the confounding status quo on the country hug of “Badlands”, to the banjo-bolstered sigh of summer aimlessness that is “Cowtown”, he consistently proves that his ear is as sharp as his tongue – and it all captures what he sees with his unique eye.

With all that evolves on this album, there is just one question that remains open: how high can Morby go in raising his musical bar even higher?

The singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer has a brand new record out now, called American Stories. While you may know him best from his tenure in Vampire Weekend (he formally departed after the first three records, though he co-wrote, performed on, and produced those albums, and continues to work sporadically with the group), Rostam has built a strong solo ouevre at this point. In this talk, he and I talk a lot about the new LP, including lyrical inspiration, musical inspiration, mixing America musical themes and touchstones with Persian ones, and more. It’s a good chat with a special artist. Thank you for listening

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It’s fortunate then for these new fans (but you know, also for all listeners) that they are arriving to some of Krug’s most interesting work. Same Fangs continues to carefully nudge at the edges of experimentation he has been introducing for the past few years while also showcasing his deft and mordant skills as a songwriter. This is his most self-referential and reflective album and it adds a layer of depth to his music that invites you in to burrow that little deeper. Krug gives you the tools and opens up the mine for excavation. 

Introductory track “Get To Live” lets us directly into Krug’s brain as he explains his thought process behind the track’s conception. “A bit overly cinematic,” he remarks on tape after trying out a flurry of piano chords before opting for a different approach. At the other end of the album we have “Listening to Music in Cars 2.5 (All the Tired Horses)” which takes us through the song’s conception, rewriting across the years, and referential treasure chest; references to Sunset Rubdown tracks from days gone will tickle the ears of fans. It’s a song about the song and the making of the song, which reads like an academic and narcissistic slog but even at five minutes long, it’s surprisingly breezy and lighthearted as a repeated piano chord pattern and strings from Maria Grigoryeva help it float on by. Earlier on, during “Timebomb”, Krug details more of the process: “I thought there might be more meaning there to find / Turns out the song’s just what it is / In fact I probably attached too much meaning to the thing the song’s about.”

When Krug isn’t shining the light on his songwriting, he’s shining it on other aspects of his life. Covering the likes of marriage, fatherhood, ending friendships, small town living, and facing the bin fire of the surrounding world, he broaches topics with an outstretched hand. He’s curious even when he’s damning; he’s empathetic even when he’s self-affacing. “I’m fucking freaking out / Because I am middle-aged and thick-necked now,” he laments over groggy synths on “Real Long Headlock” with a warble of panic in his voice. Later on, during “Pinecone King”, he resigns himself away from the spotlight: “With any luck I’ll fade away in the room where the prince was born.”

Lyrically Same Fangs is ripe for taking apart, but Krug isn’t immune to clunkiness, which shows itself worst on sections of “List of Names”. But the earnestness is always there to drive it home, as is his ability to navigate an enticing composition. You see the care on the aforementioned “Get To Live” in wanting to make everything connected. (The 10 songs on the album, like on previous records, originate from tracks uploaded on his Patreon. They aren’t just simply compiled but carefully picked to fit together as neatly as possible.) But sometimes the songs just speak for themselves: “Berserker Mode” is both bobbing and gloomy, light percussion adding to the drive; the regal stride of “Hasn’t It Always” adding a sobering glean to lyrics questioning how life seems to flash by; the conclusive waving into the distance drama of “Souvenirs” (which circles back to both the opening track and also shares a similar cadence with Julia With Blue Jeans On closer “Your Chariot Awaits”).

Like with previous albums, Krug continues to nudge himself out of his comfort zone. The distortion-heavy “Timebomb” is bold and daring even though the textures won’t be overly unfamiliar to his fans. The inclusion of strings across the album (again from Maria Grigoryeva) add both a stateliness and a slant to the songs; they are never just there for show or to simply accentuate the chords but instead are like a force pulling the tracks in different directions. And the additional vocals of Elbow Kiss add an equally welcome new texture; it does bring to mind the days of Camilla Wynne providing vocals on Sunset Rubdown records. With guitarist Jordan Koop joining Krug in the studio for production once again (as well as some additional musical parts), it makes for a merry band of collaborators. Their contributions may be familiar to old fans, but to new ones they will offer fresh evidence that Krug is an artist always working towards the next thing. If you believe in anything, believe that his career is full of peaks, both 20 years ago and now.

While the album no doubt bears the weariness inherent in this period, as is customary, Rashad is more concerned with the personal than society at large. Which is, wise, really, because there’s simply no accounting for the present, and, as his best insular statements always do, his personal reality comes to embody universal woe and perseverance.

While he claimed OutKast, Goodie Mob, and Organized Noize as primary influences on It’s Been Awful, the album is perhaps less Southern fried than you might have imagined from such a tease. It is, however, decidedly warm and inviting, pure summer afternoon porch music, in spite of the push and pull between the darkness lurking at the edges of every Isaiah Rashad vision.

Indeed, It’s Been Awful boasts some of Rashad’s most immediately gripping and memorable hooks to date. Just try to get “GTKY” out  of your head, or “Boy in Red” alongside longtime compatriot SZA. Even “Same Shit”, with its more overtly ominous, threatening nature is propelled by an instantly recognizable listing of realities as a chorus.

Yet, all of these wonderfully gilded moments don’t conceal the struggle right behind them. Take “GTKY” once more, whose earnest, lovelorn sweetness is often offset by a wounded fear in the verses. Rashad stands, seethes, wonders (and wanders), alone.

To that end, Rashad is particularly avoidant of features across It’s Been Awful. On the one hand, given his singular nature, it’s beneficial to allow the album to nearly entirely rely on his own strengths. On the other, it might have been nice to hear another great Southern voice or two to glide across these beats the way, say, Duke Deuce careened through “Lay wit Ya” on the last record. 

Bafflingly, however, given his usual penchant for cohesive sound and tasteful curation, Zay does tap Dominic Fike for “Cameras”. Fike’s beige, vacuous crooning sounds more at home on features for the likes of Justin Bieber and Jennie, whereas here it sticks out as ugly, generic pop smatter and nearly grinds the album to a halt with his soulless posturing. Then again, given Rashad named OutKast as a major influence here, perhaps he was just trying to match Antwan in the ‘What? Why?’ department for throwing Vonnegutt on Sir Lucious Left Foot.

Especially for those that take their time between projects, but even generally, we tend to expect “big” gestures from our artists: there’s a reason the term “eras” has become ever more prominent; it was coming with or without Taylor Swift’s ego. The listener is looking for it from the artists they follow: progress! Dramatic regression! Reveling in the hedonism of a moment! At the very least, something.

So, then, it takes another type of boldness altogether for Rashad to craft painstaking art out of simply managing to get by. The world of It’s Been Awful doesn’t truly feel all that removed from the one of The House is Burning, and that seems to be the entire point. Following his absence and struggles with addiction following The Sun’s Tirade, he was finding his footing, his sanity, and what’s left to find of happiness as we age in this present, draining reality. Here, in 2026, you know what? He’s still finding it. His willingness to bear that battle is both worrying and encouraging. If he hasn’t come out the other side, will we?

Yet, the fact that he’s still trying – still finds it worth trying – while finding moments of joy and beauty betwixt the exhausting pursuit is as meaningful, if not more so, than any overly arranged presentation of newfound wisdom and grace. It’s Been Awful, and it still is, and it’s likely going to be for quite some time, but Isaiah Rashad is getting by. He persists, and so do we.

Paradise is not the first collaborative record Thaiboy has released but this is his first with a producer collective. That collective being the Swedish posse Swedm, which comprises Eurohead, jamesjamesjames and Varg².

Although Bunleang was adamant in the lead up to the album it would move away from DJ Billybool’s earlier work, which drew from early 2000s and early 2010s Eurotrance (or as ol’ Billybool put it “everything before David Guetta’s time”), Paradise in fact treads similar ground.

We are greeted on “Welcome to Paradise” with an epic trance intro of harmonic, wavey chords before Thaiboy chimes in singing his heart out in an enigmatic mix of Sadboy cries and Euroclub swings. He welcomes in a bass line AG Cook could have crafted at his most EDM.

The utopian “Dreaming Your Reality” is the build up before trance track “Solitary”, and with that drop comes the introduction of another Drain Gang star. Lo and behold, Bladee skews his timings and reminds us how to look at the stars and exist as a 4×4 kick explodes across the record in Euro trash heaven. 

Imagine raving at Thunderdome in the early noughties if most of the Drainers were slightly older and invited to MC on stage. There’s not much out there like it. Arguably, Tommy Cash has existed in this space for some time, but Thaiboy and Swedm’s take is more inflected with the pop synth of PC Music’s heyday, arpeggios abound, sharp saws clashing. Pasha Teknika, with all his questionable persona, is close too.

Paradise pounds along with all its trancey, Euroclash goodness, incorporating flair from Sweden’s dance highlights until eighth track, “Irish tears”, which reintroduces Bladee. It begins with an ethereal atmospheric intro again before dropping into a forlorn deep house, coupled with a crescendoed ending where Bladee and Thaiboy going toe-to-toe in who can be the coolest sad kid at the school dance.

On the whole, the album is quite deadmau5ey. It possesses familiar drops but has a lot more vocals than a normal dance record, owing to Thaiboy’s desire to meld his club roots with his Soundcloud fame.

Why does all this have something to do with Look For Your Mind!, the new album by brothers Brian and Michael D’Addario, aka The Lemon Twigs? Simply for the fact that since their 2016 debut Do Hollywood, through the four albums and an EP that followed up to this new offering, the brotherly duo had some doubters (albeit not that many) who proffered that The Lemon Twigs might do it good, but they offer only old sounds.

So let us start there. Simply refurbishing old ideas is quite legitimate thing in modern music just by itself, and yes, D’Addario brothers rely heavily on quite a few sounds that went on before them – chiefly the Beach Boys and The Beatles – but with quite a few caveats there. 

First of all, Brian and Michael have digested those sounds to the core, which was the first condition for them to come up with some substantial and meaningful music. In fact, the duo have actually excelled so far at making all the sunshine pop, harmony rock, power pop, melodic rock that packs their releases sound unlike a rehash of bygone days, but actually brand spanking new.

Secondly, they do make music that is truly their own, and that is evident through each and every of the 14 tracks of this new album. You can sense where they are coming from, but you simply cannot pinpoint any other artist or band as their sole inspiration. Sure everybody from The Beatles and Beach Boys remain chief hallmarks, but instead of copying complete vocal or chord changes, it sounds like the brothers have finely shredded somebody else’s work, tossed it up in the air, picked up the pieces and then randomly arranged them into their songs.

Yet, saying they do it “randomly” isn’t really fair. Nothing here sounds random or haphazard at all, but rather an almost perfectly concocted pop/rock with some gorgeous harmonies to boot – whether it is the opening title track, mid-album highlight “Fire And Gold” or closing “Your True Enemy.” And each and every song sounds meticulously envisioned and performed, whether it is something with a bit of a tempo like “Bring You Down” or a through and through ballad like “Mean To Me”, it just sounds like the D’Addario brothers have songwriting and performing in their small fingers. They give it all on Look For Your Mind! – and it all sounds like they have found what they were looking for.

His debut album, Loud Bloom, is almost fashionably late as he pursued all these avenues while also being a rally against the expected; there’s no wall of bangers from start to finish here. “After taking a break I’m very happy to have arrived at allowing myself to just have fun with my own music again,” Dreijer elaborates. Dreijer asks you to meet him in the middle and then take his hand as he takes you to a different place altogether.

If Loud Bloom were a tour of the club, it’s Dreijer leading you through every single room of the venue; from the sweaty dancefloor to the seedy bathrooms, from the quiet bar to the smoking area; from the fluorescent sterility of the staff room to the ignored janitor’s closet. His music is akin like little else; his synths sound both like retro video games and Cthulhu-like. Warped notes whip like tentacles and bend like they are entering alternative dimensions. It manages to simultaneously sound both organic and electronic, a hybrid entity growing arms and legs, spreading like wildfire.

This is music for the dancefloor, but Dreijer finds glee in playing with expectations. Loud Bloom is a hefty 14 tracks, running some 75 minutes. The first half can almost feel like a red herring, an amorphous selection of energetic, vibrant, and colourful tracks (which includes reworkings of singles from the past years). On the second half the comedown arrives as Dreijer tries out “microtonal and calmer jazzy improvisations and explorations”, offering something of a photo negative to what came before. It’s a bold move, but one that feels personal to Dreijer: it’s him wearing inspiration from the likes of Nigerian author Akwaeke Emezi proudly on his sleeve while also pursuing the seed of interest that germinates upwards and outwards.

And Loud Bloom is undeniably interesting to follow the branches of as it grows, from the pregnant bass tones and sun-kissed aura of “Plastic Camelia” to the itchy low end workout of “Blood Lily” to the soft sway of “Coral”. The synth tones are undeniably Dreijer’s own and comparisons to his work with his sibling Karin as The Knife will be rife. Opening track “Rosa Rugosa” could well be considered a cousin of the work from Shaking The Habitual while “Iris” begins with what sounds like the same clicking rattle of Silent Shout’s “Marble House”. In both instances, though, the comparison only lingers so long as Dreijer takes the tracks on their own journey; “Iris” in particular whiplashes into flashes of strobe light synths, jittering like the whole thing was suddenly injected with pure caffeine.

When guest vocalists take the spotlight the individuality of Dreijer’s work is also given more opportunity to shine. His desire to challenge the persistently white, male, Western dominated homogeny of the music scene has him looking outwards for fresh inspiration as well as bucking the trends in the textures and tones he uses. Cairo-based Sudanese singer MaMan brings a sweetness to the festival-ready “Echoed Dafnino” while Colombian MC and percussionist Diva Cruz’s spot on “Acuyuye” proves an injection of vitality in an already feverish run of tracks, playing up against Dreijer’s playful electronics. South African MC Toya Delazy sings in both Zulu and English with a sultry allure on the house-infused “Makwande.” Dreijer isn’t without his own voice though; just listen to the playful way he manoeuvres the synths like he himself is singing through them on “Rosa Rugosa” and “Plastic Camelia”.

The contrast in energy between the two sides of the album won’t work for everyone. The eight-minute “Fern Valley” is a soft electro-nylon guitar wander that is undeniably calming, much like the dying neon lights of “Verbena”. Both are pleasant and curious exercises but they don’t invite repeated listens like tracks from Loud Bloom’s infectious first half. Shorter excursions like the jagged “Lantana” and buoyant “Laurel” feel like a pause from the thump of the dancefloor with their brevity, a gasp of air and space away from the crowded bustle of tracks like “Acuyuye” and “Iris” while “Coral” goes to marry both sides and feels like a gentle reintroduction to the festivities.

Like its title, Loud Bloom is undeniably a blossoming. It’s a flourish of individual style and a record of following your gut for what feels right; some of the tracks might not work for everyone, but they work for Dreijer. This is a document of his progress and evolution as an artist since his early output in the late 2000s under the Oni Ayhun moniker (just listen to how vividly different his beats are here compared to on tracks like “OAR003-A”). If there’s one consistency in his music, then it’s that Dreijer has consistently found ways to represent himself. Like with all of us, that’s an ever-changing thing. Humans are not static and Loud Bloom is a testament to that.

By all accounts, David Bowie had likely the most incredible first decade of any artist in music history. Kicking off with the release of his second self titled record – and “actual” debut of the entity David Bowie as we know him today – in November 1969, Bowie released 12 albums in just 10 years, covering a wide range of genres and refashioning himself into a kaleidoscopic pop artist.

He invented a lasting rock-archetype with the Ziggy Stardust figure in 1972, and starred in the brilliant The Man Who Fell to Earth as actual alien Thomas Jerome Newton in 1976. He introduced queerness and camp to a global audience that just slowly started to question the prevailing status quo of heteronormative identity, and then re-invented himself as avant-garde dandy when he moved to Berlin with Iggy Pop. And speaking of, he also shepherded the comeback records of Iggy and Lou Reed, interviewed William S. Burroughs, acted besides Marlene Dietrich (just on screen and not in person, as she filmed her parts in Paris, while he shot in Berlin) in the flop Just a Gigolo, befriended and recorded with John Lennon and had his shoes complimented by Andy Warhol when the two briefly ran into each other. Bowie had become such an icon that he could practically collect former idols of his like other people do with autographs. And he became a father, on top.

But where there’s light, there’s also shadow. Bowie had lost himself to an all-consuming cocaine addiction by 1976. Cannibalised by white powder and occult-fuelled paranoia, Bowie got too close to one of his alter-egos, the fascist ‘Thin White Duke’. As Bowie recalled in a 2002 interview for German Musikexpress, his fruitful Berlin stint was fuelled by his realisation that he, in the wake of euphorically overdoing drugs to celebrate the purchase of an “aura camera”, had been driving his car for two days straight down the highway.

His many collaborators of the 70s would go on to describe Bowie as “utilitarian”, and felt abandoned by him as soon as his attention gravitated to a new interest. Personal fallouts ultimately led to larger dissolutions, such as with manager Tony Defries, who co-owned the MainMan label with the musician. Notably, Bowie’s 80s started with the divorce of his self-declared closest collaborator, wife Angie Bowie in February of that year. Considering the mud thrown by Angie at camp Bowie, this could be counted as a plus, tho.

In 10 years, Bowie experienced what would be another artist’s entire lifetime – and his choices entering a new decade reflected this. Coming off the divorce, Bowie went into the sessions for his 13th album. Scary Monsters would go on to be his big retrospective work, deeply self-referential in using his own stature and catalogue as a foil. Bowie personified the Pierrot on the album’s cover, calling back to his foundational act “The Mask”, hinting at the potential of “David Bowie” as a character actor, a clown, a reflector of society for the entertainment thereof, veiling the potential of criticism within the comedy act (something Bowie hints at throughout – “Fashion”, “Teenage Wildlife” and “Ashes to Ashes” are as much about the character “Bowie”, as they are about the man behind the name pondering his societal and political impact). In other words: the character “Bowie” was outgrowing himself.

Soon after, the man behind the character found himself in New York, inhabiting the skin of yet another foil of his favourite archetype of the outsider alien dragged into human society: Joseph Merrick. The Elephant Man was directed by Jack Hofsiss, and allowed Bowie to make good use of his experience as a mime, contorting his body and voice instead of choosing extensive prosthetics. 

The show had toured Denver and played Chicago by the time that Angus MacKinnon interviewed Bowie in August 1980 for the NME. Here, he found Bowie elated, introspective and razor sharp – which MacKinnon read as somewhat controlling and artificial PR, even calling Bowie “one of the more profoundly amoral people I’ve ever met”. Yikes! When MacKinnon confronted him with that, Bowie revealed: “I have an awful lot of reservations about what I’ve done inasmuch as I don’t feel much of it has any import at all. And then I have days when of course it all feels very important to me, that I’ve contributed an awful lot. But I’m not awfully happy with what I’ve done in the past actually.” And positive achievements? “The idea that one doesn’t have to exist purely on one defined set of ethics and values, that you can investigate other areas and other avenues of perception and try and apply them to everyday life.“

As The Elephant Man trudged on to New York, there was one peak Bowie had still not achieved: conquering America fully! Young Americans – the album meant to connect Bowie with a mainstream audience – only reached #9 in the US billboard charts. His glam rock and more experimental albums were too weird for the American mainstream, and his bisexuality too much for the puritanical media machine. The furthest he got was his performance on Saturday Night Live, featuring Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias, staging a brilliantly strange moment for millions. But the coveted top spot alluded him.

It’s tough to tell where Bowie wanted to go as he zig-zagged the States and winter 1980 rolled in. It’s possible he already was considering a response for potential future play offers, as most of the interviews of that year see him focus on his acting (spoiler: The Elephant Man wouldn’t spawn any future stage assignments). Potentially, he was pondering where to go from Scary Monsters, the eccentric art-pop album he chose not to tour that year, or maybe he was considering taking another step sideways and focus on painting, which he did a lot while in Berlin.

But then, something grisly happened. John Lennon was killed.

Bowie was allegedly performing The Elephant Man in the Booth Theatre, about five kilometres from the Dakota, where his friend died. Lennon’s death, like that of all great people, looks hazier and hazier the closer you look, with multiple details contradicting each other. Alternating reports later claimed that Lennon’s murderer saw the play, that he planned to attack Bowie if his plan failed, that he had gotten a front-row ticket for the following day, that the NYPD found Bowie’s name as next up on the killer’s list. Most of this seems untrue – the murderer, by reliable accounts, mostly seemed confused by New York’s urban cityscape and was unlikely to have attended the play. On the night of the show, the Booth was closed and, according to May Pang (Lennon’s ex who, at that point, was linked to Visconti), Bowie had been out on a date. And while Bowie himself told the December 9 story in 99, the multiple statements on the case that came out of the NYPD (was Lennon speaking to the two late arrival detectives as he was transported to the ambulance, or found already deceased by the three cops arriving at the scene?) are ultimately contradictory, characterising the NY police force as a rather unreliable party in this story.

What is definitive is that Bowie, somehow, made it to Pang’s apartment later that evening, where he screamed “What the fuck is going on in this world!” over and watched news coverage until the sun came up. The next day, December 9, saw Bowie retake the stage, with three front row seats left empty. He would go on to say: “I can’t tell you how difficult that was to go on. I almost didn’t make it through the performance.” 

Something shifted. Yoko Ono later noted that in the time that followed, Bowie would step in and take care of Sean Lennon. The following years had Bowie only release the occasional single, often collaborations (“Under Pressure”, “Cat People”, “Little Drummer Boy”), and the Baal EP. A grand artistic statement didn’t happen, all the while Bowie found his new calling in front of movie cameras: Baal, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, The Hunger – all cyphers of Bowie himself, potentially creating a kaleidoscope of how he assessed himself in the time after Lennon’s death: the mad singer, the morally righteous rebel, the life weary and rotting vampire. In all three stories, his character dies. 

Meanwhile, the 80s raged on. The top best selling albums of 1982 were Thriller, Phil Collins’ Hello, I Must Be Going and Toto’s IV. Oh, also Culture Club and Lionel Richie. In that company, runner-ups Asia, Prince and Fleetwood Mac almost seem like artsy outsiders. Yes, even though the New Wave bands that were influenced by Scary Monsters and Bowie in general were massively successful, POP was now written with all caps and dominated the airwaves.

Bowie took note: for the first time, he had to live up to other people’s standards and invent a version of himself that would be able to compete with a major icon like Michael Jackson and sell as much as Phil Collins. The Bowie of the 70s wasn’t a pariah, but he enjoyed the company of those that society regarded as such – the Bowie of the 80s would have to re-fracture himself to, somehow, walk among the plastic pop-stars (whose sound and stature he predicted with Young Americans) that oozed all over MTV. The outcome would be his most bizarre character yet.

Merging the New Wave “CEO” look that was pioneered by the Talking Heads and Heaven 17, and the well coiffed 50s style of crooners and early Rockers, Bowie devised a corrosive, quasi-corporate pop star. He dyed his hair melon yellow and gelled it up into a feathery wedge, wore suspenders and belts at the same time, slung an open tie around his neck and draped himself in expensive, pastel coloured designer suits. The public demeanour was all rehearsed. A saccharine photo-negative Elvis or Little Richard. A sober, neoliberal sibling of the Thin White Duke – a parody of success!

By late 1982, Bowie had already booked studio time for December, but was somewhat lost. His band was, by all means, dissolved. Carlos Alomar was the last to go, insulted after Bowie’s camp refused his (by then customary) request for a raise. He also split with RCA, his long-term label. So Bowie had a character and vast ambitions, but no sound or vision – until chance called.

In autumn, he found himself in the VIP section of New York’s club The Continental, where he ran into Nile Rodgers, blockbuster producer and the brains of disco mainstays Chic. There’s varying stories how the two collided, the most iconic of which has Rodgers dodging the vomit of a wasted Billy Idol (according to Rodgers’ autobiography Le Freak, he spotted Bowie when, prior to the vomit, Idol loudly shouted “Fuckin’ ‘ell, that’s David Booooowiiiieeeee!”) and escaping to a lone Bowie, who was sober and drinking orange juice at a corner table. While the other versions of this story aren’t quite as colourful, they all result in the same outcome: Bowie and Rodgers got along well, trading stories and exchanging notes on favourite albums. The call came soon after: Rodgers was in and after a decade together, Visconti was out! The split came suddenly and must have hurt – Visconti wouldn’t produce Bowie for the next 20 years.

There’s decisive irony in the choice: it was Visconti who produced 1969’s Space Oddity and the titular decisive hit, while Rodgers, by 82, was coming off a few notable flops, such as Debbie Harry’s polite Koo Koo and Material’s oddly brutalist One Down. Rodgers wanted avant-garde credit, in his own words a Scary Monsters 2, while Bowie had spent the year listening to Motown and Soul albums: Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke. Simple, soulful music that evaded the trappings of the elaborate Young Americans and Station to Station.

Rodgers was, for obvious reasons, disappointed. The sentiment just continued once he arrived in wintery Montreux, where Bowie presented him with a melancholic folk ballad, played on acoustic guitar, which he considered a “hit”. Crossing the melody of “Quicksand” with the sensibilities of “Fame”, the skeleton of the song is a haunting lament – more “Wild is the Wind” than “Golden Years”. Bewildered, Rodgers countered how Bowie could write a song called “Let’s Dance” that you couldn’t dance to? A black artist, he later explained, wouldn’t have such an eccentric privilege – the song would have to be danceable: “It’s not because there isn’t interesting intellectual subject matter for black artists to delve into, it’s the fact that you won’t get played!”

While Rodgers got to work, composing a backing that was fit for a hit, Bowie reportedly bombarded him with bits and pieces of inspiration: photos, album covers, songs, all dating back to the 50s and 60s – a living mood board of intent. Rodgers, meanwhile, assembled a few local musicians that were available – among them, a young Turkish multi-instrumentalist from a jazz background by the name of Erdal Kızılçay, living in Neuchâtel.

Kızılçay would go on to become a vital part of Bowie’s inner circle much later – but in the winter of 82, he butted heads with Rodgers over the bass line for “Let’s Dance”. Kızılçay played something akin to Jaco Pastorius, which his collaborator rebuked as too showy.

When provisional work was finished, Bowie and Rodgers relocated to New York’s Power Station studio, leaving the initial musicians behind and hiring a solid group of session players. Kızılçay’s final, simplified bass line went on to be played by Carmine Rojas and is still one of the most recognisable elements of any 80s hit. Cleverly, Bowie and Rodgers fit it into a patchwork of historical pop references. Opening with a nod to John Lennon, Bowie recreated the intro of “Twist and Shout”, while Rodgers added horns to the verse that harken back to Henry Mancini’s work for the film “Peter Gunn”. As the song grew, so did the band, with Bowie enlisting Stevie Ray Vaughan to lead guitar, much to Rodgers’ disapproval – his solo here is, self-admittedly, lifted from blues musician Albert King. On top of that, the engineers of the Power Station added their trademark gated snare sound, which in 82 was regarded state of the art engineering. The result of all this is a mind-blowing hit, a track that transcends cultural and generational lines, a song that is both melancholic and euphoric and works in any occasion.

The incredible, magnetic power of “Let’s Dance” proved Bowie’s process right, but it would also go on to magnify the key issue with the resulting record it lent its name to. The album is kicked off by three immense, long tracks that would go on to be signature singles: the title track, just over seven and a half minutes long, a cover of Iggy Pop’s “China Girl” (which was a Bowie song originally, after all), that’s about five and a half minutes long, and the opening “Modern Love”.

It’s the latter that Bowie aficionados most champion off the record; a modernised Soul tune that replicates the structure of “Five Years”. Bowie would mention his composition as being in the vein of Little Richard (that call-and-response refrain), but it could equally be likened to big hits from Motown’s golden era, such as “Heat Wave” or “Dancing in the Streets” – stories of communal bliss, of the defiant movements found in sex and dance, defining black culture and framing joy as an act of survival. Yet in his vocals, as Bowie works himself into a frenzy, once more there’s a hint of John Lennon: “Church on time Terrifies me / Church on time Makes me party / Church on time Puts my trust in God and Man / God and Man No confession / God and Man No religion / God and Man Don’t believe in modern love”.

“Modern Love” doesn’t have a proper chorus, it’s all just driving force, constant movement, all while Bowie’s protagonist is motionless: “I’m standing in the wind / […] I’m lying in the Rain”. As minimal as the lyrics are, they still seem cryptic – “modern love”, whatever that is, remains obscure.

“China Girl” meanwhile, picks up the topic, and returns Bowie to his earlier composition, reframing Iggy’s manic, threatening lyricism into a slick croon. Slyly toying with a cool disco impersonation of his idol Scott Walker, Bowie read the song as being about emotional and physical colonialism, where Iggy used it to tear into his obsessive drive and sinister desires. With its added hooks (a brilliant, quasi Asian opening riff and synth line, Bowie’s signature “Oh oh oh oooooh, little china girl”), the track garnered massive airplay – all with a song whose original is better, but would eventually be abandoned live by its original interpreter. 

Hit after hit after hit: the opening triptych on Let’s Dance is so powerful that it effectively overshadows everything else there is on the record. In effect, the album can be read as two EPs, stitched onto each side of the vinyl.

The first ends with an odd ballad: “Without You” seems like an overtly groomed variant of “Always Crashing in the Same Car”, with any abstractions and artfulness removed. Chris O’Leary, author of the encyclopedically brilliant bowiesongs blog reads it as an impersonation of Bryan Ferry, a “mimicry of Avalon” and “a mockery of Bowie contemporaries”. It barely crosses the three-minute mark and seems bereft of a climax, as there’s no solo, no build up, no tension or release. Just an added-on curio, which would be expected, or excusable, on an EP. It’s an odd choice, but then the B-side is even stranger!

“Ricochet” crosses the five-minute mark, but sounds like an abandoned idea from Lodger. It’s an awkward reggae track with a spoken word chorus delivered through megaphone. The lyrics are vaguely political, pointing towards Walker’s “Nite Flights” as inspiration, heralding the same merciless machinery of death: “Men wait for news while thousands are still asleep / Dreaming of tramlines factories pieces of machinery / Mine shafts things like that / March of flowers, march of dimes / These are the prisons, these are the crimes”. Bowie loved the track, but felt Rodgers messed up the syncopation. He was right – it remains clunky and clueless.

Then there’s the mid-section of this side, with two reworked songs. The first is a cover of Metro’s “Criminal World”. An odd transitional act, Metro released their debut – which opens with the song – in February 1977. Fusing Glam, Punk and New Wave, it’s a bit of a forgotten cult album, a jewel in the 5-buck-bin. Bowie defanged the song’s somewhat provocative lyrics, which ran afoul of the BBC, and fashioned the original, a strange cross of Pink Floyd and The Cars, into a groovy banger. These alterations will be addressed later! But for now: his cover is a perfectly agreeable mood piece, and a great mid-tempo addition to any DJ set. It’s also the sole stand-out on the B-Side, as the reworked “Cat People” is enjoyable but by the numbers. Where the previous Giorgio Moroder version recorded for the Paul Schrader film is a thumping, manic film noir nightmare, Rodgers’ take on the song is a snappy rocker that was likely intended to prove a live-band sound. In other words: a selling point for tour tickets! It’s still a great song and very good rendition, but its inclusion as remake is just immensely curious for an artist so content on reinvention. 

This only leaves the closer, “Shake It”. Likely the closest to Rodgers’ initial dream of helming Scary Monsters 2, the track seems a reworking of “Fashion”, all weird composition, off-kilter guitar lines (Alomar must have shaken his head upon hearing it for the first time) and nervous synths. It’s an odd closing track, as it evades the emotional punch Bowie usually reserved for that spot. It’s a great composition, but it becomes also painfully apparent that Rodgers wouldn’t have been the best fit for a Scary Monsters 2. He adds Bee Gees-style backing vocals here, which are just out of place, while his production defangs what would have been a much more unbound song under Visconti. Compare it to “Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)” or “The Secret Life of Arabia” and note how elegant and dynamic their oddball structures and vast instrumental virtuosity are. The biggest crime of the song is that with how immensely and unapologetically “Bowie” it is, it equally ends up surprisingly unmemorable, fading away just before crossing the four-minute mark and without allowing Stevie Ray Vaughan a signature, key solo that catapults it onto the airwaves alongside “Fashion”.

Let’s Dance can be divided into three categories: there’s the soulful tracks that have Bowie merge black genre with radio pop (“Modern Love”, “Let’s Dance”, “Without You”); the arena rock reworks of earlier material that is connected to Bowie’s avatar as cultural figurehead (“China Girl”, “Criminal World”, “Cat People”); and the glimpses of an avant-garde follow up to Scary Monsters, which frames black genre in stark, abstract movements (“Ricochet”, “Shake It”). All of it is produced skilfully, presenting the impression of a live setting.

The initial intention of the Power Station engineers with the gated snare was to produce something more vital than the classic 70s drums sound, erasing all studio reverb and presenting listeners with the initial hit on the instrument: a sound they would expect from a live experience. The lead vocals for five of the songs was recorded in one day; most of the instrumental solos in another. All this is surely no accident, and explains Bowie’s business model for Let’s Dance: hit people with a trio of unshakeable singles, fit in two (or three) artsy experiments that remind them of your status as innovator and pad out the remaining slots with enough solid material to interest them in paying for tour tickets. The album as commercial product: a venture gold mine! 

Maybe that’s why the record still feels so odd. It lacks the usual cohesion that comes with a Bowie project. He had a skilled group of musicians behind him, but their playing lack the brevity and interplay that came with his established crew. And the emotional tone seems somewhat off-center. Most tracks just carry on for too long, where they should have ended two minutes earlier. “Ricochet” is a good indicator of that: the track is finished at the 2:30 mark, but still drags on. By 3:30, it already feels overlong. Why it carries itself all the way to a five minute finish is a mystery. On Scary Monsters, Bowie would dive into a pained improvisation, or let Alomar carry the track when things went over time. But here, there’s no darkness, no edge, no playfulness.

Still, Rodgers was right: fashioning “Let’s Dance” into a dance track was an intoxicating spell for success! The song carried a new image that announced itself forcefully: Bowie had sobered up and was playing the ‘straight man’. For once, mainstream audiences ate up his act, rushing to acquire the single. In April 1983, Let’s Dance entered the UK album charts in the top spot, while the titular lead single finally delivered a number one in the US (the album reached the perfectly respectable fourth spot). Worldwide, the album led the charts, and continued to sell for months. At far over 10 million sold copies, it went on to become Bowie’s best-selling album, with radio play and popularity of its singles increasing steadily. 

And how magnetic these three songs proved themselves to be when Bowie was seeking backers for his commercial venture. Out of all viable candidates for a label, Bowie chose EMI and signed a five-year contract that was reportedly worth just under $17 million. The label had reportedly agreed immediately after Bowie played them the album’s tracks.

The news was announced at a March 17 press conference, with Bowie presenting himself as rock royalty. He had made a great deal (negotiated all by himself), but EMI walked away with an immeasurable bargain! Let’s Dance was the sort of investment they anticipated would be an evergreen, but even the most optimistic execs couldn’t have predicted its staying power.

Maybe Bowie shouldn’t have called the fight so early. His new hobby should have primed him: Bowie had picked up boxing to get fit for an upcoming tour (a 12 round match roughly parallels an average concert) and took on the role for the artwork on the record’s sleeve. Photographed by Greg Gorman, Bowie presents himself bare chested, muscular, radiant. Fists in gloves and raised in anticipation of his opponent’s next move. The back cover and inner included drawings by Derek Boshier, somewhat imitating Keith Haring’s iconic style. 80s excess is all over the artwork, with an odd projection of a cityscape onto Bowie’s upper body, while additional graphic elements of a gigantic last name in sky blue and instructive dance directions spelled the album title. It’s a little overloaded to the contemporary gaze, but still, in all its pastel glory, instantly memorable.

The gloves came off for the album aggressively. In May, parallel to the start of Bowie’s world-spanning Serious Moonlight tour, Rolling Stone magazine released a key interview, where Bowie sold himself to American audiences. The knockout comes early on: “’The biggest mistake I ever made,’ [Bowie] said one night after a couple of cans of Foster’s Lager, ‘was telling that Melody Maker writer that I was bisexual. Christ, I was so young then. I was experimenting….’” Kurt Loder continues: “So: he is not gay, whatever he may have blurted out in 1972. Nor was he ever a transvestite, thank you. Still, American TV – for want of any more-recent product, it’s true – has kept running his 1979 “Boys Keep Swinging” video, and so total strangers still breathily inquire whether he’s doing drag onstage again. (‘I’ve never done drag onstage,’ he huffs.)”

It’s painful to read, and ruffled feathers upon release. Where Metro’s “Criminal World” had been banned by the BBC due to its queer imagery and royal irreverence (“I’m not the queen, so there’s no need to bow”), Bowie cut most of the first verse, and changed some of the others: “I saw you kneeling at my brother’s door / That was no ordinary stick-up” became “You caught me kneeling at your sister’s door”. In 83, just as the AIDS epidemic had claimed the life of his one-time protege Klaus Nomi, this was indeed perceived as a slap in the face of a community Bowie always championed. Changing lyrics is one thing, but wholly denouncing your sexuality to Kurt Loder of Rolling Stone magazine?

In his writing on Bowie, Marc Spitz delivers a key statement from queer musician Justin Bond regarding the travesty: “I didn’t feel betrayed. I just felt like he was a product. But then he lost his touch, didn’t he? For many people it was a betrayal. You can’t take that back. ‘Oh, no, I really am cool. I really am on your side.’ At a time when Reagan was in office and AIDS was rearing its head he decided he was going to cash in on his white, male privilege and put a distance between him and his stigmatized fans…”.

But it’s also interesting to note that the initial quote might be an unfortunate misunderstanding by Loder. He reads David Bowie’s proclamation that his coming out was a mistake on his way to achieving fame as David Jones actively discouraging the idea that he was bisexual. And this is pretty much how modern Bowie scholars read his words: a moment of brief corporate marketing comment. In 2002, Bowie reflected on his statements when confronted by Blender: “I had no problem with people knowing I was bisexual. But I had no inclination to hold any banners or be a representative of any group of people. I knew what I wanted to be, which was a songwriter and a performer, and I felt that [bisexuality] became my headline [in America] for so long. America is a very puritanical place, and I think it stood in the way of so much I wanted to do.” 

Time has been gentle to Bowie on this one, but the scars his act left are still noticeable. It’s not particularly helped by other artefacts throughout his career – “John, I’m Only Dancing (Again)” erasing the queerness of the original track, a 1993 Rolling Stone interview where he declared “I think I was always a closet heterosexual. I didn’t ever feel that I was a real bisexual. It was like I was making all the moves, down to the situation of actually trying it out with some guys […]”. But then, it’s important to read almost all of Bowie’s interviews as cyphers for whatever foil or avatar he conceived at that moment in time. The 1983 piece has Loder refer to young Duncan Jones as “Joey, formerly Zowie”, elegantly showcasing that whatever truth Bowie fed to journalists was still manufactured, or outright bullshit.

No matter David Jones’ orientation, in 1983 David Bowie was considered straight as a nail by most Americans. What angered many allowed for a whole host of other political topics to take centre stage as Bowie was confronting the imperial core of the western world. When interviewed by MTV, Bowie suddenly switched to the role of inquirer and confronted the channel with its internalized racism. Go ahead and watch the clip – Bowie is strikingly aggressive and cynical, shading his opposite with such skill and style as he tries to deflect the observation that there’s few black acts playing on the channel. When Bowie is being told the Isley Brothers don’t mean much to a 17 year old, he retorts “Well I’ll tell you what maybe the Isley Brothers or Marvin Gaye mean to a black 17 year old…!”

The video for “Let’s Dance” went further: using a veiled Wizard of Oz reference, it frames an Aboriginal couple’s struggle within a contemporary urban setting. The two observe the wake of an atomic bomb explosion, then paint on the walls of a gallery after being forced to work menial jobs. Colonialism, racism, class inequality, all paired with the central symbol of “red shoes”, which echoes the song’s lyrics. Some of these images would return later (prominently on the Tin Machine song “Goodbye Mr. Ed”), but the video for “Let’s Dance” is still considered a high water mark of Bowie’s pop politics. With its protagonists living through a host of scenarios, it sharply focuses on the surreal rituals within so-called civilised societies: the excess remains rooted in exploitation.

Soon after, Bowie made amends with Alomar (likely shedding some extra cash in the process), and in May 1983, kicked off the Serious Moonlight Tour with his former band leader in tow. Encompassing 96 shows and stretching from May 18 to December 8, Bowie would travel the world as the yellow-haired CEO of his capital venture. What was meant to fill venues of about a thousand people soon exploded into arenas. In Auckland, he faced up to 80,000 visitors, and at a festival in California, he played to 300,000 people.

The tour would become a high watermark of the trade and garner a reputation as a showcase that underground “art rock” can translate to the mainstream. While Bowie claimed his song selection was encapsulating his most popular work, much of the tour was comprised of deep cuts, many from the Berlin days: “Look back in Anger”, “What in the World”, “TVC15”, “Breaking Glass”, “Stay”, “Joe the Lion”. Let’s Dance took a back seat, mostly just represented by its singles. And even if his general delivery was rehearsed and slick, the recorded documents of the tour prove the pre-80s tracks to be as edgy as their original versions. Besides great performances by the always reliable Alomar, there’s also a few notable restorative moments with Bowie’s past. Mick Ronson would join the band in Toronto for “Jean Genie”, terrifying additional guitarist Earl Slick when he borrowed his prized guitar and swung it above his head. On the final day, the three-year anniversary of John Lennon’s passing, the band would go on to play “Imagine” in his honour. 

The tour spawned an interesting documentary by Gerry Troyna: Ricochet. Blending somewhat staged moments with concert footage and interactions of traveling Bowie with his environment, it’s cleverly obtuse. In one of the best moments, Bowie allows himself a playful transgression into the silent storytelling of his days as a mime. In Singapore’s Far East Plaza mall, he ascends and descends neon lit escalators, the blue of the lights contrasting with his melon yellow hair, while “Sense of Doubt” from the Berlin days gives an eerie aura to the proceedings. Singapore’s Far East Plaza suddenly looks both like Berlin’s Bahnhof Zoo and Blade Runner‘s future Los Angeles – “a man lost in time, near KaDeWe”. Pedestrians turn their heads as Bowie, in dark trenchcoat, seems more like a replicant than human. A cop points and yells at him – Bowie scans the orderly as the camera cuts to his profile. Then he walks away, in silence, finally resting in the empty mall.

The man who sold the world had sold himself to the world. He had become everything he always wanted to be – artist, legendary musician, achieved actor, world citizen, number one in America. Perversely rich and world famous. But what did he sell to get here, to this point, all alone in Singapore?

He had fulfilled his commercial ambitions, yes. But he had shedded not just detractors – Angie and Defries, who had become unbearable weights – but also lost many friends. Lennon had been killed. Visconti had been ‘let go’. Alomar had returned after being insulted, but for how long would he accept a commercial venture over artistic freedom?

Many of his fans felt let down and left behind, all while he had achieved his financial dreams with the record that – outside of the roleplaying cash-grab Pin-Ups – was his least representative, his least personal, his most scattershot and overall his weakest since the ill fated Decca debut. “It’s kind of a mixed bag, really”, he told Musician magazine that May.

Even if it allowed him to re-package the brand of Bowie to an audience of millions, he was more than aware that Let’s Dance marked a creative dead end. For somebody so obsessed with the concept of death, dystopian terror and apocalyptic horror, Bowie must have paused to ponder who it was that he sold his soul to when he signed with EMI and filled arenas. Soon, he would come to know. But for now, his future was on the stages of the world, in front of millions of people that all chanted along to “Let’s Dance”.

Also in this series:

His Best Since Scary Monsters: Blackstar

In this conversation, Karl and I dig right in to his brand new debut full-length solo LP, Blue Water. The album was written all about his mother – both the deep relationship he had with her, and her passing a couple years ago after a prolonged health battle. Karl was super candid, and was ready to talk all about his mother. In her health journey, Karl eventually became her caretaker, which brought him back home for a number of years, dealing with hospital care, paper work; it was a lot, but he showed up out of the profound love he has for her. The songs are sometimes a bit downcast, but also sometimes quite fun and bright, and Karl hasn’t lost his sense of joy or humor in the process. While this talk does touch on many very serious and heavy topics, I think it’s a rather funny and light conversation ultimately, owing to Karl’s humor and candor. Thanks for listening.

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At the structural heart of the track leans the salsa clave, a foundational pattern native to Afro-Cuban music. Yet, in Cobiella’s hands, this traditional clave is stripped of its standard brass orchestration and repurposed as an instrument of romantic desperation. “I wanted to make a song that moves because I want people to dance,” he said, accurately noting the clave’s “constant, almost obsessive forward momentum”. The result is a piece of music that successfully mirrors the artist’s own description: a tornado. It is a wildly kinetic, unapologetically sexy collision of indie rock grit and Latin propulsion.

Lyrically, Cobiella matches this frantic instrumentation by shredding the standard rulebook of romantic etiquette. “Is loving you a crime? / You ain’t no Aphex Twin”, he sneers and pleads in equal measure, navigating the perilous, agonizing space between total devotion and bitter resentment. He paints a portrait of a lover willing to endure cartoonish extremes for an indifferent partner, stumbling forward with a desperate poetry: “And I walk through hot coals, crooked pipes / hell I’d burn my toe in candlelight”. It is the sound of a man practically vibrating with unrequited intensity.

When the arrangement swells and he hits the central, agonizing refrain, “When I never liked you I loved you / How much greater could you be / When I can only catch my breath when you sleep”, it lands as a startling admission of a love so consuming it practically suffocates the lover. Cobiella has not merely written a dance track; he has recorded the exact tempo of an obsession. “Have I Been Good To You” is a thrilling, unexpected feat, proving that a compelling pop music happens when an artist bleeds their cultural heritage directly into their neuroses.

Listen to “Have I Been Good To You” below or find it on streamers.

You can follow Ian Cobiella on Instagram.

We’ve picked out a few of the ones that have most excited us during this dark and dreary month. Enjoy our BPM Curates playlist for March below.

Below is the track list and some notes from our team about why they’ve selected them for this month’s playlist.

Abbie Ozard – “Backbone”

The first release following her 2024 debut album everything still worries me, Manchester’s Abbie Ozard returns with the fuzzy and summery “Backbone”. Channeling “the self destruction that comes from avoiding conflict at all costs, where keeping peace and saying sorry too much can cost you your voice”, “Backbone” comes complete with an blossoming chorus that veers on being positively anthemic for an up and coming artist. It’ll sit nicely in any 2026 playlists for basking in the good weather, conjuring images sun rays breaking through venetian blinds and sitting horizontal on the grass looking up in the clouds. – Ray Finlayson

Anyma – “Bad Angel” (feat. Lisa)

If you don’t like this kind of thing, you’re almost surely never gonna, but the only defense I feel I need mount is that its hook was immediately living in my head, rent free, for at least a week. LISA’s eye-catching appearance during Anyma’s Coachella set notwithstanding, it’s simply a (simple) jam. You’d think he could have cooked up a musical backdrop a bit less “Fisher Price: My 1st Club Adjacent Beat set” for his highest profile collaboration to date (is this really all it takes to score songs with 1/4 of BLACKPINK, Sevdaliza, 070 Shake, and more? Where do I sign up?), but LISA’s charming, forceful turn makes it work. If you’re not at least kinda rooting for the most globally visible Thai pop star, well, why aren’t ya? – Chase McMullen

Billy Danze & TooBusy – “Let It Be” (feat. B-Real)

Lots of solid dad rap this month – Billy Danze (from M.O.P, y’all) and producer TooBusy perfect their partnership on their second album together; blunt, to the point, both on the sounds and rhymes, sometimes, simple is best. Honestly, there are several tracks worth the pick, such as Danze and Conway the Machine waxing familial on “What If” or Jadakiss sliding through on “Got Time”, but going with this one because: Danze with B-Real on the hook over a Buena Vista Social Club sample? Yes, please. – Chase McMullen

Carla dal Forno – “Under the Covers”

Carla is an international treasure. Made an album so jammin’ that it took me a few listens to even notice how worrying its narrator is. Art pop for the obsessive within us? Come on in, get lonely! Can’t no one do it like she does it. – Chase McMullen

Charley Crockett – “Country Music”

With the help of those like Colter Wall, Zach Top, Sierra Ferrell, and Charley Crockett, country music is having a traditional resurgence. Even tracks topping the charts are sounding a lot more orthodox than they used to compared to say a decade ago (e.g. Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” sounds a lot like a long lost Jean Shepard reissue in my opinion). With his surprise new release in late April titled Clovis, Crockett continues his time-honored ambition to reimagine the west. Lots of tracks stand out, but on “Country Music” Crockett looks to his past and confesses the way he came to the genre of empty vistas, saloons, and spit tobacco. “Days marked by madness, beauty and sadness / Letting go of all the things you know that you left unsaid”, he preaches. “Country Music”, and Clovis as a whole, is a reminder that sometimes looking to the past is the best way to move towards the future, yet it still remains un-anachronistic, like a tumbleweed rolling towards the big city. – Nathan Skinner

Curren$y, Wiz Khalifa & Harry Fraud – “z28”

What’s more surprising than Wiz Khalifa and Curren$y dropping two projects in April is that neither of them were released on 4/20. That said, the first two installments of Roofless Records for Droptops both contain highlights, but Disc 2 shows a closer level of collaboration between the two veteran rappers. Produced entirely by Harry Fraud, Disc 2 hits a high point on “z28”. Curren$y slides over slick piano chords before Wiz gets off a quick verse. It’s simple, but the formula is tried-and-true. – Ethan Reis

Dude Central – “A HAND STRETCHED OUT TO GOD!” (feat. Ghais Guevara)

A collaboration between a presumably reclusive singer/songwriter and an equally outspoken rapper, “A Hand Stretched Out To God!” leans decidedly in the direction of the former. Initially, you could mistake the piano motif for a sample or loop, replayed with an authentic reverb but maddeningly repetitive; Ghais Guevara turns inward and challenges himself not to unclench his fists. But unexpectedly, Dude Central’s octave patterns followed by a deceptively inaudacious flourish keeps the duo in this rut. The chords change with reference to Ben Folds’ “Brick” or Badly Drawn Boy’s “Silent Sigh”, and the just-above-a-mumble second act guides the song away from the door and back to bed. – Steve Forstneger

Kehlani – “Cruise Control”

On “Cruise Control”, Kehlani eases off the emotional turbulence that runs through much of her self-titled album and settles into something softer, more deliberate. Positioned near the record’s close, it sounds like a quiet exhale — a moment where the urgency of love gives way to patience. The production leans into warm, mid-tempo R&B, with a gentle bounce that recalls late-2000s radio without sounding stuck in it, while her layered vocals glide with a kind of unforced clarity. Lyrically, it circles a familiar tension: wanting something real, but refusing to rush into it. There’s a subtle push-and-pull in her delivery, as if she’s negotiating with both herself and her partner in real time. Critics have pointed to it as a standout in the album’s second half, partly because of how effortlessly it restores momentum without raising its voice.  More than anything, “Cruise Control” works because it trusts restraint. It doesn’t try to resolve everything, it just coasts, and lets that be enough. – Mary Chiney

Kelela – “idea 1”

We had to wait six years between Kelela’s first and second studio albums, but it seems like we’re gonna get another one in half that time. Now that the queen of R&B is back in the groove, she’s trusting herself and “idea 1” is the perfect proof that she’s at peak confidence. A seemingly unsuspecting oozes of a track that finds her emoting over ripely produced guitar suddenly turns into a scorching shoegaze-adjacent come-on that fixes you in its laser, stunning you in its tantalising heat. If this is “idea 1”, I can’t wait to hear ideas 2 to 100. – Rob Hakimian

Kevin Morby – “Badlands”

Kevin Morby has become one of the leading chroniclers of modern life in Middle America, but always with a benevolent eye. Even in the so-called “Badlands”, the sky is ever-expanding and “Heaven is a place on Earth”. There’s a weariness to Morby’s proclamations here, but his loping guitar melodies and naturally friendly voice ensure that his heart is never obscured. He might be wary of “the big disaster we call home”, but it’s still home. – Rob Hakimian

Massive Attack x Tom Waits – “Boots On The Ground”

What seems like an unexpected collaboration on first glance soon makes sense when you hear the end result. Massive Attack and Tom Waits are both concerned with texture, mood, and atmosphere, and “Boots on the Ground” – a unabashedly clear protest song against the decaying soul of the United States of America that is the first Massive Attack music distributed under a Spotify exemption policy and comes with an accompanying film created by Massive Attack working with enigmatic photo artist thefinaleye – is full of evocative time and place. The percussion rattles and a raspy Waits croons in the way only he can; you can smell the tear gas in the air. It’s not a rallying call but instead a portrait of reflection to deepen the spirit of resistance. – Ray Finlayson

mildred – “Fenceline”

Oakland foursome mildred burst into the scene with their slouch-rock infused debut Fenceline. It’s a collection of laidback melodies, provocative lyrics, and California-laced fantasies, emulating the likes of David Berman, Pavement, and Smog. The titular track perfectly encapsulates the album’s quiet magnitude. Its lyrics long for connection and acceptance: “I’m adopting a highway / just to try things my way / I’m gonna paint the median blue / plant all your favorite flowers too”. Singing and telling stories about loneliness, love, and the future, mildred already sound wonderfully coherent and blissfully content. – Nathan Skinner

Nine Inch Nails x Boys Noize – “Copy of a”

Nine Inch Nails got rave reviews from all comers for their latest tour, in which German DJ and producer Boys Noize played a critical role. For those of us who stupidly didn’t bother to go along, they’ve captured a pulverising snapshot of their collaboration in the album Nine Inch Noize. The revamped version of “Copy of a” is just one highlight from the record, but probably my favourite for the way it doesn’t go straight for the jugular but builds in anticipatory synths and haywire drum machines. Then comes the Berlin bass that will have the masses juddering as one, mindlessly moving to this anthem of lost identity. – Rob Hakimian

Otoboke Beaver – “I Don’t Need To Be In Your Strike Zone”

Japanese band Otoboke Beaver returned in April with their first new music in four years, showing once again that brevity is not just the soul of wit but also of punk too. “I Don’t Need To Be In Your Strike Zone” is 68 seconds of anti-manosphere whiplash, fiery metal-esque guitar riffs packed in alongside more tempo and rhythm changes most bands would struggle to execute over their entire career. Apart from the in-your-face lurch at the end when they insist “I am not interested”, I can’t pretend to understand the rest of the lyrics, but doesn’t matter because the message is there in the music. – Ray Finlayson

Presley Jean Cross – “Begin Again”

When Presley Jean Cross started her now almost mythical online diary, she was just a dreamer that had come to Los Angeles, chasing phantasms of the great American myth. Soon, dozens of seekers joined her exclusive portal – a whispered secret that slowly spread through back channels. Over the following months, her online presence became an intimate document of confessional storytelling – a companion for a generation that was slowly understanding the dissolution of societal safety nets. As Cross slowly shifted her focus from narrating everyday life to composing music – posting demo recordings and giving direct access to every stage of her writing process – the potential and excitement practically oozed out of the phone screen. The muse had become creator!

There’s a universality to “Begin Again” that reconnects with its composer. You could have met Presley in 1920 at a séance, in 1968 at Woodstock, in 1995 at a Smashing Pumpkins show – her aura transcends generational classification, as she embodies an archetype of feminine spiritual curiosity. A seeker that could as well be a time traveler, she’s allowing the rare occasion to watch a pop star make her very first steps. “Begin Again” embodies this movement: in its mixture of lyrical mantra and its gentle arrangement of Y2k beats and 60s mellotron, it presents a kaleidoscopic journey that is as much echoing Sylvia Plath as it is evoking 90s MTV. A mercurial libra, Presley finds the balance of emotional gravitas and Alternative nostalgia. She’s on to great things! Don’t blink – she might just leave you behind. – John Wohlmacher

Pretty Baby – “8:25pm Greenwich Fucking Mean”

The towering centre of Pretty Baby’s recent debut album, Layaway Plot, “8:25 Greenwich Fucking Mean” is simply masterful; crushingly emotionally raw, punctured by tortured screams and a stunningly organic progression that somehow takes in gorgeous synth accents, pg.99 handclaps, and a beautiful post-rock interlude before building to a devastating climax. This is grief-informed post-hardcore that overwhelms and uplifts. – Andy Johnston

Serial Killers (Xzibit, B-Real, Demrick) – “High Energy”

More dad rap: no long words needed, I don’t care if you’re 36, 26, or 16, anyone can enjoy the simple things. Like Xzibit, B-Real, and Demrick slicing through a menacing, slightly eerie West Coast cut (complete with a Nate Dogg-esque hook). – Chase McMullen

Shakira & Beéle – ”Algo Tú (Shimza Remix)”

In a World Cup year that’s bound to overburden us with the competing might of the American and Mexican music industries – all apologies to Canada – this Afro-Colombian track is a welcome respite. Its distinction from the other “Algo Tú” remixes (the title roughly translates to “something about you”) comes from Shimza’s references to amapiano. He plays it so subtly as to be unnoticeable, and that’s its subversive magic. Shakira’s reputedly honest hips have to obey a couple of masters, a.k.a. the original’s more salacious moments and Shimza’s nonchalance. Luis Díaz for the win. – Steve Forstneger

Listen to our BPM Curates: April 2026 playlist here.

Must we utilise our literary critical analysis? It is a pretty overt reflection of how Ware has treaded into brighter, bolder territory with each progressive album. Her lyrics have become more extroverted and cheeky; her sultry, soulful voice unfurling across euphoric and grandiose dance production as if made for the genre. Superbloom proves not an exception, but the new rule of Jessie Ware – a project exploring the fulfilment of love, attraction and sex with a greater emphasis on lush. In an age where love has been trampled underfoot by dating apps and toxicity, the singer implores the listener to bask in the glow of its radiance.

This mission begins with lead single “I Could Get Used To This”, which invites the listener into an Elysium of pleasure and “satisfying [your] every motive”. The subtle basslines, woodwinds and fluttering strings create a beautiful and groovy ode to self-love and encouragement (“It’s not impossible to bloom and grow / Cause everyone deserves their flowers”). As the key is raised towards the song’s last third, Ware shows off her belting ability with gusto. The album’s title track is even sultrier, slinkier and romantic as Ware paints a picture of glorious love with a standout chorus bolstered by a choir. “Let the flower in the rain paint the colour of June / Take me back to the place where we met, superblooming.” 

Despite love being the core of this album, there are significant variations in both the production and lyrics. “Mr. Valentine” – undoubtedly the album’s most experimental track – is a frenetic and propulsive ode, pushing and pulling between coyness and exuberance. Through a distorted filter, Ware sings “Mr. Valentine won’t you be mine / Give a good knock on the door, step right inside.” The subdued nature of the verses only serve to make the explosive chorus detonate perfectly in the ears. It is one of Ware’s more chaotic tracks and as such, can be considered an album highlight.

There is, naturally, some more risqué tracks on the project delivered with Ware’s assertive flair. Songs like “Ride” – built on a sample of Ennio Morricone’s “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” – are a bit more insistent and salacious. “I’m bad / Beautiful / Hold my hips / Watch me move” she intones over blipping synths and a smooth tempo. It features some of her more cheekier lyrics such as asking a man to “come be my cowboy” and to “ride my love” with some “giddy up”s naturally included. While it does not quite reach the dirty heights of, say, That! Feels Good!’s iconic “Shake The Bottle”, the production is darker and sexier.

On the flip side – yet still just as tongue-in-literal-cheek – is the campily erotic “Sauna” which could easily slot into What’s Your Pleasure? It features Ware delivering a breathy treatise on sweaty encounters (“I want the boys who seek the joy in every corner of the spa”) over pulsating (an appropriate adjective) synths and tasteful gasps. With an unsubtle chorus (“If you wanna last longer / I need faster, I need stronger / Take it to the sauna”) and her need for “a wood-chopping God-given love” that you realise the spa she is at probably keeps the curtains closed in their reception area.

For those who are quite miserable about affection and romance, this might prove a too idealistic listen that lacks the pitfalls many of us encounter. There are no toxic men call-outs as shown by the shimmering, dreamy (and, bragging the introduction of acclaimed actor Coleman Domingo) “Automatic” where Ware sings about being adored and satiated (“‘Cause he loves what he sees / No he ain’t ever problematic”). Nor is there that emotional unavailability in the declarative “Don’t You Know Who I Am?” (Answer: The love of your life) that ticks all the boxes for a dramatic disco tune. The portraits of love that Jessie paint do not yield even slightly to cynicism and as such, perhaps this can be considered one of the project’s significant drawbacks: a lack of danger.

The outlier on this project is the touching “16 Summers”, a complete breather from the humid dance floors and the only track that feels like a proper glimpse behind the disco ball. On this sweeping ballad, Ware contemplates and laments the notion of time passing: of children destined to not stay young forever, of whether love can truly stay strong as the years go by and even her own mortality (“It’s so easy to forget we’re all just passing through”). It’s quite poignant and Ware gives a vocal performance that brings chills and tears to the body. Although this ballad seems a bit misplaced on such a joyful album, it anchors the listener down to remind them that life – and therefore love – is a fleeting thing so enjoy it while you can.

Superbloom proves another ace in Jessie Ware’s hand, albeit one that for the most part stays within the dance-disco territory of her 2020s output. It is her sumptuous approach to this music, however, that elevates her: the stunning vocal performances, the intricate and magical production, the maximalist and unrestrained approach. Ware’s power is in her full embrace of what makes love so fantastic and the listener can feel their heart thaw, however reluctantly, against the onslaught of such warmth. We could get used to this.

But then, it took her another six years and a lot growing up to record and release her official debut album, 2013’s Same Trailer Different Park, and something had clearly deepened in her artistry. It was like you were listening to a completely new artist singing with the same voice. From that point on, from 2015’s Pageant Material up to 2024’s Deeper Well – with Golden Hour from 2018 being her standout album so far – Musgaves has shaped herself as one of the real innovators within the confines of country music. In fact, she actually makes those confines somewhat invisible, as she seamlessly blends elements from other genres -whether it was modern pop or even psych rock.

Not everybody might like what Musgraves has been coming up with – particularly among ‘traditional’ country music circles – but it seems she hasn’t been bothered much by these criticisms (some of which have been mixed with her more liberal political stance). And, with Middle of Nowhere, Musgraves is clearly not attempting to appeal to those people, as she once again plays with the genre with ample sonic and lyrical twists.

On the surface, Middle Of Nowhere might seem and sound like Musgraves retreating back to standard country music formulas, with pedal steel guitar all over the place and a Miranda Lambert duet on “Horses & Divorces” – she even flexes a Willie Nelson feature on “Uncertain, TX”. However, she knows exactly what she’s doing here – instead of simply incorporating other musical elements within country, Musgraves is inverting the process – she’s incorporating country music elements within other musical forms, often searching the best balance between the two.

This is best heard in the opening title track, a softly bopping number where she’s “way past common sense” and also “past the Dairy Queen”, of course. As she sings about being “somewhere in the middle of nowhere”, you can hear her self-possession and determination. “Loneliest Girl” is another highlight, where Musgraves places her finger exactly on that balance she seems to be looking for as the production – particularly on drums and voice – take a more pop-leaning approach, but the guitar and pedal steel remain firmly intact. Lyrically, too, she excels again at presenting personal as something that quite a wide spectrum of listeners can relate to, something that is always one of the hardest elements to get right.

While the album mostly leans into Americana tropes of lonesome hearts and big dreams, there’s also opportunities for Musgraves to show off her true personality and priclivities in a couple of spots. The cheeky single “Dry Spell” might get even those country purists to pay attention as, not only is a damn catchy number, but it has our singer feeling “lonely with a capital H”, desperate for some buck to put his “tool up in her shed” or “truck up in my drive”, if you catch the drift. Later, she combines Nashville glamour with West Coast attitude in the pun-tastic and glistening “Rhinestoned”.

No, with Middle of Nowhere Kacey Musgraves, hasn’t move back to that dusty old place. It’s safe to say she’s riding her own horse and will keep freely picking and choosing whichever roads she wants to take on her musical journey.

It’s a story that comes back to me multiple times as I watch the Futurismus act Prostitute perform in Berlin’s Urban Spree – itself too somewhat of a liminal space. Located in a former hotbed of autonomous artists and semi-legal joints, the club is in an area signed up for demolition, to erect urban office graves and high end stores, hosting some of the edgier, noisier shows you can see these days. Prostitute themselves seem out of place, as the band – a five piece live – stand on stage waiting for the enigmatic vocalist, Moe. Dearborn natives, the group is nonetheless thoroughly committed to their Lebanese heritage, both in substance and style: the band’s bassist is draped in a black balaclava, resembling the figure adorning their debut album’s cover. As Moe enters, red light floods the stage and as both guitarists (to the left and right end of the stage) vanish in darkness, the band’s bassist steps forward. 

A few words on the identity of the group. On the liner notes of their debut album, Attempted Martyr, all members are merely listed by first name: Moe, Andrew, Ross, Dylan, Bret. Two of them (Dylan and Bret) are listed as bassists, though live there is only one, and two guitar players. It’s possible the names are aliases (note that none of the members carries a traditionally Arabic name), but still, it’s not easy to pinpoint which is their bassist, who quickly takes centre stage as figurehead of the band. Towering and moving to the very front of the stage, his confrontative demeanour is immaculate! Moe, meanwhile, starts breathing heavily into the microphone, as he stares across the crowd, his gaze both tired and panicked. Fog fills the stage as he slows down. “I turn to you… and I turn to you… and I turn to you… for if I’m caught!” he yelps, and the band explodes into “Body Meat”!

As if in trance, Moe is writhing his body in tune with the music, a possessed shaman from a distant realm, exasperated and hypnotised. It’s an incredible and immediate start, tho the Berlin audience seems almost frozen in response, barely moving. As the band shift, and Moe takes to the keys, the bassist removes the fabric from his face, staring down the audience with an iron gaze. The brutal “M. Dada” follows with pummelling rhythm and screeching synthesiser. The two guitarists have now almost totally vanished into fog and darkness, only visible as outlines. The audience slowly wakes up, but by the end, of the song, it’s clear Moe noted the somewhat cool atmosphere. With the same tired, almost disembodied gaze he held since the beginning and the distant intonation of a Twin Peaks character, he addresses the audience: “I’ve come to dance. So let’s dance.” His heavy breath and searching gaze lead into a bluesy intro and groove of the next track – which finally cracks the audience wide open.

As the duo of vocalist and bassist stare down the visitors, the image of B 018 comes to my mind. The sheer theatricality and precise physical nature of the band stands out as a question of embodiment, or memento. Not just cultural, but also spiritual. The Arabic nations have undergone endless pain, often at the hands of western invaders. The very idea of martyrdom, of glory in the sacrifice of blood, has become a defiant position in light of the genocidal mania and cultural assimilation. With the song, it becomes clear how far the band goes in digesting western influences into a uniquely Arabic aesthetic. As Moe’s movements explode into wild dance during the climax, the group break down what is usually a safe space of cultural hegemony: an invasion of the very natural western heritage in punk.

The performance the band’s two figureheads continue throughout the set is deeply meaningful. They don’t oppose the audience so much as they confront them with alienation. Their faces, like masks. never seem to switch emotion, creating a strange tension. Between songs, after rapturous applause, they seem to bathe in the following silence, hardly moving, as if to read the nervousness among their visitors. Midway through the set, Moe drinks from his water bottle, staring into the crowd, and after a few gulps just lets the stream run down his jacket, mixing with the sweat that pearls off his skin. Then, once more, silence, before the band dives into a crushing rendition and Moe, staring to the ceiling, writhes. The crowd by now is finally joining his exasperated euphoria.

With blistering, brutal renditions of “Judge” and “All Hail”, the band reaches the 45 minute mark. At this point, Moe is drenched in fluids, his vocals wrath drained growls. Especially “All Hail” is absolutely exceptional, with the bassist lifting his hands to the sky for the intro, leading the audience on to clap along. It’s an immense, crushing performance, which seems to transform the club, rip it out of space and time. As the song ends, Moe shuffles over to the keyboard, starts the arabic spoken word introduction to Attempted Martyr, lifts the instrument to his shoulder, blows the audience a kiss… and leaves. Unmoving, the bassist stares down the crowd, then shakes hands in the front row, and leaves with the rest of the band who emerge from the shadows. And that’s it. After exactly 45 minutes of surreal, crushing, theatric excellence, the mysterious group has vanished as suddenly as they appeared. There’s no break of character, no introduction, no encore, no lifting of the veil. Just as they conquered the room totally, they remove themselves.

If you talk to Arabic people, they will always point out how each nation has their own identity, humour, theatrics, spirit. If you mention the Lebanese, many fellow Arabs will say that they are immensely playful and that they, well, like to mess with people a little. Everything is a rule-based performance of emancipation and independence, one Bahraini friend once told me. This spirit is absolutely translated in Prostitute’s on stage appearance. The traditional lead characters of the music – the two guitarists – disappear in darkness. Their supposed band leader Moe seems lost, exhausted, almost confused throughout, his gaze far gone as silence marks his presence. And then the tall bassist, whose stoic, tense stare measures the crowd below. There’s links to the great goth bands of the early 80s in how fully formed and aesthetically demanding the band appears, how important this performance and aura is to express a cultural statement. 

But in this tense silence, the strangely lost Moe and shadowed stringmen, there’s also a question to the crowd. To what degree do we perceive those who look or seem a little different to us as enemies? In all their surreal theatrics, Prostitute never seem hostile or aggressive. Rather, they seem lost in the ecstasy of music. Another observer might let loose on their internalised racism, or read the band as consciously militaristic. Ironic, considering that the band is American after all. Still, as I stumble into the night, my thoughts drift back to B 018. Prostitute are an inherently political band, their album is accompanied by a manifesto and sports the Cedrus libani. As the country is bombed mercilessly, I think of those ghosts in Beirut, who come to dance among the living. As I try to read the shirt I purchased, I quickly realise some of it is gibberish – that second half of the band-name on it is definitely not spelling “-titute”! There it is again: the Lebanese spirit. That evening, what’s real, perceived and implied merges, only to exist as memory. This band will conquer the world!

With their subsequent LP, 2023’s Devil Music, PoG retreated a bit into the more singular playbook of their first two albums, though still exhibiting sonic versatility and emotional bandwidth, including string-accompaniments on the album’s second half. Lyrically, King revisited the perennial themes of toxic conditioning, estrangement from nature, and how glaring inequities are inherent to governments, religion, and social structures.

With their new album, …Beginning of the End, PoG return to the MO defined via Christfucker, moving nimbly between assorted mixes and timbres. Vocally, King navigates clarities and confusions, assertions and laments. Mostly adhering to a lycanthropic growl, he also experiments committedly with a cleaner, though still sullen, singing voice. As a whole, the album reaffirms PoG’s metal stance and Hobbesian view, even as the band continue to draw from and integrate diverse approaches.

From the opening track, the one-minute “Backstabber”, the band forge notable hybridizations. A sludgy riff emanates from a wiry, flanger-soaked guitar, conjuring creepy rituals performed in a mosquito swamp. This succinct but illustrative intro segues into “Human Terror”, built around bad-trip atmospherics and Alex Stanfield’s crunchy bass part. King embodies Milton’s Lucifer clambering out of a pit to wreak havoc on whoever and whatever crosses his path. The album’s lyrical tone is established courtesy of his opening lines: “Plagued by vile sickness / in an endless cycle of grief”. If you’re hoping for a redemptive tilt, you’re definitely in the wrong neighborhood.

With “Heaven’s Gate”, the band dive into cacophony. Stanfield’s bass part could’ve been plucked from Nirvana’s Bleach and run through a malignancy pedal. James Beveridge’s drums sound like juggernauts stomping through a metropolis. King shrieks over the noxious welter, a radioactive war survivor or lab subject emerging to exact revenge on a hypocritical and consumeristic world.

“Under Siege” and “Ecstasy” further the noisy onslaught. On the former, King’s guitar threads through Beveridge’s adrenalized drumming; his vocal resembles a vampire spewing curses while being cemented into a wall. The latter features a melodic and echoey guitar part. On the chorus, King adopts a less snarly yet broody vocal a la “My Immolation” from 2021’s We Are Always Alone. With the concise “Chamber of Misery Pt. IV”, on the other hand, Slim Guerilla’s rap vignette is framed by a moody and reverb-doused mix, bringing to mind Paris, Texas’s Boy Anonymous or a late-night collaborative outtake spearheaded by Dean Blunt.

The band intently explore the use of clean-ish vocals on “God Will Never Hear Me”, the intro filled with guest Jenna Rose’s sighs and whispers (a very different contribution than her part on Christfucker’s “Sadist”, where she matched King’s screams with her own higher-pitched and slightly thinner shrieks). Soon enough, King grabs the mic and assumes rabid-lupine mode. Toward the end of the song, Rose’s softer moans and King’s corrosive growls are interweaved. “Object of Pain”, meanwhile, shows King using clearly articulated vocals throughout the song. His chorus/mantra – “I want to feel you from the inside / I want to feel you from the outside” – obviously and presumably intentionally references Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer”.

“Nerves of corroded wire hold this body together”, King sneers on “Death from Above”, capturing the essence of anxiety. Even angels “salivate over [his] unsealed wounds”, meaning: these aren’t the benevolent, downy-winged beings we learned about in Sunday School. If life on earth is filled with misery, conditions aren’t much better in the so-called holy realm. Guitars on closer “The Last Judgment” oscillate between jackhammer riffs and gossamer arpeggios. King gives his best demon-soaked-in-acid performance: vitriol, rage, hints of bloody catharsis.

As Radiohead are at their sublimest when Thom Yorke’s ethereal vocal is contrasted with the band’s more electronic/mechanistic rhythms and textures, so PoG are most distinct when King’s vocal savagery is juxtaposed with austere, if still solemn and weighty, and frequently innovative, instrumentation. …Beginning of the End, like earlier albums, spotlights the trio as they persist in their mission to heterogenize trample-and-roar metal, reemploying the tried-and-true while scratching in the dust for new possibilities.

Now, arriving on the singer’s 31st birthday, Kehlani finally relieves that pressure. Their fifth studio album signals a clear reset. Following the pandemic-era introspection of It Was Good Until It Wasn’t and the genre experimentation of 2024’s Crash, Kehlani returns to a more familiar sound. Rather than attempting to subvert the established rules of rhythm and blues, they have chosen to honor its grand lineage. The result is a startlingly confident synthesis of their life’s work, proving that true maturation often requires returning to the root.

The lead-up to the self-titled release was anchored by “Folded”, a mid-tempo crossover track that drew strong critical support and widespread attention online. Driven by a minimal, hypnotic guitar loop, the song became Kehlani’s first Top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100. More significantly, it secured them two Grammy wins after 10 years of nominations. The success of “Folded” marked a turning point in their career. Instead of chasing another viral hit, Kehlani used the momentum to build a traditional R&B album with clear stylistic ties to the mid-2000s.

The album opens with a spoken “Intro” about a strained emotional state, but the tone shifts quickly to a more confident musical approach. Kehlani sets a measured perspective early on, addressing their romantic past with less defensiveness and a clearer sense of personal responsibility.

Nowhere is this retro-fitted confidence more evident than on “Another Luva”. Featuring Lil Wayne, the track is built on a foundation of brassy bombast and a heavy, percussive bounce that distinctly recalls Amerie’s 2005 smash “All I Have”, bursting out of the speakers with an analog warmth. The production favors live instrumentation over sterile digital trap programming, allowing Kehlani to belt rather than merely whisper. They sound revived.

That energy carries over into a staggering roster of guest features that, on paper, run the risk of crowding the marquee. Yet, Kehlani stands toe-to-toe with the genre’s royalty. “I Need You” pairs them with Brandy, yielding a breathtaking vocal tag-team match across the bridge that highlights both singers’ mastery of complex runs. On “Shoulda Never”, a heavy-hearted duet with Usher, the two artists navigate the wreckage of a failed partnership without resorting to petty grievances.

Even when leaning into hip-hop, the album keeps its focus firmly on a bygone era of polished, radio-ready soul. “No Such Thing” operates as a spiritual sequel to Mya’s lush, string-laden “Fallen,” complete with a brooding, noir-tinged rap reprise by Clipse that provides a welcome jolt of grit. Similarly, “Back and Forth” reunites Kehlani with Missy Elliott under the production helm of The Stereotypes. The track features a subdued, interlocked groove echoing the late 90s Latin-pop crossover appeal of Carlos Santana and The Product G&B’s “Maria Maria”, offering a silky backdrop for a romantic bust-up.

Admittedly, the guest list occasionally weighs the project down. “Sweet Nuthins”, featuring Leon Thomas, suffers from a cluttered mix that distracts from a vocal performance that deserved more space. But whenever the album threatens to capsize under its own ambition, Kehlani rights the ship by isolating their voice. “Still” creeps through the speakers with a serene, creeping production, allowing them to lament past mistakes with striking clarity. “Cruise Control” strips away the heavy features entirely, delivering a bouncy, pop-inflected reminder of the sheer melodic instinct that first brought them out of the Bay Area over 10 years ago.

Kehlani largely moves away from the diffuse, texture-driven style common in the streaming era, opting instead for structured ballads and slow-tempo R&B tracks built around strong hooks. The album addresses identity and sexuality through direct, personal songwriting rather than provocation. “Oooh” is a prime example, functioning as a galactic, slow-tempo soul record heightened by stacked harmonies and sexed-up coos that bloom around their lead vocal.

The album closes with “Unlearn”, a stark, piano-led confessional that could easily scan as cloying in the hands of a lesser vocalist. Instead, Kehlani delivers it with an arresting conviction. They vocalize their selfhood, acknowledging the dualities that have defined their public and private existence. They are no longer trying to outrun the pain or outsmart the critics. They are simply standing in the center of the room, demanding to be heard without filters, without gimmicks, and without apology. By looking backward to the golden era of modern soul, Kehlani has finally secured their future.

This line of thinking and personal actualization was evident across their debut album, 2023’s Follow the Cyborg, a collection of hook-filled songs which examined the fluidity of self and of the transitory nature of identity. The record also happened to be a hell of an emotional gut punch, a congregation of her deepest vulnerabilities feed through vivid arrangements augmented via syrupy melodies and their need for situational understanding. With the release of Sohn’s latest album, Under My Umbrella, they continue this course of amorphous construction, blending sounds from all rhythmic geographies while trying to live in the moment as much as possible.

This new collection was born from long stretches of touring, driving alone across North America, finding inspiration on empty roads and remembering the unrestrained energy that they developed on various stages and wanting to channel those frenzied manifestations into each song. Developed mostly within their Queens apartment, the album was consciously built from first takes and the occasional spontaneous eruption, which allowed Sohn to focus more on what was happening at each moment and less interested in what could be edited later. Musically, it further refines their sense of melodic eclecticism, drawing disparate sounds together which could only find proper realization under her careful guidance.

Under My Umbrella is, up to this point anyway, the best representation of Sohn’s multi-sonic perspective, a vibrant and affecting series of landscapes which form a loosely woven narrative filled with excitable stories of intimate revelations resulting in their embrace of purposeful catharsis. It’s a bold and cinematic look into their creative and emotional processes, and we’re quickly caught up in the tidal motions of her imagination.

Sohn has offered to walk us through the welcoming and supportive architecture of her new album, giving us a glimpse into the structures of each song. Check out her thoughts on each track below.

1. “Tourist Mind”

“Tourist Mind” was the first track I wrote after touring my last album a lot. I had been having this yearning to be able to access a particular energy during performances and so I made it my mission to make a track that could do that for me. It feels like a really classic Miss Grit track to me but I think does a good job of preparing for the departure the rest of the album takes.

2. “Mind Disaster”

“Mind Disaster” might be my favorite track on the record. Mainly due to the contributions from my collaborators Lucci, Sae, and Eva. Lucci recorded the most amazing piano part on this, after he sent it back to me, I couldn’t stop listening to his part just solo’d. I’m particularly happy with the chord progression on this track. It never really gets old to me and that’s something really rare when it comes to songs I’ve written.

3. “Won’t Count on You”

This track makes me sad honestly every time I listen to it. It’s about being let down by someone, and instead of having their lack of care affect you it’s important to be there for yourself. I really love the second half of this song. It was my first time playing around with Arturia’s Acid vst which is modeled from Roland’s TB303 and I became so obsessed with the sounds this thing could make that I ended up incorporating it on a lot of the tracks on this album.

4. “It Feels Like”

I owe this track a lot to my friend Sae aka mmph who really helped make this track come to fruition. I started it off with the first part that happens before the explosion and just let Sae know where I was hoping to take it and he really took it there and beyond. I really love the bass synth in this song especially and its presence and rhythm within the song. It makes me happy every time playing it live although the song is kind of sad. It Feels Like is something I have started saying a lot, and maybe have always, but I think there is so little that I really know for sure and especially when it comes to relationships, I can only really go off of my feelings and sometimes they’re not always reliable.

5. “Where is My Head?”

This was the first track I wrote on this album. It was written a whole year before the rest of the tracks were started and in a lot of ways helped pave the path for the record. It was the easiest and quickest I’ve ever written a song and felt very organic in its formation. I kept trying to recreate that feeling of ease and minimalism, but I think it ended up being a pretty unique track on the album.

6. “Stranger”

This track started from a drum machine loop my mixer and co-producer on this track, Aron, sent me. I knew I wanted to build something on it and so I was super happy when he let me go wild with it. It’s my first track where I swear on it, and I know that sounds kind of childish to point out but it really cuts for me in a way that feels so good every time I sing it live I’m really happy with my swearing choice.

7. “You Will Change”

This song is about embracing change. For me personally I’m trying to embrace the fact my body is changing and aging and interfering with my body’s natural aging process isn’t going to stop the end from coming. At some points in this song, I’m addressing someone directly who was in my life at the time. This person was so so stubborn to change, part of this track’s purpose was to try and frame change for them as a friendlier concept and to let them know that we’ll persevere through it.

8. “Overflow”

“Overflow” was written super quickly, and it basically came together because I just couldn’t stop writing after “You Will Change”. I really loved this drum part that Preston Faulkes came up with and so I just continued riffing on it and made up this whole other track around it. The name really rings true for me on this one. I think it was one of the last tracks I wrote and I kind of just put in all the things I felt like I didn’t get a chance to put on the rest of the album. This one also is a favorite to play live. I had been getting pretty sick of trying to sing and play guitar riffs at the same time I wanted to just be able to strum and enjoy singing.

9. “Waste Me”

I almost didn’t include “Waste Me” on the album. It felt really different from the rest of the record to me, so I wasn’t sure if it belonged. I ended up running the record by a bunch of people with “Waste Me” on it and everyone kept coming back to me with “Waste Me” as one of their favorites. I think I had been nervous about the lyrics being particularly personal/vulnerable for me, but it felt nice to know that it really hit with people. The album’s general theme was trying to be more vulnerable and let more people in so I kind of felt like there was no other choice but to include it.

Under My Umbrella is out today on Mute Records. You can order the record here. Follow Miss Grit on Facebook and Instagram.

Crys Matthews, the Nashville-based songwriter and newly minted custodian of the Guthrie estate’s musical lineage, has stepped into that same canyon with “Citizen”, a work that suggests the American identity is still a fragile, contested thing.

Matthews’ arrival at TRO Essex Music Group — the publishing sanctuary for Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Pete Townshend — feels like a career milestone and more like a historical inevitability. As the first artist to win the International Folk Music Awards’ Song of the Year twice, Matthews has spent the better part of the decade earning the right to pick up Guthrie’s pen. On “Citizen”, she does more than just cover a classic; she updates a grievance.

The impetus for the track arrived during the volatile summer of 2025, as the US presidential administration’s scrutiny of immigrant populations reached a fever pitch. Matthews, a proud Black Southerner and LGBTQ+ advocate, found herself ruminating on how the indignities once reserved for the “deportee” were now being leveled at those who are, by law and by birth, citizens. In her hands, the song becomes a visceral interrogation of the “show me your papers” mentality. Her vocal performance is grounded and weary, carrying the weight of someone who recognizes that the erasure of humanity is a cycle, not a relic of the past. By keeping much of Guthrie’s original structure but weaving in the modern reality of the 2020s, she makes the case that the “altogether” Guthrie dreamed of is still a long, hard walk away.

If “Citizen” is the fire, then her companion release — a cover of Ed McCurdy’s 1950 peace anthem “Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream” — is the cool water. It is a song that has been sung by everyone from Simon & Garfunkel to Johnny Cash, yet Matthews manages to strip away the folk-revival sheen to reveal a quiet, prayer-like core. It is a performance inspired by her mother, whom she calls “The Rev”, and it plays like a moment of communal exhaling. In an era of ceaseless digital noise and political combat, Matthews’ delivery relies on a startling simplicity. She isn’t shouting for peace; she is imagining it so clearly that you can almost see the “paper being signed” in the lyrics.

The dual release marks a significant debut for her on Shamus Records. It is a bold, complex distillation of everything Matthews does best: blending the high-lonesome sounds of bluegrass and the grit of the blues with a lyricism. She has always been a “troubadour of truth”, but with these recordings, she joins the ranks of the essential. Matthews is singing about justice; she is documenting the soul of a country that is still trying to decide what to do with its promises.

Listen to both songs below or find them on your preferred streamer.

You can find Crys Matthews on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.