L&Q Weekly
Iceage are back, Tanya Tagaq live and terrifying in London, First & Best with Cameron Picton, the L&Q podcast, Chalamet Vs the opera
Track of the Week
Danish band Iceage (a group you just have to call a ‘band’ now, as they’ve been moving what they do since their teenage hardcore debut 15 years ago) have not announced a new album with ‘Star’ this week but it would be nice to have a whole album of this sort of thing. Elias Rønnenfelt has been enjoying solo life as a cloud rock prince over 5 Iceage-less years, collaborating with scene godfather Dean Blunt and others, playing all the right DIY venues. ‘Star’ is straighter, but only by a touch. It’s a ragged thing where, no, Rønnenfelt doesn’t sing particularly in tune, but the feeling is off the scale. A euphoric rock song about love where you can so clearly its elemental parts it makes you want to join a band.
3 sentence live review
TANYA TAGAQ, ICA, LONDON, 6 MARCH: There’s no photo because Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq played Berghain a couple of days ago and enjoyed the no-phones rule so much that she walks out and asks to implement it here, so her and her improv band of a cellist and drummer can “go wilder”. No one cheers louder, I’m sure, than the few who move like wind dancers outside car dealerships even to the beat-less moments of this improvised hourlong set of guttural, largely wordless breath music. The rest of us stand stock still, transfixed by a sound that is, in turn, haunting, terrifying, beautifully beyond us, powerful and not very nice when Tagaq yams into the mic like a gluttonous pixies eating a fleshy, wet substance. Stuart Stubbs
What if we judged Morrissey’s Make-Up is a Lie on the music alone?
What Morrissey loyalists don’t understand about any backlash that has come the singer’s way in the wake of his increasingly right-wing views is that it comes from people who loved him too. To crow that people have “always had it in for him anyway” is complete trash: The Smiths were and are critically lauded; Morrissey was an outsider icon and a generational wit and lyricist. The people who have distanced themselves from him and are the loudest about doing so are those for whom he has meant the most. The hurt fans who invested so much in what he appeared to stand for, who thought – and still think – the world of the music. There are millions of casual Kanye fans and zero casual fans of The Smiths and Morrissey. The love is either devotional or you’re someone who has never given the band or the man a second thought. And so Morrissey has been held to a higher account by those who’ve left his church.… Continue reading
First & Best: with Cameron Picton
Ahead of his debut solo album as My New Band Believe (coming 10 April), Cameron Picton, previously of black midi, shares the first album he ever bought and the best he’s bought since.
Find previous episodes of F&B on our Instagram and YouTube channel, or in previous editions of the Loud And Quiet Weekly.
Roundtable podcast: Mandy Indiana, Gorillaz, Danny L Harle, and Radiohead’s King of Limbs
One member of the Loud And Quiet team may have let slip during this episode of the Roundtable that they get their new music recommendations from The Graham Norton Show. Join Gemma Samways, Sam Walton and Stuart Stubbs for our monthly album reviews, taking on the 9th record by Gorillaz, Danny L Harle’s Euro trance debut/not debut Cerulean, and the heavy, heavy sound of Manchester industrial electro noise band Mandy, Indiana. We also put Radiohead’s King of Limbs back under the microscope 15 years on from its release – an album recorded at Drew Barrymore’s house. Listen now
Essential albums announced this week
Croz Boyce – Croz Boyce (8 May, Domino): Dave Portner and Brian Weitz of Animal Collective (or Avey Tare and Geologist, as they’re knowing in that group) have made an instrumental album together under the name Croz Boyce, which, in some way, is a nod to David Crosby. They say not musically, although their slightly frazzled debut track lines up that way too.
Earl Sweatshirt, MIKE and Surf Gang – Pompeii / Utility Due (3 April, 10k, Tan Cressida & Surf Gang Records): Friends and collaborators for a decade, underground rappers Earl and Mike are releasing a double album with the production collective Surf Gang. It being double, there’s a lot of music here – 33 tracks in total. And God knows how many will feature bars from both MCs: the first tracks to come are ‘Minty’ and ‘Earth’, one from each disc, and one from each lone rapper. Good, mumbly stuff though.
Katie Alice Greer – Perfect Woman Sound Machine, Vol. 1 (3 April): The former Priests singer has finally announced the follow up to her excellent 2022 solo debut album Barbarism, having released 2 new tracks over the last few months. The best yet is ‘Unglued’, which she says she wrote imagining “Kim Gordon fronting a Cleveland proto-punk band.”
Olof Dreijer – Loud Bloom (8 May, DH2): Since The Knife split up in 2014, Karin Dreijer has turned the world of experimental pop upside down as Fever Ray. Their brother has been more quiet, only releasing a few tracks and remixes whilst he concentrates on producing. His debut album is now set for release in May, where he addresses the persistently white, male, Western domination of dance music with vocalists from around the world, like MaMan, a Sudanese singer based in Cairo.
Tara Clerkin Trio – Somewhere Good (5 June, World of Echo): Released by the label of London’s most well-curated record store, this second album by the Bristol based trio is a dead cert to be your 2026 muso chat winner whilst also being a record you actually like or love. Listen to the title track for a taste of the patience and mood that goes into the band’s dubby, modern classical avant-pop.
The Lemon Twigs – Look For Your Mind! (8 May, Captured Tracks): The D’Addario brother have welcomed their band into the studio for the first time for their 6th album. It doesn’t seem to have upset the 1960s applecart, as new track ‘I Just Can’t Get Over You’ – more streamlined than any radio hit from that entire decade – sees the group proudly land at Please Please Me, right down to the Hofner bass.
Also this week
Fugazi have released a shelved albums worth of material recorded by Steve Albini in 1992. The songs were rerecorded by Ted Niceley for their 1993 album In On the Kill Taker, and now how that record originally sounded is available to buy on Bandcamp, with proceeds going to the Letters Charity, the charity that Albini and his wife set up to help families living in poverty in Chicago. Two tracks are available to stream on that Bandcamp link.
Mogwai have celebrated 30 years of their debut single ‘Tuner’ and their own label Rock Action, which released that first 7” in 1996, with a new video for the song that’s made up of home-recorded, never-seen VHS footage. Watch it here for maximum mid-90s post-rock nostalgia (there were words to the songs back then, too).
To commemorate the 7-year anniversary of the death of Keith Flint, his family and his group, The Prodigy, have installed a bench in his hometown’s church, which features a carving of the singer’s hair. Not his face. Just his hair. It’s a serious chunk of wood.
