L&Q Weekly
UMO go instrumental again, Nick Cave and others share unreleased music, Squid's evil new album, the week's newly announced LPs, Grammy show offs "can laugh about it now"
Supported by Ninja Tune
Album News
Albums for your diary announced this week:
Anika – Abyss (4 April, Sacred Bones): Albums from the British-born Berlin-based Annika Henderson don’t come along all that often but always offer something shadowy and befitting the Scared Bones label. From new single ‘Hearsay’, it appears the once Nico-ish artist is feeling PJ Harvey for her angry 3rd album.
Divide And Dissolve – Insatiable (28 March, Bella Union): Once a duo and now in the sole custody of Black and Cherokee artist Takiaya Reed, D&D’s 3rd album of progressive doom metal combines Reed’s bowel-emptying sludge guitar with more of her ambient saxophone than ever before.
YHWH Nailgun – 45 Pounds (18 April, AD 93): Perhaps the experimental rock band to fill that Black Midi-shaped hole this year, the New York band “you really need to see live” have announced their debut with their most digestible track yet. Drums still on overtime.
Patrick Wolf – Crying The Kneck (25 April, Virgin): Yes, that Patrick Wolf. After a long wait of 13 years since his last album – which was something of an unplugged greatest hits – one of the more interesting artists of mid-00s British indie is finally back, having been through the mill of addiction, bankruptcy, injury and grief in the interim.
Track of the Week
In 2018, psych pop band Unknown Mortal Orchestra surprised with a fully instrumental album called IC-01 Hanoi, recorded in the Vietnamese capital city. The ‘IC-01’ of the title should have perhaps been a sign that Ruben Nielson’s outfit planned to repeat the trick at least one more time, and now its followup is nearly upon us. IC-02 Bogotá – recorded in the capital of Colombia, of course – will be released 28 March via Jagjaguwar, and once again is a record void of lyrics and full of free-flowing jams, largely formed from improvisation and the local area. This particular trip to a foreign city was to initiate new keyboard player Christian Li, and boy do they put him to work on ‘earth 1’ – a shuffling boogie for him to showboat his Ray Manzarek-ish organ runs up and down.
Review
As Bristol/Brighton/London band Squid release their new album Cowards (out today via Warp), Sam Walton charts the history of evil in modern music and unpacks what makes Cowards such a welcome addition to cannon. Read here
Charity
Following last month’s devastating wildfires in L.A., the music world mobilised quickly to raise money for those affected by this latest tragedy of climate change. There’s been benefit concerts and charity releases, but the biggest of these – in terms of artist names and music – arrived yesterday. Los Angeles Rising is a compilation only available via Bandcamp, with all proceeds going Sweet Relief. It features artwork by Shepard Fairey and unreleased music by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, PJ Harvey, Primal Scream and Gary Numan. There’s also a Jarvis Cocker cover of ‘California Dreamin’’, which sounds exactly as you’re imagining it, and a redux of Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ ‘Turn Into’. A few tracks can be previews on bandcamp, but to hear a majority of them, fan will need to buy the $10 download here.
Rumour of the Week
Backstage at the Grammys, Jaden Smith and Bianca Censori were overheard comforting each other over a misunderstanding about who had upstaged who on the red carpet earlier that evening. Moments after Censori was seen running to the bathroom in tears screaming, “Hello, I’m naked here!”, she was spotted in a corridor with her arm around a dejected Smith explaining, “Y’know, I just thought no one would trump complete nudity this year, so it was a bit of a shock to see that someone was wearing a castle on their head.” Smith’s castle was showing signs of water damage following his own tears of frustration, but he clearly appreciated Censori reaching out, as he was overheard saying, “Oh my god, totally! I get it. I mean, when I saw you had worn nothing at all my heart sank. My team were telling me to drop my pants to put me back in the game, but I can’t hear much with this thing on.” The two talents were seen laughing about their initial reactions before promising to tell one other what they have planned next year, when Smith is expected to wear a castle on his head and no trousers.