L&Q Weekly
Stay grounded with Donna Thompson, Show Me The Body live from a bandstand, weekend listening from Water From Your Eyes, Nick Cave goes tech mad
Track of the Week
The wait goes on for a debut album from London singer and multi instrumentalist Donna Thompson, but in the meantime she has announced a new 6-track EP called What in the World?!, coming 21 Nov via PRAH Recordings. Its opening track, ‘Gardner Street’, adds a little spoken word to Thompson’s laid-back alt-jazz sound that’s always been fitting for an artist taking her time to develop. You have to say it’s an approach that’s working. “I suppose ‘Gardner Street’ is an invitation to reject becoming self-obsessed and to try to stay grounded,” she says.
3 sentence live review
SHOW ME THE BODY, SOUTHWARK PARK BANDSTAND, LONDON, 14 AUGUST: There are people stage diving off the Victorian bandstand in Southwark Park as New York hardcore trio Show Me The Body play a cover of ‘Sabotage’ for the second time in 20 minutes at a free guerrilla show that remains true to the band’s smash-and-grab live roots. Why can’t we have more 7pm circle pits for a community that rages as one in a respectful manner towards each other and their surroundings? Everyone picks up their fair share of offie-bought cans before heading home in time for Love It or List It. Stuart Stubbs
Weekend listening
If over the weekend you listen to one album released today, make it It’s A Beautiful Place by Water From Your Eyes, for it is quite possibly 2025’s greatest album yet. The New York duo’s 2023 label debut for Matador, Everyone’s Crushed, sure had its moments of genre-hopping brilliance, but this follow-up has the trollish Rachel Brown and Nate Amos absolutely flying. Only one song features any remnants of the duo’s beloved Red Hot Chili Peppers, and ‘Life Signs’ is good enough to make you pleased that ‘Give It Away’ walked so it could run. There’s also an interlude that’s all guitar solo from a hair metal band’s compulsory ballad, the really daft, too-long acid house piano lick of ‘Playing Classics’, classic rock bar chords, and the band’s take on a clunky country tune, all fed into the WFYE mangle, which includes Brown’s curiously pop toplines. It’s the album it always felt like this band could make.
Read our interview with the band here
The Loud And Quiet Podcast: with Karly Hartzman of Wednesday
Karly Hartzman started Wednesday in North Carolina (the only state she’s ever lived and, she says, will ever live it) as a solo project, until her sister made her put a full lineup together to play at her birthday. On this episode of the L&Q podcast – recorded in London last week – Karly discusses the split in the background of the band’s new album, how she has kicked social media with the help of a shit phone, death by bears, and how Wednesday’s next album might be a hardcore punk record. Listen here
The endless playdate of Rachika Nayar and Nina Keith as Disiniblud
At the gates of queer heaven sits a dragon – or, more accurately, a dragon’s head. She doesn’t look dissimilar to Falkor the Luckdragon from Wolfgang Petersen’s 1984 adaptation of The NeverEnding Story. She’s seven foot high, doesn’t have a name (at least, not one we’re privy to), and until recently she was stored in Rachika Nayar’s garage in Los Angeles, California. She makes a striking cover-girl for Disiniblud’s self-titled debut album (pronounced “Disney Blood”), a deeply melodic, beguilingly experimental world of its own gauzy wonder, guided too by hope and friendship. This phantastic puppet resting in the soft yellow glow of workstation lights is in many ways the perfect portal to access this world, Rachika kneeling down to stroke her nose and bandmate Nina Keith watching on from just outside the frame... Continue reading
Albums for your diary announced this week
Anna von Hausswolff – Iconoclasts (31 Oct, Year0001): After a 5-year break, the Swedish queen of pipe organ drone is taking a less doom-til-you-drop approach on her Year0001 label debut, with straighter songs made of so much singing they feature Ethel Cain, Abul Mogard and Iggy Pop. Two new tracks here.
Bar Italia – Some Like It Hot (17 October, Matador): Yes, that’s Super Hans from Peep Show in the video for ‘Fundraiser. Very Bar Italia.
Claire Rousay – Little Death (31 Oct, Thrill Jockey): It would seem that Claire Rousay has moved on from her emo ambient, vocoder sound of 2024’s sentiment. Little Death’s lead single, ‘just’ featuring M. Sage, heads back towards the scratchy found sounds the experimentalist has long be the master of.
Makaya McCraven – Off The Record (31 Oct, XL): The Chicago-based jazz drummer and bandleader’s new double LP will comprise 4 distinct new EP that will be released on the same day. A track from each are currently jazzing around the internet.
Also this week
Canadian post-rock pioneers Godspeed You! Black Emperor have become the latest band to pull their music from Spotify following Daniel Ek’s investments in weapons of war.
For reasons that no one knows, the new Tame Impala song, ‘End Of Summer’, has writer and producer credits that simply read “loser” on Spotify and Tidal rather than, presumably, Kevin Parker.
