L&Q Weekly
Water From Your Eyes confuse and delight, Tommy Wright III and DJ Spanish Fly finally play the UK, who Patchwork really are, and new albums from Cate Le Bon, Big Thief and Shame
Supported by Deer Shed Festival
Track of the Week
Water From Your Eyes’ new single ‘Life Signs’ does absolutely nothing to suss out what kind of band the New York duo are. Art rock, experimental pop, alt. pop, other. Fans haven’t been able to decide since their self-released early albums, or their 2023 breakthrough Everybody’s Crushed, released via Matador. On 22 August they’ll release a follow up called It’s A Beautiful Place, which feels like an album that will super charge their ascent without compromising their bloody-minded experimentalism. ‘Life Signs’ is the perfect taster, which mixes low-slung grunge power chords with nu-metal breaks and muted arpeggios, and a typically celestial chorus from singer Rachel Brown. It’s A Beautiful Place really is an album work getting excited about.
3 Sentence Live Review
Tommy Wright III, DJ Spanish Fly, Grandmixxer with Novelist, Mez & M.I.C, Lord Tusk, Jim j0nes, TTB, Lord Tusk + Lauren Duffus
ORMSIDE PROJECTS, LONDON, 25 MAY: Ormside Street is a usually barren nook of Bermondsey, south London, desolate save for the occasional rustings of flatroof churchgoers, dark kitchen couriers and chain-smoking club runoff, but tonight the strips is alive, as the street’s sole and dearly beloved club, Ormside Projects, invites the sprawling Life is Beautiful collective to curate a line-up featuring Memphis rap titans Tommy Wright III and DJ Spanish Fly. Both are key architects of the macabre, tape-fried sound that put Memphis on the map from the late-’80s to the late ‘90s, a scene that has patiently yet definitively altered the shape of modern rap. Despite releasing the bulk of his discography during the ‘90s, this is the first time Tommy, who’s hair is permed to perfection and stands wearing a look ebbing between humble appreciation and quiet bewilderment, has graced the shores of the UK, and the rapturous response to his presence is a sign that it’s been long-overdue, though the highlight of the night must be as he later reappeared quietly in the crowd, gazing with reverent amazement as DJ Grandmixxer closed the show with a set of no-holds-barred grime artillery, flanked by MCs Novelist, M.I.C and Mez, a style all of its own, but no doubt also deeply indebted to the pioneering sound of the nights headliners. Oskar Jeff
Album Review
Pulp and new album More: never rush, never change
Pulp were famously late bloomers, and they’ve proved to be slow at gearing up again. By the time Sadie Frost was pushing Jarvis Cocker around a supermarket, the same year they headlined Glastonbury as a last minute replacement for The Stone Roses, they’d been at it in one guise or another for 17 years. Most people presumed A Different Class was the band’s debut album, but real fans knew it was their second, after the Mercury Prize-nominated His ‘n’ Hers: their 3 albums before that – commercial and critical flops, It, Freaks and Separations – were struck from the books completely. It only further endeared them to a public who instantly loved them once they knew they existed. God loves a trier, and while Damon Albarn did his best to conceal the alpha ambition he shared with two brothers who flagrantly made it their brand, it felt more relatable to back a band who you knew had once been losers... Continue reading
Podcast
The first ever Loud And Quiet Roundtable: Model/Actriz, PinkPantheress and Blur's worst album
3 members of the L&Q team discuss key albums from the last 30 days, and reassess one from 10 years ago. Listen now
Column
The Drift: the best in weird and experimental music
Good evening fellow Drifters. The moon has once more passed all around the Earth since our last meeting, and that can only mean one thing – it’s time again to celebrate the last month’s strangest, silliest and most beautiful music… Continue reading
Album News
Albums for your diary announced this week
Cate Le Bon – Michelangelo Dying (26 Sept, Mexican Summer): Having produced albums for Devendra Banhart, Wilco and Horsegirl since her own last album in 2022, the Welsh artist returns for with a record of utter heartache, including hypnagogic pop single ‘Heaven Is No Feeling’.
Big Thief – Double Infinity (5 Sept, 4AD): The New York folk rock band’s 6th album, and their first as trio, announced this week with new track ‘Incomprehensible’.
Shame – Cutthroat (5 Sept, Dead Oceans): The forth album from the south London punk band, announced with its title track, which was inspired by Oscar Wilde and – naturally – features a video in which singer Charlie Steen stunt rides a motorbike in a wall of death.
Rumour of the Week
Patchwork to play Glastonbury
“Shocked, in the best possible way,” is how Winchester band Patchwork are said to feel having been booked to perform on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage this year. Speaking in his local pub, The Wheatsheaf, lead singer David Strutton was overheard recounting the moment he heard the news from lead guitarist Ian Potter, who joked, “it’ll probably bloody rain all weekend now.” Rumours have been flying around this week about who Patchwork are, after the Glastonbury day lineups were revealed featuring the rhythm and blues quartet sandwiched between John Fogerty and Raye on Saturday night. Festival goers have been convinced that Patchwork could be a code name for everyone from Pulp to Haim, to Timothee Chalamet, to Oasis, to David Gray. Few thought it could be Patchwork themselves, who Michael Eavis is said to have seen by chance at The Crown and Sceptre in Abbott’s Barton. Glastonbury will be the band’s biggest show to date, where fans will get to hear their renditions of ‘Mustang Sally’, ‘Roxanne’ and ‘Dancing In The Moonlight’.