L&Q Weekly
U.S. Girls highlights her evolution, A man walks into the strangest gig of his life, Spotify advertise ICE, Rolling Stone eats Vibe magazine, Allen White to be buried with Springsteen
Supported by Sub Pop & FORM
Track of the Week
It is cheating to have two Tracks of the Week if they’re the same track? ‘Running Errands (Yesterday)’ and ‘Running Errands (Today)’ come with a clear message of how underrated Meg Remy’s U.S. Girls project has been over the last decade – certainly in terms of creative drive. Having started out looping tapes and self-releasing before even then, Remy hasn’t stopped evolving her sound since she released her album Half Free 10 years ago. We’ve actually taken it for granted. ‘Running Errands’ marks the stark difference between what was once a solo electronic project (the ‘Yesterday’ version, below, features samples from Half Free) and what most recently has become a giant band made up of Nashville country legends (‘Today’ features the players from U.S. Girls’ Scratch It album from earlier this year – listen to that version here). And yet as wildly different as their approaches are, played side by side, what’s most startling is how good of a jazz singer Remy has become, or perhaps always was.
10 years on, Joe Casey revisits Protomartyr’s The Agent Intellect
Next month, the best post-punk to ever come out of Detroit are going to do something they always said they wouldn’t: celebrate an old album by playing it front to back, at 13 dates across Europe. The album is Protomartyr’s third, The Agent Intellect, released a decade ago. “We said we’d never do it, but that was when we were starving,” says singer and lyricist Joe Casey. “We thought it was so lame, and now here we are.”… Continue reading
A man walks into the strangest gig of his life
It started, as these things tend to, with a WhatsApp from my mate James. “Famcy milkweed next week at the ICA” he wrote, typos and punctuation just standard collateral damage priced into James’ ongoing mission to see all the new bands. I’d heard the name but nothing more, so accepted his offer and decided to go in cold. Well, cold-ish: on the tube to Charing Cross, I googled “milkweed” and was given first a slew of gardening advice and then an old Cafe OTO listing for music that “ricochets between bewitching Appalachian folk and disconcerting hauntological experimentation” and a review that went big on the fact their last release was a nine-song album lasting 10 minutes. Strap in, I thought, with eager anticipation… Continue reading
First and Best
Welcome to our new video series where we ask artists, what was the very first album they bought, and what’s been the best album they’ve bought since then. We’ll post these on our Instagram, YouTube and also here on Substack, starting right now, with
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Don’t read the comments
Let us tempt you into signing up for a full Loud And Quiet subscription by showing you what you’ve been missing. For the next 48 hours Stuart Stubbs’ article is out from behind the paywall, asking how useful is feedback from artists’ fans, and at what point can it have an adverse affect on their creativity? Featuring insights from Matt Berninger, Lily Fontaine and Richard Dawson. Read now
Albums for your diary announced this week
Oneohtrix Point Never – Tranquilizer (17 Nov, Warp): Daniel Lopatin just released three new tracks from his upcoming eleventh album – the opening three.
Sleaford Mods – The Demise of Planet X (16 Jan, Rough Trade): Guest features abound on the Nottingham duo’s new album, which took an uncharacteristically long time to make, including Life Without Buildings frontwoman Sue Tompkins, Aldous Harding, soul singer Liam Bailey, grime MC Snowy, and, on lead single ‘The Good Life’, actress Gwendoline Christie and Big Special.
Rumour of the Week: Jeremy Allen White contractually obliged to be buried with Bruce Springsteen
Bruce “I’m the Boss” Springsteen has been a lot more hands on with his biopic than Bob Dylan was with his, who is expected to see A Complete Unknown as soon as it comes to a streaming service he already subscribes to. The ‘Born To Run In The USA’ legend was said to have visited the set of Deliver Me From Nowhere continuously through filming, and now he and star Jeremy Allen White are looking closer than ever as they hit the promo circuit together. But what White wasn’t expecting to find out on his recent trip to London is that he’s contractually obliged to be buried alongside Springsteen. Sources say that White had the small print of his movie contract pointed out to him after Springsteen casually mentioned the arrangement before they took to the stage of BBC’s The Graham Norton Show, saying, “This green room isn’t even half the size of the tomb I’ve had made for us, Jezza.” Timothée Chalamet has allegedly denied asking for a similar clause to be added to his contract retrospectively.
Also this week
Iconic R&B and rap magazine Vibe – founded by Quincy Jones and Time Warner in 1993 – has merged with Rolling Stone. The two have been owned by the same publisher, Penske Media Group, since 2020. By all accounts it sounds like Rolling Stone is just going to feature more hip hop from now on, while Vibe will most likely be slowly mothballed.
Hertfordshire festival Standon Calling has gone into liquidation. Following financial losses in 2022 and 2023, the event – which started in 2006 – has not run for the last two years as organisers have sought out investors to keep things going.
Always determined to find another terrible look, Spotify have started running ICE recruitment ads in the US on their free, ad-supported tier, where, between listening to their favourite artists, listeners are encouraged to “join the mission to protect America.” But it’s actually fine, because the US government are paying a lot of money for the ads.
