Boris have dropped a new song titled ‘Question 1’. It’s set to appear on their forthcoming album Heavy Rocks (2022), the third installment in their Heavy Rocks series, which also includes the previously unveiled track ‘She Is Burning’. Take a listen below.
Heavy Rocks (2022) will follow Boris’ latest LP W, which came out earlier this year.
Rosie Thorne, the project of Mannequin Pussy members Marisa “Missy” Dabice and Max Steen, have released their new single ‘You’re My Future’ (via Epitaph). The track arrives with an accompanying video directed by Dabice that stars “a real life nonbinary trans couple who are also part of the Deaf and CODA (Child of a Deaf Adult) communities,” according to a press release. Watch and listen below.
“I’m so deeply interested in human connection and the ways in which we express ourselves through love,” Dabice commented in a statement. “How we show our devotion and our interest and our intent. There are so many different ways that we use language to demonstrate our love for another person. ‘You’re My Future’ attempts to capture how it feels to realize that the person you are falling in love with may be by your side forever.”
Elaborating on the video, Dabice said:
I wanted to cast and showcase love between two people who are not often represented in media. Early in 2020, when so much of life went fully online – the Deaf community had to continually petition major corporations such as Zoom, Google, Tik Tok, You Tube, Twitch etc to include closed captioning for those in the Deaf community who were not able to participate in so many of our new virtual modes of communication. I imagined how this also related to art, music and visual storytelling and how at a time where many of us were so desperate for human connection, many people were being left out of conversations simply out of an ableist mindset of what it means to make something accessible.
Through friends in Philadelphia I was introduced to Michelle Goodwin, who came on as an editor and producer of this music video. Michelle is a CODA who, along with Blake and D, were consultants on this video. Blake is a Deaf adult and D a CODA. The video was filmed over 3 sunrises and 2 sunsets in Philadelphia, in July 2021. We wanted to make a sweet, romantic, slightly cheesy portrayal of two young people falling in love who we see expressing that love for each other in a language that many people in the world do not speak and have yet to learn. ASL (American Sign Language) has even been described as painting through air and we sought to capture the beauty of both the language and the people who speak it. Happy Pride!
Katie Alice Greer has released a new single called ‘Captivated’, alongside an accompanying video. It’s taken from the former Priests member’s upcoming debut solo album, Barbarism, following previous cuts ‘FITS/My Love Can’t Be’ and ‘Dreamt I Talk To Horses’. Check it out below.
“This is a creepy song, in my mind, and I wanted to lean into that for both the production and the video’s narrative,” Greer explained in a statement. “In the video, a woman is intermittently experiencing time in reverse. She sees a plane fly overhead in a field and moments later, it flies backwards. She carries a suitcase full of money and now wonders where it came from. After experiencing time in reverse, she questions whether or not her experiences ever happened at all; she wonders whether she is in the present moment, caught in a daydream or a memory.
She continued: “In the video we are experiencing her mind’s chopped and shuffled versions of both, none of what she’s seeing or remembering (wandering at night, a woman in a yellow skirt, a gloved hand reaching for her in the field) makes any sense to her anymore. She is losing her sense of reality, and simultaneously trying to piece it back together with the few and unreliable clues she has left.”
Barbarism arrives on June 24 via FourFour Records.
Real Estate frontman Martin Courtney has released a new song, ‘Sailboat’, the second preview of his upcoming solo LP Magic Sign. The track, which follows previous offering ‘Corncob’, arrives with an accompanying video. Check it out below.
Of the new single, Courtney said in a statement:
For some reason I always assumed I did not possess a ‘license to rock’. This song is my attempt at some unlicensed rocking. I was extremely fortunate to have Matt Barrick, who drummed on the greatest rock song of the 2000s, ‘The Rat’, on this one. Couldn’t have done it any other way.
Lyrically this song is kind of about keeping things in perspective and attempting to stay positive in the face of all of the bullshit. An increasingly difficult task.
And I just thought ‘Sailboat’ was a funny name.
Magic Sign is due for release on June 24 via Domino.
A new Lou Reed album featuring never-before-heard material and early demos is being released. Words & Music, May 1965 will come out on August 26 as part of the reissue label Light in the Attic‘s new archival series in partnership with Laurie Anderson. The album features songs written by a young Reed and recorded to tape by his future Velvet Underground bandmate John Cale. Reed mailed the tape to himself as a “poor man’s copyright,” and the envelope remained unopened for nearly 50 years. Listen to the 1965 demo of ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’ below.
In addition to ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’, Words & Music, May 1965 includes the earliest known recordings of ‘Heroin’ and ‘Pale Blue Eyes’. It will be available as a deluxe-edition LP, a regular LP, CD, cassette, as well as digitally, and features liner notes from Greil Marcus and archival notes from Don Fleming and Jason Stern. On the same day as the album’s release, a podcast hosted by TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe will premiere.
Words & Music, May 1965 Tracklist:
1. I’m Waiting for the Man (May 1965 Demo)
2. Men of Good Fortune (May 1965 Demo)
3. Heroin (May 1965 Demo)
4. Too Late (May 1965 Demo)
5. Buttercup Song (May 1965 Demo)
6. Walk Alone (May 1965 Demo)
7. Buzz Buzz Buzz (May 1965 Demo)
8. Pale Blue Eyes (May 1965 Demo)
9. Stockpile (May 1965 Demo)
10. Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams (May 1965 Demo)
11. I’m Waiting for the Man (May 1965 Alternate Version)
12. Gee Whiz (1958 Rehearsal)
13. Baby, Let Me Follow You Down (1963/64 Home Recording)
14. Michael, Row The Boat Ashore (1963/64 Home Recording)
15. Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right (Partial) (1963/64 Home Recording)
16. W & X, Y, Z Blues (1963/64 Home Recording)
17. Lou’s 12-Bar Instrumental (1963/64 Home Recording)
Throughout the week, we update our Best New Songs playlist with the new releases that caught our attention the most, be it a single leading up to the release of an album or a newly unveiled deep cut. And each Monday, we round up the best new songs released over the past week (the eligibility period begins on Monday and ends Sunday night) in this best new music segment.
On this week’s list, we have Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ first new song in nearly a decade, the explosive, triumphant ‘Spitting Off the Edge of the World’ featuring Perfume Genius; the Mountain Goats’ ‘Training Montage’, the first single from their upcoming album Bleed Out, which was inspired by movies from the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s; Florist’s profoundly moving ‘Sci-Fi Silence’, the latest offering from their forthcoming self-titled LP; ‘nothing (in my head)’, Pinkshift’s soaring, infectious first single for Hopeless Records; Beth Orton’s gorgeously revelatory ‘Weather Alive’, the title track from the British artist’s recently announced new album; and Flasher’s latest single, the confident, propulsive ‘I’m Better’.
Best New Songs: June 6, 2022
Yeah Yeah Yeahs feat. Perfume Genius, ‘Spitting Off The Edge Of The World’
The Mountain Goats, ‘Training Montage’
Song of the Week: Florist, ‘Sci-Fi Silence’
Pinkshift, ‘nothing (in my head)’
Beth Orton, ‘Weather Alive’
Flasher, ‘I’m Better’
Eternal Stalker, the first collaborative album from Japanese noise legend Masami Akita (aka Merzbow) and Australian sound philosopher Lawrence English, is a merger of their obsessions and techniques. Unfolding through field recordings of a massive industrial warehouse and its environment, the album rests at the intersection between nature and industrial space. The sounds are both exhausting and impressively dynamic, illustrating a transformative liminality through the medium of field recording.
This is an irresistible collaboration. Merzbow’s music encapsulates the roaring ethos of an industrial world: true metal machine music. His extensive oeuvre of harsh noise records (spanning over forty years and hundreds of releases) unleash volatile waves of mechanical sound, all-consuming until all traditional conceptions of “nature” are distant memories. Caverns of feedback scream back into more caverns of feedback. The rare inclusion of any standard musical conventions (ie. rhythm or melody) feels jarring in Merzbow’s work. His sounds evoke an air of self-sufficiency. It’s easy to forget an artist has (often meticulously) crafted these sounds, since Merzbow’s music feels entirely removed from anything biological. Consequently, he leans into the post-human potential of Noise.
Yet for Merzbow, whose experimentations and re-inventions unfold primarily within the admittedly limited parameters of industrial cacophony, collaboration with other artists allows for an invigorating re-adaptation of his sound. Merzbow’s work with musicians (from Boris to Xiu Xiu to Full of Hell) treat his harsh noise as an instrument amongst other instruments, crafting less monolithic pieces and reaching further into musical contradiction.
On the other hand, much of Lawrence English’s work positions him as a sonic nature documentarian (though he’d likely contest the perceptions of objectivity often attributed to documentation). Last year’s A Mirror Holds The Sky was sculpted from English’s fifty-hour archive of Amazon rainforest nature recordings, recorded almost fifteen years prior. Each track embodies different spaces English visited during his Amazonian residency. The incredibly detailed soundscapes echo with rushing water and the constant cries of insects: personal experiences of spaces archived in sound. While English’s prolific catalogue contains multitudes (including dark and distorted, Tim Hecker-esque drone records like Wilderness of Mirrors), his recurring relationship to nature recordings is seemingly antithetical to the industrial screeches of Merzbow’s work.
Eternal Stalker begins with bursts of thunder and rainfall. They clash against the metallic surface of the Australian warehouse where the entire album was recorded. The rain sounds nothing like it does on A Mirror Holds The Sky. Here, downpour is metallic and bassy, like some over-amplified tape hiss. Yet slowly, as the album evolves, mechanical sounds from within the warehouse mix with the noise of weather. The line between the mechanic and organic becomes blurred. By the back half of ‘A Gate of Light’, the second track, the mix has been subsumed in noise: rainfall indecipherable from the grating cries of machinery. As a collaboration, it’s a pure mixture of Merzbow and English’s fixations. Nature and machinery weld together through the platform of field recording.
The music is also unexpectedly narrative. There’s no cohesive arc, yet the sounds exist in flux, moving across a vast assortment of noises and telling the story of an overnight factory. While primarily a representation of a liminal space and its unnerving atmosphere, there’s dynamism to the sounds. The space evolves from eerie silences to the all-encompassing howls of a room full of machines. Sounds fluctuate from foreground to background. In the stretch from ‘The Visit’ into ‘Magnetic Tapes’, the mechanical caterwaul of machines begins as a distant rumble and then grows overpowering. There are even peaceful moments along the way (e.g. the gentle background hissing on ‘Black Thicket’ or the slow fade out which concludes the album on ‘A Thing, Just Silence’, as once abrasive sounds become a mere hum). Sometimes everything sounds richly textured. At other points, it’s a singular wrecking ball of assaultive noise.
Eternal Stalker is transitory music, plunging into the depths of unknown spaces: a harsh noise odyssey. The album’s title is a nod to Andrei Tarkovsky’s sci-fi classic Stalker, a movie about three men wandering through “the Zone”: a bleak and other-wordly landscape. Like Stalker, Eternal Stalker is a work about inhabiting alien spaces and becoming overpowered by their ambiance. It’s a transcendental album, moving towards a new post-human relationship through sound and decentering our own biology.
By the third and final day of Primavera Weekend 1, I expected the tiredness to have fully kicked in. Because the Barcelona event is different from other festivals in that it starts later in the day and goes on until super late into the night, depending on your mode of transportation, you might not get to where you’re staying until 6:00 or 7:00 am. After a few hours of sleep, I’d only have a couple of hours to work on these recaps before heading to Parc del Fòrum again. Maybe it was due to the fact that the lineup was even more stacked than the previous days, or that some of the organizational issues seemed to have improved, or my body had simply adjusted to the physical requirements of a festival by that point – regardless, all I could sense was people’s excitement on all different kinds of sets, and I didn’t even get to hang around the main stage for Gorillaz (who are also set to perform next weekend). In chronological order, here were six of my favorite moments.
Though I unfortunately didn’t catch most of Dana Margolin’s solo performance at the Plenitude stage late on Saturday afternoon, I managed to make it to the front for the final three songs of her set. The festival’s seaside location was an ideal fit for ‘Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky’ – the only track from Porridge Radio’s excellent new album of the same name that I got to hear – a stripped-back cut that naturally lost none of its resonance. (In between songs, Margolin instinctively looked back at the empty stage to check on her band: “Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that,” she laughed. I’m sure there were other endearing moments like that.) But even when diving into Every Bad highlights ‘Lilac’ (which hasn’t been part of their setlist for a while) and ‘Sweet’ (which drew the biggest reaction of the three), the power of Margolin’s voice alone was undeniable. I tried not to be bitter about missing the rest of the show; singing along to those songs was cathartic enough.
There was no chance that the songs off Low’s HEY WHAT would sound exactly like they do on record – the band’s new album is a disorienting wonder of production and sound design, and any attempt to recreate each subtle detail would surely prove futile. Still, I was curious to see what approach the slowcore duo would take. At the Binance stage on Saturday evening (they also played Auditori Rockdelux on June 3, where the above photo was taken), the album’s highlights didn’t exactly sound quiet, but they were significantly cleaner and more raw than I had expected – you could actually hear Alan Sparhawk strum his guitar on songs like ‘White Horses’, and there was a clear correlation between what he was playing and you ended up hearing. Not only did this help the new songs blend in with the rest of their catalog, but it also proved that HEY WHAT‘s greatest strength – and the real reason it stands among their best – lies in the songwriting, which was just as resonant in a live setting. If anything, limiting (but not eliminating) the layers of effects turned the focus to the actual performance aspect of the show: Sparhawk straining his voice to reach a higher octave, Mimi Parker providing delicately beautiful harmonies behind the kit. Sparhawk’s interactions with the audience were also notable, like when he asked who was looking forward to the Napalm Death show later that night, then let out a brief growl. Who knows – maybe that will be the direction of the next Low album.
“Charli met Earl Sweatshirt in the elevator today,” Lewis Evans said as Black Country, New Road started playing something new, and I wasn’t immediately sure if it was a fictional lyric from an unreleased song or a real-life anecdote about their stay in Barcelona – or both. They definitely weren’t going to play ‘Basketball Shoes’ – the standout from their new album Ants From Up There that started out as a song about Charli – and not because she had just played the same festival, but because they’ve promised not to play any old songs following the recent departure of singer Isaac Wood. What it ended up being was the introduction to a song they claimed to have written a couple of hours earlier, and though I didn’t catch much of the lyrics – I think it’s about being friends across the pond? – it at least bore some thematic resemblance to ‘Basketball Shoes’.
At any rate, that wasn’t the main draw of seeing BCNR at the Binance stage on Saturday evening. The band has been testing out new material on the road, and I was excited to hear what it would sound like. Rather than one of the six remaining members taking the role of the frontperson, there were songs led by bassist Tyler Hyde, saxophonist Lewis Evans, and keyboardist May Kershaw. Regardless of whether those songs could measure up to the group’s prior work, what’s certain is that they managed to captivate the crowd. Most alluring and eclectic were the songs by Kershaw, which took on a pastoral quality (“I’m only a pig,” goes one refrain.) By contrast, Hyde’s were most reminiscent of songs from their sophomore LP, their lyricism similarly sentimental but less steeped in metaphor (one culminates with the words “I will always love you” and ends with “I’ve accepted that no one else will love me like that ever again.”) The one by Evans that struck me the most started as a ballad that leaned further into vocal jazz than anything they’ve done before, even if it wasn’t as impactful. It will be interesting to see if and how these different paths will end up converging, but the most startling part of this performance was their ability to build any song into something new and distinctly BCNR, crescendoing into a striking, familiar place.
If you somehow could only remember three words from Nick Cave’s two-hour set at Primavera, it would be: “Cry! Cry! Cry!” Throughout the second performance of his first tour in four years with the Bad Seeds (he toured with Warren Ellis last year), Cave howled the line from ‘From Her to Eternity’ over and over, directing it at specific members of the audience every time the words manically resurfaced. Yet few performers could embody an unhinged, eerie persona with such potent theatricality and then genuinely move you to tears, let alone stage an entire show about keeping your faith in love.
The set began with ‘Ready for Love’, which he hasn’t been performing since 2009; during the encore, he played the recently unveiled B-side ‘Vortex’, a song about “strange, deformed people” that includes the line, “I just want to hold your hand.” Throughout the performance, Cave did just that, reaching toward the audience as much as he paced around the stage. When he sang ‘Can You Feel My Heartbeat?’, it felt like an urgent request for someone to place a hand on his chest. And when he opened the encore with the classic ‘Into My Arms’, the line “I believe in love” became an affirmation of everything that had come before, carrying the hope that, if that hasn’t changed in all those years, it probably never will.
As they delivered hits from throughout their discography, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ show was by turns raucous, darkly funny, and always stirring. But when he played ‘I Need You’ (the only track from Skeleton Tree), dedicating it to his sons, Luke and Earl, every person in the crowd fell silent. The feeling was almost too much to bear. As Cave transitioned to the equally heart-wrenching ‘Waiting for You’, I wondered what was going through each of their minds, or who.
Not long after, the mood had shifted yet again, most notably with a remarkable performance of Let Love In‘s ‘Red Right Hand’, which Cave himself described as the best version of the track they’ve ever done. (“I’ve never sung it in tune,” he explained, “but tonight I did. More or less.” Other highlights included an incredible rendition of ‘White Elephant’, which sounded as menacing as it does on CARNAGE, Ellis’ angelic vocals on ‘Bright Horses’, and the hauntingly beautiful performance of ‘Ghosteen Speaks’ that closed out the set, a timeless, unforgettable show of humanity.
In the few quiet seconds before the final song, the screens showed Cave looking at a member of the audience – who I can only imagine had said or done something pitiable or embarrassing – and, without a shred of irony or humour, saying, “You take care yourself.” Perhaps it was a small and insignificant moment, or maybe it was a strange glimpse into something serious and intensely personal – there’s really no way to know. But I like to think that, for at least some members in the audience, those two hours were enough to make some kind of healing feel possible.
For IDLES, playing at Primavera was a dream come true. Frontman Joe Talbot got a little emotional as he recounted the many times he’s attended the festival, standing on the very same steps where dozens upon dozens of fans were now shouting along to his own band’s songs. But even if you’re not the biggest admirer of IDLES’ latest records (they only played a couple songs off this year’s CRAWL, which I thought was a significant improvement from Ultra Mono), you probably wouldn’t pass on the chance to see them live; they have the reputation of being an incendiary live band for a reason. “Are you ready to collide?” Talbot screamed after commanding the audience to split, and then, with equal fervour: “Are you ready to look after each other?”
But there was another reason why this was a significant moment for IDLES, who expressed gratitude for being out of the UK during this time. The anti-monarchist sentiment had already been echoed by other bands at Primavera, but IDLES being IDLES, Talbot really drove the point home. (“When I say, ‘Fuck,'” he instructed, “You say, ‘The Queen.'”) This perhaps explains why the set was less of a showcase for CRAWLER, whose subject matter is more directly personal – or they simply wanted to deliver songs people would be more familiar with. Either way, it landed. Upon realizing that they still had loads of time left, IDLES charged into an extended version of ‘Love Song’ that featured interpolations of ’19-2000′ (which Gorillaz might as well have been performing at the same time), ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’, ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ (I kid you not), and the one that obviously resonated the most with everyone who wasn’t over at the main stage: ‘Wonderwall’. “If you feel threatened by Oasis,” Talbot argued, “You need a good old-fashioned hug.” Replace “Oasis” with “strength-in-numbers,” and you basically get the IDLES MO.
I had, obviously, no expectation that Beach House’s set would be as political as IDLES’ in any way shape or form, but it was still pretty amusing to walk over to the Binance stage and be greeted with a much more basic message from the Baltimore duo: Please remember to drink water. (“You tell them that,” one festivalgoer responded, referring to the serious criticisms over the lack of water access at the festival.) Everything else, they said with their music, which sounded as spectacular as ever. Although their latest album features more lush orchestration, the duo had no issue making the songs work with a more direct presentation that blended seamlessly with the rest of their catalog. The Once Twice Melody standout ‘Superstar’ took on a new resonance as the band slowed it down; older songs carried an added punch. Hearing people sing along to their most popular songs only made the experience more transcendent.
Here’s the thing: I like to call Beach House one of my favorite bands, and I’ve listened to all of their albums countless times. I know their songs. But I don’t think I can recite the full lyrics to a single one of their songs by heart. I almost feel like it would lessen the impact they have on me, that I’d miss the thrill of hearing the vocals as just another layer of sound, or discovering some new feeling in the words that shine through. Beach House’s live show reminded me that there is value in being totally immersed in something without having to break it down or give it meaning. It doesn’t mean your connection with it isn’t or one day won’t be as strong. I still want to hear their songs again and again, like a recurring dream that’s never quite the same. When they closed out with ‘Over and Over’, you wish it would stretch on for just a little longer. And in some weird, unquantifiable way, maybe it did.
After people were left disappointed by the lack of organization on the first day of Primavera Sound as well as the cancelation of the Strokes’ headlining set on Friday, the mood was less than enthusiastic heading into the second night of the festival. Something about the overall atmosphere on Friday seemed to eerily reflect this – the sky was getting cloudier as not-so-cheerful acts like the National and Fontaines D.C. were set to hit the stage. Although I would have killed to see the National live, I thought it reasonable to try to find an alternative to some of the bigger names, which also included Beck and Caribou, given that overcrowding was still an issue. I also did my best to make time between performances rather than attempting to catch as many of them as possible, which made the experience less overwhelming and more enjoyable. Here, in chronological order, are six memorable moments from the night.
Weyes Blood hasn’t released an album since 2019’s mesmerizing Titanic Rising, which made her Friday evening set feel like a hazy dream coming back to haunt you. For the most part, the sun still shone bright, but the smoke machines were almost unnecessary as clouds began to loom over the Binance stage: a startling fit for Natalie Mering’s measured yet mesmerizing performance. For as melancholy (or, in her words, “sadass”) as her music is – as her set reminded us, it can also be otherworldly, wild, and breathtakingly cinematic – Mering seemed genuinely glad to be back, making jokes between songs. “This is our one upbeat song,” she said before singing ‘Everyday’, “Feel free to mosh.” Halfway through her performance, she also announced that her next record is done. Though it doesn’t come out till the fall and she refrained from playing any unreleased songs – surprising the audience only with a stirring cover of the Hollies’ ‘The Air That I Breathe’ – the way she brought her older songs to life was a good enough reason to be excited.
Just like yesterday’s schedule made it impossible to see Charli XCX without missing out on Rina Sawayama’s set, on Friday fans of the UK post-punk revival had to make a choice between Dublin’s Fontaines D.C., who have established a reputation for making gloomy songs with a poetic bent, and the fast-rising Isle of Wight duo Wet Leg. I have no doubt Wet Leg’s refreshingly lighthearted and playful approach made for a particularly fun festival set, but over at the Estrella Damm stage, Fontaines DC delivered what was easily one of the most exhilarating performances of the festival so far.
Even with the stylistic differences that characterize each of their three records – with this year’s Skinty Fia being simultaneously their most haunted and tender to date – there wasn’t a single dip in intensity for the entirety of their set. A moshpit kept swirling throughout, and, even in Barcelona, people were bellowing the words to every song. Like his lyrics, there was a hint of ambiguity in singer Grian Chatten’s stage presence; you couldn’t be sure if it was out of anguish that he was pacing around the stage, drilling the microphone stand into the floor, and staring intently at the crowd, or if he was simply trying to rile people up (either way, he succeeded at that). The rest of the group maintained a moody yet propulsive groove alongside him, with bassist Conor Deegan III counteracting Chatten’s passion with a seemingly purposeful listlessness. But their sincerity was there, too. The final shot on the big screens wasn’t of the band leaving the stage but that of a delighted fan who had somehow managed to get Chatten to pick up and sign a record on stage.
The last time Little Simz performed at Primavera was in 2019, when she had just released her album GREY Area. “There definitely weren’t as many people that day as there is tonight,” she said before launching into a string of tracks from that LP. But when she graced the Cupra stage on Friday night, those people chanted her name, cheered, grooved, and sang along to both the GREY Area cuts and highlights her 2021 introspective opus Sometimes I Might Be Introvert. A group of what I can only assume were North Londoners lost it when ‘101 FM’ came on, while everyone started head banging when the beat dropped on ‘Venom’. If the contrast between Simz’s last two albums is evident on record, their juxtaposition here was less jarring; save for the horns that introduce ‘Introvert’, Simz cut back on SIMBI‘s luxurious, majestic presentation, which turned out to be a pertinent decision. (The spoken interludes from The Crown‘s Emma Corrin were nowhere to be heard.) Besides, keeping things raw and direct only made her songs hit that much harder. Simz might sometimes be introvert, but she sure knows how to connect with her audience.
Given that Warpaint made most of their fourth LP, Radiate Like This, remotely during lockdown, it was a special joy seeing Emily Kokal, Theresa Wayman, Jenny Lee Lindberg, and Stella Mozgawa performing songs from it together live. Whether diving into groove-heavy tracks like ‘Hips’ and ‘Hard to Tell You’ or delivering an acapella rendition of ‘Melting’, their interplay was natural and fluid as you would expect, with each member getting their time to shine even as they all moved as one organism. Much like when Weyes Blood took the same stage earlier in the day, the band seemed to have conspired with the weather gods. I’ll admit that heading is a bit misleading – there was only a light drizzle during ‘Love Is to Die’, but it came almost like a stroke of magic, lending the line “Love is to dance” a mystical, revelatory quality. From that point on, Warpaint’s performance became increasingly more engaging and upbeat, and in the final stretch, their typically moody show had turned into a full-on dance party – and there was room for everyone.
What else do you need to know?
With Caribou taking over the Strokes’ place, Mogwai had to fill in his set at the last minute, and given the circumstances, or rather in spite of them, the Scottish legends did a spectacular job. I’ve heard – from people like Dave Thomas, the designer who has created much of the band’s album artwork, including the variation of the one for 2021’s As the Love Continues that stood ominously behind them at the Cupra stage last night – that the experience of seeing Mogwai live can be life-changing. It didn’t quite have that effect on me, but with their unmatchable grasp of dynamics and glorious wall of sound – loud enough to remind me to pull up my earbuds – it’s hard to imagine a more crushingly beautiful way to close out the night. (Mogwai said few words in between their heavily instrumental songs, but Fontaines D.C. weren’t the only UK band at Primavera that took a shot at the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations). As the layers of noise kept building and building towards the end, Mogwai left us with no choice but to take it all in.
Yorgos Lanthimos is a Greek film director, producer, and screenwriter known for his offbeat and often unsettling films. He has won awards for his English language films The Lobster, The Favourite, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, as well as Greek films Dogtooth and Alps. His cinematic style is palpable across his filmography, even though the characters and settings range in diversity. A common thread in his work is dark humor – combined with minimal dialogue, the result is often strangely morbid and has been pinned down as part of the Greek Weird Wave movement. Here are five movies to watch for those who enjoy Lanthimos’ work, including two of his own films.
Beast is the directorial debut of Michael Pearce, which earned him a BAFTA for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer. The film is set in the somewhat isolated coastal community of Jersey, where a young woman named Moll (Jessie Buckley) works as a tour guide. She lives with her wealthy but oppressive parents, who often make suggestive remarks referring to something terrible Moll has done in the past. After a night out, Moll meets Pascal (Johnny Flynn), a mysterious man who’s out hunting. She’s instantly drawn to him, though her family warns her to stay away from him, especially when a string of local murders makes the news. In fact, her parents suspect that Pascal is the killer, but Moll defends him. Much like Lanthimos’ movies, Beast is a quietly thrilling film. The dialogue is similarly blunt, and the isolated, pretty-on-the-surface setting is an effective backdrop for suspense and mystery.
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a suburban-set horror focusing on the Murphy family. Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell) is a surgeon, a father to two children (Sunny Suljic and Raffey Cassidy), and a husband to Anna (Nicole Kidman). After work one day, Steven meets a young man named Martin (Barry Keoghan) and soon takes him under his wing. He tells Anna that Martin’s father died in a car accident years ago and that he’s helping Martin through his grief. However, Martin soon reveals that Steven is to blame for his father’s death and that, as the person responsible, he must restore the balance. The unnerving plot of this Lanthimos film is presented in a very stark manner; the audience has nowhere to escape, nowhere to find comfort amid the bleak, sparse visuals and clinical settings. The characters, also, are clinical. They speak in an odd way, which helps viewers distinguish truth from lies and confront the film’s underlying meaning.
Like Yorgos Lanthimos, director Wes Anderson is known as something of an auteur. He has a palpable, easily distinguishable cinematic style, particularly when it comes to atmosphere. Where Lanthimos’ films are often visually stark and bleak, Anderson’s pop with vivid color. Yorgos Lanthimos fans may enjoy The French Dispatch for its complex story and dialogue. The two directors both share a propensity for minimalistic, blunt, almost absurdist speech. The French Dispatch follows a suite of characters connected to the newspaper of the same name, where reporters venture out into the town to meet criminals, teenage rebels, and kidnappers, all with similarly vacant expressions. The characters are interested in a search for truth and beauty, and even when their social circumstances differ, they all treat each other with respect. The result is a humorous, adventurous story presented with the utmost precision in cinematography and production design.
Another Lanthimos film, The Lobster is a taut drama about a man named David (Colin Farrell) who has forty-five days to find a romantic partner. He’s at a special facility known as the Hotel, where many others like him face an unappealing fate: if they fail to find a partner, they will be transformed into an animal of their choosing. David has chosen to become a lobster. As the film progresses, the characters find increasingly extremist ways to connect themselves to a potential significant other, usually in physical, surface-level ways, like maiming themselves to alter their bodies. An even more unsettling layer to the story is revealed when David must embark, with other guests, on a hunt for “Loners” in the nearby woods. The Loners reject and prohibit romance, which often leads to members secretly wishing for it. On the other hand, some at the Hotel want to join the Loners because they are forced into relationships. This satire comments on social structures and expectations in an unnerving way – the settings are bleak in their starkness, and the characters are blunt and overly direct.
Something about the world of Sometimes Always Never is off-kilter, and it’s not just the blend of animation, split-screen scenes, and black-and-white sequences. Drenched in grief, the story follows a family whose chief method of communication is through Scrabble. Alan (Bill Nighy) is convinced that his missing son, Michael, is somewhere out in the world, and he spends much of his free time playing Scrabble online to find him. One day, he encounters a particularly skilled player and convinces himself that it’s Michael. Along with his younger son Peter (Sam Riley), Alan embarks on a quest to track Michael down. However, Alan’s relationship with the rest of his family is strained, and they are well aware that it was a game of Scrabble that caused Michael to leave in the first place. Oddly comedic, Carl Hunter’s feature directorial debut is a unique story set against bleak backdrops. Like Lanthimos’ characters, Alan’s speech is stilted, though littered with impressive vocabulary choices. However, the family’s board game exchanges make it difficult for them to communicate authentically.
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