Photographer Michael McCluskey grew up in a rural area in the west of Michigan. Having worked as a musician for 15 years prior to experimenting with photography, McCluskey developed his interest with the hopes that it would serve as a stepping stone to becoming a filmmaker. While this is still a dream he is pursuing, photography has since come to mean much more to him. The artist describes his style as “documentarian with a subtle narrative”, citing Valérie Timmermans as a central inspiration, but also drawing ideas from films, music and personal experiences. McCluskey mostly shoots at night; he enjoys the challenge and magical results that the process creates.
Introducing his “Mourning and Evening” photo series, McCluskey compares the images to sad love songs, evoking an appreciation and warmth for the good moments, but also a heartache that accompanies every ending. The creator analogizes the photos of lighter skies with their various shades and cloud compositions to the early stages of love, filled with a saturated but short-lived passion, while the darker images are symbolic of loneliness and the fear of this feeling being eternal.
Follow Michael McCluskey on Instagram to see more of his haunting, breathtaking work.
When the Vaccines’ debut came out ten years ago, you could hardly find a review that didn’t include some pun on the album’s title: What Did You Expect From the Vaccines? And while googling that question now might redirect you to the WHO website, frontman Justin Young remains focused on the music, even if he admits the situation has made reposting Instagram Stories “a bit of a logistical nightmare.” (“Someone mentioned that maybe we should do a co-headline tour,” The Coronas’ Danny O’Reilly joked.) In addition to working on the Vaccines’ fifth studio album, which he promises will be out “very soon,” he started a side project with the group’s keyboardist Timothy Lanham called Halloweens, whose first LP, Morning Kiss At The Acropolis, came out exactly one year ago. Just this month, the Vaccines also put out the covers EP Cosy Karaoke, which includes stripped-back renditions of songs by Queens of the Stone Age, Waxahatchee, Kacey Musgraves, and more, and announced a 10th anniversary pink vinyl reissue of their debut featuring a previously unreleased demos album.
We caught up with Justin Young via Zoom to talk about what to expect from the Vaccines’ upcoming album, how the pandemic has affected the band’s process, making Cosy Karaoke, and more.
I see you’re wearing a Halloweens T-shirt –I was actually listening to that album this morning, and I live not far from the Acropolis…
Oh, no way!
I have to say, it’s a bit of a strange contrast when you’re stuck inside and the weather is cold.
I saw the snow – someone sent me a DM with pictures of snow on the Acropolis the other day.
Yeah, that was crazy. We haven’t seen snow like that here in ages. What was it like shooting the video for one of the singles here?
For the video for that song [‘My Baby Looks Good With Another’], we landed in Athens and we didn’t have any of the stuff so we spent the day running around music shops before we got on our ferry trying to find the guitar and everything for the video. It was really cold. It was a super fun day, actually.
From my understanding of the timeline, after you released Combat Sports in 2018, there was kind of a renewed focus on live shows and you toured extensively for a couple of years. And then you started the Halloweens side project, and you recorded and recently finished mixing the new Vaccines album, and just this month you released the covers EP. Between all that, has the pandemic affected your process in any way or caused you to reshift your focus more into songwriting and production?
On multiple levels, I think, really. First off, with the music we already had recorded, it afforded us some time to put the brakes on to refine what we’d done in Texas at the end of 2019. So we were able to do a bunch of additional production, and we actually wrote an extra song for the record. It gave us a little bit of time to reflect and actually not just look back but look forward as well, and think, “Okay, how do we want this to exist in the world?” and have a bit more time on the creative and the visuals for what will be the next record. And then maybe slightly more negatively, I definitely think from a songwriting perspective, everyone I talk to is kind of suffering from the same thing a year in, and that is that if you’re not living life, it’s very hard to write about it. I definitely feel that as a songwriter you’re sort of dealing with the dregs at this point, and you kind of want to get back out and live in technicolor again and hopefully that’ll start working its way into the creative process.
Hopefully we’ll get to the album later on, but I wanted to take a moment to ask you about Cosy Karaoke. The last time you put out a covers EP was in 2013. How did the idea for this one come about? Did you work on it remotely?
Yeah, we worked on it remotely. And I guess that’s sort of where the name came from, the fact that we’re taking these kind of karaoke songs and sing-along songs and we’re doing them in our bedrooms and rather quietly so as not to annoy our neighbors. It was just something fun to do and to keep us occupied. We wanted to choose songs we’d kind of been listening to when we were making the record and that sort of thing, but it’s just a very innocent, not particularly well-thought-out bit of fun, really.
It’s an interesting selection of tracks – the ones that stood out to me the most were the Waxahatchee and Kacey Musgraves covers; firstly just because ‘Fire’ is so recent, and then they’re both kind of country-leaning. Why did you choose these two songs in particular?
Obviously, we’re big fans of both of those artists. Funnily enough, ‘Fire’ was one of my favorite songs from last year, but then I was listening to the Song Exploder episode and discovered it had been recorded at the same place we recorded our new album, so that was a nice bit of coincidence. And you know, we did make the record in Texas but we certainly weren’t listening to country music on repeat. But something I love about Kacey Musgraves is, I suppose she is loosely a country singer, but it sounds so of-the-time and modern and in no way dated, like it can compete with the best of pop.
I guess it comes from working on it remotely, but the project does have almost a bedroom pop vibe. Has that made you more comfortable with using electronic instrumentation in general?
That’s something I think anyone that is making music in their bedrooms leans heavily on, and I think, actually, we’ve always been quite comfortable and inspired by that sort of stuff. But I think Combat Sports, our last record, was obviously very much kind of a live band in a room-sounding record, but that doesn’t necessarily align with all of our tastes and what we’re listening to and stuff. I think that this next Vaccines record is definitely the most heavily produced. And that obviously predates Cosy Karaoke, but I think when you’re creating, your focus points are always shifting and you’re looking for new ways to stay inspired, whether that’s when you’re writing or arranging or even rehearsing or performing.
When you say heavily produced, that actually makes me think of English Graffiti, which I’m a fan of as well. You’ve said this one is heavier than anything you’ve done before, and you’ve also called it the best Vaccines album so far. What is it that this album has that the previous ones didn’t?
Well, I think it’s got a bit of something all the previous records had, but hopefully a lot more… Hopefully a lot more, I guess that’s the end of that sentence. [laughs] You know, when you make music, you’re hopefully on this never-ending process of refinement, you’re hopefully getting better every time – I suppose that’s rarely the case but it’s at least the aim. And I just think that for the first time maybe since the first record, we’ve kind of had an idea and we executed it, you know. I think the lyrics are stronger, I think the musicianship is stronger, I think the production’s really strong. And I think, unlike with English Graffiti, which I love that record too and I’m really proud of that, but I think the sort of concept was maybe stronger than a lot of the songs, and I feel like all the stars aligned for us creatively this time. I just feel everyone was at our best, everyone really brought their A-game. I don’t think we could have made a better record – I probably say that after every record, but I truly feel it at the moment.
You’ve also said that some of the songs have taken on a new resonance during the pandemic. Is there more of a running theme this time around in terms of the lyrics and the concept as a whole?
Yeah, I mean it’s not a concept record by any means, but it is, I suppose, loosely conceptual and it does sort of take place in this fictitious city. And I think there is a sort of dystopian feel to it all, which I suppose rang true pre-pandemic, but also even more so during the pandemic. But there definitely are universal themes running throughout.
Can you offer any update as to when it might come out?
Yeah, I’m not gonna put my foot in it and give a date, but very soon, like really soon. Like, if not next month, the month after.
Wow, really?
Yeah, soon. I think everything just worked out for us to sort of – it got to a point where it was now or ever, really.
It’s perfect timing as well, considering you’ve just celebrated the 10th anniversary of your debut. I wanted to take a moment to talk about that, because obviously it’s of great significance to you and the band, but also so many people, including myself, grew up with that record. Has revisiting those memories and seeing fans engaging with it on social media made you reflect back on the album and that time any differently?
When it was all happening for us, it was obviously incredibly exciting, but it was also an incredibly anxious time for me and I felt very insecure. I don’t think any of us really felt quite ready for the spotlight it shone on us. And so then I started questioning myself and I was questioning the band and it’s taken me a long time to really come to terms with it and to fall back in love with it. And looking back now and thinking what it did for us as individuals, how it changed our lives but also seeing all the amazing messages and seeing what it meant to so many people – it’s just made me so proud of that, and it’s nice to see that it was as important to other people as it was to us.
Before we end things off, I know you have a sort of fascination with artists that become cultural phenomena. Are there any new names that you’re currently really excited about?
I really like Holly Humberstone, from the second I heard her I thought that she could be – if you want a prediction as much as my approval, I think she’s great and I think big things await. There’s a girl I think is amazing called Lucy Blue who only just released her first song last month, but she’s awesome too. I’m trying to think – I mean, there’s always endless exciting new artists. I also make a playlist on our Spotify called ZODIAX, where every month I update it with my favorite 12 new songs, so you can check that out as well.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
The Vaccines’ Cosy Karaoke EP is out now. The limited edition 10th anniversary reissue of What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? arrives on April 2. In collaboration with Jägermeister Musik, The Vaccines are hosting a competition where fans can win their own record player by creating a DIY one themselves – find more info here.
joe p, a singer-songwriter from Asbury Park, New Jersey, is most prominently known for his ear-pleasing song ‘Leaves,’ which currently holds over 1 million streams on Spotify alone. With his first appearance in 2021, joe p unveiled his latest single, ‘Fighting in the Car,’ a magnetic-like piece that takes you in from the get-go with its confident drive and message.
Talking about the single joe p said:” ‘Fighting in the Car’ started with some notes randomly written down at 4am one night. I really liked how the words sat next to each other and supplied a sort of motion/action -based imagery with just a few words. I had the riff from the verse that felt sort of bouncy and confident, so when the chorus came, I wanted that to capture the contrasting imagery I had in my head that stemmed from the song title. I was trying to channel what it feels like to be willing to go through all of the most difficult/painful parts of something because even those moments are better than the best parts of other things. Like opting to go to hell if it means you could be with someone as opposed to going to heaven without them.”
Goldensuns ‘Easy Love’
By closing out 2020 with their track ‘Cover It Up,’ we knew more potent music was to come from the brother trio that are shaping up their forthcoming EP. Entering 2021 with the EP’s fourth song, ‘Easy Love’, Goldensuns did not disappoint. ‘Easy Love’ starts with a gloomy mood that slowly progresses into feelings of faith and love. Their dreamy-like sound is lucid throughout the song, taking us into their world.
Talking about the song, they said: “Easy Love is a song about how perspective can shift everyday hardships in our minds into opportunity. We wanted to create a soundscape that reflected that—while the verses toil over the things that disconnect, the chorus washes them away, both sonically and also in its sentiment.”
Wooden Drone ’24 Suns’
Wooden Drone, the moniker of Emmanuel Lauzon, released his album fourteen-track album Never Ending Loops back in November of last year. Part of the mellifluous album, Wooden Drone featured our favourite track of the lot named ’24 Suns.’ The piece fuses striking synths with filmic textures and raw-sounding drums for a unique listening adventure. This one is for the playlists.
Over the past decade, Valerie June has earned a reputation for her soulful blend of folk, blues, and Appalachian bluegrass. Rising out of the Memphis scene in her twenties, the Tennessee-born singer-songwriter’s breakthrough came in 2013 with her label debut, Pushin’ Against a Stone, which was co-produced by Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys. It took her another four years to refine her sound, but 2017’s The Order of Time brought her further acclaim and a name-check from Bob Dylan. That album found her “dancing on the astral plane,” as she sang on one of its highlights, a place she assures us she’s all but left on her latest full-length release, The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers. If the title alone strikes you as overly romantic, a single listen is enough to stave off cynicism: June embodies that ideal with profound earnestness and an infectious sense of optimism that’s grounded in reality and years of experience.
Her voice, a distinctive drawl that’s both mesmerizing and elastic, is her greatest asset in spreading that joy and positivity. She uses hope as a form of resistance on ‘Smile’, a song inspired by the civil rights marches of the 60s that took on a new resonance in the wake of last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests. Despite the familiar warmth of its pop-leaning production – it’s in that department that some of her previous albums have suffered – the song never loses its urgency, leaning on the kind of stirring melodies that anchor and elevate much of the record. She maintains that hopeful outlook when meditating on personal losses, and the album’s best moments match swelling arrangements while foregrounding June’s vocals as they stretch from calm and reflective on the ethereal ‘You and I’ to a full-throated growl on ‘Call Me a Fool’, one of two tracks featuring soul legend Carla Thomas.
Aided by co-producer Jack Splash, known for his work with Kendrick Lamar, Solange, and Alicia Keys, as well as string arranger Lester Snell, June sets her candid reflections against a more sprawling canvas that includes nods to modern hip-hop stylings (as in ‘Within You’) without disrupting the organic flow of the album. The elegant backdrop never overshadows June’s thrilling performances, though it occasionally feels too weightless to carry them; ‘Why The Bright Stars Glow’ and ‘Two Roads’ add little towards the back end of an album that runs a bit too long. On the whole, however, one of The Moon andStars‘ most immersive qualities is the way it plays with space, interspersed with ambient interludes that provide both texture and an earthly respite from the album’s cosmic ambitions.
No song here makes a better case for June’s romanticism than early highlight ‘Colours’. Where other tracks rely on the strength of her voice and conviction, ‘Colours’ most powerfully communicates her message through her evocative songwriting: we find her lying awake in the middle of a cold night, “Giving it all up to the darkness/ Just to see/ Just to visit with the light,” eyes welling up at the thought of all it took just to get there. There’s no mention of the moon or the stars, no worldly details either, just the forces of hope and fear battling it out. “Colors of orange, red, black and green/ They all have me bursting at the seams/ And I know that every day/ It is a dyin’ day,” she sings in the chorus; the second time, the final line becomes “It is a livin’ day.” By the time she repeats the old cliché that “life is just a song,” it’s obvious why she pours so much heart and soul into her music, and why it feels like she’s urging us to do the same in everything else: “And it goes on and on and on and on and on.”
Elie Saab presented his ready-to-wear fall-winter 2021 collection at Paris Fashion Week. The collection screamed elegance and power, through alluring and detailed pieces that utilised numerous surface designs varying in different forms of embellishments and fabric manipulations. Black and white are prominently employed with a few pieces in teal, green and pink.
Overall, the collection was a combination of formal wear and work attire. All the garments had effortless movements with the models. A slit at the arm seam became a key feature throughout the collection.
Nina Ricci showcased their ready-to-wear 2021 fall-winter collection at Paris Fashion Week. Designers Lisa Herrebrugh and Rushemy Botter visualised the collection as a combination of form and functionality. They envisioned this vibrant collection to be post-pandemic, which can be versatile enough to mix with our everyday wardrobe.
Houndstooth is a key textile pattern used throughout the collection, varying in colourations. The collection has many contrasting elements, such as a mixture of chunky knitwear paired with lightweight outerwear or vice versa. An unforgettable garment in various fabrics and colours is the exaggerated puffer coat with a long scarf attached, perfect for when you want to match it with an accessory.
Sustainable fashion, gender-neutral brand Bad Habits London are set to release their spring-summer collection in March of this year. American designer Porscha Hill who launched the label back in October of 2020, is on a mission is to encourage consumers to buy something that can be cherished over time whilst discouraging the bad habits of buying something quick and easy out of convenience. As a sustainable brand, they produce limited quantities of their pieces, all materials and trims are eco-friendly, and the dyes used are natural extracts.
“Working in the industry for years, I’ve experienced direct influences of fast fashion, which ultimately inspired me to create a sustainable business. Bad Habits is more about creating a community who live without limitations in the most sustainable way,” said Porscha.
Their 16-piece collection is inspired by Earth, one of the four elements of matter. For the collection, which only uses sustainably sourced fabrics, the silhouettes have been designed to be timeless with a natural approach. Each item is hand-dyed from plants and natural ingredients like fustic trees, chlorophyllin, cutch, and more.
Belgium-based designer Florentina Leitner showcased her 2021 fall-winter collection through a fashion film for New York Fashion Week. Florentina Leitner is among the new generation of designers whose ethos is anchored on a more sustainable creative approach. Leitner is developing a green line consisting of up-cycled pieces using vintage garments and jewellery. The fashion film The Royal Leitners, directed by Belgian director Athos Burez, provides a glimpse into the magic of her world, following the Leitner family through their Maison. From green tents to snowy landscapes – the film introduces you to her newspaper reading father and his Wiener dog companions, her eccentric, plant-loving grandmother, and a cadre of other interesting characters. Key Winter pieces like faux-fur hats, coats and ski masks are central in her collection. Floral prints and bright colours remain essential for the brand, layered with printed bodysuits, puffy dresses and wrap skirts to create a dynamic and arresting aesthetic inspired by her Austrian family and childhood. Florentina Leitner created a collection dear to the designer’s memories of innocent times. The Royal Leitners also pays homage to Wes Anderson’s 2001 movie The Royal Tenenbaums.
“If you ask me where I’m from,” Chris Lee-Rodriguez sings a little over halfway into Really From’s self-titled album, pausing to let the dust settle around him: “I’ll say the rage, the lights the sea/ I’ll say the pain passed down on me.” It’s a striking moment of clarity and self-actualization on the Boston quartet’s latest record that directly addresses the question that’s implied in their new name and that’s often aimed at its mixed-race members: “Where are you really from?” Yet the co-lead singer and guitarist’s voice initially sounds almost unaffected on that song, which is called ‘I’m From Here’, the hummable melody undercutting any potential for catharsis and instead embodying the following thought: “And when you say it’s not enough/ I will pretend it won’t get to me.”
It’s then that the energy shifts: the rest of the band – synth bassist and vocalist Michi Tassey, trumpeter Matt Hull, and drummer Sander Bryce – come back into the fore, conjuring a whirlwind of an instrumental that serves as a visceral release of tension. So the second time Lee-Rodriguez arrives at that refrain, he screams at the top of his lungs as if no longer willing to mask his frustration. The track then breaks into an odd time signature before a chorus of voices repeats a mantra equal parts celebratory and haunted: “I’m from here, I swear/ I’m really from here.” Playing with convention is one of Really From’s key strengths, but ‘I’m From Here’ also epitomizes the group’s ability to take familiar indie tropes and give them weight, augmenting their typically intricate song structures with equally complex subject matter.
The band’s effortless fusion of emo, math rock, and jazz will appeal to fans of any one of these genres, but what makes their music so resonant and compelling has less to do with their penchant for blending musical traditions than the way they combine their own individual voices. Really From brims with personality – something many “genre-melding” and technically proficient acts often lack – not just because of its honest and potent exploration of cultural identity, but also because its members harness the spirit of collaboration in ways that bring out rich and distinct flavours while maintaining an overall sense of fluidity. That openness bleeds into both the album’s musical arrangements and its lyrics – as they’ve discussed in interviews, Tassey and Lee-Rodriguez don’t just trade vocal duties; they also go through the delicate process of co-writing the songs, inviting the listener into that shared and vulnerable space.
‘I’m From Here’ might be the album’s most memorable highlight, but it’s far from its only outstanding moment. Even seemingly conventional cuts like ‘Quirk’ burst with colour and detail as Lee-Rodriguez and Tassey grapple with the weight of intergenerational trauma, casting a shadow over the track’s elegant, relaxed instrumental flourishes. ‘Try Lingual’ offers a vivid account of struggling to communicate in their parent’s native tongue, and in doing so, adopts the universal language of self-blame: “I listen hard to what you say/ Each word begins to sound the same/ The sounds, the words, the goddamn shame.” The dynamic interplay between Hall’s lush trumpet and Bryce’s jazz-inflected drumming is evident early on with ‘Apartment Song’, the album’s exploratory opening track, while the brief instrumental ‘Last Kneeplay’, which consists of just trumpet and classical guitar, showcases the band’s more minimalist tendencies.
Their third LP following 2017’s Verse, Really From is less of a stylistic pivot than an apt distillation of what the band has always stood for, propelled by a newfound confidence that bolsters their unique artistic vision. The album may not offer any clear-cut resolution, but in reflecting back a sense of earnestness and candor, almost eliminates the need for it. Things only get darker from ‘I’m From Here’, but shedding all the extra layers of sound on the acoustic closer ‘The House’ has an almost cleansing effect, despite the damning nature of the lyrics (“Mom and Dad/ They told me separately/ They come from different parts/ So what does that make me?”) Expanding their musical scope might be the only way for Really From to express their unbound creativity, but the true power of their music lies in untangling the chaos that’s buried underneath.
Japanese brand Issey Miyake presented their ready-to-wear womenswear 2021 fall-winter in the form of a film titled As the Way It Comes to Be.Designer Satoshi Kondo took inspiration from nature for the collection. The film commenced with a stone background that gradually took us into the building and then back outside to the stone wall to eventually grassy lands. The collection employed earthy and nature-like colours. Whilst, the silhouette is unstructured and has an organic movement. Satoshi Kondo executed patterns that created forms when posed a certain way. The collection is full of textures with several fabric manipulations from heat pressed fabric, ruching and manipulation.
