The best new albums this week

Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan – The Nation’s Most Central Location (Castles In Space)

For various reasons, Lancaster-based Gordon Chapman-Fox is on fire. Not actually burning, but there sure is smoke coming off him right now. Working under the most unwieldy name in pop, his retro-futurist synth workouts as Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan are hot stuff and the pitch is reaching fever with this, his fourth full-length.

The Nation’s Most Central Location follows on the heels of a trio of albums that have seen Chapman-Fox go from zero to total hero in the blink of an eye. His debut album, Interim Report, March 1979, appeared out of nowhere in February 2021 and sold out in less than 10 minutes. How people knew about him was proper magic, as was the music contained within. The follow-up People And Industry – made back-to-back with the first LP – entered the fray in September 2021 and sold out just like that. The third, last October’s Districts, Roads, Open Spaces sold so well it charted, actually charted, reaching Number 20 in the vinyl album countdown.

So why the big love? Musically, the whole shebang is on the money. Embracing a world that promised so much and delivered very little, the date on that debut long-player is revealing. March 1979 was small window when British electronic music was post-kosmische but pre electropop and working in that niche Chapman-Fox limited his palette to instruments available in March 1979. The result is a very distinctive sound that draws on everything good, from Vangelis, Jarre, ‘Tubular Bells’ and Kraftwerk to The Radiophonic Workshop, prog, ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘Star Wars’.

The idea of new towns has also rang loud bells with people who grew up in them, grew up near them, grew up nowhere near but are fascinated by the idea of them. Just ask The Planner, the in-house magazine of The Royal Institute Of British Architects and Town Planners who put Warrington-Runcorn on their cover a year before anyone else was even having a sniff (written by the mag’s deputy ed Simon Wicks, it’s a great piece. Do check it out online for a thorough examination of the whole new town phenomena).

WRNTDP also has a very visual sound with the project growing out of a track on the first album called ‘Aerial Views By Helicopter’. Here you can almost hear that ’copter chop-chop-chopping and see the camera tracking the M6 traffic across ‘Thelwall Viaduct’ and sweeping up the grand plazas of Warrington’s ‘Europa Boulevard’. He just ticks all the boxes doesn’t he?

At the heart of WRNTDP though there is another fire. It’s been smoldering on his previous outings, but it really catches hold on ‘The Nation’s Most Central Location’. Growing up in Chorley, near Wigan, Chapman-Fox is acutely aware of the north-south divide, a world of haves and the have-nots, a place where millionaire politicians trot out empty phrases – levelling up, northern powerhouse – and it fair makes his fluids boil.

This then, is his angry album. The title comes from one of the many 1980s TV adverts promoting Warrington-Runcorn. This particular ad tackled the idea that it’s the place to be for businesses – the nation’s most central location no less. The opening track, ‘Just Off The M62 (J12)’, is dark, dark, dark. Its slow, brooding sweeps and Vangelis-like mewls are a real line in the sand for what’s to come.

So how, you’re wondering, do you convey anger with instrumental music? Track titles speak volumes. Take ‘Rocksavage’. It’s the location of a massive gas works on the outskirts of Runcorn. Sounding like something off the ‘Drive’ soundtrack, you can almost see moody nighttime footage set to its metronomic beat. But there’s something else going on. Google “Rocksavage”. A little dig around reaps rewards when WRNTDP is involved. The cornerstone is ‘London’s Moving Our Way’ – another line lifted from the 80s TV advert. It’s a tense, brooding track, mournful even and there’s that anger, a bubbling undercurrent that could erupt at any moment.

Of course, long story short, the London didn’t shift their way and the new towns of Warrington-Runcorn withered on the vine. There is no chance of the music being made by Gordon Chapman-Fox doing the same. ‘The Nation’s Most Central Location’ is a record that really lets you know you’re in the presence of something very special indeed.

NM

The God In Hackney – The World In Air Quotes (Junior Asprin)

This is the third album from the transatlantic team that is The God In Hackney – East London in name, but in reality with members in Brighton, Los Angeles, New York City and Odiham in Hampshire.  With their core line up – Andy Cooke, Dan Fox, Ashley Marlowe and Nathaniel Mellors – augmented by the presence of Eve Essex and Kelly Pratt, they sound more confident and experimental than ever.

That’s the easy bit – the facts – over with.  Describing their music, on the other hand, is a tougher task.  Familiar sounds done in unfamiliar ways might be about as close as we can get.  They inhabit the sound palate of the traditional guitar band, at least some of the time, and they write tunes that are impossibly memorable, but there’s always a twist.  On ‘Bardo!’, which starts with go-go cowbells and electronically-subverted hip-hop beats, it’s the Sun Ra-style spaced out jazz sprawl it collapses into.  On ‘Red Star’, it’s the oozing brass and woodwind parts.  On ‘American Email’, it’s some very British voices reading morse code over tense, hovering washes of gently oscillating bass synth.

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While it’s true to say these are obviously highly technically gifted musicians, there’s very little in the way of excess fat, and certainly no stooping to show off soloing.  What we get instead is addictive, ingenious lyrical soundbites – “there’s a hole at the bottom of the ocean” being one of many favourites – and a constant flow of the unexpected.  No wonder a certain Mr Weatherall was a massive fan when he was around. He’d certainly love this.

BW

They Might Be Giants – Lincoln (Idlewild)

As the two Johns (Flansburgh and Linnell), better known as They Might Be Giants, gear up for the UK run of their Flood celebration/anniversary shows later this year, what better time to reissue their equally exceptional yet criminally underrated preceding effort Lincoln.

Originally released in 1988, the project was a marked improvement over their self-titled debut which spawned their first cult classic single with ‘Don’t Let’s Start’; serving as the introduction for many to the duo’s unique brand of quirky, avant-geek art-rock. Their sophomore triumph (which paved the way for the aforementioned and acclaimed Flood) would serve as both an expansion and doubling down of every facet of their absurd eccentricities while further highlighting the pair’s penchant for dense, obtuse and bewildering lyricism and genre-less compositions.

From the sea shanty swing of ‘Cowtown’ to the jazz flourishes of ‘Lie Still, Little Bottle’, the project teems with clever micro-ideas that bop and weave like a mole turned boxer, while essential cuts such as the political satire of ‘Purple Toupee’ or the lovelorn ‘They’ll Need A Crane’ have become beloved staples of the band’s canon ever since.

Most notably, the frenetic proto-math-pop opener, ‘Ana Ng’, would go on to become their first chart topping single, with its convoluted mapping out of a perplexing Vietnamese surname found in a New York phonebook which would blossom into a pseudo-love song elevated by the John’s brazen oddness and narrative opaqueness. Before Weezer or Charlie Kaufman or Jim Jarmusch, They Might Be Giants were the OG oddballs, and it’s high time we revisit the turning point album that first introduced generation X to the duo, long before the Malcolm In The Middle theme song took care of the millennials. 

ZB

Eyes Of Others – Eyes Of Others (Heavenly)

Edinburgh-based producer John Bryden arrives with his eponymous debut album as Eyes Of Others. Two things to point out here. Firstly, it’s on Heavenly, which on its own is a mark of quality and distinction. Second up, this is really going to hit the mark for the after-hours crowd.

The sharpest of knives among you will recognise the name from his 2017 release, ‘I See You In The Shrubs’, on  notable Edinburgh label Paradise Palms. A 12-inch release, it came complete with a Weatherall remix. Here, on ‘At Home I Am A Leader’ you can hear that psyche/krauty influence live on. It also gives you a very good idea of the kind of ballpark we’re in here.

Bryden says he makes music that is “post-pub couldn’t get in the club” and he does indeed fall between the two stools. There’s some first-rate songwriting on show – the tippy-tappy drum machine and drifty vocal of ‘New Hair New Me’ feels like Silver Apples’ Simeon Coxe as his most breezy. ‘Ego Hit’ likewise, but with a lick of Moroder maybe, or perhaps it’s ‘Technique’ rubbing off. Talking of which… the excellent ‘Mother Father’, with its twangy guitar, slo-mo drums and synth washes is like New Order at their most mellow.

The closing duo will have the remixers forming an orderly queue. With handclaps and rave-y keyboard licks, ‘Come Inside’ sounds like it’s rocking a tent a couple of fields away and ‘Big Companies, Large Tentacles’ gets right in your grill as it closes proceedings in rough and tumble squelchy 303 acid style.

Clocking in at just 40 minutes it’s not too short, not too long. Maybe it’s the pull of vinyl, but we do seem to be in a world where less is more. One go of this isn’t really enough. You can easily run through it two, three times in a row as you let its infectious grooves wriggle their way into your life.

Bryden says it’s music that’s for later than a gig but not quite early morning fare. Whatever, he really hits the sweet spot with this debut.

NM

Weezer – SZNZ: Summer (Atlantic)

In 2021, equally adored and maligned alt-rock/power pop mainstays Weezer dropped not one but two full-length LPs. The first was the Nilsson Sings Newman inspired orchestral curveball OK Human while four months later, the much-anticipated Van Weezer would restore the down-stroked power-chords, sugary hooks and face-melting solos, with a much more brazen embracing of their classic 80’s-indebted, hair metal influences.

When asked in interviews what was next on the band’s horizon, endlessly endearing and prolific mastermind, Rivers Cuomo, revealed that their next project would be a four-volume work, centred around the seasons of the year, with the releases set to coincide with the official start dates of each subsequent equinox and solstice.

The first of these components was the Spring EP; originally unveiled at the beginning of the Vernal Equinox on 20th March 2022. Just under a year later, with seemingly the entire music world attempting to catch up with vinyl delays, spring arrived early for 2023, and now the Summer pressing lands just a month before the June 21st solstice.

Described naturally by the eccentric Cuomo as “21st century 90s”, and linking the project aesthetically to 44 BC at the end of the Roman Republic, with an intended emotion of “youthful indignation”, this is the closest we’ll ever get to hearing Weezer score an epic on the scale of Gladiator or 300. These motifs are subtle, like in the lilting orchestral flourishes of opener ‘Lawn Chair’ or the swelling epic ‘The Opposite Of Me’. Those already familiar with the Weezer goes to the county fare folk-pop vibe of Spring will already be aware that these separate instalments carry their own individual sonic theme, yet all firmly rooted in the band’s specific brand of nerd-rock power pop.

Leaning even further into their metal machinations plundered on the aforementioned Van Weezer, cuts such as ‘Blue Like Jazz’ or ‘What’s The Good Of Being Good’ pulse with cathartic menace in a manner Cuomo often doesn’t indulge in to such dark effect, with Iron Maiden indebted riffs weaving around his uncertainty and anxiety. There’s still no denying that the standout centrepiece is lead single ‘Records’, which as its succinct title indicates, is an ode to the escapism that comes with listening to albums, or more specifically, spinning vinyl. It’s a grunge-pop banger with standard Cuomo witticisms and namedrops from Rihanna to Nirvana, and easily feels like the most Weezer sounding track across this first half of seasonal EPs.

While not as musically devoted to it’s thematic elements as the preceding Spring, the Summer EP trades larping joy for uneasy, slightly metallic anthems, with the band offering an ideal balance between the youthful abandon of the season tethered by modern stresses. In other words, it’s exactly the type of summer themed EP you’d expect from Weezer while simultaneously sounding nothing like you originally anticipated. Let’s not think too far ahead to Autumn just yet.

ZB

Wooden Tape – Music From Another Place (God Unknown)

Our latest tryout of the hauntological VR headset experience yields a brand new one from Wooden Tape (real name Tim Maycox), whose many years of membership as part of the Liverpudlian psychedelic scene has led him to this point.

Music From Another Place is a fitting title for an album so invested in deviating from the world of bands and collaborative music-making. Instead, Maycox aims here for an exploration of memory. What’s more, it’s obvious from the sound and vibe of this project that these aren’t just any old consciously-had set of recollections either. These are intensely interpretive and deep sonic memories, pried from the inner mental boxes that would normally stay locked, out of reach of the conscious mind, unless accessed via the dream-journalled astral plane.  A meeting-your-anima type deal.

It’s these kinds of projects that inspire internet meme classes like dreamcore or weirdcore, or record labels like Ghost Box, or applications of hauntology to schizophonic music styles like experimental electronica. Of course, lead piece ‘Godesic Eric’, with its oddly perfect yet unlikely blend of tape-loopy, lo-fi warbly guitar twang and pristine triangle tinkles, is evocative enough of Maycox’s childhood experiences of 1980s children’s TV theme music. But its pairing with a music video – which depicts a dancing humanoid bear, mo-capped for an eerily animated spectacle – very much ignites something forbidden in the soul. It feeds into something equally cursed and beautiful, the same sublime creep factor that has set alight a recent enthusiasm for cursed, but “hauntingly beautiful”, internet imagery. The erstwhile pastoral ritual dances of ‘Dandy Eyes’ or ‘Above The Djinn’, meanwhile, succeed in wordlessly conveying a mood of ‘folk hollowing’ – as if the pieces’ various dulcimers and guitars were played by skilled chindogu automatons a-la Westworld, but the setting was rural Norfolk, Merseyside or Cornwall instead. 

It’s hard to know if any overarching message is really there, but the title for the wistful ‘Music For A Sun Chariot’ medley (which is our favourite piece, at first reminding us of Gustavo Santaollala’s The Last Of Us soundtrack, before merging into something completely different altogether, some kind of guttural-froggy improv seance) might suggest something ironically foreboding and tragic about the inherent dangers of too much nostalgia. 

JIJ

Fleshwater – We’re Not Here To Be Loved (Closed Casket Activities)

Boston industrial metalcore savants Vein have become renowned for their dense, oppressive, and utterly frenetic approach to hardcore, interpolating everything from absurd time signatures and Silent Hill soundscapes to digital manipulations and truly macabre lyrisicm. While last year’s acclaimed sophomore effort This World Is Going To Ruin You exuded a further delve into caustic territory, there were subtle moments of intrinsic melody that highlighted the group’s dynamism and showcased frontman Anthony DiDio’s vocal range.

Fans pining for more material in this guise ultimately wouldn’t wait that long as the members unveiled news of a new project under the collective banner to be released that same year. In essence, Fleshwater is a Vein side-project with the addition of one new member: vocalist/guitarist Marisa Shirar, who helps the band to realise their vision of embracing 90s indebted shoegaze worship.

Channeling influences from the likes of Deftones, Hum and Slowdive, We’re Not Here To Be Loved is a brief nine-track collection of soaring melodies, impenetrable fuzz, ethereal haze and bruised emotions, all the while delivered by a group of musicians who clearly cut their sonic teeth within the realms of hardcore.

From the soaring post-rock beauty of opener ‘Baldpate Driver’ to the trudging grunge groove of ‘Woohoo’, the tracks do their utmost to push the fragility and melancholy of the pieces to the forefront, but that isn’t to say there aren’t slight glimpses of the members’ feral side which only rarely appear in micro bursts of maniacal bedlam, equating to a shoegaze/mathcore hybrid which could easily dictate the entire runtime if not kept restrained and in check.

Vein’s DiDio reveals more of his sultry hypnotic cadence while bouncing off of Shirar’s more vulnerable and impassioned delivery, conjuring a lush balance between the male/female vocal leads. The latter’s standout performance on lead single ‘The Razor’s Apple’ creaks with fractured wails while the former’s understated ‘Backstairs Breathing’ is a sugary piece of indie-dream-pop malaise.

While clocking in at just under a half hour, the sonic presence of Fleshwater’s debut is defined and mercurial; paying endless homage to it’s specific inspirations yet feeling effortlessly fresh and emotionally resonant. By plumbing the depths of certain aspects of their primary project, the members of Vein have opted to allow these experiments to blossom into their own fully realised, separate entity that just might rival all previous efforts. In short, We’re Not Here To Be Loved is a stellar piece of shoegazing beauty repurposed by some of the most vital hardcore heads in the modern scene. 

ZB

Hot Mulligan – Why Would I Watch (Wax Bodega)
Michigan emo-tinted pop-punks Hot Mulligan are a prime example of hard work paying off. Over the past decade, they’ve clamoured their way up the scene through a slew of excellent EPs and a seemingly endless tour cycle, leading to a blink and you’ll miss it quality of their name bouncing from the bottom of support slots to top billing status, with last month’s first UK headline tour selling out every single date.

While their 2018 debut full-length Pilot put them on the appropriate course, it was 2020’s You’ll Be Fine that began to truly showcase their cathartic staying power and vulnerable approach to the sugary pop-punk formula. Unfortunately, the well-deserved brewing momentum would be cut short due to covid, leading to the placeholder EP I Won’t Reach Out To You tiding eager and avid fans over until they could resume touring.

Now at LP3, Why Would I Watch marks a notable yet nuanced maturation process, while still relying on their intricate math-rock inflected emo-punk. The aura of these cuts is a little more jagged and restless, which makes their trademark brand of asinine titles all the more humorous. Take the bruised ‘It’s A Family Movie She Hates Her Dad’ or the fractured anthemics of ‘Shhhh! Golf Is On’, which provoke a smirk but beneath the surface exude true anxiety and struggles with relationships and self-worth. It isn’t that this type of subject matter isn’t usually par for the course but Hot Mulligan tap into a curious phenomenon within their generation to hide pain and trauma behind wisecracks and in-jokes.

The album also plunges further than ever before into full on math-emo territory on the melancholic double punch of ‘This Song Is Called It’s Called What’s It Called’ and ‘No Shoes In The Coffee Shop (Or Socks)’, exuding their honed craft to a devastating degree. In one of their recent music videos, the band state (ironically) that they’re here to save pop-punk. Where some might think of the genre as formulaic, immature or lacking any gravitas, Why Would I Watch is a dynamic and emotive display of angst-riddled hooks and serene melodies, elevated by its sincerity and vulnerability, and continues to stake Hot Mulligan’s claim, but less as saviours and more as re-definers.

ZB

Keplrr – Petra (Control Freak Recordings)

Born out of the respected London party Cabin Fever, Control Freak have established themselves as one of the leading UK labels focusing on the deeper, percussive aspects of techno and bass music. Their first full-length comes from Keplrr, the South-London based producer who launched their imprint in 2019. 

Having had a string of successful releases on the label over the last couple of years, as well as releasing tracks with Pressure Dome and Needs, this record sees Keplrr delve further into the ethereal and kaleidoscopic nature of his brand of left-field techno. 

“After writing dance music for ten years it was so liberating to create something that has no function. I was in between flats and staying with friends when I wrote the bulk of this. The writing was therapeutic – it felt like I was trying to capture the feeling of that moment rather than write with a listener or dancer in mind,”the producer remarked about his production process. 

From a fruitful downtempo collaboration with jazz singer Livi Graham on ‘Re-reality’ to the intricate rhythms of ‘Celestial Body’, the nine-track ‘Petra’ perfectly showcases the producer’s knack for absorbing sound design. 

CB

Alexis Georgopoulos – Fragments Of a Season (Emotional Rescue)

First released six years ago, but now reissued for round two, Alexis Georgopoulosa and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma’s Fragments Of A Season returns for what one might call a “reconsideration”. Musicians of all stripes know there’s real utility in putting fresh ears on an old project – for many, it’s the ultimate test of timelessness. 

But this LP is equally a neat example of temporality, with its motifs centring on the titular Season and its titles throwing back to bygone eras (‘The Seventeenth Century’). The minimal guitar-drone direction of the album – unusual either for a Georgopoulos or Cantu-Ledesma project, as they’re usually backed by more driving bassy pulses and rhythms – is matched by the promise that there is a narrative hidden somewhere in its subtext.

But only traces of it can be found. In the words of Emotional Rescue, there is only a “sense that this temporary idyll will end”, and this “casts a shadow”. The opening surfy tropicalia of ‘The Letter’ hardly reveals this, but it’s a sentiment that certainly opens itself up over the album’s course, with ‘Madagascar’ indulging pleasant rhythm guitars and Shibuya-style jubilancy (fun fact: the Malagasy are known for their purely relative sense of time), and by the time ‘The Marble Sky’ hits, we meet a real sense of a seaside vista having become more visible to the mind’s eye. Like the last dregs of an already only-100 strong seaside festival sticking behind only for a half-rememberable final shebang, this LP both seizes the day and commiserates over the day’s passing, at the same time. Its interest in both time and timelessness seems to say, “I never want to leave this place, but I have to!”

JIJ

This week’s reviewers: Zach Buggy, Jude Iago James, Neil Mason, Charlie Bird, Ben Willmott.