March comes in like a lion with with six belters this week. The first comes from Liam Gallagher & John Squire, long-term friends with a mutual admiration for each other’s work, who first had the idea to collaborate when John joined Liam on stage at his biblical Knebworth shows. Song ideas were soon flowing, and their eponymous album took shape with an intuitive intensity while in Los Angeles with revered producer Greg Kurstin, who also played bass throughout the record while drums were performed by Joey Waronker (Beck, R.E.M., Atoms For Peace).
Mountainhead, the new album from Everything Everything, exists in a world in which society has built an immense mountain. To make the mountain bigger, they must make the hole they live in deeper and deeper. All of society is built around the creation of the mountain, and a mountain religion dominates all thought. At the top of the mountain is rumoured to be a huge mirror that reflects endlessly recurring images of the self, and at the bottom of the pit is a giant golden snake that is the primal fear of all believers. A ‘mountainhead’ is one who believes the mountain must grow no matter the cost, and no matter how terrible it is to dwell in the great pit. The taller the mountain, the deeper the hole.
Faye Webster’s songs are direct lines to the human subconscious, and Underdressed at the Symphony documents what happens once you begin to build a new self from the ashes of your old routines. This rebirth isn’t flashy or definitive, but is instead a series of seemingly mundane moments that, scattered across weeks and months, sneak their way towards something like healing. Yes, there’s a breakup in play, but Webster is not documenting the heartbreak of a breakup so much as she’s navigating the contours of heartbreak itself.
Almost two decades in the game, and armed with an extensive back-catalogue of stadium belters and record-breaking success, Kaiser Chiefs return with their brand new studio album, the aptly titled Kaiser Chiefs’ Easy Eighth Album, produced by Amir Amor (Rudimental). The album sees the Chiefs return with a fresh and bold new sound: from the Nile Rodgers co-write of new single ‘Feeling Alright’ to the frantic ‘Beautiful Girl’, from the horn-laden Kaiser Chiefs throwback ‘Job Centre Shuffle’ to the joyous punch in the gut that is ‘Jealousy’, these ten tracks are a true statement of intent from a band that continues to deliver the goods again and again.
The Who’s tour to promote 1982’s It’s Hard album was their last to feature Kenney Jones on drums, and the band wouldn’t tour again until 1989. The tour took place entirely in North America apart from two warm-up dates at the Birmingham NEC in England. Live at Shea Stadium 1982 features the show from the second of their two nights at the famous New York stadium on 13 October 1982. The set list includes a number of tracks from It’s Hard, some of which the band have never played live since this tour.
Our release of the week is Where’s My Utopia?, the follow-up to the critically-acclaimed Leeds band Yard Act’s debut album The Overload, which was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize after a slew of positive reviews, national radio playlistings and a placing at #2 in the official charts. Frontman James Smith has said that lead single ‘Dream Job’ “feels like an apt introduction to the themes explored on Where’s My Utopia? – though not all encompassing. In part I was scrutinising and mocking myself for being a moaning ungrateful little brat, whilst also trying to address how the music industry is this rather uncontrollable beast that hurtles forward unthinkingly and every single person involved in it plays their part. Myself included, obviously. As with pretty much everything else going through my head last year, trying to find the right time to articulate the complexity of emotions I was feeling and the severity to which I was feeling them couldn’t be found – or accommodated, so instead I tried to capture it in a pop song that lasts less than three minutes once the fog had cleared a bit. It’s good and bad. I’m still glad that everything that happened to me happened.”
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