STACK #142 Aug 2016

MUSIC NEWS

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Q3/ What do you think are the primary catalysts of the ‘male malaise’ that the album investigates? Well, this album has a real nihilistic edge to it. It's sort of about acting up when you have nothing to look forward to, about performing something you don't believe in because you think you have to. In the UK we have an appalling suicide rate among young men, and a culture of silence and violence that creates all kind of problems that could be avoided. I should stress we are directing this anger and disgust inwards, which

I think it is absolutely part of being a man today. That song is both a hymn of praise and a kind of inverted, feminist cock rock. It's nigh on impossible to call yourself a feminist as a man, but I feel we were ahead of the curve in playing with those kinds of power inversions and quoting Cixous and Lispector. We are European men and the idea that we are victims of anyone but ourselves is laughable. Q5/ 2BU is an astonishing track – it reminds me of Antony and the Johnsons. How did the melody and lyrics came together? Delighted that you mention Antony and the Johnsons; she [Anohni] is a huge influence on our music. That song begun on an acoustic guitar, and the synths came off an iPad. The rhythm is just 4/4, but Chris [Talbot, percussion] played with the accents ‘til it sounded like it wasn't. The lyrics are kind of a revenge fantasy, a sort of play on jealousy and trying to attain the things you'll never have. Melodically and structurally it's a simple folk ditty, we just took things away until it no longer sounded like it was. Thematically, "I'm the type of man/ who wants to watch the world burn" ties the album together quite nicely.

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INTERVIEW TOM FLEMING WILD BEASTS UK four-piece Wild Beasts are releasing their fifth album, the swaggering, beautiful and very thematically thoughtful Boy King . We spoke to bassist and tenor vocalist Tom Fleming.

Q1/ The album is full of references to huge historical figures (as is the album presser – Hayden [Thorpe, guitar and falsetto vocals] mentions Freudian theory and Lord Byron); what do they mean to your worldview? Certainly we're aware that we're not writing in a vacuum – things have been iterated and reiterated in all kinds of ways, musically, lyrically, [so on]. A lot of writing and performing is a kind of imitation, and we are aware that we're using stuff from all over the place. Certainly finding something from maybe 200 years ago that resonates now is part of the fun, and using and re-contextualising it is part of the job. Q2/ The video for Big Cat is mesmerising! The short scene where you’re standing on the road outside of the car, in the headlights and the wind, with huge cracks of lightning in the distance – how real was it? Thank you very much, we're very proud

again is kind of the point of the record, all the performative anger and cock rock performance is kind of directed at ourselves. Fulfilling the macho stereotype kind of hurts everyone. Q4/ Alpha Female ’s lyrics go “I will not hold you back, simple as that.” Do you think recognising the female position is part of being a modern man?

of it. Truthfully, hand on heart, that storm was 100% real. We saw it coming in and pulled over at the last minute to try and shoot it. It is the biggest storm I personally have ever seen; it was absolutely crazy. A lot of equipment got damaged and it waylaid us for some time, but we only captured 5% or so of it on camera. Even for people who are used to a lot of rain, it was legitimately terrifying.

MUSIC

Boy King by Wild Beasts is out August 5 via Domino.

SARAH MARY CHADWICK INTERVIEW

I f the organ which accompanies the gorgeously stark tracks on Sarah Mary Chadwick’s latest album sounds familiar, it’s probably because you – or your mate – had one, sitting like a lump in the loungeroom, when you were little. “This guy that I lived with owned it, this big old ‘70s kind of organ, the kind that nobody wants to buy because they are massive and you can’t move them anywhere,” she says. Chadwick bought it from the housemate when he moved out, and it’s been a marvellous pain in the neck ever since. “When my girlfriend Steph [Crase, she of Summer Flake] and I moved into our house, the movers were not f-cking impressed. I don’t really get it. It’s your job, what did you think this was going to entail!?” Piano was the first instrument Chadwick learned; her excellent 2012 EP Eating For Two leaned heavily on electric guitar, but this month’s

Roses Always Die and her album of last year, 9 Classic Tracks , have made the organ queen. “You know how sometimes you just need some new toys, because you get a bit bored of whatever you’ve got?” Chadwick asks. The instrument’s reverential tones and

Roses Always Die by Sarah Mary Chadwick is out August 5 via Rice Is Nice.

has waned. “I’m actually f-cking really anxious whenever I have to do things with other people, which is annoying because it probably would be fun, but I just can’t really get my head around it any more,” she says. That’s fine with us – the strength and beauty of Roses Always Die is in its total truthfulness, and we wouldn’t have her sacrifice that for anything.

lonely beats give an extra confessional feel these new tracks, which – despite their lean composition – are rich with divulgence. Chadwick thinks the “churchie vibe” might be a result of too many plagal cadences in her Catholic upbringing, but it’s also really clear that the solitary feel has prosaic grounds: since she’s been writing solo, her interest in collaboration

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