Classic album: Talking Heads - Speaking In Tongues

Twenty-five years have elaspsed since Speaking In Tongues gave Talking Heads their biggest commercial success, but the passage of time hasn’t diminished the influence or freshness of the New York band’s first post-Brian Eno record…

It’s 1981. Talking Heads have just released the wildly ambitious Remain In Light, but the band’s future is far from assured. How could they possibly follow such an album? Where next? Bassist Tina Weymouth said at the time: “We spent so many years trying to be original that we don’t know how to be original any more.”

So Talking Heads did what any highly creative band on the verge of splitting up should do: the quartet went on hiatus to distract themselves with side projects. David Byrne made The Catherine Wheel, a soundtrack for a ballet by his choreographer girlfriend Twyla Tharp. Weymouth and husband/drummer Chris Frantz cut their first album as Tom Tom Club, a pop-by-numbers moneyspinner. And guitarist/keyboardist Jerry Harrison, not to be outdone, released his first solo album, The Red And the Black, which satisfied Jerry Harrison, if no-one else.

When they regrouped, the niggling jealousies within this famously dysfunctional band had not disappeared, but they had receded sufficiently. In his seminal Heads biography This Must Be the Place, David Bowman writes: “They still appeared more Addams family than Brady Bunch, but they no longer seemed to be embittered.” The new congenial atmosphere allowed them to make their fifth great album, Speaking in Tongues, released in late May, 1983.

For three reasons, Speaking in Tongues was a departure from the norm for Talking Heads. Firstly, all four core members had now proved they could work independently of the band. Secondly, it was the first album to benefit from the interracial ‘Expanded Heads’ group that appear in the Stop Making Sense concert film. Thirdly - and most importantly - it was Talking Heads’ first post-Brian Eno release.

Eno’s influence on Talking Heads cannot be understated. Band and producer met in London in 1978 when the Heads were supporting the Ramones. Their instant bond was such that Eno would produce their next three albums and loom large over the most fertile phase of the band’s history. Famous for his musical non-ability, Eno described his input as “listening to what they were doing and picking out sounds and making new sounds from them… using delays to create new rhythms within their own.” In the following years Byrne and Eno were almost joined at the hip, hanging out among the Manhattan trendies, collaborating on the leftfield LP My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, even dressing alike; their relationship as fellow artists was intense, but platonic. But within the fragile power structure of Talking Heads, their exclusive cosiness inevitably caused tension. Note that Eno is just one letter from Ono.

The final insult for the other Heads was the biased credit on the sleeve of Remain in Light: ‘All songs written by David Byrne, Brian Eno and Talking Heads’. Byrne sensed that Eno’s ongoing influence would spell the end of the band that had taken him from a skinny young art student in Rhode Island to a skinny rich rock star in New York, and ended the relationship. Eno being Eno would say that it was he who lost interest in such conventional music makers.

Following the ‘Big Suit’ tour with the Expanded Heads, the band flew down to the Bahamas to start work on the as-yet-untitled Speaking in Tongues. But the exotic surroundings weren’t inspiration enough for Byrne, who would fly back to New York to pace around his SoHo loft with a tape recorder, mumbling lyrics to himself day and night – in short, speaking in tongues. Byrne was no Dylan: he didn’t do narrative – his lyrics were disembodied slogans and Dada-like verse. But this time, Bowman reports that “the words weren’t just random. David was actually saying something, it just wasn’t in a linear fashion.”

In fact Byrne was writing his best lyrics yet. On Burning Down the House, David Byrne, certified oddball, sings emphatically: ‘I’m an or-di-na-ry guy!’ On Making Flippy Floppy, he is almost political in the ever-topical line, ‘Our president’s crazy’. Perhaps the best lyric on the album is from This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody): ‘Love me till I’m dead’. The double entendre, in such a sweet song, is perfectly poised.

Musically, Speaking in Tongues takes the Heads’ love affair with funk to its orgasmic conclusion. The rhythms are complex, African, black. The relentless pulse of the music was boosted by the Expanded Heads, especially by the talents of Parliament keyboard legend Bernie Worrell and Wally Badarou, a classically trained funk maestro. That’s not to say the white Heads couldn’t do rhythm of course: Frantz’s drumming, Weymouth’s bass, and Harrison and Byrne’s guitars are all tighter than ever. 

Side one (in vinyl terms) is practically flawless: Burning Down the House, Making Flippy Floppy, Girlfriend is Better, Slippery People, I Get Wild/Wild Gravity. The beats are hypnotic, the synths dark, Byrne’s voice fizzing between paranoia and elation. Side two starts with the electro-blues of Swamp, where Byrne pulls off a convincing Delta growl, before – sadly - two filler tracks, Moon Rocks and Pull Up the Roots. The album ends on This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody), with everyone apart from Frantz playing instruments on which they’re not proficient. The result is aptly naïve but beautifully sincere.

With Speaking in Tongues, Talking Heads sold a million copies for the first time, most in the emerging Japanese format of pre-recorded cassette. The record industry was changing. MTV was dominant. The dollar-eyed Eighties were in full swing. Punk was dead. Post-punk was dead. Talking Heads, now one of the biggest bands in America, would spend three more albums trying to reclaim their former edge. As it turns 25, this landmark work of prog-funk genius is definitely due a reissue.

Released: June 1983
Produced by: Talking Heads

01: ‘Burning Down the House’
02: ‘Making Flippy Floppy’
03: ‘Girlfriend is Better’
04: ‘Slippery People’
05: ‘I Get Wild/Wild Gravity’
06: ‘Swamp’
07: ‘Moon Rocks’
08: ‘Pull Up the Roots’
09: ‘This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)’

Musicians

David Byrne. Vocals, keyboards, guitar, bass, percussion.
Chris Frantz. Drums, backing vocals, synthesizer.
Jerry Harrison. Keyboards, guitar, backing vocals.
Tina Weymouth. Synthesizer and string bass, backing vocals, guitar.

Alex Weir. Guitar.
Wally Badarou. Synthesizer.
Raphael DeJesus. Percussion.
Steve Scales. Percussion.
David Van Tieghem. Percussion
Richard Landry. Saxophone.
Nona Hendryx. Backing vocals.
Dolette MacDonald. Backing vocals.
Bernie Worrell. Synthesizer.
Shankar. Violin.

1983: The Albums

‘Murmur’ REM
‘Synchronicity’ The Police
‘War’ U2
‘She’s So Unusual’ Cindi Lauper
‘Swordfishtrombones’ Tom Waits
‘Madonna’ Madonna

This feature appears in the current edition of Clash magazine

The Charlatans - You Cross My Path

Rating: * *

The Charlatans, along with the Manics and Oases of this world, are a band content to plough the same musical furrow ad infinitum. And while perseverance should be celebrated when it reaps consistently good produce - such as 2001’s Wonderland - it’s very easy to become indifferent to such Britpop survivors when the quality of the songwriting inevitably wanes. You Cross My Path, the tenth album from Tim Burgess and his West Midlander brethren, feels like the inevitable waning. At a juncture when they should be reminding us of their relevance, they have tossed off a tame and tired album that will soon collect dust on your shelf. Their ’60s aping style remains in the constant, whirling organ, but the choruses are lacklustre and even the mix sounds mis-balanced, drowning out Burgess’s vocals in places. The title track briefly evokes their former swagger, but what are they trying to tell us with an album closer called This Is The End?

You Cross My Path is out now via Cooking Vinyl

May in singles: new music from New York, Norway and… Dundee

Most agree that the indie-fication of pop has been a change for the better. Except, that is, when bands like The Pigeon Detectives bring their knuckle-dragging post-Libertine shtick to the table with new single This Is An Emergency (**, 5 May). A rush of equally naff computer beeps heralds the debut single of Philadelphian electro-rock-bots Innerpartysystem. Don’t Stop (**, 5 May) is quite good fun, in an emo kind of way. Speaking of emo, I’m not sure if Paramore fit the criteria, but they’ve got that strangely sanitized angst-rock down pat. That’s What You Get (*, 12 May) might be gash, but they sport some splendidly coiffured ‘dos on the cover.

Figure 5, this month’s new-band-from-Glasgow, offer a kind of garage punk that’s anything but forward-thinking with debut single Rock of Gibraltar (**, 26 May). With cited influences like The Jam and Buzzcocks, they probably want to be seen as retro rockers anyway. Another debut single from the other side of the indie continuum: Oxford’s A Silent Film come over all sensitive and slick on Sleeping Pills (***, 12 May), but they sound better than many of their soft-on-the-ear southerner peers. Just.

This column wouldn’t be complete without an Australian singer/songwriter, so step up Mr Kris Morris. Someone Sometimes (**, 5 May) is a downtempo love song that will fit nicely into Terry Wogan’s Radio 2 playlist, if you catch my drift. Cazals are an utterly different proposition, but with Somebody, Somewhere (***, 5 May) they obviously attended the same vague school of song-naming. Nevertheless, this is sharp, punchy indie - and Casio keyboard noises are always a winner. This month’s female singer/songwriter, Norwegian Ida Maria, upstages her male counterpart with Queen of the World (***, 12 May). An ode to getting sozzled that drinks from the same (presumably spiked) pint glass as the unnaturally chipper Jack Peñate.

Why should a band from Dundee pine for the Big Apple, as The Hazy Janes do on New York (***, 19 May)? Is the silvery Tay not inspiration enough? Whatever their home-town gripes, they make indie-pop that’s safe but satisfying. Proving the theory that the point of art school isn’t to paint but to form bands, Edinburgh’s The Gussets arrive through our mailbox with Gortex Erotique (***, out now), a paean to seedy subculture that falls somewhere between The Slits and Le Tigre. Banish all thoughts of Enya before listening to Sail Away (***, 12 May) by The Thirst. This Brixton quintet make quality indie-rock that couldn’t be further removed from the ’80s warbler. Given that this blog is already a signed-up fan it’s no surprise that Frightened Rabbit should take single of the month with Fast Blood (****, 26 May), a beautifully simple track that takes its cue from the ragged-edged panache of The National.

Clinic, Errors, RememberRemember @ Cabaret Voltaire, 27 Apr

 
RememberRemember’s (***) Graeme Ronald chose his new musical moniker wisely, because by the end of every ’song’ (in the loosest possible sense) the minimalist sequences and percussive noises are not live but recorded, looped, the stuff of memory. He may not be the first to compose and perform in this multi-layering manner, but with his use of a holepunch, bubblewrap, a plastic shark… oh, and a guitar, he is certainly the quirkiest. Joined by sax and violin, this trio is wilfully avant-garde in a kraut-rock style, and not as pretentious as you might imagine.

Upholding the leftfield Zeitgeist - with added electro muscle - Errors (****) emit bone-shuddering waves of synth, chiming, resonant guitar and a buzzing haze of glitch-core that sparks around the stone walls of the Cab. Salut France and set-closer Mr Milk are mesmerizing in their shamanic intensity, but their finest moment arrives in new single Toes, an elemental math-rock-out that shows that Errors are as tight as any of their more conventional contemporaries. Expectations of greatness, brilliantly fulfilled.

The scene is set for Clinic (***) to provide a rockier outro to Triptych’s Edinburgh curtain call. The Liverpudlian eccentrics appear in Hawaiian shirts and their trademark surgical masks; a rather bamboozling visual statement, given that their music is more in line with ’60s psych revivalism than conceptual performance art. But any semiotic confusion is obliterated by their klanging riffs and organ-led energy. It does all get a bit homogenous in a set that regresses from new to old, but tracks like The Second Line and Winged Wheel affirm their truly unique appeal.

Interview: Errors

Anyone who has trawled MySpace in search of good music and been met by band after mundane indie band will know that it is acts that offer something a bit different (like Errors) that make it all at least semi-worthwhile. A year ago, maybe more, it was the track Mr Milk that made me sit up and listen: a simple minor key guitar riff - so far, so normal - followed by a blaze of electro that surges and builds and fades in all the right places. So with their debut album (finally) on the horizon, I spoke to drummer James Hamilton for a feature in The Skinny…

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Errors are a band who have buzzed, fly-like, around the electrically charged bars of the Scottish music scene for a few years without igniting in a satisfying pop. But that could all be about to change with the release of their debut album next month, the wordily-titled It’s Not Something, But It Is Like Whatever. If it’s not something, but it is like whatever, then what is it exactly, James Hamilton, Errors drummer?

“The stuff that we come out with is kinda like a mish-mash of our own influences. Simon and Steve come from electronic music so there’s a lot of acid and house and techno but there’s also a lot of hardcore, post-rock guitar influences. Personally I listen to tons of jazz and latin, which is so not cool but I think that comes through, especially in some of the newer songs.”

The Glasgow-based band first caught local attention with the single Hans Herman in 2005. It was the beginning of their ongoing relationship with Rock Action, the record label established by post-rock behemoths Mogwai. Originally a purely electronic affair, Errors soon hired Hamilton to provide live drums, and guitars also became an integral part of their sound. The EP How Clean Is Your Acid House? brought them further exposure, and they supported dance veterans Underworld on their UK tour last November. It’s all steady progress, but Hamilton admits that the album has been a long time in gestation: “When I joined we were still working out different aesthetics of playing. We’d been planning on making an album for a long time but we didn’t feel we had the songs that were good enough to put out.”

But having Mogwai as their artistic patrons meant they had no shortage of time and understanding to make the record they wanted to make: “It makes it a lot easier for us, because they’ve got that insight, they know what it’s like to be on the other side of the fence.” It also meant that, when the time came to start recording, they had the run of Mogwai’s own Glasgow studio, the ominous-sounding Castle of Doom, and a ready producer in the form of ‘Gwai guitarist John Cummings. “John’s a ridiculously good producer,” Hamilton says. “The drum sound he got was amazing. They basically boxed me in in this room, and it was a bit claustrophobic. But he said, OK, play some stuff and then come through and hear how it sounds. So I was expecting it to sound a bit dodgy but I came through and it sounded like Bon Jovi or something. He got an amazingly epic drum sound.”

As well as ‘epic’ drum sounds, the album benefits from the husky tones of London-based diseuse George Pringle, who guests on the track Cutlery Drawer. “We assumed it was gonna be an instrumental record,” Hamilton explains, “but we were reading this interview with this writer and performer called George Pringle from London. She does spoken word stuff over electronic music. And she said in the interview that she didn’t like much new music, except for… and she said Errors. So we thought we’d just get in touch and ask her if she wanted to do vocals on a track. She said yeah and it’s turned out absolutely amazing.”

Errors have planned a tour in support of the album which includes, rather intriguingly, a four-date jaunt around Finland. Hamilton says that this unusual diversion dates back to the band playing Finnish festival Qstock last year - “this kind of gothy festival with a dance tent that was absolutely amazing” - and he’s keen to sing the praises of the Scandinavian nation, and its wildlife: “We were driving down this dusky, foggy road and this moose ran across and it was the most majestic thing I’ve ever seen”. As Hamilton observes, there are definitely worse places to be ‘big’ in. Soon Errors may be qualified to make the same statement about their homeland.

The release date for Errors’ debut album It’s Not Something, But It Is Like Whatever has been a matter of contention, although the band did post a MySpace bulletin this week saying it would be out on 2nd June.

This is the video to the new single Toes. It looks like it’s been made on MovieMaker, but have a listen at least…

The Futureheads - This Is Not The World

****

It may seem exaggerated to call this a comeback, given that The Futureheads only crashed on to the scene with their self-titled debut some four years ago, but when the Sunderland punk-popsters were dumped by their label after a second album that certainly was ‘difficult’, their musical stock price took a nose-dive worthy of Northern Rock. So to hit back with a self-released record of such unadulterated, unperturbed vigour is a real two-finger salute to the doomsayers. Their appeal always lay in their amphetamine energy and wry pop charm, and it all comes flooding back in tracks like Think Tonight, Work Is Never Done and The Beginning of the Twist. There’s little shelter from the gale of staccato guitars and punchy beats, but this is their forte and all to the good. With their third album The Futureheads show there’s plenty of life left in their own form of northern rock.

This Is Not The World is released via Nul Records on 26 May.

The Futureheads play ABC, Glasgow on 6 May and Fat Sams, Dundee on 24 May.

Triptych, R.I.P.

There are perhaps more serious things to lament than the death of a mere music festival, but then Triptych is/was no mere music festival. This weekend it bows out with a typically diverse barrage of gigs across Scotland, and I at least plan to attend the Clinic show, with Errors and RememberRemember in support, at Cabaret Voltaire on Sunday night.

The thing about Triptych which distinguished it from other festivals was that even if you didn’t know the names on the bill, you’d probably trust the organisers enough to go off and look them up, and learn a whole host of new artists every year. Last year I discovered one of my favourite electro bands, Ratatat (pictured), thanks to the open-minded programmers.

[By the way, if you're reading this thinking, eh? Triptych? what's the frick's he on about - and shame on you - then read a handy pocket-sized history of the festival which I wrote for The Skinny.]

The demise of this truly intrepid event ties in with a general murmuring that the popularity of festivals has peaked and is now headed for a trough, what with Glastonbury failing to sell out in ten nanoseconds, etc etc.

Tennent’s have announced, as a rather damp conciliatory PR exercise, that a replacement festival called The Tennent’s Mutual is to be launched next year. The lager company says that “it will offer music fans the chance to shape Scotland’s live music landscape”. I can’t help but react with scepticism. Can we really rely on the general public to create an event that was as eye-opening, esoteric and exciting as Triptych? I wouldn’t even trust myself to curate a line-up as well as they did for eight years.

See: www.triptychfestival.com

Stay tuned for an interview with Errors on this here blog…

Interview: Frightened Rabbit

OK, so The Midnight Organ Fight has been out for a few days now, and if you’ve managed to buy, steal or borrow a copy you’ll know what a fucking superb album Frightened Rabbit have made: undoubtedly an early contender for album of the year. I wrote a review of it a few weeks ago, then didn’t listen to it for a while, and returned to it again the other night, and its tarnished glory only gets better with each listen.

The following feature was written for this month’s edition of The Skinny. It was conducted through a very faint transatlantic phone line one afternoon in late March, as the band were preparing to fly home to Scotland.
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When The Skinny first spoke to Frightened Rabbit’s Grant Hutchison last year his band were still lurking behind a seemingly intentional cloak of enigma. No surnames given, sparse MySpace, hoodie-clad in their few publicity pictures – it all seemed like some subversive, anti-commercial gameplan. But, on the eve of the release of The Midnight Organ Fight, their second-ish album, Frightened Rabbit have stepped further into the public domain and, though they may not be the cultural terrorists we took them for, the Glasgow-based Borderers are the latest in a line of fine bands to emerge from Scotland’s burgeoning music scene.

And it is indicative of their progress from local oddities to indie favourites that we now find Grant in the New York apartment of the band’s American tour manager, recovering from a night of Dionysian excess with compatriots Sons and Daughters. Over the phone he certainly sounds fatigued, and a little interrogation confirms that they’re all “feeling a bit fragile”.

Frightened Rabbit kicked off their American jaunt at the industry showcase South By South West, and Grant says the reaction has been very good: “They just love anything Scottish over here you know. They all think they have Scottish ancestry. And they love the accent when we go on stage and introduce ourselves. It’s difficult because the album’s not out yet but when we’ve played live everyone’s been enjoying it.”

With The Midnight Organ Fight’s unpretentious alt.folk styling, Frightened Rabbit were almost ready-made for American success. Whereas first album Sing The Greys was more of a straight-up indie rocker (and basically the re-packaged version of their demo tracks), the follow-up is a finely crafted, musically rich album that was graced by Interpol/The National producer Peter Katis. “He has his own sound that you can hear on the records he’s made,” Grant says. “To be honest he’s the first producer we’ve worked with. Sing The Greys was just us. But having Peter there worked really well for us. We’re happier with the second album because it’s what we knew we could eventually do.”

But it’s not likely to be the music that resides in your memory after a first listen; it’s the battering-ram lyrics delivered by Grant’s brother Scott. The biographical nature of his writing is barely concealed (’Floating in the Forth’ portrays a clear-minded contemplation of suicide), although he does twist his personal sagas into gloriously vivid metaphor. It’s just his way of dealing with it, Grant says: “He finds that that’s really the only way that he can talk about his feelings. He doesn’t bring these things up with people in general conversation. If he needs to get over something he puts it in a song. There are some songs where it’s about being in love and the next one is ‘fuck you’. It’s in real time almost, the way it flows. Scott writes about exactly how he’s feeling at that moment in time, which is quite strange when you’re his brother in the band and you find out about these things!”

Having taken their music to the Yanks, Frightened Rabbit are now focusing on their homeland. The privileged few who have already seen them in full flow will know that they are one of the most exciting live acts around; now expanded to a quartet, they belie their woolly image with strafing guitar and scatter-bomb drums. Do they consciously try to distance themselves from the record on stage? “Of course we want people to recognise the songs - we’re not gonna come out and start playing them in 7/8 time. But live and record are completely different things. I’ve never bought a ticket for a gig expecting to go and hear the album. I could just put the CD on in the house and play it really loud if I wanted that. You’ve got to put on some kind of a show for people that they’ll remember, so they feel part of something special. The worst thing for me would be for people to say ‘they’re alright’. I’d prefer if they went home and said ‘they were shit, they did this, they did that’. But for people to say ‘they were OK’, that’s the worst.”

With Frightened Rabbit due to make their Triptych debut this month, terms of indifference like ‘alright’ or ‘OK’ are unlikely to be heard post-gig. The band, like the festival itself, are no dwellers of the middle ground.

Frightened Rabbit’s Triptych show takes place at The Tramway, Glasgow on 26 Apr

Paul Haig – Go Out Tonight

* * *

To coincide with his first live shows in 19 years, former Josef K singer Paul Haig releases his tenth – yes, tenth – solo album. And whereas his Josef K persona was all giddy angst and jitterbug freak, Go Out Tonight - while it skirts with paranoia - is the product of a more contented, better fed, middle-aged man. Haig has long since broadened his scope beyond brittle, boney post-punk in favour of meaty basslines, string segments and a surprisingly danceable formula. But while there is a veneer of sheen, it is still the work of a songwriter, not a producer, and is oddly reminiscent of Heathen, David Bowie’s own late-career return to form. In a largely upbeat album, ‘Believe’ is one of the few minor-key songs, which makes it a standout in more ways than one, while ‘Trouble Maker’ and ‘Data Retro’ are more in keeping with the theme of the title. A decent return, but the overly slick production tends to neutralise some of Haig’s artistic charisma.

Go Out Tonight is released on 14 Apr via Rhythm of Life

Catch Mr Haig’s long-awaited comeback live at:
Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh on 13 Apr
King Tut’s, Glasgow on 4 May
Tigerfest @ Carnegie Hall, Dunfermline on 18 May

April in singles: beatniks, soulsters, the usual fluff

Pitched somewhere between O Brother Where Art Thou? and The Pogues, The Ballad of Bess Houdini (***, 7 Apr) by Paul Vickers and The Leg is nothing if not intriguing. Which means it is, by the way. So we’ve established that SL Records have an ear for quirky, beatnik troubadours. Thomas Truax is further proof: Stranger On a Train (***, 14 Apr) is a skiffle ode to locomotive life that showcases his weird and witty narrative style. Over on the more conventional side of the singer/songwriter scale is Rory McVicar. No More Do I Care (***, 7 Apr) really benefits from repeated listens – a pleasant strum by the Norwich native. White, English, mid-30s, but Jamie Lidell does his best Stevie Wonder on Little Bit of Feel Good (***, 14 Apr). A less flattering tagline would be ‘the male Joss Stone’, but we know better.

Scouting For Girls have a new song out. It’s called Heartbeats (*, 7 Apr) and the rhythm is timed to a human heartbeat sample. Clever? About as clever as these fuckwits will ever get. It’s a risky business calling only your second single Listen Then Leave (***, 28 Apr) but then Midlands metalheads AFD Shift don’t seem like a worrisome bunch. Their glitchy thrash is surprisingly listenable, even for this metal-sceptic’s ears. The same can’t be said for Las Vegans The Higher, whose UK debut single Dare (*, 14 Apr) sounds like it’s been marinated in The Feeling singer’s melted hair gel. Less gloopy are Blood Red Shoes, who up their game with Say Something, Say Anything (***, 7 Apr). Although the subject matter is a family bereavement, its garage-punk blast is not at all funereal.

In these esoteric days of math-rock and Afrobeat, simplicity, it seems, is not a fashionable concept, but The Envy Corps use just that to good effect in Story Problem (***, 21 Apr), a rousing terrace-style chant that’s more British Sea Power than Fratellis, thankfully. Make Model sing “we’re here with a mission” on The LSB (***, 21 Apr), and with their major label backing and ear for bright punk-pop, this Glasgow mob could be on the cusp of ubiquity. A rich seam of indie runs through Canada, and even if you don’t like latest exports Tokyo Police Club and their single Tessellate (****, 21 Apr) – and it’s hard not to – you may at least have learned a new word. This blog wasn’t complementary about Lightspeed Champion’s debut single back in January: “distinctly ho-hum“. But Galaxy of the Lost (****, 14 Apr) is a big improvement, big enough for single of the month. The lap-guitar tags it as folk-pop, but Dev Hynes’ love-torn lyrics are in pointed contrast to the trad sound.

Listen to the single of the month.

This article - or one very similar to it - originally appeared in The Skinny magazine