Good morning,
This week’s Recommender comes courtesy of WhatsApp messages flying across the continent between me and Ted, both of us on holiday, him in Ibiza, me in Cornwall. Maybe one day we’ll go on holiday together. But not this year, nope, this time we were with our families, leaving them hanging whilst we went and dug out some quality time for our Recommenders. We did it. The proof is just a couple of scrolls away. Although if you’re not a paying subscriber, which is a shame, you’ll just have to take our word for it as Friday editions are for those legends only. It costs £5 a month and you can become a hero here:
Here’s this week’s playlist:
And here it is for the Apple Music squadron.
Enjoy the edition, see you on Monday,
Ted and Niall
At Q magazine, we once had an editor who insisted on a “three-word bio” being added as a prefix to any mention of an artist. Two factors counted against him in this facet of his otherwise inspiring editing: he’d taken the job very suddenly having not listened to much contemporary music for a long while; and he insisted on micro-managing all editorial tasks. So, every twenty minutes or so, he’d rock back in his chair while rewriting copy and loudly bark “three-word bio for The Black Lips” (or whoever) and the office would pause its own work while he hovered impatiently above his keyboard before someone, having had their concentration interrupted abruptly, would hesitantly suggest “chaotic American punks…?” And he’d then shout “Yes!” or “No!” until we could get on with our own business once more. This happened so often that now I still internally pause in Pavlovian reflection to ask myself for three-word bios when writing about music, even if sometimes I don’t bother adding it to my work in some kind of pointless, unremarked upon rebellion.
DIIV started around that same period of Q and I recall having to add “shoegazing New Yorkers” to the review page design printout that the editor had queried in red ink beneath some poor schmuck’s review (‘who do they *sound* like?!’). If DIIV’s new single The Fountain had been released under his leadership, I could’ve simply added “My Bloody Valentine” as its three-word bio. It sounds uncannily like Loveless-era MBV. Which is obviously a brilliant thing to pull off this convincingly, particularly when sounding like Loveless-era MBV not only wrecked MBV itself, but their label, Creation, too. If anything, The Fountain is more dynamic and instantly groovy, thanks perhaps to input of producer A.G Cook, of PC Music and Charli XCX repute, sounding almost effortless – which it most certainly was not. New album titled Zirp! arrives in October.
Absolutely LOVE the Teenage Fanclub-like Glass Shattered by The Cindys, a Bristol quintet starring Jack Ogborne, formally known as Bingo Fury, and – of course they’re brilliant, of course – Naima Bock of Naima Bock (and, yes, Goat Girl) fame on guitar and harmonies. This is a hugely more immediate and succulently catchy number than their debut album from last year now, and I keenly await more from album number two. Very good old school plaid shirt indie heartbreak rock. Video shot live in a classroom. Textbook.
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