Bain’s newest addition to their discography, is the first EP since their debut album Good at Falling which was released last year on Dirty Hit. It is also the second piece of work produced by BJ Burton with whom they first worked with on their debut due to the fact usual collaborator, George Daniel of The 1975 was tied up working on the band’s phenomenal 2018 release A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships.
Burton has worked extensively with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver which meant Bain travelled out to the US to work on music at Vernon’s private studio in Wisconsin. This encounter resulted in their latest EP ‘Chewing Cotton Wool’ going full circle in terms of production. It includes Dionne, a track featuring Vernon that exudes a new sense of sureness – which is reflected throughout the rest of this EP. The first single released from Chewing Cotton Wool was Something Has To Change, a potential pop hit with an awfully catchy chorus that you can’t help but sing along to.
The title track then followed, it is in this track that Bain recalls memories of a lost loved one using lyrics like “She’s the sound of your own voice / She’s someone else’s drink”. These lyrics are accompanied by a tinkling of electronic sounds in the background. The final of the four songs, the first on this record is ‘Sharing Beds’ which is comprised of piano and vocals produced using a synthesiser, a familiar sound to fans of both The Japanese House and the 1975 as this track is reminiscent of some of the bands earlier tracks.
Chewing Cotton Wool is an advancement of Bain’s sound but it is an EP that brings the last few years of music together whilst directing listeners toward future possibilities with lyrics designed for the radio. This EP is an indication of Bain’s talent and their ability to produce an incredibly meaningful collection of songs in every release.
(The title of this piece is a line taken from a letter by Claire Schwartz that was published in the Paris Review’s column: Poetry Rx).
Nobody ever warns you about how intense the break-up of a long-term friendship is, how that pain never really goes away – it just settles and comes back to visit you just as everything else in your life finally starts to feel alright.
I fell out with my best friend of almost fifteen years around this time last year, we had moved to the same university in Manchester and had (by complete coincidence) ended up living in different blocks of the same halls of residence. So much of those first few weeks were spent traipsing between flats, eating huge bowls of pesto pasta and being badly behaved in various clubs, it almost felt like we’d never left home.
I’m not going to pretend our falling out isn’t my fault, I enabled something to happen that never should have and I will spend the rest of my life kicking myself for it (note to self: do not ever give someone the passwords to your phone or social media no matter how much you think you might love them). I spend so much time wondering what life would be like now if I’d realised how wrong it was that my partner (at the time) was so jealous of the friendship I had with this person that she asked me to cut them off and when I refused to do it, she took matters into her own hands and did it herself from my social media. I’ll never forget those messages or the way my stomach dropped once I realised what had happened was real and not some totally horrid dream.
I’ve talked before about how the grief I feel is comparable to that feeling when you go swimming in the sea and the current is so strong that the gross, salty water starts to fill your mouth and lungs until it burns your insides and you spend what feels like forever struggling to get your breath back so many times before. I don’t feel it all the time, it’s at its worst when something happens to me and I reach for my phone to tell her about it (because she was always the first to know everything) and then I remember her number isn’t in my contacts anymore and I haven’t even seen her since the night we went to my favourite bar in Manchester and spent £17 on two double gin and lemonades because neither of us could stomach tonic. It makes my stomach lurch and suddenly, everything comes flooding back and I will spend the next few days almost entirely consumed by guilt. It’s a miserable cycle I’m scared I’ll never be able to break free of.
There’s so much I want her to know, I imagine the way she’d laugh whilst I recounted stories of failed Hinge dates over pints or how she’d squirm in horror once she learnt about the time I almost died in Newcastle. I want to tell her that I am so much happier now than I was in the last 12 months of our friendship, how I don’t let people walk all over me anymore and I finally learnt what it means to be happy without relying on other people all the time. I’d like to think she’d be proud of me if she knew that I finally got my work published properly too. It’s quite funny really because her mum sometimes comments on things I write when I share them on Facebook and it always makes me think about when we were kids talking about what our lives would be like as adults, conjuring up all these huge dreams in which the other always featured somewhere: huge houses in faraway places, stupidly unrealistic jobs – you name it, we’d probably made it up.
I don’t think the love I have for her will ever go away, it’ll just continue changing shape and I’ll push bits of it into the rest of my life and the friendships I have now. It’s there when I answer the phone in the middle of the night to give the worst advice possible because I’ve had two bottles of wine but I know my friend is hurting so I have to be there for him, it’s there when I decide to stay out clubbing into the small hours even though I hate those small sweaty rooms, it’s there when I listen to David Bowie as I paint black lines over my eyelids and it’s there swelling in my chest when I wake up next to the same boy in my bed every week because I know all she wanted was for me to be happy and I am (finally).
The first time I watched Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird (2017), I was fourteen and thought I was the coolest person alive because I wore fishnet tights and went to gigs without my dad trailing along behind me. A coming-of-age film about the complexities of growing up and moving on whilst juggling everything being a teenager throws at you (love, relationships, big life decisions), on first watch I can’t say I related to any aspect of the film because my experiences of the world were incredibly limited due to my age. However, as I’ve grown older and in turn collected experiences in the same way people might collect coins or stamps, there are a few themes that have started to become more relatable for me personally. Most notably Lady Bird’s (played by Saoirse Ronan) relationship with the place she’s from, her inability to like a nice person (although I’m better at that now than I was at 15) and in some ways, her relationship with her parents really stick out.
I grew up in a relatively small town (the population is just less than 20,000 people) on the outskirts of Leeds. It’s one of those places where everyone knows everyone, as in so small that you will almost definitely bump into old teachers and people you’ve not seen in donkeys in the local supermarket. I’m grateful to have grown up in what is considered a (more than) nice area but I’m a firm believer in the idea that people grow out of places because I certainly did (or so I thought). I love where I’m from, the fact my accent has remained incredibly strong despite years of being surrounded by others from elsewhere but I’ve exhausted everything it has to offer; the old men’s pub that everyone from school frequents when they come back from uni, the park with the curry house in the centre of it and the same conversations with the same people I’ve known for 15 years – of course I’ll keep coming back to it, I just needed to get away from the sameness of it all, much like Lady Bird does in the movie.
When it came to picking universities I might want to go to back at the start of 2021, my decisions were nowhere near as big or as rash as the ones Lady Bird makes. I knew I wanted to be close to home but not so close that it felt as though I had no independence, I had talked for years about moving to Manchester. I loved the busyness of it, its fit to bursting live music scene, the coolness of the Northern Quarter etc etc. It had all of these things that home didn’t and most of all, it meant a fresh start somewhere no one knew me. I had ultimately ended up living here by total accident having been rejected from Sheffield University on A-Level results day and at first, I despised it. I spent my first three months miserable and wanting to go home all of the time; I hated the hugeness of the city even though this was something I craved before I moved, I couldn’t understand why barely anyone I met sounded like me even though we were in one of the biggest cities in the north – everyone was southern and much posher than me, all I wished for was the comfort of home. It was during this time that I must’ve watched Lady Bird a further 5 or 6 times and it was then I finally felt connected to the titular character; I saw myself in the scenes where she leaves for uni knowing her mother’s attitude towards this move to the other side of the country and it made my chest burn.
A central theme to the film is Lady Bird’s relationship with her parents. I’ve always had an incredibly close relationship with both of mine except for a period when I was 17 and in a relationship that admittedly, turned me into a selfish, spoilt brat. Outside of pandemic restrictions, I’d spend every second I possibly could away in Sheffield visiting my girlfriend at the time. Christmas break 2020 was the worst of it because I didn’t come home for three weeks and missed Christmas Day with my family to be with hers. I’ll never forget the conversation I had with my dad that echoed the same one Lady Bird has with her mum, he told me that he’ll always love me but in that moment, he didn’t like me. I was so gobsmacked that I couldn’t grasp that I was the one being awful, I just thought that this reaction was my dad being mean and trying to prevent me from being ‘happy’. I look back on that discussion and am so grateful for it because even though it took me another year to get out of that relationship, I know he was just trying to protect me by getting me to think about the damage I was doing to not only myself but everyone around me. I thought about that period of time a lot when I moved to university, how my parents must feel without me in the house and it made me incredibly sad – I regretted all those months of bitterness and childish behaviour, all the times I told my mum I hated her and the fact I let this person that was supposed to be my partner fill my head with so much poison that it warped the view I had of my own family. It’s something that still crosses my mind from time to time but things are a billion times better now, I call them at least twice a week and go home to be taken care of as often as money and time will allow. I know that they’re proud of me for moving away but I can’t help but feel that sometimes they wish that I stayed to make up for all the time we lost over the span of that two-year relationship.
I’ve always been notoriously bad at finding the right people to like too; it’s only in the last couple of months I’ve become somewhat more aware of when someone is a dick before it’s too late. I’ve spent much of my teenage years fixating over brunette men in bands and boys that only kept me around to give them an ego boost when theirs was low, the women haven’t been much better either. It’s partly why I’ve almost always found extreme comfort in the character of Lady Bird because she too fixates on the wrong sort of person. There’s Danny who she becomes more of a friend to as he struggles to accept his identity as a gay man and then there’s Kyle: every woman’s worst nightmare because he’ll butter you up until he gets bored and fucks you off eventually (I’ve been Lady Bird in that situation and it SUCKS!).
She doesn’t mend her heartbreak in the way you’d perhaps expect, there’s no having sex with friends of friends or boat loads of time wasted crying over it; instead she paints over the space in which she wrote both their names on her wall and uses female companionship to get by because she learns (just like I did) that no love will ever be greater than that shown to you by friends. They’re the ones that pick up all the pieces when your life goes to shit, in my experience they’re always there to go for a drink or sit and listen for hours whilst you moan about how you pulled the short straw again, they’ll lend you clothes and come and buy condoms when you’re too embarrassed to go alone. I never realised just how much friends do for you up until my most recent re-watch of Lady Bird and the scene after she experiences her first break-up in which she and her best friend Julie sit in the car crying to ‘Crash Into Me’ by The Dave Matthews Band really hit close to my heart. I would be absolutely nothing without the shower of love I’ve received from my friends and to have a film written almost entirely as a love letter to female friendship is so special.
Lady Bird has taught me so much about learning to love the place that you’re from, treating it with care as after all, wherever you grow up shapes a huge part of your identity as an adult no matter how much you may think it’s the worst place in the world. It’s also taught me the important lesson of taking better care of my friends and nurturing every friendship I have because I realise I’ve been pretty crap at that in the past. Who knew that a 90-minute film set 6,000 miles away from home could have such an impact on the way a person chooses to live their life even five years after its initial release?
I was born at 29 weeks and three days gestation, a June baby instead of the September baby I was supposed to be. Not expected to live past that first day on Earth, my parents were told that if I did, I would never walk or talk. Such an early entrance into the world meant that after birth, I had a brain haemorrhage that would leave me with the mildest form of hemiplegic cerebral palsy on my left side and near total deafness on my right-hand side among a whole list of other things that I wouldn’t be diagnosed with until well into my teenage years. All things considered, I actually got off pretty lightly if you think about it.
Growing up, my parents would always make sure that I got the same opportunities as everybody else in my life: they put me in drama lessons and sent me to various Girlguiding groups, I did bronze Duke of Edinburgh and went on every school trip that was offered to me. The only thing separating me from every other person my age was the odd hospital appointment.
Dating as a person with a disability or illness of any kind is excruciating because you know that as much as you may wish to hide these things from potential partners, there will come a time where you do have to sit down and have ‘the conversation’ and there’s always SO many questions that follow which are fine but there’s a constant feeling of dread that lingers in the pit of my stomach because sex almost always makes up a good 70% of this discussion. My answer always remains the same: yes I can and yes I have with both men and women. Whether or not I can be intimate with another person is not the issue but rather the idea that most nondisabled people have that disabled people should either a) not be having sex or b) we can’t have sex is the real problem here. Having this conversation feels a bit like a test of other people’s maturity at times too because either they’re grown up enough to stick around and realise that none of what is ‘wrong’ with me is as bad as it first seems, or they run away at the first sign that something is ‘off’. It really isn’t hard to be adult about something even when you don’t understand it.
I can deal with numerous questions and people not being able to cope, I get it and over the years I’ve learnt there’s no point in wasting time trying to make people understand because at the end of the day it’s a reflection on the type of person they are more than anything else. It’s the almost inevitable infantilisation and the patronising tone of voice that a small fraction of people adopt to address me because apparently having a mild physical disability means that I can’t have basic, adult conversation that I can’t cope with. It ignites an anger in me like nothing else because like I will keep on reiterating, nothing about me is all that different from the average person other than the fact I’m a bit deaf and a bit slow. I have ten GCSE’s, three A-Levels, am a third of the way through a Journalism degree, I live independently and am also a published writer. In fact, I think it’s quite possible that I’ve done more than most people ever will and it’s something that I’m incredibly proud of on the inside – I just wish I wasn’t so embarrassed to be more vocal about it publicly.
If I could change my life so that I didn’t have to go for yearly check-ups or sit embarrassed in doctors’ offices, I would but I know no different and I never will. I want other people to get used to the fact that people like me exist and we are NOT burdens. Even know sometimes it’s incredibly hard to believe, I know that I am more than capable of being loved – I just need to stop looking for love in all the wrong places and putting my faith in people that will never see me the way I would like them to.
I’ve been on dating apps since the middle of January, I only downloaded them as a way of figuring out where my head was at in terms of who I’m attracted to after never really being 100% sure – I’d been in a long-term relationship with a woman and had fancied men before but spent a long time drifting between labels because I couldn’t seem to find a place where I fitted comfortably. I didn’t really anticipate to still be endlessly scrolling on them seven months later because another man I’d spent a month speaking to started to lessen his replies to me until he became nothing but another viewer of my Instagram story.
I try not to be hurt by it because I know that this is just what happens: you start messaging backwards and forwards, you might even promise to meet up – or if you don’t then you just continue messaging until one of you gets bored and it fizzles out because you lose interest in finding out anything else other than how their day was by way of a message sent at 11pm on a Wednesday evening. Despite knowing that this is exactly how the vicious cycle of using dating apps works, it’s hard to not feel the tiniest bit deflated when you do eventually get ghosted because you made the stupid assumption that this time it might be different.
It feels slightly hypocritical to be writing about how much I hate modern dating culture and the fact ghosting is a thing when I myself am guilty of it too but let’s be real, who isn’t? I think we’ve all been in a position where someone just doesn’t do it for you anymore or they’ve made you uncomfortable with unwanted sexual advances after what was at first, a seemingly normal conversation. Sometimes, as human beings I don’t think we’re left with much choice but to just disappear – that doesn’t excuse the fact ghosting is still an incredibly shitty thing to do though. I don’t really understand what happened to just being honest with people when you can’t be bothered anymore, nor do I understand the people that think ghosting helps protect the feelings of the other person when normally it just makes you feel worse than if someone were to straight up say that they didn’t want to keep it up with you.
I seem to always go for the same sort of man every time I end up in one of these weird talking stages: brunettes that look like they could be a member of experimental rock group Black Country, New Road or like they’ve stepped directly out of a Sally Rooney novel. They’ve nearly always done a creative degree or made working in a high street retail chain seem like the most attractive thing in the world. There was a boy who spent ages telling me about all his favourite films and another that showed me poetry he’d written – they both seemed sweet until the inevitable happened and once again I found myself listening to Julia Jacklin’s 2019 album Crushing and wondering where I’d gone wrong this time.
I don’t like modern dating culture or this idea that there’ll always be somebody there to one up you. I wish it was easier than constantly being made to feel like that one toy you would get for Christmas as a kid just to play with it for a few days only to then forget about its existence once you grew bored of it. It’s for sure a first world problem and I know full well I don’t need to be romantically involved with somebody to be happy because there’s more to life than that but sometimes it would just be nice to have someone stick around for longer than a month at a time.
I’ve been a fan of Lorde and of Melodrama as an album since 2018, a year after the album’s initial release. I had just started going to house parties in May of that year and rinsed songs from the album for all that they were worth, ensuring they were played at least once on every one of these nights because back then, I saw Melodrama as nothing but a collection of (mostly) fun, pop adjacent songs to be played loud in rooms full of my friends whilst we drank underage and gossiped about who we all fancied (Just as Ella Yelich-O’Connor aka Lorde had intended, FYI, the album concept is built around an evening at a house party).
It wasn’t until earlier this year that this album would become something more to me than one full of songs designed to soundtrack drunken antics in someone else’s garden. It became an extreme source of comfort in the aftermath of my first breakup, to hear someone of a similar age (at the time of the album release) singing about overcoming all these huge feelings a breakup brings with it during the period when I genuinely believed that relationship was the be-all and end-all of where I stood in life at that point in time, was (and still is), a constant reminder that relationships don’t define who you are or the experiences you will go on to have forever. They’re simply just connections you make that allow you to continue growing into the person you want to be.
There are many tracks on the record that echo the events of my own life, the idea in ‘Green Light’ of being so wrapped up in the intensity of the breakup that you wait for signs from the world that it’s okay to move on is one. My own ‘green light’ moment came in the form of a 96-hour long trip to London to stay with my cousin two weeks after the breakup happened, I got on the train expecting those four days to be a temporary distraction from the way that I was feeling but instead, they changed my attitude towards the entire situation. We went out clubbing and I ended up kissing one of her friends, that kiss was the catalyst for the realisation that the end of that relationship wasn’t the end of me, and it certainly wasn’t the end of the world. It was just an opportunity for me to figure out what I want from the world and the people I choose to surround myself with. ‘Writer in the Dark’ and ‘Hard Feelings/Loveless fuelled similar revelations, Ella’s echoes of “I ride the subway, read the signs / I let the seasons change my mind / I love it here since I’ve stopped needing you” in the former stuck out to me especially when I moved back to Manchester for the start of the new university term – I walked along each street with ease and said yes to nights out without hesitation, it became far easier to exist once I had fallen in love with this city and stopped associating it with bad arguments and the taste of my own tears.
The easily accessible portrayal of adolescence across Melodrama means there’s something there for everyone to pick out and tune in with, whether that’s the idea that you feel too much for another person just as the singer does in ‘Liability’ or the love letter to having one of those all-consuming crushes in the form of ‘The Louvre’. It’s an album for anyone who’s ever shared a connection with another person and even after all this time out in the big, wide world, it still feels like the musical equivalent of a long, tight hug from an old friend.
Last Friday, Ella Yelich-O’Connor (AKA Lorde) rounded off her three night residency at Camden Roundhouse and right down to the weather outside, the night was everything you could ever possibly hope a Lorde show would be. Fans lined the street outside and a palpable excitement filled the air long before they’d even caught sight of the inside of the venue.
Right from the offset, it was clear why the Kiwi star had opted for such an intimate venue to host her magnificent stage show, rather than somewhere much bigger – these evenings were about connection over anything else. Split into four ‘acts’ the 22 track long setlist combined old favourites with the bright melodies of 2021’s ‘Solar Power’ set to the backdrop of a rotating sun dial.
Introducing herself to the crowd after ‘Buzzcut Season’ from her debut album, Yelich-O’Connor joked that the venue had started to feel like her home and how the Friday night show felt like she had invited the crowd over for a party or dinner and the intimate setting truly did make it feel that way. At times, it was easy to forget that there was 3,000 other people in the room purely because of the amount of love so freely flowing between artist and audience.
Accompanied by a suit-clad band, Act II resulted in some serious emotional whiplash, jumping from witchier tracks like ‘The Path’ and ‘California’ to ‘Ribs’, a song she wrote at 15 and one that ignites a reaction from the crowd like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Nostalgia is a theme woven deep into the majority of Lorde’s music and for many fans, they have grown up alongside it, using songs like ‘Ribs’ to pinpoint those most important moments so the invitation to dance for our fifteen year old selves was very much welcomed.
The show also happened to be the 9 year anniversary of her song ‘Royals’, the one that started it all off. Expressing her gratitude for her fans and the fact that it was a pop song that changed her life, she launched the idea that a banger isn’t a banger until the audience participates before playing a stunning stripped back version of Carly Rae Jepsen’s ‘Run Away with Me’.
Throughout the set, there were cathartic moments a plenty, including ‘Hard Feelings’ and ‘Writer in the Dark’ both of which hit especially hard for me personally having experienced my first break up late last year. It’s incredibly hard to properly articulate what it feels like to hear the songs that got you through such a dark period live in the flesh but I will say this: it was a reminder that I’m still here, still breathing and even when it feels like your entire world is collapsing inward, there’s so much joy left to be felt.
Cue an on stage outfit change (artfully done behind a screen) and a subtle change in lighting to what can only be described as ‘sunset hues’ during the closing monologue of ‘Secrets From A Girl (Who’s Seen it All)’. Act III saw a huge rise in the already bursting energy that existed in the room as she stormed through several of her greatest hits including ‘Supercut’, ‘Sober’ and ‘Perfect Places’, during which it was almost difficult to hear Ella over the screams of the lyric ‘I’m 19 and I’m on fire’.
Then it was time for the big ones, ‘Solar Power’ and ‘Green Light’, the lead singles from her last two albums. The former of which she wrote after a long day in the sunshine and the track in which during the last chorus a huge cannon of yellow disc confetti consisting of messages like ‘Save the bees’, ‘Wear sunscreen’ and ‘Breathe out and tune in’ was let off, releasing with it a totally brand new sense of euphoria.
Finally, the big finish rolled around, the band did the classic ‘walk off, walk back on’ before the encore which included deluxe edition Solar Power track, Helen of Troy which is HUGELY under-appreciated as well as the classic rendition of ‘Royals’ because, after all this is the song that started everything and lastly ‘A World Alone’ live for the first time in 5 years, played especially because it was the final night in Camden.
These shows at Roundhouse were indeed a celebration of connection in its purest form and it was magical to be surrounded by so many people who have all been walked through the complicated mess that is adolescence by Lorde’s music with the knowledge that at one point or another, everybody in that room had experienced the same feelings of first love, heartbreak and joy so strong you don’t know what to do with it.
A little over two weeks ago, Wolf Alice closed their tour of some of the UK’s smaller venues (in support of Music Venue Trust’s ‘Revive Live Campaign’) with a duo of performances at Pryzm, Kingston – hosted by Banquet Records.
After 18 months away from moshpits and sweaty crowds, the under 18’s alcohol free show set the bar high for any future gigs one may be in attendance of. The setlist was an absolute dream with older fan favourites like ‘Giant Peach’ and ‘Don’t Delete the Kisses’ sandwiched between newer material from the quartet’s most recent and probably their greatest release yet ‘Blue Weekend’. The result was an utterly spellbinding performance that I know I’ll certainly never forget.
The band leapt straight into the gig with the fast paced ‘Smile’ before leading into much loved favourite ‘Bros’ which made for an emotional few minutes for a majority of the crowd.
‘Delicious Things’, a highlight of both the album and the gig itself, was just magical and had an almost cinematic quality to it as sparkly guitar notes circulated round the room.
One of the band’s best qualities throughout their musical career has been the ability during every set they do, to shapeshift from outbursts of anger (‘Formidable Cool’) into emotionally sensitive ballads of a sort (‘`Safe from heartbreak (if you never fall in love’) that get the whole crowd swaying and ultimately made for another completely mesmerising break in the set as almost everybody in the crowd had put their phones away and were just listening to Ellie and Joel belt their hearts out.
As the set entered its final half, bassist Theo Ellis and guitarist Joff Odie were high on the buzz of the crowd as they took it in turn to hype the packed room up for the thudding punkiness of ‘Play the Greatest Hits’ and of course, what followed was a chaotic mess of limbs as the crowd erupted into an albeit glorious, (not quite yet) post pandemic mosh pit).
The breaks were slammed on hard with a beautiful rendition of the already extravagant piano ballad that is ‘The Last Man on Earth’, with keys provided by none other than Ryan Malcolm, a former member of the two piece ‘Superfood’. The set was drawn to a sad close with arguably one of the greatest love songs in history, ‘Don’t Delete The Kisses’ and what a magnificent ending it was – it would’ve only been better had the set been a lot longer!
Starring Olly Alexander, Omari Douglas and Callum Scott Howells and set against the backdrop of 1980’s London at the very start of the AIDS epidemic, It’s A Sin follows four best friends as they embark on their new, exciting lives in London. However, the group arrive as reports of a new disease are slowly trickling into UK news from across the pond. The story starts to come together by the end of the last episode with much of it focusing on the characters’ themselves and their relationships with one another. The show is a warm reminder of Davies greatest gift, creating incredibly real (but not without their flaws) characters whilst making it obvious what they have to lose in the least pretentious way possible.
Viewers would perhaps consider Ritchie (Olly Alexander) to be one of the more self indulgent in the series alongside Roscoe (Omari Douglas) with Ritchie having left his loving yet unthinkably homophobic home on the Isle of Wight to pursue a career in drama and Roscoe having escaped an extremely religious family who were intent on driving out the homosexuality out of him even if it meant returning to their native Nigeria. Colin has travelled to London from the Welsh Valleys and is much quieter than both Roscoe and Ritchie. He is seemingly thrilled with his new job at a tailors and befriended by older colleague Henry (Neil Patrick Harris) who reveals to Colin that he has been living with his partner Pablo for thirty years.
All seems fine, that is until Henry and Pablo both fall ill at the same time with a mystery illness – no one really knows what it is but Pablo’s mother whisks him away back to Portugal leaving Henry incredibly isolated on a hospital ward. The characters all have differing approaches to this brand new disease, with Ritchie favouring denial, Jill, having a slight distance from what was seen by a large percentage as ‘the gay disease’ has armed herself with all the knowledge she possibly can. It’s possible for audiences now to identify with endless and seemingly mindless joys coming to a tender halt and perhaps, in episodes to come, the wrestling with a distressingly inept and insufficient government.
As we get further into the series, it moves through the decades and the subject matter, as expected, darkens but It’s A Sin never loses its funniness or briskness. Some may argue that this is no way to go about presenting such a serious period in Britain’s history but it’s without these things that it would become incredibly difficult to portray the depth of the disaster that was about to unfold in 1980’s Britain.
Having been hinted since July 30, Cherry Glazerr have returned with their sparkling new synth pop track ‘Rabbit Hole’. With this being the band’s first release since 2019’s Call Me (featuring Portugal, The Man), listeners are finally getting a glimpse into what the band’s fourth album will sound like.
Bursting with synth, ‘Rabbit Hole’ opens with a sample of The Moderations’ 2011 track ‘All Because of You’ and was inspired by the likes of electronic artists DJ Koze, Caribou, Yaeji, and Kaytranada all of which Creevy listened to when in the writing process.
Although unexpected, having a brand new single from Cherry Glazerr feels refreshing – it marks the beginning of a new era for the band and is a step into a future filled with genre-bending success.
Despite the year not panning out to be how many of us expected, there’s no denying that 2020 has been an absolutely spectacular year for music releases. From the likes of Rina Sawayama to Phoebe Bridgers, I wrote about my top 14 of the year.
14. Hayley Williams – Petals For Armour
Williams’ debut as a solo artist can only be described as an empowering ode to women across the globe. Petals for Armor sees the Paramore lead singer at her most vulnerable as she celebrates our relationships with those around us whilst also acknowledging the downfalls of others in a way that can be considered more mature than some of her previous work. It’s an energetic promotion of self love and realising your own value.
13. Dua Lipa – Future Nostalgia
After her rise to stardom following her eponymous debut in 2017, Dua Lipa returned with new album Future Nostalgia in March and unsurprisingly it’s one of the biggest releases this year. Filled with 80’s synth pop and futuristic sounding pop bangers, Lipa creates some much needed escapism to a far away galaxy – ironically, Future Nostalgia couldn’t have been released at a better time.
12. The Big Moon – Walking Like We Do
Released in January, Walking Like We Do is the second album from London based quartet The Big Moon. It is on this record, that the band embrace their evolution from tracks based solely on roaring guitar to those filled with keys and synthesisers (‘Don’t Think’) along with the occasional feature of flute and brass (‘Barcelona’). WLWD is proof to all who listen that producing a more fully fledged album without losing any of your original magic is possible.
11. Soccer Mommy – Colour Theory
Split into three, with each section of the album a different colour, yellow for illness, blue for sadness and grey for loss, Sophie Allison’s second album deals with some of life’s more challenging experiences. Despite the heavy content of her lyrics, Colour Theory sees Allison explore her new platform and embrace the opportunity of having a studio recorded album.
10. Porridge Radio – Every Bad
Porridge Radio’s second full length project ‘Every Bad’ deals with the confusion that follows conflicting emotions. Musically, it is not disimilar to that of their debut ‘Rice, Pasta and Other Fillers’ and follows the stereotypical conventions of indie rock but the band appear stronger than before and rightfully so too, considering their nomination for this year’s Mercury Prize.
9. Fenne Lily – Breach
‘Breach’ is a very personal collection of songs about growing older and the change that comes along with that growth. Reflecting on a number of subjects from self medicating with weed to the uneasiness of getting older within the age of social media, Lily perfectly encapsulates the feeling of being in your late teens and early 20’s figuring out just what you want to do with your life.
8. Fiona Apple – Fetch The Bolt Cutters
Her first release in eight years, ‘Fetch The Bolt Cutters’ sees Fiona Apple break free from all traditional genre conventions and become more experimental whilst simultaneously bursting with the same originality that runs through her first four albums.
7. Laura Marling – Song For Our Daughter
Song For Our Daughter is Laura Marling’s 7th studio album and perhaps her most distinctive yet. Based entirely around a fictional daughter, she recounts stories of what it is like to be a woman in society in a sensitive way that intertwines the trauma of womanhood with some ever important life lessons.
6. Rina Sawayama – SAWAYAMA
Sawayama is a perfect example of how genre bending albums should be, combining pop with influences from nu metal and rock Rina Sawayama takes listeners on a personal journey through the exploration of aspects of her life that shaped her into the person she is today. These of course include her Japanese/British identity and her queer identity amongst others. Sawayama is certainly one of the most outstanding albums on this list and that doesn’t come as a surprise.
5. Georgia – Seeking Thrills
There is no better way to describe Georgia’s ‘Seeking Thrills’ other than as a teaser of all the things we have missed out on this year. Packed with dazzling electro pop and turbo dance hits (‘Started Out’), it’s easy to overlook the gloomy undertones of Georgia’s lyrics which show that heartbreak is never too distant, even on the dance floor. Seeking Thrills emphasises the importance of friendship and coming together to enjoy life whilst providing hope that these experiences will be back before we know it.
4. HAIM – Women in Music Pt.III
To me, this is the album that best encapsulates what HAIM are about. Women in Music Pt.III is bold and a step out of the trio’s comfort zone into a world of 90’s inspired R&B and bleak electronica that accompanies lyrics which address misogyny and life changing events experienced by the sisters (‘Hallelujah’). WIMPIII i undoubtedly HAIM’s best release yet.
3. Charli XCX – how i’m feeling now
Created in 5 weeks at the start of lockdown, ‘how i’m feeling now is perhaps one of Charli XCX’s most emotional, personal and experimental pieces of work to date. It sees her go unfiltered, exploring her more intimate side providing a closer look at her past relationships and a look into her battle with mental health issues whilst also still providing a dose of classic Charli on tracks like ‘anthems’ and ‘c2.0’ in which she longs for nights with her friends on the dancefloor.
2. Sorry – 925
925 is the debut from London based rockers Sorry and it combines infectious guitar pieces with catchy choruses to create a unique collection of songs that just so happens to be one of the best releases this year. Sorry do not shy away from adding their own personal touch to the tropes of every day pop rock music with the honesty of each track shining through via lead singer Asha’s calm but cool vocals. After such a release, there is no doubt in my mind that Sorry will go far and wide in whatever they do next.
Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher
It’s not often that sophomore albums live up to the same hype that an artist’s debut does but with Phoebe Bridger’s ‘Punisher’ the story is different entirely. A powerful album that encapsulates similar feelings to that of 2017’s ‘Stranger in the Alps’ with an added vulnerability, Bridgers isn’t afraid to combine nostalgia with fresh new feelings that reflect that of the year we’ve just had. Punisher is the perfect album for summarising the highs and lows of the year that was 2020.
![Lady Bird – [FILMGRAB]](https://film-grab.com/wp-content/uploads/photo-gallery/ladybird001.jpg?bwg=1551286310)
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/58840757/ladybird2.0.jpg)
