The New Cue #370 April 5: Kamasi Washington, Swim Deep, Palace, Grace Cummings, Blondshell, Vampire Weekend, Paul Weller

"Big white Reeboks."

Good morning,

Welcome to your weekly Recommender fix! And hey, if you like Recommender, then please recommend Recommender. You represent the full extent of our marketing dept, you need to start pulling your weight.

Here's the spiel to tell people:
“A Recommender edition arrives once a week. It changed my life, this one contains two mind-blowers from Grace Cummings and Palace and Nicky Wire moaning about Robert Smith’s shoes and lots of new music recommendations and you get full access to every edition for only £5 a month”. See it’s easy! Stop moaning!

Here is this week’s playlist for the Spotify mob:

And here for the Apple Music crew.

Enjoy the edition, see you on Monday for a chinwag with James frontman Tim Booth,

Ted, Niall and Chris

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An Album To Blow Your Mind #1

Aussie singer-songwriter Grace Cummings picks experimental trio’s debut.

Photo by T ... O'Halloran

Australian singer-songwriter Grace Cummings releases her brilliant new album Ramona today. It’s a sumptuous, full-bodied listen that pairs poignant 70s pop with what Cummings describes as “kitchen sink” instrumentation. It’s no expense spared music, and it’s excellent. Have a listen:

For her mind-blower, Grace tells us about how experimental Aussie trio The Necks twisted her melon…

The Necks
Sex (1989)

“There are so many albums that I could write about that I love. Albums with the greatest story telling, the truest emotion, the most nostalgic or the happiest etc… But I’ve been asked to share an “album to blow your mind” and that means I can only really write about The Necks.

Sex is the first album from the Australian trio of absolute freaks, Chris Abrahams, Tony Buck and Lloyd Swanton. It’s a single track of piano, bass and drums that goes for just about an hour. You can’t find it on record ‘cause you’d have to flip it and then it’d be no good.

I saw The Necks live once and I felt like I was hallucinating. I’m not trying to be cool or anything, I started to see sounds and then suddenly I was in the future. They begin calm and cool, they make you feel the same way. You hear the instruments and it’s pleasing to you, then you kind of blink and you don’t know where you are or what your name is.

This album is an ocean of constant and repetitive warmth that you swim in for a while until you get into a bit of a trance, then, once you’ve been hypnotised waves start to crash over you and the world is good. Then you’re gently carried out again, ironically, with no real crescendo. You don’t even care.”

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