The New Cue #402 August 2: Crows, WHY?, Flohio, Jack White, Pond, Blur, Empire Of The Sun, Christopher Owens, 86TVs, Porridge Radio, Goat, Father John Misty, Katie Bollinger

"A phenomenon sorely missing in the current landscape of Google searches"

Hello TNC crew,

Welcome to your regular Friday edition, a lovely little platter of new music recommendations with a side-serving of mind-blower picks from Crows frontman James Cox and WHY? leader Yoni Wolf. That should see you through til lunch at least. Here’s this week’s playlist:

And here for the Apple Music crew.

If you would like to support The New Cue, then the best way to do that is by clicking Subscribe Now below and becoming a paid subscriber. It costs £5 a month and you’ll get full access to each and every edition. It’s not only the best way to support us, it’s also the only way, that was just a turn of phrase.

We’ll see you on Monday, when we’ve got Foals frontman Yannis Philippakis telling us about his new project Yannis & The Yaw.

Enjoy the edition,

Ted, Niall and Chris

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An Album To Blow Your Mind #1

Crows frontman James Cox picks a Tom Waits doozy.

This week London rockers Crows released the latest cut from their forthcoming new album Reason Enough – scroll down to read Niall rave about it in his Recommender. Here frontman James Cox tells us about his love for a Tom Waits classic:

Tom Waits
Blue Valentine (1978)

“Is there a more perfect record than Blue Valentine? Not for me. It’s soulful, tragic, jazzy, dense, groovy, heartbreaking yet full of hope all at the same time.

I remember the first artists my dad introduced me to that I really clicked with were Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan & Tom Waits. All incredible lyricists and songwriters but most importantly storytellers. They have all been; and continue to be a massive influence on me lyrically but there's something about 'Blue Valentine' that just hits different.

The way he weaves intricate anecdotal narratives for his characters; the gangster, the sex worker, the innocence of youth and places them all in these tangible scenes inside this mundane archetypal American fever dream. It’s so visually stimulating I find myself hanging on to his every word, like the great storyteller he is, waiting for what will happen next, where the journey will take me. Even if he’s just talking about corner shops and petrol stations, I feel like I’m there watching the story unfold, on a freezing Chicago night, or a humid Los Angeles afternoon. I’m there, and that's the mark of a truly great storyteller.

The fact that Tom Waits was just 29 years old and it was his 6th studio album, makes me sick that I’ll never be that good. For me it's just perfect, an album I can listen to from start to finish at any time of the day, in any mood or situation. Great to drive late at night to, alone so you can belt it out and pretend to get your voice sounding anything like his. Like you’ve smoked since you were five and drink whiskey like water.”

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Recommender

Pic: David James Swanson

Niall Doherty

There are two surprise-ish “back to base”-style records out today, by The Smashing Pumpkins and Jack White respectively. One is much better than the other and in the spirit of this being a Recommender, I’ll stick with White’s excellent new record No Name. In truth, the former White Stripes frontman has never really left base. He’s danced around base, repainted base, turned base’s spare room into an office, built a tunnel under base, but it’s always been there. By the time of 2022’s double Entering Heaven Alive and Fear Of The Dawn, though, it felt like White had taken his exploration of where he could push his union of garage-blues and rootsy Americana to its limit. The latter record, the “rocky” one, contained some excellently caustic riffs and the former woozily swayed around countrified, sat-on-the-porch ballads, but everything seemed a little too clean and standardised.

If that was White’s normcore period, then I am pleased to report he is back in the land of the loonies on No Name. Always at his best when he sounds like he’s on the edge of being about to totally fucking lose it, as if he’s just realised Jason Stollsteimer is eating in the same restaurant as him (the former Von Bondies singer is now an estate agent, Where Are They Now? fans), there’s a raggedy, aggro brilliance to the whole thing. The guitars sound like they’ve been dragged through a hedge, the drums tremble as if the room they are being recorded in is about to collapse and White’s voice is in a constant state of what an Essex dad would describe as “totally effin livid”.

The production isn’t exactly lo-fi, more hi-fi that’s gone rusty, and most impressive is the amount of brilliant, ear-worming melodies going on. That’s How I’m Feeling is the sort of concise pop tune that White might have once set aside for The Raconteurs, but here he turns it into a bulldozing garage-rock number. If, like me, you were obsessed with the repetitive dynamism of the guitar patterns on Freedom At 21 from his solo debut, then there is lots to love here: the frazzled blues of It’s Rough On Rats (If You’re Asking) and Stooges-meets-Led Zep snarling of Archbishop Harold Holmes are up there with his best. Brilliant record.

The first new music in seven years from former Girls frontman Christopher Owens has the sort of carefree vibes that make you assume Owens has spent the intervening period in a state of breezy nonchalance, having a nice lie-in, pottering round his local grocery store at midday, afternoon nap round the pool, early evening cocktails. But the song’s sunny acoustic strums mask what looks like a fairly harrowing period for the US singer-songwriter. There was a motorcycle accident that required a long stretch of recovery, periods of homelessness and the death of his old Girls bandmate Chet “JR” White to contend with – factor all that in and new single I Think About Heaven sounds very much like someone reflecting on the positives of coming through the other side. The fact that Owens is doing all this contemplating on top of a track that sounds like The Flaming Lips drowsily reworking N*E*R*D’s She Likes To Move on a beach is even better. It has been a perfect heatwave accompaniment this week: