The New Cue #422 October 4: The New Cue Album of The Year, The Horrors, Mount Eerie, The Hard Quartet, Naima Bock, The Smile, Monobloc, Lauren Mayberry, Ela Minus

"Not every night is monumental, most are blurry half-baked moments."

Buongiorno, Salve, Ciao!

Today is the day you finally get to vote in the inaugural The New Cue Album of The Year Awards! Yessss! Get in!

To be honest, we’ve not nailed down every minute detail of this process so far. But what I can definitely say is this:

1/ We’d like nominations for your favourite three (or fewer) albums released between late November 2023 and late October 2024 made by a British-based artist signed to an independent label who The New Cue has also featured in that time.

2/ Voting is only available to New Cue subscribers. We’ll be checking! Our data game is very hot, baby. Send your nominations to thenewcue1@gmail.com. Voting closes on October 21^st.

3/ There will definitely be some kind of celebratory event in early December in Central London, possibly more events to follow in early January. (This is the element that I am still trying to nail in one place, but it’s all going to be very good fun). One lucky New Cue subscriber will win a pair of valuable tickets to this celebration, which will also act as our Christmas party.

4/ I’ve forgotten what this point is. Never mind. We have another edition on Monday if I remember.

“Guys, why can we only vote for British-based artists signed to independent labels?” Good question, thanks for asking. It just seems to us that major label international artists are pretty well-covered by the Brits, Grammys, etc, while the Mercurys charge all acts £200 to enter, which we know anecdotally can put some on smaller or self-funded labels off. So, we wanted to offer an alternative in which our winner is a local hero not picked entirely by a committee of self-appointed horse-trading experts, but by our readers (and ourselves, obviously).

Anyway, on with today’s edition (sorry, just readjusting the seat of my pants having climbed down from that high horse). We’ve got Naima Bock giving us all kinds of musical insights just after the jump. She ticks the boxes for a TNC Album of the Year nominee, for example: her new LP is certainly one of Ted’s three nominations. Loads more music, an introduction to NYC quintet Monobloc and that kind of caper, too, down there beyond the paywall.

We are grateful for all who read The New Cue, but particularly for those to chuck five quid into our hat each month to keep going. Join them, please. Here’s this week’s playlist whilst you mull it over:

And here for the Apple Music crew.

Love you,

Ted and Niall.  

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Release Valve: Naima Bock

Last week Naima released Below A Massive Dark Land, her richly melodic and philosophical album of future-folk-pop. Today, she tackles our Release Valve queries...

The first record I loved was:
Gorillaz self-titled first album from 2001.

The last record I loved was:
Sluice’s Radial Gate. 

The musician I grew up most wanting to be is:
Lou Reed 

The song I wish I’d written is: 
Point of Disgust by Low 

The greatest gig I ever saw was: 
Lisa O’Neill acoustic in store at Rough Trade West.

The greatest gig I ever played was: 
Brian and Jean’s place in Walla Walla; Billsville, with Mildred and Bingo Fury.

Can’t find any footage from those performances, but here’s Naima being amazing live sitting on the counter of Rough Trade West with Oliver Hamilton last month.