The New Cue #434 November 1: Bill Ryder-Jones, Fionn Regan, Tess Parks, Tunde Adebimpe, Falle Nioke, The Studio 68, Peter Perrett, Hope Of The States, Lauren Mayberry, She Drew The Gun

"I'll be taking requests..."

Nov 01, 2024

Big news! The New Cue Album of the Year - as voted by you and us - is Bill Ryder-Jones’s Iechyd Da. No surprise there, really, other than this is the first place to nominate it as such. Refresh yourself with this beauty:

To celebrate, we’re putting on a special performance by Bill, accompanied by cellist Evelyn Hall, at The Social on December 10th. There are just 100 tickets available at £20 each from thenewcue.co.uk. Bill will be taking audience requests on the night, answering our Life & Times questionnaire live, and probably having a few drinks. It’s Christmas, after all. There’ll be DJs, possibly dancing. Let’s call it The New Cue Christmas Party. It’s going to be a spectacular night. Congratulations to New Cue Subscriber Jeff Ando who’s won a pair of tickets. Here, have a look at our flyer.

We sent Bill some questions to see how he’s feeling about it all.

Hello Bill, congratulations. You’ve won the first The New Cue Album of the Year for Iechyd Da. How do you feel? That's very kind. It's of course a lovely feeling, particularly when awarded by people you respect.

Describe your year please. It's been quite a hectic year. The album came out in January and there's been more touring than I've done in a long long time. I’ve also worked with some incredible artists too. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it all right now. I think perhaps over the new year I'll have a proper think about it all.

How has it felt playing songs from the record live and also how did it feel to have those songs out in the world. Well, it's been great playing the new record. I was absolutely bored to death of playing the old songs and I know people say you just have to do it for the fans, but fuck that. Getting onstage is a mission and having to play songs you've been playing for years is just shit sometimes...so yeah it's been nice. I've never really noticed the songs going out into the world but I guess when 'This Can’t Go On' came out I did notice that.

Thanks for agreeing to play a special acoustic show for us at the Social on December 10th in celebration of your award. What can fans expect? I'll be taking requests and seeing what happens.

Are you up for answering some questions on the night? Yes, absolutely.

Bill’s Album of the Year announcement selfie

OK, on with the rest of the edition, for which I think we’ll lift the paywall for one Friday, which means we’re safe to put this week’s playlist right here:

Here it is for the Apple Music crew. In today’s edition, we’ve got Release Valve interviews with Fionn Regan (whose album out today is brilliant) and Tess Parks (whose album out last Friday was also brilliant) and more. If you enjoy our work, please do consider a subscription. They say time is money and this enjoyable endeavour eats time. We love all our subscribers very deeply.

Ted and Niall.

Very strong recommendation for Fionn Regan’s new album, O Avalanche, the Irish singer-songwriter’s first in five years, since his similarly excellent Cala. It’s a beauty: poetic, warm, filled with shimmering, life-affirming melody. The only minus point is that it sounds like early summer and is released just as we welcome six months of darkness. Never mind. It’s timeless, so will save.

Fionn answered our Release Valve queries below in typically poetic and idisyncratic style…

The first record I loved was…Probably something like The Beatles’ Rubber Soul or maybe Neil Young’s After The Gold Rush.

The last record I loved was… Oasis’ Definitely Maybe

The musician I grew up most wanting to be… I’ve never wanted to be anyone but myself, but Leonard Cohen I heard early on and I thought he had a lot of stunning qualities as a writer, he seemed to be warm as a person, humorous and someone you could shoot the breeze with.

My fantasy band would feature…I don’t know if I have an answer to this.

but maybe something like...

Lou Reed

Leonard Cohen

Bob Dylan

The greatest gig I ever saw was… maybe Oasis in Ireland… I also played before Bob Dylan at Austin City Limits Festival and I remember he was amazing that night:

The greatest gig I ever played was… can’t think of one exact show but some shows that come to mind are a Dublin show in Vicar Street, Union Chapel London:

and the Bowery Ballroom in New York

sometimes people sing along so loudly at my shows

That it feels like stadium

Those nights I feel a sense of joy beyond explanation

The story of my new album goes like this:

I went to Mallorca to a town called Deia

I had an album written when I got there

then I started a few new songs. Those songs became the start of a new album. These new songs started to write themselves almost in a magic way which then became the album that I wanted to make.

I couldn’t have made the album without… The quality of light in Mallorca, the moon at night, the chance to be there,

and the great people of the town of Deia.

The song on it everyone should listen to is…Blood is Thicker than Wine or Anja 2

The one song everyone should listen to that isn’t on one of my albums is… 00000 Million by Bon Iver which has a sample of my song Abacus

The song I wish I’d written is…I don’t really think I’d wish to have written any particular song. I feel very grateful and amazed to have written my own.

The person who is making my favourite music in the world right now is…I haven’t heard anything yet but Oasis’s new album is something to look forward to.

The film everyone should see is…I can’t think of one but Federico Fellini has some brilliant films.

The book that changed my life is: I can’t think of a specific one but Jack Kerouac has some brilliant books.

The one thing that would improve music is: Artists making music to make music with no other idea apart from making music.

Recommender Pt. 1

Niall Doherty

It gives me great joy that Hope Of The States are back today with a new single and that it is just as ambitious and majestic as their best songs from back in the mid-00s. For the uninitiated, they were a band who made post-rock-meets-drunk-folk-meets-arty-indie from Chichester who were drenched in glorious contradictions. They were signed to a major label when everything about them screamed indie oddballs, they were sensitive but surly and they should’ve been a band who slowly amassed a diehard following over many records but instead they split up after two albums. They were also one of the first bands I interviewed and because I didn’t know what I was doing and they didn’t know what they were doing, we accidentally became close friends and remained so after they broke up. Much of what went wrong for them can be traced back to the tragic suicide of guitarist Jimmi Lawrence during the making of their debut but, ahead of reunion shows in December, the release of Long Waits In A&E is the start of the five-piece rewriting how the tale ends. It’s an 11-minute epic, a hilariously cocky move, and takes in about four different brilliant songs in that time. They obviously haven’t thought about how it’s going to work on TikTok but that’s fine – this is great.

Grimes has lost her way a little of late, her musical output a long way short of the immersive alt-pop of 2012’s Visions and its masterful 2015 follow-up Art Angels. But her reworking of Magdalena Bay’s Image, a song that originally featured on the LA duo’s latest album Imaginal Disk, suggests that all is not lost. It’s very good, turning the Fleetwood Mac-in-the-Balearics vibes of the original inside out and emerging with a spiky industrial-pop gem.

Sometimes music journalists call things pop when they’re not really pop, they’re music journalist pop, not pop that will be played in the hairdressers. I’ve definitely done it in the past, call someone a pop star when knowing deep down that their ceiling is headlining the Kentish Town Forum. But Chvrches singer Lauren Mayberry seems to be aiming for the real thing with her solo material. Her last song sounded like it was the lost classic that Natalie Imbruglia meant to follow-up Torn with and new single Crocodile Tears is all mellifluous melodicism and Smash Hits giddiness.

The new single from She Drew The Gun, aka Wirral singer-songwriter Louisa Roach takes a similar approach in the way it swaddles its spikiness in layer of mellifluous melodies. Washed In Blue is fantastic, like The War On Drugs trying to write an ABBA song.

Recommender Pt. 2

Ted Kessler

Busy times for TV On The Radio frontman Tunde Adebimpe, whose band has reunited for a series of shows in New York, LA and London in December. He has now also announced his own solo album, vaguely slated for some time in the near future and previewed by this excellent first single, Magnetic, which sounds quite a bit like TV On The Radio in their prime.

Have loved all of Guinea-born, Margate-based Falle Nioke’s releases so far, which mix afro-pop in with contemporary electro. His newest track, the hypnotic LDN Girl, which was inspired by his wife’s self-description when they met, is arguably his best yet.

Deadpan, heavy, self-aware, ambitious: former Only One Peter Perrett’s third solo album The Cleansing is a sprawling twenty-track appraisal of the first seventy years of his life. It’s also his late-life masterpiece, produced alongside his sons Jamie (guitar/production) and Peter Jnr (bass), alongside guests including Johnny Marr, Bobby Gillespie, Fontaines D.C’s Carlos O’Connell and others. If you want to know more and live in London, come join us at Rough Trade East this Saturday where I’ll be chatting with him about it and Peter will be playing some songs and signing albums.

Shout out to my long-time colleague, comrade and hero Paul Moody, whose psychedelic mod monsters The Studio 68 have a mind-blowingly groovy new single out today called That’s The Way It Is. It’s an apocalyptic state-of-the-nation address: think the wrecking-ball in Withnail & I scored by The Faces. Comes backed with the expertly titled Let’s Get Wasted.

Release Valve: Tess Parks

Tess Parks unleashed her beautifully misty-morning new album Pomegranate last Friday, and this week her Release Valve answers turned up.

The first record I loved was… (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? - Oasis

The last record I loved was… Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers - Kendrick Lamar

The musician I grew up most wanting to be is… Chan Marshall (Cat Power)

Cat Power’s live version of I Don’t Blame You on Jools Holland in 2003

My fantasy band would feature… Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Elvis, Keith Moon, Jimi Hendrix, Paul McCartney, Thom Yorke….. Madonna, Lady Gaga... it’s a crazy band - lots of singers

The greatest gig I ever saw was… Oasis at Molson Amphitheatre in Toronto when I was 11. Or Neil Young in Hyde Park on July 12 2014. Or Radiohead in Toronto at the Hummingbird in 2006 - that sparked me and my best friend Annie to start a band.

The greatest gig I ever played was… there have been so many beautiful ones. There’s always someone or something memorable at each show that makes me think, wow… this is the most incredible opportunity on earth to be able to connect with people this way. Ahh… But I gotta say a personal highlight was in Manchester at Yes, when Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs joined us on stage. That was a very proud moment. Or opening solo for the Dandy Warhols at La Cigale in Paris was really special.

Tess Parks performing Cocaine Cat at Yes, Manchester

My favourite group when I was 13 was… Oasis, The Vines, The Dandy Warhols, The White Stripes, Bright Eyes, Cat Power…

The story of my new album goes like this: It was November 2020, I was in the lowest point of my life, slowly beginning the process of recovering from post traumatic stress disorder, and my longtime best friend and writing partner, Ruari Meehan, started sending me music he was writing during lockdown. I was in Toronto and there was no end to this world wide sickness in sight… we didn’t end up seeing each other in person for two years, but writing this music and sending it to each other back and forth kept me alive and excited to wake up every morning.

I couldn’t have made the album without… Ruari Meehan is the heart of this album, and my mother.

The song on it everyone should listen to is… the whole thing in its entirety is really special, of course I’m gonna say that, but ‘Koalas’ and ‘Crown Shy’ particularly are undeniably good, no matter what genre of music you are into.

The one song everyone should listen to that isn’t on one of my albums is… Big Bang Blues - Breanna Barbara

The song I wish I’d written is… Gates of Eden by Bob Dylan

The film everyone should see is… ‘Some Like It Hot’

The book that changed my life is: My mom found a copy of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho left on a seat on the airport and then she passed it on to me when I was 19 or 20 and at the time it seemed very important!! But more recently, The Artist’s Way and everything else by Julia Cameron

The person who is making my favourite music in the world right now is… Ruari Meehan <3

The one thing that would improve music is: for it to be cherished and consumed like it was the sixties / not available on the internet

And Finally…

Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan on bands sticking together:

“You don’t have to be best mates. Life changes. It’s about the music, it’s not about the fucking individuals. You realise that as you get older. You’re not that important. There’s something that happens, there’s a chemistry. I remember Joe Strummer said once that the biggest mistake he ever made with The Clash was going along the management and firing Mick Jones. They fired Mick from The Clash! The stupidest fucking move. There’s something between you two guys… Jones and Strummer, Plant and Page, Gilmour and Waters. As a fan of music, I see it clearly, then I realised, ‘That’s what’s going on with my band! Oh, it’s me and Mart’.

The New Cue