The New Cue #456 January 10: Lambrini Girls, Japanese Breakfast, Decius, Squid, Mogwai, Doves

"Basically we didn’t really play at all, it was great."

Good morning,

Welcome to the first TNC of 2025. Yes, it is ten days into the year but we wanted to give you a chance to ease yourself into it. No-one wants to be bombarded with content, no matter how good it is, at the very start of January. It’s just not that sort of month. In fact, anyone who has bombarded with you content over the previous ten days is not your friend. They don’t care about you. They are the sort of people who would talk to you when you’re trying to get to sleep. That’s not us, we’ll let you drift off peacefully.

Until now. We’re back. There will be some very slight alterations to our schedule in January as our mainman Teddy Kessler has been pulled away on other business for the next few weeks. He’ll be chipping in here and there and adding any new music he’s enjoying to the playlists but you will be mainly stuck with me, Niall Scrappy Doo Doherty. We’ll get through it together, with the help of some of that content we talked about earlier: like today when we’ve got a Q&A with punky duo Lambrini Girls, whose debut record is out now.

Here’s this week’s Recommender playlist, collating some of the very good new tunes released this week. Good music doesn’t sleep, does it? Good music needs to be careful and get its eight hours otherwise good music is going to end up having a nervous breakdown.

Here’s the lowdown on some of these week’s inclusions: there’s a monumental new song from Doves, some spidery, orchestral art-rock from Squid, presumably not the same string section weaving its way through the excellent new track from Japanese Breakfast, a fuzzy, spacey gem from Mogwai, a thumping banger from South London dance collective Decius featuring Fat White Family’s Lias Saoudi on vocals, a stirring cut from the forthcoming new Manics record and a few more too alongside a mournful but lovely ambient number from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s Queer soundtrack that has been my recent go-to. Really gets me in the zone for not getting in the zone.

And here it is for the Apple Music crew.

We’ll see you on Monday, when Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite takes on our Life & Times questionnaire.

Enjoy the edition,

Ted and Niall

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Release Valve: Lambrini Girls

Brighton-based punk duo Lambrini Girls release their debut album Who Let The Dogs Out today via City Slang. If you need a bit of an early Jan wake-up call then dive right in, it’s a proper slap around the chops. The band’s Phoebe Lunny and Lilly Maciera took some time this week (about 10 minutes I reckon) to answer our RV queries…

The first record I loved was:
Phoebe Lunny: Rumours by Fleetwood Mac

Lilly Maciera: Monkey Business by Black Eyed Peas

The last record I loved was:
PL: I Got Heaven by Mannequin Pussy.

LM: Nothing Clever, Just Feelings by CLT DRP

The musician I grew up most wanting to be is:
PL: Stevie Nicks
LM: Courtney love

My fantasy band would feature:
PL: My neighbours Jerry and Steven on the bongos.
LM: David Yow, Sara Lund, Laura Les, Brian McMahan, Charli xcx, Steve Albini.