The New Cue #462 January 31: Sunflower Bean, James Bay, Fionn Regan, Kneecap, The Murder Capital, Emma-Jean Thackray, Tamino, DoFlame

"Pay fair amounts to listen and fair amounts to everyone involved."

Hello,

You’ve nearly made it through January, well done, and if this last day is phasing you then Niall has accidentally written a Recommender entry long enough that it will take the whole day to read. It’s just music and words, man, the notion takes me and the spirit of the music journalist who thinks everyone needs to hear every stupid little thought he has about music flows right through me. I’m the Derek Acorah of shortform reviews right now.

Before you get to that opus, though, James Bay checks in from mid-tour to tackle a Release Valve Q&A, which was nice of him. Here’s this week’s playlist:

And here for the Apple Music gang.

Full access to today’s edition is for paying subscribers only, the kindly folk who give us a good reason to the question “why are you listening to that song for the 15th time in a row?”. If you would like to join this elite band of triffic humans then you can become a fully fledged TNC diehard for £5 a month (a fiver, fresh air basically costs a fiver these days!) by clicking here:

Enjoy the edition, see you on Monday for a Manics corker as Nicky Wire takes on our Life & Times questionnaire. It is predictably very entertaining.

Until then,

Ted and Niall

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Release Valve: James Bay

It is just over ten years now since hat-loving singalong machine James Bay released his giant hit Hold Back The River. What better way to mark the anniversary than his biggest show yet – he plays Wembley Arena in mid-Feb – and by releasing a jaunty pop tune made with US jazz dynamo Jon Batiste. Sunshine In The Room is out today. James is on tour at the moment and every artist knows that it can get boring backstage listening to your bassist banging on about what string gauge he’s using, so we sent him our Release Valve queries to have a good reason to duck out of the conversation…

The first record I loved was: I moved to Brighton when I was 19. I had loved so much music by this time but I remember going to Resident Records and buying Bill Withers Live At Carnegie Hall on CD. I listened to it hundreds of times, loved every single thing about it and I feel like it taught me so much.