The New Cue #490: Baxter Dury, Nia Archives, Stormzy, Falle Nioke, Isaiah Hull, Kara-lis Coverdale, Nourished by Time, Scrounge, Mên An Tol, Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke, CMAT

"Imagine Oasis if Bonehead played mandolin."

Good morning,

We come to you today with a “Near email length limit” warning flashing in our eyes. This is what Substack does when we are almost too loaded up with content, when we’re about to take your inbox to another dimension. Yes, today’s edition has put on a little weight, just enjoy it, there’s more to hold onto.

But we will start, as always, by reminding you that this edition is for paying subscribers only, the legendary crew who fork out £5 a month so that we can make a little moolah from this worthwhile endeavour for music journalistkind. Won’t you join them?:

And we shall continue, as always, with this week’s playlists:

And here it is for the Apple Music compatible.

Enjoy the edition,

Ted and Niall

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Recommender Pt. 1

Ted Kessler

In my very long personal experience, music journalists tend to possess lots of high-minded, set-in-stone morals, while being simultaneously totally amoral in many other respects. It’s one of the joys of being a hypocrite and why so many of us find it hard to give up the gig.

For example, let’s look at the practice of writing official album biographies. When a record is due, label/management commission a journalist to interview their artist about this new work so that other journalists have an origin story to explore when they review it or interview the artist themselves.

I now very rarely write album bios. If I do, it’s only of an artist I love so irresistibly I cannot refuse. This is chiefly because you can’t be a sarcastic smart arse – my speciality - in a label bio, and also because delivering the label bio disqualifies you from writing about that artist for almost all commissioning editors. To many commissioning editors, it implies that the writer has been bought by the act and is therefore corrupted, unable to independently report on the artist, as they’ve received payment indirectly from the act. With my own ears I have heard writing a profile of an artist that one has also crafted the bio of described as “disgusting”, “corruption” and “the worst crime a music journalist can commit.”

At Q, I didn’t care. Every few months I’d commission someone for a piece I felt they were right for, but they’d hesitantly turn it down, saying “sorry, I wrote the bio.” I’d commission them anyway. My reasoning was the fact they knew the backstory already would allow us better access and more of a story than other publications, and that if commissioning editors can accept concert tickets, hospitality, finished albums and box sets (which they sold every month for hard cash), meals and more from the labels of acts they were commissioning, why couldn’t freelancers also write bios from time to time? They are freelance writers trying to make a living from writing, after all. Did you, music section editor, really think that Christmas hamper from a PR agency arrived without strings?

Similarly, in the UK there is no issue for commissioning eds when labels pay for flights, accommodation, meals, drinks and taxis for writers reporting on a story – presumably because it absolves the publication of this financial responsibility – so why is this not viewed as payola but bio-writing is? US publications do not allow labels to pay for their writers’ trips for reasons of payola, but UK publications’ morals don’t quite stretch to their own delicate bottom line being taxed. As Niall wrote to me in a text when discussing these self-imposed hypocrisies, “imagine getting a job in an industry where there aren’t that many rules, but you’re such a dry fucker you have to invent some to make it stricter.”

All of which is a preface to this: Baxter Dury has made not just the album of his career alongside super-producer Paul Epworth, but no doubt one of the albums of this year. I know this because I recently wrote his album bio and have spent a lot of time listening to it. Despite this, in a few weeks I’ll probably be interviewing him here again for The New Cue. Revoke my membership, report me to the cops. Readers, however, should be extremely excited for Allbarone, the album, as the marriage to Epworth’s shiny electronic funk allows Dury’s lyrics to fly with a menace, meaning and impact that you now hear he’s been searching for throughout his seven previous albums. He's not a rapper, he doesn’t make hip hop…but in a way he is and he does, and this more beat-driven and contemporary backdrop makes delivery of his mix of Mockney misanthropy and self-loathing sweeter and sharper. Title track came out this week, album is in September. I’ll be writing about him as much as possible.