The New Cue #547 November 14: Hatchie, Austra, Nightmares on Wax, Picture Parlour, These New Puritans, Bill Callahan, Thee Headcoats & Thee Headcoatees, Tobias Jesso Jr
"This feels like a pretty vague and philosophical question."
Good morning,
Here we go again! Technically actually we’ve already gone because this intro is the last thing we write. This is the 547th intro, which is a lot of intros, enough intros to be thinking on Tuesday morning, ‘Mmm, what are you going to do for the intro on Friday, mmm?’ but it’s never decided until the g on “Good morning” has rung and then you’ve got no choice but to just crack on, run, run, as fast as you can, you can’t catch me, I’m the intro man.
I’m just freestyling here, I’ll read it back later.
Today we have a bumper-to-bumper edition for you, with 2x Release Valve Q&As with Austra and Hatchie and a fully-loaded selection of Recommender action from your hosts. Here’s this week’s playlist:
And here for the Apple Music crew.
We’ll see you on Monday for a Life & Times chat with Nightmares On Wax ringleader George Evelyn, who apparently has released Ted’s album of the year today - you can read about that below the paywall…
Enjoy the edition,
Ted and Niall
Recommender Pt. 1
Niall Doherty
You don’t really hear the phrase “sounds like Wolfmother” much, do you? In fact, I’m gonna hazard a guess and say it might be the first time those words have ever hung out together, certainly in the last decade. But here they come, cropping up in my entry about The Parlour, the bolshy, fun rock’n’roll debut from Liverpool duo Picture Parlour. This is music that has never been to Dalston, never been to Hackney Wick, never been to Peckham Rye, never been to wherever hipsters are hanging out these days, music that… here it comes… sounds like Wolfmother and all their dumb fun crossed with the muscular rock grooves of AM-era Arctic Monkeys. And for that I commend them, because in all amongst its classic-rock licks, showy vocals and catchy hooks is a pair of people who sound like they’re having a really good time, a couple of anti-play it cool champions. You’ve always got to leave room for a bit of silly, good on them.
You won’t catch These New Puritans clowning around. All very serious round here, which I’m also totally down with because I’m a malleable (some would say fickle) kind of guy. The Southend duo made my album of the year in Crooked Wing and it wasn’t even because they are from Southend. This week they released an instrumental outtake from it titled The Other Side. A pretty minimalist cut from sessions that invariably included grand church organs, children’s choirs, industrial beats, menacing synths and more, this is nothing but Jack Barnett’s delicate and dreamy piano with a light dusting of airy harmonies and restrained drumming from his twin brother George. Very nice though.
