There have been parts of this week that have been awful. Truly, wretchedly awful. I lost at least two days to OCD. I couldn’t do anything but lay in bed and try to escape the loops. Utter mental torment. I hate this condition, I really do. I despise it.
Somehow though, when I’d escaped that, I managed to release two episodes of The James McMahon Music Podcast; one with a songwriter whose music I’ve adored all my adult life, Kathryn Williams; the other with a band called The Faim who you should check out if you like big gooey pop rock anthems. I also wrote an article for The Face about sci-fi horror. And I interviewed the poet Lemn Sissay for The Observer. And I wrote quite a few words for my book too. Absolute nails, me.
By the way, I’ve resisted putting a song by The Beths in this newsletter this week because, well… it’s just getting weird now. But look, I’ve sneaked one in anyway!
Right, let’s get to it.
Gilla Band - ‘Eight Fivers’
Gilla Band are from Dublin, do that sprechgesang thing, and used to be called Girl Band. They remind me of the Butthole Surfers and I wish more bands reminded me of the Butthole Surfers, I really do. They recently changed their name because it’s not really on being a bunch of dudes in a band in 2022 and calling your band Girl Band. I’m not really into their explanation for the name change - “the effect of the name has been damaging to individuals”, nope, physical assault is damaging to individuals, the name of an experimental indie band isn’t - but I’m going to put that down to the ideological sanctity/insanity of modern times. End of the day, it’s not really on being a bunch of dudes in a band in 2022 and calling your band Girl Band. So good on them. Also, ‘Gilla’ sounds a bit like ‘Gila’ and Gila monsters are rad.
That hook, “I spent all my money on shit clothes”, reminds me of a song by pre-Frankie & The Heartstrings Dave Harper vehicle UP/YZ called ‘Dress 4 Less’. There’ll be about eight people who subscribe to Spoook who will know about that song, but it really was a fun thing to watch in the late 90s, Dave hammering away through the thing like he was trying to smooth out dints in a busted car bonnet. Miss that dude.
Japanese Breakfast - ‘Be Sweet’, featuring. So!YoON! (Korean Version)
I’ll be honest, I probably wouldn’t have checked out Michelle Zauner’s band Japanese Breakfast as quickly as I did if they’d been called, I dunno, Latvian breakfast. I love Japan. I’ve been twice and I’d go much more often if more of you guys took out a paid subscription to Spoook. Funny thing is though, I can’t remember what I had for breakfast on any of the visits I’ve had to the place. Probably marshmallows or something. Every time I’ve ever bought food in Japan it’s never what I think it’s going to be before I eat it. I once went into a shop and bought what I thought was an egg sandwich and it was actually marshmallow, spread on crusty baguette. What a place.
Michelle isn’t actually Japanese. She’s Korean, but she lives in Philadelphia. This is a Korean language version of one of the best songs from Japanese Breakfast’s incredible third record, Jubilee, released last year, featuring a vocal from Hwang So-yoon – AKA So!YoON! - from the Korean band SE SO NEON. I didn’t know who they were either, but watch this and I think you’ll agree that they might be the best band ever.
Yeah, I am not having Latvian breakfasts at all.
Panic! at the Disco - ‘Middle Of A Breakup’
Is it just me or has the reception to Panic! at the Disco’s return been a bit lukewarm so far? I did, of course, used to work for a magazine that could have made a cover out of Brendon Urie stubbing his toe, and so it’s perhaps understandable that in civvy street, the fervour for the group is much milder. This is a shame, because the dude has somehow fashioned a properly good pop project out of a rather silly Myspace-era teen emo band. This was a song I was absolutely obsessed with at the time it was released. This was my favourite pop promo the year it was unleashed. And this, the group’s showy new single, makes me want to spend an evening in London’s West End.
I’m a big boy. Those old theatres aren’t built for people my size. It takes something special to get me to spend a few sweaty hours feeling like my circulation has been nipped at my knees, munching £5 cans of Pringles and - ugh - navigating Tottenham Court Road after dark. The new album, Viva Las Vengeance, is out August 19th. I’m looking forward to it. I do hope plenty of others are too.
The Sheepdogs - ‘I Wanna Know You’
Something that profoundly irritated me when The Darkness were at their peak of their popularity was being told that they were a joke band. I don’t know what a ‘joke’ band are. I think it’s a really boring and earnest way to contemplate music. I would prefer to listen to The Toy Dolls than literally any second of recorded music produced by Bon Iver. I don’t know why I’m picking on Bon Iver. I quite like Bon Iver. But seriously, who has the fucking time, y’know? And besides, this is a perfect song.
The other thing is that this sort of music - in the case of The Darkness, lusty hair metal; in that of The Sheepdogs, their new song embedded above, warm hearted classic rock - is that it is music that I really like. Lots of people like it. It’s why there are no music magazines left other than the ones who write about rock music. Why rock festivals still sell tickets and everyone else struggles to. I might laugh at it. But it might also make me feel something. And I might have the chorus stuck in my head all week. And I have done all of these things, for days now. All of these responses to music are as valid as each other. Sure, the Canadian band might have brazenly stolen the guitar lick from Malice’s 1987 heavy metal classic ‘Licence to Kill’, but little has given me as much pleasure as this song has in an utterly wretched week.
I was supposed to interview them for The James McMahon Music Podcast this week but alas my brain couldn’t handle it. I hope we can reschedule.
The Umlauts - ‘Non è Ancora’
This is a song taken from The Umlauts forthcoming EP Another Fact - out October 14th on PRAH Recordings - and it is an absolute mystery to me. I find the principal melody sexy and unsettling. I can’t completely work out what every instrument being played is. I think the arrival of the violin towards the climax is brilliantly unexpected, like digging for dinosaur bones and unearthing a Nintendo Gameboy instead. And I can’t for the life of me work out what language they’re singing in. I could of course Google and find out, but I don’t really want to. I want to be confused and intrigued.
I want to watch the magic trick without it being explained to me.
Slipknot - ‘The Dying Song (Time To Sing)’
It is unfortunate that Slipknot’s 2019 release We Are Not Your Kind - by some distance their best record in years and years - coincided with singer Corey Taylor sporting the worst mask he’s ever donned. Dude legitimately looked like he’d stretched the rubber casing of a Wii controller across his face. This will not do, and so I am delighted to say that not only do Slipknot now return with a properly ferocious new single, a song that suggests the Indian summer of album six is far from concluded, but that Corey Taylor is now wearing a career best mask too. I mean, look at that thing! Holy fuck. It’s uglier than a sack of drowned rats. And here’s the thing; it’s not even the best of the group’s new masks! DJ Sid Wilson is now sporting the face of a robot and the skin of a human face under his arm! That twitches! FUCKING YES FAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The new album, The End, So Far, is out September 30th on Roadrunner. Psyched!
Ghost - ‘Spillways’
HITMIALTTW is on something of a rock tip this week, is it not? It’s starting to smell like The Crowbar (RIP) in here. This, the new single by Ghost, is a helluva thing - it’s got a great video too, I always like it when they integrate choreographed spoookyness into their promos, though I can’t imagine how they’ll ever better the closing breakdown of ‘Rats’, truth be told. I’m absolutely craving the next time I can go see Ghost play live. I went to see them at Wembley Arena a few years ago and it really was transcendent stuff. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a gig that much. But a really weird thing happened. I have this Spotify playlist. It’s called The Best Songs Ever, Ever - feel free to subscribe to it if you’d like - and it’s where I dump songs I really like so I can listen to them on long car journeys. I vaguely know one of the Nameless Ghouls - the masked musicians that back up Papa Emeritus - and said Ghoul tweeted at me before the show to say that the band had been listening to my mixtape in the dressing room. The mixtape has the EastEnders theme tune on it. I love EastEnders. That night Ghost played the EastEnders theme tune. Coincidence? Hmmm.
I’ve just checked, and that playlist I made has four versions of the EastEnders theme tune on it. I really, really love EastEnders.
Fiona Brice - ‘And You Know I Care’
Fiona Bruce is the presenter of BBC Question Time. In addition to working with Elbow and John Grant, Fiona Brice arranged the strings and things on my old friend Lucas Renney’s - the best British songwriter you don’t know about, and that’s a damn fact - 2009 solo album Strange Glory. These are subtle differences. (For what it’s worth, I’ve just spent far too long trying and failing to find a song called ‘Down/Up’ by Lucas’ old band Brilliantine on the internet. That song is legitimately the best song I’ve ever heard that I cannot access right at this precise moment - if someone in the know wanted to send me an MP3 of it to spoookmagazine@gmail.com then I’d be very grateful and will even up your subscription to Spoook from ‘free’ to ‘paid’).
Anyway, I can’t imagine that Fiona Bruce would be able to write a song that is as devastatingly sad as this, the new single from Fiona Brice, though after fielding some of the questions she does on Question Time, maybe she could. Maybe she goes home, pours herself a big gin and sobs uncontrollably, sits at the piano and lets it all pour out. Maybe you can chart a direct link from Joy Divison’s existential horror, right the way to Fiona Bruce. Maybe Fiona Bruce has already made a solo album entitled, Brexit: Make it make sense. Dimbleby on spoons. Peter Sissons laying down his parts from beyond the grave. The ghost of Robin Day dancing round, like Bez.
RZA Presents: Bobby Digital and the Pit of Snakes
The best rapper in the Wu-Tang Clan is revisiting his alter ego Bobby Digital on his new solo album. And it’s good too. Not a classic, but still better than 95% of new hip hop I’ve heard this year. We haven’t heard from Bobby Digital - who RZA once memorably described as “Bobby Digital is just me feeling my nuts. RZA is my heart” since the New Yorker’s astonishing 1998 solo album Bobby Digital in Stereo. How has he changed in that time? Well, he’s a little bit more restrained. A little bit less wild. His rhymes aren’t as chaotic as we’ve come to know from him. But there’s so much flava here. So much groove. And ‘Something Going On’ - which at times sounds like something that might have come out of the Stax stable! - is probably the best cut on the album, as simplistic and as primitive as the song might appear to be.
WAAX - ‘Read Receipts’
A brand new name for me, despite this Australian band being around for decade now. You know what I really like? I really like those vocals that sound like the person singing has smoked way too much. Like they know something you don’t. Like they’ve pickled their larynx in red wine. If I was a dickhead I’d probably say something like ‘WAAX are akin to Marianne Faithful for the Warped Tour generation’, only I’m not a dickhead, I’m a knobhead, and there’s a difference. Incidentally, WAAX have the worst website of any band who have ever existed, ever. Like, it’s so bad they should be fined for it or something. But it sort of makes me like them more.
Here is the music I am listening to this week #14
James, your Spotify playlist kept me going while stuck on the motorway for hours yesterday