ANADOL & MARIE KLOCK — RENTRER À LA MAISON

Turkish sound artist Anadol (Gözen Atila) and French writer-musician Marie Klock have teamed up once again teamed up to create an upcoming album, Manivelles (May 15). The first single, 'Rentrer à la maison', also arrives in video form, a wonderous home movie-style affair in grainy VHS quality that very much fits the vibe of the song — the drear brick walls of the suburbs; driveways and gardens; dad is washing the dog.

Klock sings of the trials we face when confronted with that most comforting yet most alienating of things: returning home. How far we come only to arrive home again! Whether it's Christmas or someone's birthday or popping over for a cup of tea, to sit around the same table and hear the same stories and feel the same way as the child version of you all over again — a bittersweet tragicomedy (or comitragedy?).

With characteristic Klock humour, the lyrics for 'Rentrer à la maison', for the chorus at least, translate to

Whenever you go home
You start off with great intentions
And then, shove ‘em up your ass
Nice and deep, nice and deep

For some, I imagine that sounds about right. And with the vocal melody and the accompanying soundscape, the song has the melodic drone of a moralistic folksong or classic chanson, while during the verse the vocal skips over the lines like beat poetry.

Atila's instrumental work features time-worn analogue synth and thin drum machine beat, the kind of sounds that might emerge from a dusty childhood keyboard inherited from some uncle or another. It's as if the pair, one having accompanied the other to their parents' house, actively composed and recorded the song during such a visit, barricaded in a tiny time capsule of a bedroom and won't emerge until everyone has mercifully gone to bed.

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• 🔔 The video for 'Rentrer à la maison' was created by video artist and film-maker Timo Schierhorn and was produced by Hamburg-based filmmaker collective Auge Altona. Unfortunately we do not have a name for the dog. [Edit: The dog's name is Fips, and his owner was Schierhorn's grandfather; it's a special posthumous appearance from them both.]
• 🔔 Anadol & Marie Klock's new album Manivelles is scheduled for release 15th May on Hamburg label Pingipung. You may pre-order it in vinyl and digital form from Bandcamp.

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WET LEG — POKEMON

There is some joy in Wet Leg titling this song 'pokemon' (or should I say Nurse Joy, right?). Mostly because, when 'Chaise Longue' popped into this material plane back in 2022, I never clocked them for a band that'd name a song after this mega-franchise. But that's just a small joy.

Lyrically, the 'pokemon' weaves a low-key less on-the-run Thelma and Louise love story. "Oh, to be yours, to be driving away..." sings frontwoman Rhian Teasdale, painting a poetic picture with cute couplets like

But nothing hits like you and me
"I love you, " I say casually

and

You taste so sweet, like grenadine
You are my favourite human being

There are a couple of references to partying, what with the grenadine (above) and getting "another round". Starting the song with "Get lost, get loose..." feels like an echo of famed rock hedonist Jim Morrison, who utters the words "Get loose!" in the intro for 'Changeling', the first track on L.A. Woman (1971), his final album with The Doors.

A more obscure reference can be found: "Giddy up, you want to go faster? / Call me the demon headmaster" — quite a throwback to a British TV series from the '90s called The Demon Headmaster (it was about a headmaster who was a demon). It is followed by the line that names the song (and another '90s reference): "You just gotta choose me, baby, yeah, I'll be your Pokémon."

Showing how far the Teasdale (and the band) has come, the chorus features a line about driving from Isle of Wight to Tokyo, which is really quite a long way culturally, population-wise, and geographically. Ultimately, it's a driving song, a mood evoked not only through the road-tripping lyrics but in the galloping rhythm of the track, the gleaming guitars like a half-setting sun glinting on the metallics of a car.

The video for the 'pokemon' basically illustrates the thoughts and feelings evoked within the song, except in place of another human being it's about a woman who's in a relationship with a giant egg. Which, incidentally, makes it feel a lot more Tamagotchi-coded than Pokémon related.

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• 🔔 The video for 'pokemon' by Wet Leg was directed by Elliott Arndt (from the band Faux Real, who often support Wet Leg on tour). The woman in the relationship with the giant egg is played by Alice Longyu Gao, who is a DJ, producer and all-round artist in her own right.
• 🔔 'pokemon' is, of course, taken from Wet Leg's much-anticipated second album moisturizer, which was released in July 2025 via Domino. You may stream the album, purchase it in vinyl form or digitally by heading over to Bandcamp.

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GUSTAF — STARTING AND STARING

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Described variously as no wave, post punk, art rock, or some combination of all three with perhaps a bonnus genre or two thrown in for good measure, Brooklyn band Gustaf have released a video for 'Starting and Staring', a frenzied propulsive number that provides the first inkling of their second album, Package Pt. 2, which arrives off the back of their well received Audio Drag For Ego Slobs (2021).

The hook — well, less of a hook more of an imperative mantra — "Stay on my eyes" is by turns growled and uttered through bared teeth by singer Lydia Gammill. It weaves through, appearing with her increasingly agitated "You got me starting and staring!" in the midst of the juddering sweaty low-ceilinged dancefloor sound vehicle powered by zingy guitar harmonics, slapdash yet precision riffs and solid, driving bass. A cross between a streetfight and euphoric dance-off.

Channeling a vocal delirium that recalls Patti Smith's rollicking refrains, but with added slurring ferocity, Gammill's voice cartwheels, swoops and bodyslams itself, sometimes punching the air with group vocals a la fellow NYC-ers The Rapture. Truthfully, there's a lot in here that summons that sound, that essence of 21st-century danceable disco-meets-rock, and its key components, LCD Soundsystem and !!! (West Coast, but still) included, and it speaks to the cultural weight propelling Gustaf forward to inherit the house parties and basement clubs of tomorrow.

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• 🔔 This slice of new music, 'Starting and Starting' in case you didn't get that, is from the second Gustaf album, Package Pt. 2, which will be released on 5th April this year (that's 2024) via Toronto-based label Royal Mountain Records.
• 🔔 Gustaf tour dates can be found by clicking this very text (they're going on tour in April/May around the U.S.).
• 🔔 The rather indie-filmic video for Gustaf's 'Starting and Staring' was directed by filmmaker Alex Ross Perry.

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CUUSHE — MAGIC

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Cuushe is back. Recently she announced her upcoming album WAKEN via the fresh vitality of its first single, 'Hold Half'. This time around, it's 'Magic' that faces up to the grey piercing light of morning.

A slow steamroller of a beat thuds as the propulsion to 'Magic', rusted metallic percussion ticking faintly at its mechanical heart. A set of heavy-hearted piano chords plays a downcast reverb-laden refrain; "I just wanna die.." Cuushe's voice whispers from this fog of sound. Craggy synths crack in mournful reply, a glistening gloomy call-and-response.

Starting quietly, almost from another perspective, later in the track her vocals rise up, outraged: "Magic... Why are you so silent?" A question perhaps posed to the once-dreaming individual now scrutinised by reality. Lightness eclipsed. This refrain cuts through a wash of intense sounds, synths glittering and roaring together with the clatter of a bright guitar riff — a combination of playful concreteness and fantasy synthetic noise that runs through 'Magic'.

It's all been brought to life with a video by director Tao Tajima. On a backdrop of footage filmed in the wilds of Tibet, it's a tale of ghostly girls tied with string to insistent flapping birds, drawn in their phantomic pastels by sometime Cuushe collaborator Yoko Kuno. The music — mysterious yet methodical in its makeup — matches the stark marching mountains and vast empty tundra.

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• 🔔 'Hold Half' is taken from Cuushe's forthcoming new album Waken, set for release 20th November on her label home flau. Pre-order it over on the flau bandcamp.

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🐣 BIG HEATH — PLAN

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Cambridge rapper Big Heath unveils his plan in the video for, well, 'Plan'. Set in a support group for something or the other, Heath jumps up and delivers bars in fast-paced triplet flow, packed with dynamic layering and laced with humour throughout. For example, from the moment he uses "porkie pie" (Cockney rhyming slang for "lie", FYI) and then busts out

"Yo, I rap the brothers that wake up early in the morning just to eat a Weetabix"

the level of humour is real.

Added to this is the intricate ticking and rolling of hi-hats of the trap-flavoured beat, and dusty music box instrumentation for a spooky backdrop, allowing for a juxtaposition in light of Big Heath's humour — something that pelts you throughout the track, and sometimes poignantly.

Speaking about rappers who "take a life then... rap about it," he sums up that it "doesn't make that stuff right." As always though, he jokes to get the point across:

"Yeah I could've been up in the street
Could've shot a coupe Gs
Could've served a couple fees
But that really weren't for me
I could not run from police"

Self-deprecating, funny, self-admittedly feeling "happy just to be alive" when he's rapping, and shot through with positive messages, 'Plan' shows Big Heath as a refreshing addition to the UK's rap scene.

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• 🔔 Purchase or stream Big Heath 'Plan' via your fav service.

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🐣 KAZU — SALTY

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With its delicious blooping bumps of bass drum and pastoral soft sounds rising in thumb-daubed pastel arpeggios, 'Salty' is a mist of sea air, a coastal breeze, an idyll of freshness swirling around gnarled trees; it is also urgent, a bubbling of thoughts, gradually turning into something that feels almost panicked.

"hurry up" KAZU sings towards the end, whilst sounds become like short breaths, spots of light in your vision, being unsure where to look anymore. Cells vibrating like molecules.

That KAZU is Kazu Makino, co-founder of rock Blonde Redhead, and 'Salty' - so named for its cryptic and statemently loveable hook, "i bet you're salty" - is the first track to be taken from her upcoming debut solo album, Adult Baby.

With credits on the single a starter-pack rollerdex of names ranging from Brazilian percussionist Mauro Refosco to composing legend Ryuichi Sakamoto, the instrumental for 'Salty' is unquestionable. Plumes of lightness, trinkets of percussion, analogue loops and dives that breathe extra vitality into the track. Though KAZU, with her expressionist lyrics and distinctive, rounded tones, emotes enough for multiple lifetimes throughout.

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• 🔔 'Salty' is taken from the upcoming debut from KAZU, Adult Baby, which is set for release on Kazu Makino's brand new imprint of the same name later this year. It will be distributed by !K7, by the way.
• 🔔 The video for 'Salty', a concept of Makino herself, was directed, filmed and edited by Paride Ambrogi and Jonas Ranner in Elba, Italy.

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🎥 CHAI — CURLY ADVENTURE

In the video for Nagoya-based band CHAI's 'Curly Adventure', curly hair literally becomes synonymous with adventure; the protagonist as animated by LA artist Sean Solomon daydreams the lyrics of the four-piece's thunderous ode to curly hair.

"Long long time ago, my hair is troubling me…" the song begins with singer Mana spinning these hair-based lyrics composed by bassist (and art director) Yuuki.

With the fizzing-crash of the drums alongside a galloping funk of bass, plasma watery synth shoots through this track distorted and fluid all at the same time, a storm of summer-summoning sound; half '90s-remembered sparkly sun-soaked jam, half explosive reaction against the slump of frustration.

Lines in CHAI's song like "curly hair: that is amazing" and "curly hair means being yourself" can resonate with anyone having to alter themselves for the sake of uniformity. And this is reflected in Solomon's video for 'Curly Adventure', with its carefree spirit, popping colours, winding roads and undersea treasure hunts.

Watch it below, obviously.

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• 🔔 'Curly Adventure' is taken from CHAI's 2019 album Punk.

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🐣 RALLY CLUB — TWELVE TATTOOS

⊚ LISTEN TO RALLY CLUB, TWELVE TATTOOS ⊚

Conversational lyricism weaves through the sunny strumming jangle of Rally Club's 'Twelve Tattoos', the effect basically feels like climbing inside the head of its female protagonist. Her observations and thoughts sprinkle the lyrics, whilst she's also described her in third person from the point of view of the singer.

The chorus, with its hook-laden far-off broken radio vocals, mentions this explicitly: "I gotta feeling that I’m seeing what she’s looking through / cause she talks in her sleep, she talks about being with you."

The sparkle of its chords feel like starfish washed up on the beach, the breeze shunting clouds across a cool blue sky, the tinny bump of the drums skittering in coastal somersaults. There's this surf feel, with these effortless vocal harmonies that feel Beach Boys crossed with beat poet – or West Coast Weapon-era Brand New – as you can see from Rally Club's opening gambit:

"She looked pretty even keeled if you looked from afar. Her makeup barely covered up her blatant reactions to songs as she mumbled the words if she knew them at all.

She looked pretty damn full from all the meals in her car; the times she spent driving chasing constant attractions added up and the math in her head was getting harder to solve."

There is this delicious wordy detail in the strings of words that whirl around, rhythmically solid and pulsing with the bounce easy scansion. Even the ABCABC (bones, palate, remind her / known, mallet, behind her) rhyme scheme feels poetically sound.

Next to the detail, the words remain methodically cryptic; lines like "Twelve tattoos in the entire home, the perfect situation to display on the surface" and "A polished reputation, could it really be worthless? she thought as she filled in all the cracks in the living room wall" – as well as the sad "nobody found the letters she was leaving behind her" – mix everyday minutiae with mystery.

And then besides the airy detached jangle, there's this angular guitar riff that jumps in loaded with chorus; the sort of glitzy, towering thing you'd expect from some early metal band, but with a lovely lack of distortion. Besides the superficial everyday of the protagonist, the light strumming, there's the inner turmoil of what she's actually going through, displayed in the mild aggression of the thumping riff sections: clutching at reality and trying to make sense of it.

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• 🔔 Feel free to stream or purchase this Rally Club track on their Bandcamp or the single release it appears on, Space / Twelve Tattoos'.
• 🔔 The fun hand-drawn video is by Nathan Henning.

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