The Who was formed by sheet-metal worker Roger Daltrey in 1963. The the line up, after a couple of adjustments, established itself with Daltrey on lead vocals, Keith Moon on drums, John Entwistle on bass and Pete Townshend on lead guitar. Townshend, honouring his art student credentials, wrote (and still writes) music famous for having an ‘edge’, complemented by the wildly creative performance techniques of each member of the band.

It is generally acknowledged among rock aficionados that The Who in their heyday were the most exciting live band on the planet, with their Live at Leeds album (1970) hailed as the greatest live album of all time. The compositional skills of Townshend have always been way beyond the conventional, as is proven not only in classic songs like ‘My Generation’ and ‘Baba O’Riley’ but also in his two great rock operas (a form he more or less invented single-handed) Tommy and Quadrophenia.

Today, despite the deaths of Keith Moon and John Entwistle, The Who remain a potent force on the rock music scene. Their Concert for New York City appearance after the tragedy of 9/11 was a classic, as have been their annual performances at the Royal Albert Hall in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust. In 2006, Pete Townshend wrote The Who’s first studio album for the new millennium, Endless Wire and the band toured Europe and the U.S. during 2006 and 2007.

The Who are still highly active, with Townshend continuing to write and seek new musical challenges and Daltrey still the charismatic frontman he’s always been. The Who have recently launched their very first official website, www.thewho.com.

The title is taken from a lyric in “Blankets of Sorrow,” the elegiac, wistful ballad that closes the album and perfectly encapsulates the theme that runs through So that you might hear me: the need to be heard, acknowledged, understood. That brief, simple sentiment that underpins all of the songs on the album expresses a universal desire that so often goes unspoken, but runs deep within us all -- the primal, fundamental need for meaningful human connection.

“To me, it’s about trying to communicate with someone and feeling like you can’t reach them anymore” says Andrew. “That deeply resonated with me. Unwittingly, it became a theme of the album.”

So that you might hear me is the follow-up to Bear’s Den’s, UK silver-selling debut, Islands, which earned them an Ivor Novello nomination in the UK and a devoted following worldwide, and 2016’s more expansive Red Earth & Pouring Rain, which went Top 10 across Europe. 2017 saw the band cap four, non-stop years on the road with the largest headline shows to date, from sold-out tours of the States to a 7000-capacity arena in Belgium, and sold-out hometown shows at London’s iconic Brixton Academy and the Hammersmith Apollo.

The speed and scale of their success meant that Bear’s Den hadn’t taken a break since forming in 2012 – Red Earth & Pouring Rain was written in just three weeks squeezed in between tours and main stage festival slots at the likes of Pukkelpop and Lollapalooza Paris. Last year, finally, they took a step back to focus on their future.

For the first time, Andrew and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Jones had their own studio, a cubby called Josiah Booth Studios next to The Church Studios in north London, where they could leave their instruments plugged in and come and go as they pleased. Musically, there were no self-imposed constraints. Nor was there a time frame.

Both had a hankering to incorporate piano and more electronic instruments into their sound. Kev began playing with ideas on piano and drum machines while Andrew alone went to a cottage in a remote part of the English countryside with a guitar and started scribbling lyrics.

“In the past, I’ve always tried to understand what I’m writing about,” says Andrew. “This time, lyrics came from a more subconscious place. Like they were things I needed to say and I worked back from there. I’m inspired by people who wrote as though they were trying to figure out their own feelings as much as explain them to anyone else. The aim was to be more honest and instinctive, like when you blurt something out and can’t take it back, so you have to deal with it.”

Glorious opener “Hiding Bottles” builds in to their rockiest song to date, but is also doused in electronics. The idea for the song began with a synth pad and the lyric “Hiding bottles in the cold blue light.” Like several of the songs, it turned out to be about Andrew’s relationship with a close family member with an alcohol addiction and his attempts to address it.

“It was a situation that I could file away while we were on tour,” says Andrew, “but back home, I had to confront. The lyrics recall real conversations, trying to reach and help someone. It’s also about recognising what you can and can’t change, however hard you try.”

The first single “Fuel On The Fire” blossoms from the throb of drum machine beats in to an orchestral beauty. “Laurel Wreath” is a majestic track built on piano with electric guitars and synths that shimmer like strings. Both the haunting “Fossils” and the deeply moving “Crow” fuse acoustic instruments and electronics so organically it seems daft to distinguish between them.

“I love how the boundaries between genres have gone in the age of streaming,” says Andrew. “No one listens to music in boxes anymore, so why make it like that? Our songs incorporate all sorts of sounds, but not in a pre-ordained way. We could start with a weird pocket synth sound or Kev playing a creaky old upright piano. We just tried to follow our collaborative intuition and go where each song suggested.”

The result is a record that is both bold and exposed, at once intimate and widescreen. While the music leads the listener down different paths, the lyrics unfold as though revealing secrets, each line littered with clues.

Lyrically, “Crow” was inspired by Max Porter’s award-winning, 2016 novel Grief Is The Thing With Feathers while “Not Every River,” the album’s short, self-produced shimmering centrepiece, is about acceptance – or as Andrew puts it, “being okay with what’s not okay”.

Bewitching album closer “Blankets Of Sorrow” turns to nature to explore familial love and ends with Andrew sighing that tweaked album title over acoustic guitar.

“We decided pretty early that the title should be: So that you might hear me” he explains. “We changed the ‘will’ in the title for ‘might’ to acknowledge a sense of hope. The implication being that situations can change, particularly if you talk about them.”

So that you might hear me was demoed at Josiah Booth Studios and recorded at several studios in Seattle over the course of seven weeks with the producer Phil Ek (The Shins, Fleet Foxes, Father John Misty).

“Kev and I are both huge fans of The Shins – their early records helped teach us how to write songs,” says Andrew. “We’d never met Phil, but it was our dream to work with him so we sent him our demos and, luckily, he loved them. Working with him in Seattle was a deeply rewarding and massively educational experience.”

Bear’s Den’s four-man touring band also appear on the album, joining them in Seattle throughout the recording to beef up the songs with brass, drums, electric guitar and more electronics.

“The album has grown and evolved from all of the processes we went through. Every step of the way, it has been instinctive, collaborative and pushed us both lyrically and musically. From writing the songs to Kev and I working on the songs together in the church, working through them as a band together with Phil in Seattle and even ultimately mixing with Craig Silvey (Arcade Fire, The National) in London. Each separate process shaped and informed the album enormously.”

“The album started out as an attempt at trying to communicate with someone honestly. Our thoughts are not all rational, not all considered or tied up with ribbons and bows. This album is an attempt to reveal the honest and difficult challenge of communicating with anyone that you really care about.

“We’re immensely proud of it and hugely excited to share it with people.”

Coasts are currently in the studio with producer Eliot James (Two Door Cinema Club, Noah & The Whale) recording their debut album due for release this summer. Before then, the band are set to release a new single from the album at the end of March titled ‘A Rush of Blood’ supported by another UK and European tour for what will inevitably be their last until they tour the album this Autumn.

In 2014, Courteeners stand on the brink of unveiling their fourth and - by some distance - greatest album. In the six years since they released their sharp and underrated debut St Jude – a pinpoint accurate portrayal of youth enjoying life – the band have been steadily rising. All their albums have gone Top 10 – St. Jude (no.4), Falcon (no.6), ANNA (no.6) - and the growth in their live shows has been exponential and astonishing.

Just to take one example, on the 5th and 6th July last year, the band played two nights at the Castlefield Bowl, Manchester. They sold all 16,000 tickets in a day. In fact, they sold 100, 000 tickets in 2013 alone, also selling out Manchester Arena and Brixton Academy in the process. This time round – before the album’s even been heard by anyone outside the band’s inner circle– they find themselves headlining the Radio 1/NME Stage at this year’s Reading and Leeds Festival and handpicked to support The Killers at their 40, 000 capacity Glasgow Summer Sessions show on August 19th. The momentum is with them.

And the reason? Well, that’s when we need to turn our attention to the band’s singer and sole songwriter Liam James Fray. A riot of contradictions – romantic, sensitive, brash yet self-doubting – it’s his songwriting, an acute observation of how life is mostly lived, that has fuelled the band’s longevity, striking a resounding chord with an increasing large bandwidth of people across the country.

“Right from St Jude, everything was about how I was feeling,” explains Fray. “I did feel frustrated, stuck in a rut. But, I was full of ideas, watching the world go by outside, wondering if music could take me further than work, eat, club, sleep (a bit) die etc, I did seek escape from that life and I wrote about that. It wasn’t a formula. I wasn’t hell bent on capturing the abstract at 21. I wanted to focus on what was real. My world. Other people’s worlds. It’s what I knew. It’s what I grew up on. Pulp, Stephen Fretwell - they wrote about real life with frustration, heart and with humour.”

Concrete Love continues down that path. It radiates a confidence that’s perhaps best summed-up by the album’s two greatest moments, both of which are totally different to anything the band has attempted before.

Summer comes totally from leftfield, a joyous Beach Boys-eseque slice of perfect pop driven forward by a hypnotic, leaping riff. It’s a pure pop moment and all the more thrilling for it. It’s matched for freshness and ambition by Dreamers – a five minute epic that’s the perfect encapsulation of Fray’s outlook. It’s an atmospheric call to arms shot through with acute observation on the charts and underscored with a vibrant romantic sensibility. “The charts are full of cartoons and lawyers having a gap year before choosing their employers/But what about my life/Who is singing about that?” laments Fray, before a euphoric chorus bursts through. “Dreamers and writers/Risk takers and fighters….Come on and unite us”.

This new sense of musical sure-footedness is partly attributable to Fray’s relationship with producer Joe Cross. “Musically it was very liberating because we were creating in so many different ways. He gave me new confidence with my voice, I’ve never really had that before. I wasn’t forcing it, I was singing” laughs Fray.

“It was the most free I’ve ever felt in the studio, we were experimenting all the time, different people popping in and out at all hours of the day and night. Working with members of the BBC Manchester Philharmonic Orchestra and Manchester Ladies Choir really lifted the place and pushed us on….”

“The challenge, and the fun, is myself and Joe getting some of the songs - which often start from a folky perspective, on the acoustic or the piano to a point where I can channel my inner -Nick Zinner. I want them to sound big. It’s exhilarating feeling them grow. There are elements of Motown, UNKLE, Simon and Garfunkel!”

“St. Jude was punk and brash and exciting,” clarifies Fray, “but Falcon and Anna were totally different from that. I wanted us to push ourselves. When I listen to our music, I don’t hear any of the groups that we’re often associated with.”

To that end, the writing process for Concrete Love found Fray decamped to Paris. Starting in October last year, he spent three months writing and recording in the Montmartre (for a historical precedent Echo And The Bunnymen did the same thing when they were searching for the spark and inspiration for the extreme otherness of Ocean Rain).

It was a time spent walking the city seeking out new experience and something of that city’s nocturnal allure permeates the grooves of the new record. Having said that, it should be noted that the Gallic sojourn was followed up by sessions in a wholly different romantic setting - Whitby, then finally, homeward bound, in Ancoats.

The thing easily missed about Courteeners is that they might be earthed in the experiences of growing up in and around Manchester but there’s a tension in their music that comes from a desire and a fascination with breaking out of that.

It’s at the heart of what makes them such an interesting, contradictory group. With Concrete Love, it feels like they’ve finally got the balance right. It’s their most rounded and satisfying album to date and it coincides with a moment when they’re nearing the peak of their live powers.

That’s as good as summation as any. For Courteeners, it finally feels like their time has come.

2015 live dates featured a busy summer of festival appearances including Glastonbury, Latitude, Secret Garden Party, Lowlands, End of the Road and Bestival, a short tour of Europe supporting Mumford & Sons, plus his biggest UK headline tour to date in October.

Inspired by music as diverse as Tim Buckley, Neil Young, Radiohead, Justin Vernon and Father John Misty, Eaves has crafted a very unique style of song-writing and sonic landscapes that has got music lovers around the world very excited at what is about to come.

One of the most compelling British debuts in years – The Sunday Times

Strikingly fresh and moving – 4/5 Mojo

Echoes of Tim Buckley but he’s very much his own (young) man – 4/5 Metro

“Replace us with the things that do the job better.”

It's both a bold call to arms and a statement of nagging doubt. If they've been too long in the game, if they need replacing, somebody else better get on with it - and it better be good.

Alexis Taylor explains: “I was trying to capture the feeling of excitement I get when hearing Joe’s new music for the first time, and collaborating with him on it. Huarache Lights are some trainers I love - but in the song they're a shorthand for something modern, something very London, and for the kind of escapism and fun of a Friday night at Plastic People - which is where we were heading to DJ when we were making that track. The record is about the excitement of choosing what you might wear, choosing which records you will play. But at the same time, it’s asking whether we as a band are getting old, whether people still care. The answer is meant to lie in the music.”

The questions ‘Huarache Lights’ posts should probably be asked by any band serious about facing the future. What do we mean fifteen years in? Is there a newer model waiting at the side of stage, readying to make us obsolete? And if there is, why do what’s expected of us anyway?

Such ideas sit at the heart of Why Make Sense?

It’s a Hot Chip album that restates the band’s intentions and redefines the very things that made them relevant in the first place. Its ten tracks shun modernist dancefloor tropes in order to flick through the dusty corners of the band’s teenage record collections, back when they were experimenting with music on primitive computer programmes. But the creative process behind this record could not have been more different to the one behind those early records like San Frandisco and Coming On Strong. Why Make Sense? represents the first time the Hot Chip live band has recorded together residentially (at the rural Angelic Studios). The core five-piece band of Alexis, Joe Goddard, Owen Clarke, Felix Martin and Al Doyle were augmented by their regular drummer Sarah Jones and multi-instrumentalist Rob Smoughton (a formidable live prospect who will this summer headline Green Man and Sonar festivals, having previously headlined such venues as the Hollywood Bowl).

Joe: “When we were recording, we were getting closer and closer to the sound we make on stage. That kind of freedom makes a massive difference to a few of the tracks on the album; to how the tracks grow. Our recording process has been slightly anachronistic. It’s kind of perverse. I guess a lot of the records that were an influence on the record were made in that way – with engineers and people that knew their craft. I guess I feel that that’s something that’s often missing from a lot of very modern records made on laptops in bedrooms.”

The result is a revelation. Alternately jarring and chaotic, pared back, thundering, then pulsating and gloriously mellifluous, the album confidently displays its influences: clattering analogue post-punk (‘Why Make Sense?’), Philly disco (‘Dark Night’), and outer-space acid dub (‘Easy To Get’). The crisp, snapping ’90s RnB of ‘Love Is The Future’ calls in guest spots from De La Soul’s Posdnuos and Scritti Politti’s Green Gartside on vocals and arrangements respectively. The record even eschews Alexis’ vocals in favour of a carefully chosen sample (from the 1983 Sinnaman single ‘I Need You Now’) that adds huge clout to the emotionally charged core of the album, ‘Need You Now’

Alexis: “‘Need You Now’ is a bit different to anything I’ve previously written about – it’s about the bleak reality of living in a world where terrorism exists in such a visible way. The track isn’t trying to solve anything, it’s just a recognition of the fact that it’s there and we’re helpless against it. Hot Chip songs are usually about relationships – either my own or my relationship to the music we make... ‘Need You Now’ comes from a more pessimistic place. It’s an attempt to condense down that sense of helplessness you get watching the news.”

Condensing both lyrics and music was a key technique in the making of Why Make Sense? – an anti kitchen-sink approach that has been gestating in the years since In Our Heads.

Joe: “Musically we all had a desire to strip things right down, not overload it with parts. It relates back to the idea of actually being a band – maybe just one guitar part and one live drum part rather than multiple layers added. Musically, it was an effort to bring a real directness to our music, the kind you’d get on old RnB records… Hopefully stripping things back brings more funk to the tracks.”

Funk runs deep through Why Make Sense? The unmistakable strutting sound of the clavinet drives ‘Started Right’, transplanting 1970s Stevie Wonder into a futurist soul backdrop. Elsewhere, tracks are augmented by a talkbox that’s as much Roger Troutman as it is Todd Rundgren.

Alexis: “It’s impossible not to think of Stevie when you hear a clavinet being played. We’re always into exploring possibilities of new bits of gear that we maybe haven’t used before. The talkbox in the studio was just as inspiring. We spent a lot of time going back to the RnB records we were listening to from the ’90s… they were records that quested after a pared down funk sound… Michael McDonald, G Funk…”

Joe: “A lot of this comes from the feeling that the RnB that’s being made now is washed with these drifting clouds of reverb. Those sounds seem designed to hide the fact that a lot of the music it’s drifting across is shit. I think these songs are us saying, ‘This is our take on RnB’. You could relate it to a history of ‘blue eyed soul’ where there’s a disconnect between the music and the people making it. Driving round Putney in a Peugeot with the windows down, the music you’re passionate about might not reflect who you are. Maybe at this point in our career, we’ve accepted who we are and that’s being reflected in the music. Fuck it, we don’t make sense, we’re doing it anyway.”

It might not be an answer to the titular question but it does offer a strong sense of purpose. A strength that sustains one of the most singular, innovative writing partnerships in British music, and ensures that one of the best live acts on the planet continues to hone a sound that’s unique and unarguable, a sound that translates from nightclubs to festival stages without compromise. And it hammers home the notion that on the strength of Why Make Sense? – an unarguable creative peak - no one has built a machine that can replace Hot Chip yet.

Today he shares a preview of this new sound on the track 'Fear Less', an electrifying mix of past and new influences.

Nick Murphy is set to perform a dynamic new show, pulling from his existing catalogue and showcasing new material at his forthcoming Pitchfork Festival Paris performance on 27th October and at his London Brixton Academy show on 9th November.

Murphy's achievements as Chet Faker are great and varied. His critically acclaimed debut album 'Built On Glass' was a commercial success upon its release in spring 2014, reaching platinum sales status. BBC Radio 1 have consistently supported both his solo releases and his recent collabs with Marcus Marr. He's a serious player internationally, selling out headline tours and playing major festivals throughout Europe, Asia and North America including main sets at Glastonbury, Primavera Sound, Coachella and more.

Naomi plays percussive instruments, the Cajon and the Batas. Whilst Lisa plays piano. Together the twins have learned the songs of their father's culture, Yoruba.

Yoruba travelled from West Africa to Cuba with slavery in the 1700s. The Yoruba people have the highest twinning rate in the World, and twins occupy an important position within Yoruba culture. Ibeyi is pronounced "ee-bey-ee" and translates as "Twins" in Yoruba.

Ibeyi sing in English and Yoruba, and have created a minimalist sound that merges elements of their heritage with their natural love of modern music as teenagers grown up in Paris, citing artists such as James Blake and King Krule amongst their wide range of influences.

Ibeyi are currently recording their debut album for XL, with Richard Russell on production.

South London singer songwriter, Jake Isaac released his most recent EP ‘Where We Belong’ on Elton John’s Rocket Records last year, going straight into the Top 10 on the iTunes Singer Songwriter chart. That EP places Jake Isaac firmly alongside the likes of George Ezra and James Bay as an innovative and exciting new talent.

In March this year Jake sold out London’s Bush Hall and headlined shows around the UK and Europe. Jake has spent the summer touring throughout the UK and Europe and is now busy in the studio preparing his debut album due out April 2017 on Virgin Records.

She talks about it now with a hint of mischief: "I love horror films, I love anything eerie. Nobody knew much about me so I wanted to keep it that way and not show my face." It's true, her face barely appears at all. That mysterious introduction, plus the hyper-emotion of the ballad helps place her firmly within a new and exciting breed of intelligent, modern pop stars such as The Weeknd, The xx and Sky Ferreira. And while she might be a fan of horror films, her name (an Indiana Jones nod) and that footage helped her first few steps feel more like the start of an exciting adventure.

Indeed, you don't have to rewind far from her recent debut single to track the real beginning of Indiana's story. It started with two accidents; one, the discovery of a dusty piano her older sister had left in storage. With it she began to teach herself, picking up chords easily, using those shapes to write her first songs and discover her voice. The second piece of fortune came when Indiana stumbled across Joe Goddard's lighting-rod remix of 'Gabriel'. She describes it as "the best dance song I'd heard for a long long time. The emotion in Valentina's vocals and the lyrics were really raw and spoke to me." After falling hard for the song she quickly filmed an off-the-cuff version, translating Valentina's ripping vocal into something much more heartfelt and yearning. For those who watched that simple but effective clip Indiana's huge talent was crystal clear.

The next part is almost too perfect to be true, but it is. The original writer of Gabriel, Grammy nominated composer John Beck, was one of those first few to stumble across Indiana's stripped-back version and quickly got in touch with her. He wanted her to come to Leeds and work with him on new material. She describes the process as "Scary but really amazing too, I'd never recorded in a studio before that.". The intense sparks of those first few sessions were clear to see, and impressively Blind As I Am was the very first tune the two worked on together.

Indiana looks back on it as an incredible piece of luck: "most people take a long time to find a sound or somebody who inspires the best from them, I feel really lucky to have found that straight away - or for him to have found me. He feels like one of my best friends now". The history of pop music is littered with special writing relationships, from Aaliyah and Timberland to Eno and Bowie or even Xenomania and Girls Aloud. Beck and Indiana seems destined to become another that just rolls off the tongue.

While Beck helps refine Indiana's songwriting she is just as obsessive about the sound, describing the music as really influenced by a sense of space and simplicity. The often bare, subtle backdrops on her songs really let her voice pierce through the surface and shine. There's a rawness to her vocal, something she says people at her first shows in Nottingham remarked on, saying they could tell she had been through a lot just from listening to her sing. She puts it down to the result of really living her performances each time, bringing to mind deeply personal traumas and heartbreaks to draw up such powerful and emotional vocal takes.

At each step Indiana's story and raw, emotional vocals have drawn people into her world, but her quirky personality helps her feel modern and fun too. Her twitter is @raiderofarks, and despite being another tongue-in-cheek Indiana Jones reference it's actually quite appropriate. Pop success has been difficult to predict or force over the past few years, and if that's the Holy Grail then you get a funny feeling it's well within Indiana's reach.

Jamie’s fourth album, which takes its one-word title from album opener and single ‘Tinfoil Boy’, is a weird, important record. At beginning and end, it is the darkest, toughest and most pessimistic of his decade in the limelight. But in the middle, it’s a rock ‘n’ roll party album: albeit an edgy, punky reggae party where lost girls clash with 17th century prophets of doom, exiled Brits clash with deserted American cities, trad-rock guitars clash with speed raps and dubby basslines. A lot of Clash, then, in more ways than one.

“Everybody knows I love The Clash,” Jamie smirks, fully embracing his worship of early Mick Jones B-sides, “and I’m too far into this to be overly self-conscious anymore. ‘Robin Hood’ is basically ‘Hateful’ mixed with the idea of the song ‘Bankrobber’ and a little bit of ‘Jail Guitar Doors’. And the first line, “Riding in the back seat…”, is almost ‘Blitzkreig Bop’ by the Ramones, which I didn’t even notice when I wrote it. If I sit down with a guitar in the best mood I can possibly be in, that’s what comes out.”

You may recall that there was a five-year gap between Jamie’s second set Kings And Queens and 2014’s ‘comeback’ set Carry On The Grudge; five years in which Jamie suffered a crisis of faith and confidence, travelled the world to lose himself and find himself, and came back a more questioning adult troubadour with ideas honed and insecurities acknowledged, wondering if fickle pop youth would want him back.

But Trick arrives after a gap of less than two years, shot through with the kind of vigour and vibrancy that can only come from a man who has rediscovered his love of writing, recording and performing. Jamie is on a roll and has no intention of letting the moment pass. “The more making records is a day-to-day thing, the happier I am because I’m less daunted by it all. I’m my own worst enemy and my fears and anxieties can easily take me over. So it was important for me to get this record finished and out there because these days I’m thinking in terms of momentum.”

Like Carry On The Grudge, Trick is co-produced by Jamie and longtime collaborator James Dring, with Dring taking care of beats business while Jamie plays every other instrument you can hear. The pair also returned to The Premises in Hackney and the now sadly departed Moloko studio in Hoxton Square to record. But this time around, a third surprise recording location has brought something different to Jamie’s sound; a studio called High Bias based in the perfect American city to expand Jamie’s perennial themes of city sickness. “I became interested in Detroit and saw a documentary about it,” explains Jamie. “It has a weirdly post-industrial landscape. These figures might not be bang on, but… Detroit is built for 2.5 million people to live in and something like 250,000 actually live in it. So… it’s empty. You look at the place from the top of a skyscraper and the whole city’s green because all the gardens and plots are overgrown. So surreal!”

If you’re thinking a thought-provoking sojourn in what remains of the former Motor City sees Jamie incorporating shades of Motown and early techno into his spiky brew of multi-cultural English urban pop… think again. “Funnily, when I write abroad it has the effect of making me more Anglophile musically. When you step out of your environment you become more aware of your own identity. Hence songs like ‘Tescoland’. This record, to me, sounds quite English.”

When work on Trick commenced, Jamie did have a theme in mind. But art, digression and a creative desire to “shed some light in the dark” intervened. “The original idea was to write a Summer record, but not what immediately comes to mind when you say Summer. A really hot, oppressive London Summer. Claustrophobic and dark. And Trick certainly ends like that and begins like that, but in the middle it flows around a bit. I felt that a whole record of that vibe would be incredibly heavy.”

‘Heavy’ neatly describes the choice of first single and opening track. ‘Tinfoil Boy’ establishes the theme, names the album (“Summer times you feel like a trick/Like a hangman word that no-one ever gets”), and glowers malevolently as it examines the dark underbelly of loyal friendship. As Jamie explains: “The song is based around the idea of unconditional love, and finding the heart to be there for someone, even if their behaviour is becoming an issue for you.”

A young dog can teach himself new tricks, and ‘Tinfoil Boy’ features the first appearance of a new Jamie sound source, inspired, as is so often the case, by a ‘70s-vintage icon. “When I was very young I started listening to Kate Bush and I loved these kind of cinematic things she would put together. For this album I got a couple of friends who are actors in, sat them in the vocal booth, and told them to say this or that in certain ways, and recorded tons of it. So I made my own samples, basically. The voice on ‘Tinfoil Boy’ is a mix of some of the things I got from my friend Florence in half-a-day in the studio. She says, ‘Wear me down/Use me up/You crack my lips/You burn in my chest/I don’t want you to see me cry/I don’t wanna give you the satisfaction.” Florence is playing the friend who is feeling used in that situation.”

Elsewhere on Trick, Jamie heads back into the dread zone of English history for both the song ‘Solomon Eagle’ and the album’s evocative, Biblically-inclined cover art. Eagle was a real-life Londoner, originally a Quaker musician named Solomon Eccles, who attained mythical status by spreading righteous apocalyptic doom on the streets of London as it perished in the grip of the Bubonic Plague in 1665. “People would take their dead to St Paul’s Cathedral, and Eagle would walk among them wearing a loin-cloth and a burning urn on his head telling them that the reason this was happening to them was because they were living in a den of iniquity, and that they were all going to Hell because of the shit they’d done within the city. I thought he was an interesting character. I almost saw him in the present day as a ragga MC - a prophet of doom berating us for our greed. I was trying to make it sound like a RZA production. Harder than it looks.”

Those who missed Jamie’s rap skills – though the man himself prefers to call it “fast wordplay” – on Carry On The Grudge will be delighted to hear the boy spit rhymes on the likes of the electro-flecked ‘Drone Strike’. “I did write Carry On The Grudge with a feeling of one arm tied behind my back,” admits Jamie. “I loosened my arm this time around and that’s been a liberation. Denying who you are in order to move forward is a good thing. But I was in danger of going too far and forgetting what I enjoy. And I’m suddenly sitting there holding a mandolin going, ‘What am I doing?’ The point of making records is to put new feathers in your cap. You’re not meant to lose things.”

Which is perhaps why a line from ‘Tescoland’ - an ironic dig at the mythical misunderstandings between Limeys and Yanks which Jamie describes as, “a Jam song dressed in Clash clothing” - feels like a neat summing-up of the last seven or so years of Jamie’s life and career: ‘Every plan I make is meant to take me further away/But I always end up back at home’. “What can I say?,” Jamie laughs. “It’s the love-hate relationship I have with London. I think that I would rather be anywhere else, but when I get somewhere else I pine to be back here. And that’s probably the same with my songwriting.”

Remaining in the same house where she grew up with her parents and older brother has not just kept her grounded, it’s hugely contributed to the development of her voice and style. Her earliest memories of music include having her mind blown by her brother playing her Coldplay’s ‘Parachutes’ through his Minidisc player, or watching Kate Bush’s video to ‘Cloudbusting’ with her dad. She takes the name ‘Rae’ from her grandfather, Raymond – a carpenter and local musician. Although she never met Raymond (he died when her father was a young man), he’s come to exert a large influence upon her and the family. Music is important to all of them – she and her brother have always taken piano lessons together from the age of four, her dad’s been trying to learn saxophone for 30 years, while her uncle plays in local covers bands, and at family get-togethers the Morris’s enjoy bringing the guitars out and having a sing-along to Steely Dan or ‘Hey Jude’.

For Rae, playing was always a communal, good-time experience. She didn’t actually get into music herself until she was around 15- years-old. Her palette was remarkably unaffected by anything besides her home life. While she was good at both sport and music at school she was lacking a clear direction for her future, and decided in the interim to take an art and music course at a college in Preston. Her solo musical endeavours came to her by chance when Rae was 17 and watching a particular episode of Jools Holland, featuring Blackpool musician Karima Francis. “I was like,

Woah that girl’s from Blackpool. That’s insane. I didn’t even know that was possible,” she recalls.

Embarking on a new, exciting career in music led Rae to like-minded individuals, like Charlie Fink from Noah & The Whale, Ben Garrett (aka Fryars) who produced her first two EPs, Lucy Rose who has become a close friend. Rae also co-wrote and features on the forthcoming Clean Bandit track ‘Up Again’. Another close friend and sounding board is Jack Steadman of Bombay Bicycle Club, who invited her to record some backing vocals on his band’s material after they’d had a few beers in his studio space on Edgware Road. Rae supports Bombay Bicycle Club on their forthcoming spring 2014 UK tour and features on 3 tracks from their No1 album ‘So Long See You Tomorrow’. It’s a nurturing environment for her and has helped to build her stage persona. Of course, nothing revealed to Rae more that there was life outside Blackpool than her introduction to multi-talented, LA-based producer Ariel Rechtshaid (Vampire Weekend, Haim, Diplo). With Ariel, she recorded a collection of sophisticated, piano-driven soundscapes and ballads that comprise her much-anticipated debut. Three months of LA sunshine and crashing at Ariel’s place in Silverlake generated the sort of environment where she could finally locate her truth without any external influence, taking her a million miles from everything she thought she knew. And she’s immensely proud of the results, positive that she’s made the album she really wanted to make.

Not that this newfound confidence has made her anywhere near aware of how good she is. That humbleness is Rae’s ace card. “I should be way better than I am,” she says. “I should be far more accomplished by this stage!” From where we’re standing, Rae Morris is streets ahead of the competition.

Morrissey grew up just off the Portobello Road in London, the second-oldest of nine children. If it was an unusual upbringing it was nonetheless one that has given her both the grounding and the confidence to plough her own particular furrow. It was Morrissey’s father who introduced her to artists such as Devendra Banhart and Antony and the Johnsons, and her older brother who led her to Jeff and Tim Buckley. “And I always knew Bob Dylan,” she says “When I was maybe eight years old I did a talent show and sang Maggie’s Farm, in a cowboy hat and cowboy boots.” What she admires most in music — and hopes might be found in her own songs, is for there to be “something childlike in the best way possible, something almost vulnerable about the music, for there not to be a barrier.”

At 14 Morrissey began learning guitar. She still remembers the thrill when, only a couple of weeks into lessons, she played a song for her best friend “making it up as I went along,” she smiles. “I got really excited by the idea — I remember going back home and recording it on garage band.”

Soon she was replacing the recordings on her MySpace — youthful renditions of Lord Bless You and Keep You and My Fair Lady covers with her first original song.

Morrissey left school at 17, abandoning A Levels in Music and French to pursue her songwriting career. “It was a big decision,” she admits. “But I’d always been set on not going to university because I knew that music was what I wanted to do. Her parents, she insists, were entirely supportive. “But because I’d been making music since I was 14 and putting it online, and the power of the internet had helped pave my way to meeting my manager and meeting my label, they supported the decision.”

When she was 15, Morrissey had written a song called Show Me — a stunning and arresting song that sounded world-worn and emboldened, showcasing the height and depth, the twist and turn of her exceptional voice. She began saving up for a Super 8 camera to make the song a video she would post to Vimeo.

In a roundabout way it was this video that brought Morrissey to the attention of Elliot Roberts, manager of Devendra Banhart and Neil Young, and then on to Daniel Glass of Glassnote Records (home to Phoenix, Mumford & Sons and Daughter, among many) a label she chose because “Nearly everything I do now has to be centred around a sense of family and community and being around nice people.”

It is Show Me that forms the cornerstone of her debut album, a collection of songs written over the past 5 years of her life.

Morrissey recorded the album with producer Noah Georgeson (Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, Cate Le Bon), spending two and a half months in Los Angeles.

Having played only a handful of live shows – including much-lauded performances at Green Man and Wilderness, last autumn Morrissey suddenly found herself on stage at the Casino de Paris, playing two songs to 2000 people as a sort of amuse bouche before headliner Damon Albarn.

She remembers, she says, how warm the audience was, “And seeing a girl smiling in the crowd. And I was trying to smile and think that this is just a song, just go for it. Because sometimes you just have to laugh, don’t you, at the silliness of this whole thing?”

It is music about burying yourself in an avalanche of words and warm bodies in an endless search for the right ones.

From the beach cities of Southern California, the time was ripe for Rival Sons. Guitarist Scott Holiday had long been searching for something that would fit his psychedelic vision and fuzzy garage rock tones, then things fell into place when blues singer/songwriter Jay Buchanan put the solo career on the backburner and gave rock ‘n’ roll a chance. Scott Holiday: ‘a random find on the Internet points me to Jay Buchanan. In 13 seconds I realize I have just come across the singer I've looked for over the last 10-12 years of my life.’

Jay was invited to record vocals on the band’s debut release ‘Before the fire’ ‘Singing On My Way in a single take. We never even ran tape a 2nd time. That was a first to witness for me. And so it was born... Rival Sons.’

Four albums on, with an ever-growing fan base the band go from strength to strength and have never looked back.

The Rival Sons EP was recorded soon after Jay Buchanan joined the band and it caught the attention of Earache Records founder Digby Pearson who signed a deal in November 2010 that led to the recording of Pressure & Time in early 2011. The album was recorded in Los Angeles with producer Dave Cobb (who has worked on all Rival Sons albums) and released worldwide in May 2011. The band committed to creating an experience that closely matches the attitude and excitement of one of their live performances. Coming straight off a 4 week stint on the road, Rival Sons wrote, recorded, and mixed the album in just 20 days; ensuring a rawness for both the listener and the band.

Pressure & Time opened a door to Europe where from their first European show at Camden Barfly to Shepherds Bush Empire in 2012, there has hardly been a show that was not sold out. The band quickly picked up European shows and festivals and became known for a wild improvisational live show.

Jay Buchanan “It's an unlikely collective really but when it all comes together there's an energy I don't see happening anywhere else. Give everything you have, every time. Each time you approach that stage, every night, you're waiting for someone to call you out for the fraud you really are so you empty your pockets and give them everything you have inside of you just trying to prove that you've come there for a greater reason than just wanting to be the center of someone's attention. Music is fucking heavy business.”

Straight off the back of more touring early 2012 the band went into Honey Pye studios in Nashville in February 2012 for 22 days to write and record their new album again with Dave Cobb and Vance Powell (Jack White, Kings of Leon etc). Experimenting with old analog equipment from legendary studios that producer Dave Cobb had collected the band found a warmth in their sound for the album that would be Head Down.

With growing accolades and chart success the band were presented with “Breakthrough Artist” award by Vic Reeves at the Classic Rock awards at the end of 2012, they also graced the cover of the magazine as well as several other publications.

Between albums Rival Sons have a taxing tour schedule, original bassist Robin Everhart left the band in August 2013, finding that the touring life didn’t agree with him. Playing club shows, stadiums and festivals, the band convert new fans wherever they go. The band continued their touring schedule with long-time friend of the band Dave Beste (Maroon5, Rocco Deluca and The Burden) on bass, before returning to the studio in Nashville once again in Jan 2014 with producer Dave Cobb to record their 5th release ‘Great Western Valkyrie’.

New song Together finds Tourist at his most dance orientated, an approach he hinted at on his work earlier in the year. Opting to work with sampled vocals, the balance struck between the soulful vocal contributions of his collaborators exemplify his work as a forward thinking producer alongside many of his contemporaries.

Bristling with energy and oozing optimism, Great Divide is a rock record with widescreen ambition, inspired by the band watching their own fans and from sharing stages with the likes of Springsteen and Foo Fighters.

“Our aim was always to make songs this size,” says Twin Atlantic singer Sam McTrusty. “Coming from a punk rock background, it took a while - we like to say we went the scenic route. But it was the right route for us, full of interesting stops on which we learnt a lot – about ourselves, about each other, about how to make music that connects with fans which is always honest, never forced.”

Almost three years and over 300 gigs since the release of their silver-selling, debut album, Free, catapulted them from clubs to sold-out shows at Shepherds Bush Empire to the main stage at Reading and Leeds and this summer, Glastonbury, Twin Atlantic have made a mainstream record that marries their incredible energy live with a more mature approach to songwriting that acknowledges their long-held love of pop. Great Divide may be driven by guitars and drums, but it is also steeped in piano and strings, built on soaring melodies and littered with lyrics, sung in McTrusty’s strong Scottish accent, that express grown-up emotions as chantalong slogans.

“We’ve been through our punk rock rebellion phase and come out the other side,” laughs McTrusty. “We’ve all grown up being in this band. Dare I say it, we’re finally fully-formed adults. Since Free, some of us have got married and bought our own places and I’ve spent time in Canada because my girlfriend lives there. When the four of us got back together to work on this album, there was no bullshit. With our own lives sorted, it was easier to see the point of the songs and how we wanted them to sound. And, definitely, part of that was embracing pop.”

Pop hooks and harmonies abound on songs such as Hold On, an ode to self-belief driven by drums it’s difficult not to dance to. ‘It’s a risk worth taking/To

have a life worth living’ sings McTrusty on a huge, hooky chorus that’s a surefire summer singalong. The stunning Brothers And Sisters, set to shimmering guitars, bulked up by multi layered vocals and boasting a soft-loud dynamic is a collective call-to-arms dedicated to those who refuse to give up on their dreams.

Flamboyant first single Heart and Soul is a dirty rock stomper that sums up the shared feelings of a bouncing festival crowd, nods to both classic Bon Jovi and Queen and has already moved George Ergatoudis, Radio 1’s head of music, to tweet ‘Hyperbole alert. No joke - STUNNING does not do them justice.’ The single went in at number 17, a phenomenal achievement for a rock band in this day and age.

Twin Atlantic formed in 2007 when McTrusty and bassist Ross McNae, a friend from school, joined forces with drummer Craig Kneale and lead guitarist and occasional cello player Barry McKenna. All four had been in previous bands on the Glasgow scene. They bonded over a shared love of alternative rock, punk-pop and the city’s skate and street art scene, as well as a determination to make music their day jobs. Their ferocious shows soon saw them booked to support Smashing Pumpkins, Biffy Clyro and their teen idols Blink 182. Within two years, they had played most major UK festivals and been signed, following a tip-off from Alan McGee, to American label Red Bull Records.

“Our A&R person saw us at this strange snowboarding Channel 4 gig at Battersea Power Station,” recalls Kneale. “We pure went for it at that show, not because we knew anyone was watching, but because we were fucking freezing. We were surrounded by fake snow, our hands so cold we couldn’t hold our guitars. Either we went for it or we froze. Our A&R said it was the craziest gig he’d ever witnessed.”

A mini album, Vivarium, released in 2009, found Twin Atlantic fans in Kerrang!, saw them tour Europe and the States, play festivals including Download and Sonisphere and support My Chemical Romance. Free, their debut proper, followed two years later, boasting three singles playlisted by Radio 1, including the title track, which soundtracked Felix Baumgartner’s historic space jump in 2012.

“We were told Felix himself chose it,” says Kneale, “because he liked the lyric ‘Set my body on fire so I can be free’.” I guess he knew something could go horribly wrong. Thank God it didn’t! It wouldn’t have been a good epitaph for us.”

Most of Great Divide was written last year, while Twin Atlantic were still touring Free. “90% of it was written in the back of the tour bus, or a sweltering van in America,” says McTrusty. “Our adrenaline was through the roof because, for the first time, thousands of people had come to see us. I’d be in the lounge, unable to sleep, recording ideas on my phone, trying to make sense of the reaction we’d had to our songs. You can’t hear 10,000 people singing a chorus back at you and not be changed by it.

“I’d sit there thinking ‘I wish I’d had this type of song’ or been able to make people feel a certain way. I tried to write for people who don’t dance, and

didn’t intend to, but couldn’t help it cos the energy of the song meant they couldn’t stand still.

“I was definitely inspired by playing with Bruce Springsteen, who we supported at Hard Rock Calling last year. Every song of his is an anthem, even if it’s weird and complicated. You can’t see Springsteen and not remember it the next time you write.”

The bulk of Great Divide was recorded in Rockfield in Wales with producer Gil Norton (Foo Fighters, Pixies), who also helmed Free. Additional songs were recorded in the States with Jacknife Lee (Snow Patrol, U2, R.E.M.). The Rockfield sessions lasted much longer than had been planned and almost broke the band.

“We were there, between festivals, for most of last summer,” recalls McTrusty. “Remember how good the weather was? We were ridiculously decadent, lying in the sun, bringing back loads of alcohol. We bought a big projector screen, played FIFA and watched nearly every James Bond film.

“At the start it was amazing. We were inspired by stories of the bands who had been there before us. We used the piano that’s on Bohemian Rhapsody. But by the end, when the album still wasn’t finished, the place started to feel too isolated. Silence to me is terrifying – I’m from inner city Glasgow, I’ve always lived on a main road.”

One of the results of the extended Rockfield sessions was the song Oceans, Twin Atlantic’s favourite on the album. “Oceans could only have been written somewhere like that,” says McTrusty. “It sounds like a cry from an unhinged, isolated person, which is what I became there.”

Hold On also took on new meaning, becoming a metaphor for a band at breaking point. “There were a lot of frayed ends and decisions to make,” says McTrusty. “Hold On was us telling ourselves to not give up, that we’d get there in the end. Did we ever think the end was nigh? I’m not sure, but we did hold on and we made it and that’s what matters.”

Singer Ty Taylor, guitarist Nalle Colt, bassist Rick Barrio Dill, and drummer Richard Danielson have successfully channeled the vitality of their live show into a fresh and urgent take on Primitive Soul, a groove-fueled sound that Yahoo! once painted as “James Brown singing lead for Led Zeppelin” and “blending blues, soul, and riff-heavy rock & roll with joyfully gritty abandon.”

Longtime devotees of incendiary artists like Ike & Tina Turner, Little Richard, and

Chuck Berry, Vintage Trouble possesses sharply honed instincts for rhythm and groove and unabashed showmanship. Now based in L.A.’s musically famed Laurel Canyon, the band first played together in 2010 and soon brought their high-energy brand of soul to weekly residencies at local venues like the Edison and Harvelle’s Blues Club. As they steadily amassed a following, Vintage Trouble eventually drew the attention of Doc McGhee (a legendary music manager best known for working with KISS, Bon Jovi, and Mötley Crüe). Once under McGhee’s wing, the band set their sights overseas and — by 2011 — had taken the stage at Britain’s influential TV show Later...with Jools Holland, delivering powerful performances of “Blues Hand Me Down” and “Nancy Lee” (a stirring serenade to Taylor’s mother, penned from his father’s perspective).

After joining Queen guitarist Brian May on tour in May 2011 and Bon Jovi on tour that June, Vintage Trouble put out their debut album The Bomb Shelter Sessions and quickly saw the album hit the UK Top 40. Also charting as the No. 1 R&B album and No. 2 rock album on Amazon UK, The Bomb Shelter Sessions had its U.S. release in April 2012 and fast earned acclaim from such outlets as NPR, The Wall Street Journal and Billboard. By the end of the year, in the pages of the New York Times, critic Val Haller had hailed Vintage Trouble as a modern-day answer to Otis Redding (“Like Otis Redding,” Haller remarked, “Vintage Trouble makes music that is a little bit of everything”).

Along with appearing on Late Show with David Letterman, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (four times!), The View, Conan, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!, as well as at major festivals like Bonnaroo, Coachella, and Glastonbury, Vintage Trouble continued to keep up a grueling touring schedule in support of The Bomb Shelter Sessions. The band spent a large part of this time opening for such artists as The Who, The Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Lenny Kravitz, Paloma Faith, Joss Stone and Willie Nelson.

At a hometown gig at the El Rey Theatre in summer 2013, Don Was (a three-time Grammy Award-winner known for his work with the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Al Green, and Iggy Pop) caught the band live for the first time and found him floored by their explosive performance. “Half of the songs were brand new and totally unfamiliar to the audience…yet the place was rocking from the first notes straight through to the final encore,” recalls Was. “Do you know how hard it is for a new band to pull that off? It requires tremendous charisma, thundering power, incredible grooves, and top-notch songwriting.”

In the spring of 2015, Vintage Trouble inked a deal with Blue Note Records, and set to work on their major label debut 1 Hopeful Rd. Recorded at L.A.’s East West Studios and mixed by Tom Elmhirst (Mark Ronson, U2, The Black Keys), 1 Hopeful Rd. borrows its title from the album’s opening number and lead single “Run Like the River.” With its foot-stomping rhythm and gospel harmonies, “Run Like the River” embodies the infectiously irrepressible mood that runs throughout 1 Hopeful Rd. and gives even the album’s most pained moments an electrifying edge. The follow-up to Vintage Trouble’s debut album The Bomb Shelter Sessions — a self-released effort praised by Paste magazine as “the stuff the best soul’n’roll is made of” — 1 Hopeful Rd. matches that emotional intensity with a raw yet sophisticated musicianship that’s prompted BBC Radio 6 to crown the band “the heirs of rhythm and blues.”

With Vintage Trouble fiercely dedicated to constantly playing and creating new music — including a 2014 fan-only EP called The Swing House Acoustic Sessions – music legends such Prince (who name-checked Vintage Trouble in an early-2014 interview with MOJO) and Lenny Kravitz (who noted that the Vintage Trouble live experience bears the same feeling as “being at the Monterey Pop Festival of 1967”) were struck by the band’s passion and musical prowess. When describing their own sound, Vintage Trouble use the term “formatted recklessness”: a fantastically paradoxical phrase that captures the spirit of a band whose music is wildly unhinged but rooted in real musicality, gut-punching but thought-provoking, steeped in the heritage of old-school soul but utterly and irresistibly timeless.

In January 2017, John Varvatos tapped the band to appear in his much-celebrated music campaign series, bringing their foot-stomping rhythm and irrepressible spirit to electrify his new Spring / Summer 2017 Campaign. Throughout 2017, Vintage Trouble will release a handful of new songs starting with the blistering new track “Knock Me Out,” released on February 15th.

Vintage Trouble shows no signs of slowing down. Stay tuned for a lot more exciting music.

Dashing through northern pastures unsaddled and un-blinkered Jane's journey so-far, from teenage Liverpudlian shoe-gazer to conceptual-pop mistress, has seen her graze with pocket-punk, Synth-pop, acid folk, indie-schmindie, dark-ambient drones, Hollywood soundtracks and girl-group psych.

Raised on the enthusiasm and inspiration of Factory records founder Rob Gretton and counting Doves and Elbow as her early backing bands Jane’s desire to cultivate and promote Manchester's lesser-documented Female musicians lead to her long-running Bird records imprint (releasing the earliest recordings of Cate Le Bon, Beth Jeans Houghton and Maxine Peake) housed in the anti-office of Andy Votel’s Twisted Nerve label.

Having recorded 6 critically acclaimed self-penned solo albums Jane has also written and recorded with a wide range of multi-disciplined artists featuring pioneering ‘lost’ musicians (Wendy & Bonnie, Suzanne Ciani, Cybotron and Suzanne Christie) as well as non-conformists (Demdike Stare, Dave Tyack and The Focus Group) and high-profile friends and supporters (David Holmes, Damon Gough, Dave Brock).

Jane’s lesser known creative endeavours have seen her contribute sound-installation projects to labels via Manchester's Boomkat experimental imprint, various international theatrical institutes as a film re-composer, as a compiler for Finders Keepers records, and as an author of children’s books based on her visual collaborations with Klunkclick (Yo Gabba Gabba / Bobby Conn).

Meanwhile her presence as a live performer has been requested by the likes of Jarvis Cocker, Guy Garvey (Meltdown), Laetitia Sadier, Richard Hawley, Josephine Foster and Gruff Rhys and has flexed her knowledge in the DJ booth as a one-time member of Sean Rowley’s Guilty Pleasures DJ team. Jane’s music has appeared in fashion campaigns for Chanel and Chloe plus a wide-range of TV and Cinematic productions such as the soundtrack to ‘Kiss Of The Damned’ directed by John Cassevetes daughter Xan. Jane’s voice was also sampled by the band Coldplay, on the track ‘Another’s Arms’.

Jane’s last album ‘The Silver Globe’ was, in Jane’s own opinion, her most complete and realised commitment to vinyl to date and was released via her own Bird Records imprint in late 2014 garnering the instant accolade on Piccadilly Records Album Of The Year a notion shared with many music fans and blogs. Gilles Peterson gave the first single ‘Don't Take My Soul’ a Top Ten place in his best tracks of the year adding to the unanimous support of radio DJs like Jarvis Cocker, Marc Riley, Stuart Maconie, Lauren Laverne and Mary Anne Hobbs. Early DJ mix encouragement has also come from the likes of Andrew Weatherall and Beyond The Wizards Sleeve. Having debuted songs to a proud list of sold-out headline gigs, and as a key artist at last years Festival Number 6, beneath the rays of The Silver Globe anything is possible.

2017 will see the release of new music, yet to be announced, with a busy live schedule expected later in the year through 2018.

Their set cruises through early Rock and Roll, Rhythm and Blues, Do Wop, Rockabilly and 60s Soul.

As well as staging their own Mission 45 nights at venues around London and abroad they have also played at various Vintagerocknrollretrosoul hot spots including Buzzsaw Joint, Paper Dress Vintage, The Nitty Gritty and DJ Andy Smith’s Jam up Twist night.

They are also founder members of dj collective Original Dance Music and their night Get Rhythm is on every Thursday at Joe’s in Camden.

On their travels they have dj’ed in Berlin, Paris, Barcelona, New york & San Francisco as well as playing at various festivals including Glastonbury, Secret Garden Party, Kendal Calling, Bandada, Castlepalooza in Ireland and La Batie in Switzerland.

They have recently formed Da7, a musical collaboration with producer Lazlo Legezer. Their first release Dopamine Fiend is out in February 2015.

It’s a moment of gut-wrenching melancholy that not only plucks the heartstrings, but destroys them. This is Balthazar going all the way, with no boundaries. This, fellow travellers, is ‘Rats’.

“It’s become quite a romantic record”, Jinte Deprez says “You have to be in that special kind of mood”. Maarten Devoldere, Jinte’s songwriting partner in crime, nods and whispers reassuring: “Just take your time with it. It’s an album to soundtrack your everyday pleasures and your everyday pains.”

Maarten and Jinte go way back. They used to be teenage buskers, competing with each other, until they realized that sometimes one and one make three. Their newfound alliance led them into a vortex of musical adventures. They studied music production together and discovered the beauty and the power of string and brass arrangements.

“It’s what we do”, Maarten says “It’s a piece of cake to write a fancy big band arrangement. Some people may find it exotic. But once you learn the math, anything’s possible. Funnily enough, nowadays we’re more interested in writing simple pop music”.

In their quest for the perfect pop song, the duo founded Balthazar, a mean groove machine that released a fine debut album in 2010, chock-full of catchy, wiry indie pop.

The band earned their stripes while touring Europe: they toured the UK and France supporting dEUS and they played their hearts out in Germany, Swiss, Italy, Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

Now there’s ‘Rats’, a record that emphasizes Balthazar’s love for classic pop productions. “Most of contemporary pop productions sound too ‘noughties’”, Maarten shrugs; “There’s no depth. We’ve tried a different approach”. Maarten en Jinte cherish their love for masterful songwriters such as Leonard Cohen. They dived headfirst into Serge Gainsbourg’s sixties output: it made them think differently about rhythm, about orchestration and mixing.

“In the past we just wanted to write cool arrangements. Not this time. We wanted the emotions to surface.”

Mission accomplished. ‘The Oldest of Sisters’ works its mojo thanks to an irresistible Gainsbourg-ish rhythm section, yet, it’s the vocal harmony and the stark horn section that’ll move you to tears. Do check out the diabolically frivolous ‘Joker’s Son’ where Balthazar’s colourful, slightly tipsy chants hold up a flame to set the night on fire. ‘Listen Up’ marries a comfy jazz vibe and Bollywood-strings beautifully, leaving room for a sparkling chorus. A sunny singalong for rainy days.

Lest not forget, U.S. mixer Noah Georgeson (Joanna Newsom, The Strokes, Devendra Banhart) was behind the desk, keeping Balthazar’s sound on a tight leash. “The first album was about making a statement. This new one is about getting carte blanche, about doing what we want and what we love”, Jinte tells us, proud.

You may wonder: if ‘Rats’ feels like a clean slate to the band, does the album reveal Balthazar’s look on life and love? “Our personal crises are quite shallow”, Maarten says. “We’re still young. And we’re not fond of self-dramatizing.”

“Or self-analyzing, for that matter”, Jinte adds with a smile. On the other hand, he admits the new songs can’t shake of a certain kind of sadness.

Apparently ‘Rats’ touches on the small dramas in life. “Having to walk home alone after the party. Yeah, that can be tough. I like that kind of melancholy.”

Truth is, the boys can’t wait to play these new songs in front of an audience, together with the other Balthazar members: Patricia Vanneste, Simon Casier and Christophe Claeys.

“Every night we’ll play our best show ever. Just watch us.”

No worries. They’ll take us out of that dark, cold forest. A little less weary than before.