No. 17 - Post-post-punk edition
Meme courtesy of @xiu_shoegaze on Instagram
From the outside, the Windmill, in Brixton, UK, looks more like a faded Jersey Shore dancehall than a cultural hub. Yet over the past half-decade or so this shabby venue has become a hotbed for London’s music scene, particularly the kind anchored by angular guitars, funky rhythms, and atonal vocals.
From a North American perspective - that is the perspective of someone who’s never laid eyes on the joint in person, let alone stepped foot inside - Idles, Shame, and Ireland’s Fontaines D.C. (geopolitical considerations tend to flatten the further away you get from their centre) were the first to break out of the scene that’s formed around the venue, with artists like Dry Cleaning, Goat Girl and Fat White Family coming hot on their heels. All are excellent groups and well worth your time.
But like any social scene, there are cliques within cliques, and the one that, IMO, has been producing the most exciting music over the last few years is the one associated with the record label and studio Speedy Wunderground.
The venture is the brainchild of music producer Dan Carey whose extensive resume includes work with The Kills, Franz Ferdinand, Lilly Allen, Bat For Lashes and many, many more. In 2014 records that he produced for Kae Tempest and Nick Mulvey got nominated for the Mercury Prize.
Still, those collaborations didn’t really account for the raw and wild sounds he’d manifest with SW. Basically, the whole thing was a way for Carey to work fast and experiment - see the label’s 10-point manifesto on their website - dropping limited-run seven-inch singles of whatever noise he and his collaborators could come up with.
And it remained that until about 2019 when some of the younger acts he was working with started building a lot of buzz of the singles they were making with Carey. Black Midi were the first band to put the label on my radar, followed by Squid and the Black Country, New Road. All made the Windmill their defacto clubhouse (if it wasn’t already) and all are now international stars, at least by the standards of post-punk rooted DIY bands (not to mention bands making guitar-based music)
Curiously, Carey appears to make no effort to retain any of these acts to his label - Black Midi are signed to Rough Trade, Squid to Warp and Black Country, New Road Ninja Tune. Rather he seems content to stick to his original ethos of trying new things quickly.
If there’s a tie-that-binds all these groups - one of the real treats about them is how different they all sound - it’s a basis in post-punk sound and ethos, and I’m not talking about the early-oughts NYC version. If the original punk movement had a raison d’etre, it was wiping out everything that had come before and starting over at year zero. Wire picked up the baton before 1977 was even over and bands like Gang of Four, Joy Division and Public Image Ltd followed suit, quickly building an alternate musical timeline that we now call post-punk (Simon Reynolds’ great Rip It Up and Start Again offers what is arguably the definitive history of the period).
Of course, what makes all these bands so great is their ability to reference the past while building on, or subverting it. Here’s a quick rundown of how many of the Speedy Wunderground bands are doing just that.
Black Midi were first, but Squid (who are technically from Brighton) have emerged as the standard-bearers of the SW scene. Chalk that up to the fact that the group have what passes for a traditional lead singer Ollie Judge (also the group’s drummer), if his sing-speak yelps a la the B-52s Fred Schneider and Parquet Courts’ Andrew Savage can be considered singing. Beyond that, the band write sprawling epics that reference punk, funk krautrock and more. If you’re looking for a place to dive in, their debut full-length debut Bright Green Field is the place to start.
Black Midi burst out of the SW/Windmill scene because they seemingly emerged fully formed, with a “heady mix of spiky post-punk, Talking Heads funk, and Touch and Go Records noise” as I wrote back in 2019 (for a taste of their formidable talents from this era, check out “bmbmbm”). They’ve since lost founding guitarist Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin, gained keyboardist Seth Evans and saxophone player Kaidi Akinnibi and morphed into a modern-day Primus on Cavalcade, their just-released second album.
All the music played by the bands outlined here could be described as “sprawling” but it’s probably most appropriate when talking about Black Country, New Road. Post-rock heroes Slint are regularly invoked as an influence on the seven-member crew. And while that comparison is apt, it also sells the group short in terms of them carving out their own sound and identity (or lack thereof - the image on the cover of their debut is a stock photo pulled from Unsplash). BCNM are tight with Black Midi and the groups often perform together (as “Black Midi, New Road”) and the two groups are rumored to be working on a record together.
The Lounge Society are perhaps the greatest outliers in the clutch of Speedy Wunderground groups in that their songs mostly adhere to typical pop forms (verse-chorus-verse, etc.). Nevertheless, the Yorkshire band manage to push things forward in way that could conceivably find space on some hip playlists. Their debut EP Silk for the Starving dropped last week.
Kool Kids Self-Promotion Club
I wrote about the latest LP from Detroit’s The Armed for Exclaim!’s “Best Album of 2021 So Far” feature. I said it is “what happens when you give punks, art school kids and all-around weirdos the keys to pop music's kingdom.”
Kool Kids Recommendation Club
Illuminati Hotties are back baby! After their way-better-than-it-needed-to-be contractual obligation record Free IH, Sarah Tudzin is releasing Let Me Do One More the official follow-up to Kiss Yr Frenemies this fall. “Pool Hopping” follows the D’Angelo homage “MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA” and falls more in line with the spiky and spritely indie rock of IllHots debut. I already pre-ordered the new LP cause I’m a nerd. 🤓
One of the coolest parts of sticking with an artist across a long career is watching their music change just as their own listening habits do. Case in point, Eamon McGrath cut his teeth in DIY punk, but over the past dozen or so years has touched on experimental noise, rock and Americana among many, many sounds. After taking four years off from recording as a solo artist (he wrote a book! it’s pretty good!) he’s been on a tear, dropping three records in three years (2019’s Guts is my personal favourite) with a fourth on the way this year (he also wrote a second book). From that forthcoming LP, “Cannonball” featuring Edmonton’s Cayley Thomas, pays homage to the country music he listened to growing up in Alberta and is the most twangy thing he’s released to date.
Pub rock was one of those brief musical moments that affected the UK and the UK only (see also: baggy/Madchester). Basically it was the bridge between glam and punk. Chubby and the Gang mix blistering tempos and decibles of hardcore with pub rock’s no frills aesthetic to great effect on last year’s under the radar barnbuner Speed Kills. You get the impression this is a gang you don’t want to fuck with. “Coming Up Through,” the first single from follow up The Mutt’s Nuts features slightly slower BPMs, but all retains all the edge and attitude, promising another banner release from this London crew.
Colleeen Green has a knack for spinning classic punk tropes on their head, from her great, all-to-brief Milo Goes to Compton album, to a general twee-in-a-leather-jacket take on Ramones three-chrod blitz. She hasn’t released a new record since 2015’s I Want to Grow Up, but just dropped “I Wanne Be a Dog” a spin on the Stooges classic “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” It’s the first taste of new LP Cool out in September.
Baltimore’s Angel Du$t are a super-group of sorts, boasting members from hardcore bands Turnstile and Trapped Under Ice. Yet with each subsequent release, the group move further and further away from the sound of their members’ day jobs. That’s fine by me - Turnstile a great HC band for folks who don’t like HC bands. But I love how propulsive, yet tuneful Angel Du$t’s music can be. Take Bigger House, the new EP that expands Lil House from earlier this year. As well as featuring remixes from Panda Bear and Montreal’s Lunice, it’s got acoustic-ish banger like “Never Ending Game.”