Reviews / / 05 · 05 · 2021
Itâs finally here! The fabled âVan Weezerâ has finally arrived! Take your pandemic, your year-long delays, and your brilliant surprise releases, and stick âem where the sun donât shine! Weâre hair metal stans now,
baby.
Seriously though,
Weezer have been teasing this album for quite some time; with references to âVan Weezerâ dating back to before the band had even released their magnum anus â the
self-titled âblackâ album, for those not in the know â in March 2019. Rivers Cuomo, somewhat optimistically, has described the bandâs 15th (!) studio album as
Letâs get this out of the way first: does Van Weezer sound anything at all like Van Halen? Aside from a handful of guitar solos featuring shredding and finger tapping â techniques that the late Eddie Van Halen (whom this album was dedicated to after his passing in October 2020) helped popular
Saloon Dion are unapologetically themselves.
The Bristol group don t see any reason to hiding behind a pretence, writing songs aimed to entertain themselves, their friends, and - potentially - you.
A kind of super-group matching disparate elements of the city s DIY communities, Saloon Dion draw on the combined forces of Football FC, Kimbo Nice, Ratbags, and more.
New single Deal Or No Deal comes bursting out of the traps, a surreal but raw slice of guitar pop that veers from post-punk to Pavement influences.
Vocalist Taryn McDonnell surges into matters personal, but it s a universal theme: Saloon Dion have sculpted a song about being who you are.
Features / / 04 · 05 · 2021
Gorillaz might well be indestructible. A titanic pop force, their ability to renew and regenerate has allowed them to outstrip their peers. The pandemic, though, is an entirely different challenge.
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It could have all been so different. When Gorillaz kicked off 2020 they wanted to embrace a new means of creating, a different method of collaboration. Song Machine moved the multi-media outfit away from the standard write an album, release an album, tour an album formula, allowing them to deconstruct different studio narratives on a song by song basis.
Launching with the exquisite âMomentary Blissâ â a raucous collaboration with incendiary Northampton rap gobshite slowthai and Kentish punk duo Slaves â it was designed as a means to shake up and overhaul Gorillazâ methodologies. Speaking to Clash, 2D sums up their motivations: âWell, itâs like, if you do the same thing for ages
The Weeknd is set to perform at this year s
BRIT Awards.
The glitzy ceremony returns in socially distanced fashion on May 11th, with the crowd including a number of NHS staff and key workers.
Performers include Dua Lipa and Arlo Parks, while Griff has already been crowned with
The Weeknd is set to film a performance for the BRIT Awards, having last performed at the ceremony in 2016.
Nominated once more for International Male Solo Artist, it comes on the back of an outrageously successful 12 months spell for Abel Tesfaye.
It also follows neatly on from
his Grammy snub - we re glad to see the BRITs offering more recognition of his success.
KT Tunstall have organised intimate home town shows.
The dates are part of Passport: Back to Our Roots, a project that aims to celebrate the key role independent venues play in British music.
Slow Readers Club will play Hebden Bridge Trades Club on September 19th, while
KT Tunstall returns to Dunfermline on October 21st.
Metronomy hit Brighton on November 9th, while elbow will tread the boards at Manchester s Night & Day Cafe on November 23rd.
The move comes as the vaccination programme roll out begins to take hold, following a traumatic 12 months for live music infrastructure.
Mark Davyd, CEO Music Venue Trust says: We can t emphasise enough how absolutely vital the support of artists has been to the Save Our Venues campaign. The artists that stepped forward to support the Passport Back to our Roots project not only provided an incredible opportunity for fans to see them in intimate surroundings, they provided a real focus of attention for audiences on what they could do to