The best albums of 2021 newstatesman.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from newstatesman.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
7.5/10
It’s a crazy world; as we’ve become more isolated, social media has become a forum for people to share every detail, opinion and non-event that happens to them, a state in which you can often feel more voyeur than follower.
Virginia Wing’s last album, Ecstatic Arrow, was recorded with the Swiss Alps as a backdrop. This time however, the group – now a trio following the addition of Christopher Duffin – took the only available course of action left to them by recording, ‘at home, in our tracksuit bottoms’.
Their collective mission according to singer Alice Merida Richards was to make, in ‘private LIFE’, something unique from 2020’s nightmarescape of recurring existential dread, whilst distilling into its fabric influences ranging from Prince to Timbaland to The Slits.
The Rates: Virginia Wing on basic house and crap LP art loudandquiet.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from loudandquiet.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The Vinyl District
February 18, 2021
Part three of the TVD Record Store Club’s look at the new and reissued releases presently in stores for February 2021. Part one is here and part two is here.
NEW RELEASE PICK: V/A,
Brighter Days Ahead (Colemine) As was the case with most of us, when the pandemic-related reality of 2020 became fully evident, Loveland, Ohio’s Colemine Records found it necessary to shift focus. Instead of following through with a hefty release schedule, owner-operator Terry Cole began offering individual tracks from acts affiliated with Colemine and Karma Chief Records and placing them under the thematic
Bernie Brooks
, February 16th, 2021 09:14
Virginia Wing talk to Bernie Brooks about music as a coping mechanism, training the press, and making a 2020 record Well, you know what? I ve been vaccinated, says Virginia Wing s Alice Merida Richards. Yeah, I got it done like last week. In the UK, they re doing it for national treasures, she laughs.
At this point, who wants to hear about 2020, the year that won t die? We re all drained and depleted. Everyone is so, so tired. And yet, here we are, in 2021, awash with pressers for records recorded during lockdown, records inevitably about 2020, about trauma and healing. Still, the COVID-19 pandemic is the first thing I reflexively bring up and the first thing we talk about as Virginia Wing - the avant-pop trio of Richards, Sam Pillay, and Christopher Duffin - get settled into their practice space for the first time in quite a while. It s the new small talk. Everyone can relate.