The Chats by Luke Henery
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The Chats have posted a brand new track entitled Struck By Lightning.
It emerged during live shows squeezed in between Australian lockdowns as the band settled down with new guitarist Josh Hardy.
“Struck By Lightning came about when we were having a jam,” Eamon Sandwith explains. “I was on the drums, and I just started playing this little pattern, like, ‘struck-by – LIGHT-NIN’!’ I thought, ‘Hmm, that could work’, so I went home and wrote a song about getting struck by lightning, like how you would feel, and what would happen.”
Garden Of England is the latest taste of Crows’ new album Beware Believers, which is due for release on April 1st.
“This is straight-up our Brexit anthem,” James Cox explains. “Don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t care less which way you voted, your vote, your choice. I just hated how much Brexit had become so ingrained in our day to day life. First thing I’d hear about when I woke up and the last thing I’d read before I went to sleep at night.”
“It became all people spoke about. ‘Garden of England’ is more of a comment about the divisiveness it caused, splitting families, friends, widening the north-south divide and empowering nationalism. Public figures’ ability to lie publicly and not be held accountable, it’s just dangerous dog-whistle politics that doesn’t belong in the UK.”
Gruff Rhys is streaming People Are Pissed from a new two-track single which is available digitally now.
“The lyrics were basically inspired by the widespread anger I – and many other people felt towards the incompetence and arrogance of the Johnson regime during the lockdowns – not that I feel any different now,” he says. “I mean the words go off on one like most of my songs but that was the seed of the idea.”
European tour dates, meanwhile, will take the Super Furry Animals frontman to the BBC 6 Music Festival early next month.
Panic Shack have shared the video for their new single The Ick with debut EP Baby Shack out on April 8th.
“The Ick is about that feeling you get when you’re dating someone and they do something that really turns you off,” they explain.
“No matter how insignificant or trivial – the feeling is irreversible and it’s really not their fault. Something that shouldn’t be a deal-breaker but when you’re there staring your Ick in the face, there really is no coming back from it.”
The latest single from Kae Tempest’s upcoming new album features Lianne La Havas.
No Prizes was recorded with producer Dan Carey, La Havas praised by Tempest upon this release as a, ‘good friend and mind-blowing artist’:
“So grateful for her voice in the world and on this record. A portrait of three people getting on with getting on. I just got to keep climbing.”
Peter Doherty and Frédéric Lo have shared another track from their upcoming debut album.
The Libertines man and French multi-media artist have teamed up for the release of The Fantasy Life of Poetry & Crime on March 18th, Epidemiologist written with some of Morrissey’s best solo work in mind according to Doherty:
“When Frédéric and I were sat at the kitchen table writing with guitars, we wanted the feel of ‘The Last of The International Playboys’ or ‘Everyday is Like Sunday’. There are a number of references in the lyrics to films, writers and books. It’s about hope when things are a mess.”
