Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 73 i Under the Radar

Mark Redfern (Publisher/Senior Editor) 1. Magdalena Bay: “Image” 2. Cassandra Jenkins: “Delphinium Blue” 3. Nilüfer Yanya: “Like I Say (I runaway)” 4. Maya Hawke: “Missing Out” 5. The WAEVE: “You Saw” 6. Good Looks: “If It’s Gone” 7. Peel Dream Magazine: “Lie in the Gutter” 8. Camera Obscura: “We’re Going to Make It in a Man’s World” 9. GIFT: “Later” 10. Tindersticks: “New World” Celine Teo-Blockey (Podcast Editor/Senior Writer) 1. Fontaines D.C.: “Sundowner” 2. Goat Girl: “tcnc” 3. Kneecap: “Better Way to Live” (Feat. Grian Chatten) 4. Maya Hawke: “Big Idea” 5. Glass Animals: “I Can’t Make You Fall in Love Again” Andy Von Pip (Pleased to Meet You Editor U.K./Senior Writer) 1. Blondshell: “Docket” (Feat. Bully) 2. Man/Woman/Chainsaw: “Ode to Clio” 3. The Last Dinner Party: “The Feminine Urge”…

When Glass Animals’ Dave Bayley wrote “Heat Waves” in the aftermath of drummer Joe Seward’s brain injury, he had no idea that a catastrophic, global tragedy was looming and it would set the stage for the song’s massive international success. Released in the depths of the pandemic, “Heat Waves” was a constant companion on the radio, eventually hitting #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 2022 after a record-breaking 59-week climb up the charts, staying at the top for five weeks. It reversed the fortunes of a band with an uncanny knack for marrying an awkward vocal cadence and outlandish phrasing with earwormy hooks for delightful results, but invariably led to an existential crisis for Bayley that set the scene for their latest album, I Love You So F***king…

PLEASED TO MEET YOU Sunday (1994) made waves earlier this year with their stunning debut single, “Tired Boy.” Not only does the single resonate like a lost classic, but the band also arrived with a fully formed visual aesthetic. Combining confessional lyrics, chiming guitar flourishes, and bittersweet melodies laced with knowing dark humor, Sunday (1994) emerged as a band capable of reaching back and touching fingers with the past, conjuring up artists such as The Sundays, Mazzy Star, and Pale Saints while infusing their music with a fresh contemporary twist. Founded around the creative nucleus of Englishman in Los Angeles, Lee Newell, and American Paige Turner, with their live set-up complemented by a mysterious drummer simply known as “X,” they began crafting music in their one-bedroom apartment and releasing it…

PLEASED TO MEET YOU Though clear-headed and direct, a visit with Tyler Jordan, front-man for Austin-based band Good Looks, can take some circuitous routes once deep in conversation. While much of the band’s sophomore release, Lived Here For a While, contends with more serious subjects, the exception is the celebratory “Vaughn.” Written in honor of Jordan’s current partner, the song harks back to an era of single word titled songs where a girl’s name is called out repeatedly. Talk flits from Little Richard’s “Lucille,” to Chuck Berry’s “Carol,” to Bob Dylan’s “Sara,” to Randy Newman’s “Marie.” And it’s on that last one we dwell a bit. “Randy Newman just fucks with you. The songs aren’t true, they’re these stories he writes and they’re mixed up. That one [‘Marie’] just rips…

Maya Hawke is painting. It’s something she begins to do within the first few minutes of my conversation with her, and something she will continue to engage with at regular intervals as we talk with one another. “I have attention problems,” she says almost apologetically. “It helps me do something with my hands.” Hawke’s medium of choice just so happens to be a form of watercolor called gouache. “I love it. [The paints] come in these little dishes and they’re my favorite.” With the top of her brush occasionally flitting across the frame, Hawke and I are speaking to one another via our respective computers—hers specifically situated on the screened-in back of her semi-permanent residence in Cabbagetown, GA, a neighborhood and former textile center located on the east side of…

My Firsts is our email interview series where we ask musicians to tell us about their first life experiences, be it early childhood ones (first word, first concert, etc.) or their first tastes of being a musician (first band, first tour, etc.). For this My Firsts we talk to Oceanator (aka Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter/ guitarist Elise Okusami). Oceanator’s new album, Everything is Love and Death, is her third full-length and is out now on Polyvinyl. It’s the follow up to Nothing’s Ever Fine, which was one of our Top 100 Albums of 2022, and Things I Never Said, which initially came out in August 2020 via her own Plastic Miracles label and then was reissued physically in February 2021 by Polyvinyl. It was one of our Top 100 Albums of 2020.…

Wendy and I have recently been rewatching all of Stranger Things with our 11-year-old daughter Rose, who’s seeing it for the first time and is obsessed with it. We’ve been watching one or two episodes a night and we are currently halfway through season three (by the time you read this, however, we’ll probably be caught up and ready for the forthcoming fifth and final season). Season three features the debut of Maya Hawke as Robin Buckley, the quirky co-worker of Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) at Scoops Ahoy, the ice cream parlor in the freshly opened Starcourt Mall. It’s purely coincidental that we’re watching Stranger Things while finishing an issue with Hawke on the cover—one of Rose’s best friends, Sally, recently watched the show’s first four seasons and Rose is…

In 2003, most of us were wal-lowing in a very different music scene. In the wake of Napster, we were busy downloading MP3s and learning how to interface with iTunes. But not David Ignizio, the owner and proprietor of Square Records in Akron, Ohio. As he recounts, “We were only really in the serious planning stages of the shop for a few months. When a prime location came available in Akron’s Highland Square neighborhood, we just had to jump on it. Realistically, we probably were not ready but that sped everything along.” There have been a lot of other changes as well, as the RIAA recently certified 2023 as another banner year for vinyl, as the format was up for the 17th straight year. “Now we are almost entirely vinyl-oriented,”…

Marina Allen Eight Pointed Star (FIRE) Like a true poet, Marina Allen conjures strange realities, places that exist somewhere between her imagination and the tangible world. The Los Angeles artist may be something of a throwback to the Laurel Canyon singer/songwriter mold, but on her new album, Eight Pointed Star, she pushes toward fresh spaces, twisting the traditional form into something familiar but not quite recognizable. Allen has found the perfect collaborator in producer Chris Cohen, whose graceful, inventive approach is woven throughout Eight Pointed Star. He grounds the record in a bed of warm electric guitar, brightly strummed acoustic and spacious piano, but it’s the small, deft surprises that give the material an artful tension; the exotic, cymbal-heavy drum arrangement on “Deep Fake,” or the earthy strings that appear…

For our recurring Self-Portrait feature, we ask musicians to take a self-portrait photo (or paint/draw a self-portrait) and write a list of personal things about themselves, things that their fans might not already know about them. This Self-Portrait is by Matthew Caws of Nada Surf. Nada Surf’s new album, Moon Mirror, is their first for New West and comes out as the band celebrates the 30th anniversary of their debut single, “The Plan”/“Telescope.” The band produced the album with Ian Laughton (Supergrass, Ash), recording it at Rockfield Studios in Monmouthshire, Wales. For the past three decades Nada Surf’s main lineup has remained: Caws (vocals, guitar), Daniel Lorca (bass, vocals), and Ira Elliot (drums). Longtime collaborator Louie Lino is also part of the current lineup. The band formed in 1992, initially…

Stuart Murdoch “knew what he was doing,” says Kenny McKeeve, as if realizing it in the moment. The guitarist is recollecting the series of events that lead Camera Obscura—McKeeve, singer and guitarist Tracyanne Campbell, drummer Lee Thomson, and bassist Gavin Dunbar-back into a recording studio to dream up their new album Look to the East, Look to the West, their first in 11 years, and—more significantly—their first since the passing of friend and keyboardist Carey Lander, in 2015. Murdoch, the Belle and Sebastian frontman, who produced Camera Obscura’s turn-of-the-century debut, had extended an invitation to the group in 2018 to perform at The Boaty Weekender the following summer: a curated, floating music festival set in the Mediterranean. Inactive since Lander’s death due to a rare type of bone cancer, Camera…

Once the grief of loss sets in, it will continue for as long as you are alive. It’s a constant relay of feeling a large absence, and trying to fill that very absence, and ultimately falling short. This struggle is acutely captured on Alan Sparhawk’s remarkable solo album, White Roses, My God; the first music he released in the wake of Mimi Parker’s passing—the woman he loved, raised a family with, and played music with. Low, the seminal Duluth, Minnesota-based outfit they formed together made records that were deeply rooted in their kinship, communion, and spiritual beliefs. The band remained musically curious until the very end, bookending a three-decade career with their seismic thirteenth album, 2021’s HEY WHAT. When Parker succumbed to ovarian cancer in November 2022, the fundamental force…

DETECTION Hana Vu started the rollout for her new album Romanticism by getting killed twice. First, she gets decapitated in the video for “Care,” and then, on the Renaissance-style album artwork-a direct reference to Artemisia Gentileschi’s 17th century painting Judith slaying Holofernes—she gets her throat ceremoniously slashed. Nevertheless, Romanticism kicks off with a song called “Look Alive,” where the Los Angelesbased artist exclaims: “There is no song in my heart / Like I thought there was / When I was young and I fell apart.” On “Airplane,” the first song Vu penned for Romanticism, she sings: “Do you remember getting older / Can you tell me what it’s about / And at the end of endless summer / Got no plans to hang around.” Romanticism ensnares that feeling of everything…

Some record labels are more than just businesses; they’re musical families, built on passion and a genuine belief in their artists. Domino Recording Company is a prime example. Started with nothing more than a £40-a-week government “enterprise allowance scheme” and an unwavering love for music, Laurence Bell and Jacqui Rice set up shop in 1993, operating out of a small London flat. Over three decades later, their DIY spirit and dedication to nurturing creative talent remain as strong as ever. They’re not in it for the mega-yachts and private jets—they’re here to champion the artists they admire, collaborate with them to realize their visions, and provide a launching pad for their careers. It’s a label that also serves as a reminder that extraordinary music often emerges from the most unexpected…

Nilüfer Yanya has never questioned the need for art, as she was born into it. Yanya’s parents and siblings were always in the midst of creating things. Her father as a painter, her mother as a textile designer, and her older sister is a visual artist and filmmaker. Even before she became a musician, Yanya’s young mind was naturally attuned to the process of making things. “It’s pretty deep, I think!” Yanya exclaims, her voice jumping in a jolt of illumination. Her thoughts then wander off again, allowing the silences between her sentences to ripen. “It’s very simple: is it about being real? About being authentic? And you don’t just make it up. There’s this real thing right in front of you. And if you want it to exist on…

The ubiquitous Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson almost didn’t make the cut for one of the cleverest rhymes on the Los Angeles-based Cheekface’s fourth album, It’s Sorted. The lyric snippet from the funk laden “I Am Continuing to Do My Thing,” goes “Waxing in Atlanta, waning in Wisconsin, vaping in the parking lot with Dwyane ‘The Rock’ Johnson.” The cities were inspired by the starting and ending points of one of the band’s tours, but the wrestler turned Hollywood star not so much. “The lyric was actually A.J. ‘Alex’ Johnson for a while. He’s our touring keys player. But it felt a little too much like an in-joke. We were just spitballing people and Dwayne Johnson just reared his bald head as the resolution to the thought,” band leader and co-songwriter…