Candid, involving and full of character, Prima Queen’s music has become a world unto itself. The songs of Louise Macphail and Kristin McFadden play like a love letter to the radical power of friendship; to the fans who have reveled in the band’s bitingly charismatic storytelling. Listening to their glorious debut LP 'The Prize', you want to crawl up inside all of its effusive, empathic melodies and bathe in the warmth of the enviable bond at the record’s core.

Described, accurately, by McFadden as an album that “screams empowerment and strength,” 'The Prize' uses the pair’s fateful connection as a North Star for their shared journey towards growth. Tapping into the shimmering pop sensibilities of HAIM and Jenny Lewis, an openness of spirit defines these 12 tracks, partly inspired by the euphoria Prima Queen experienced on stage over the past year while touring with Olivia Dean, Dream Wife and Swim Deep. It’s here where the band establish themselves as astute, refreshingly frank songwriters, articulating supersized feelings with grace and wit.

TRACK LISTING

1. Clickbait (Intro)
2. Mexico
3. The Prize
4. Oats (Ain’t Gonna Beg)
5. Ugly
6. Flying Ant Day
7. Meryl Streep
8. Spaceship
9. Fool
10. Woman And Child
11. Sunshine Song
12. More Credit

Over three studio albums and nearly a decade, Wirral-born Louisa Roach has built She Drew The Gun into a project that fully lives up to its incendiary name. Her 2016 debut ‘Memories of Another Future’ was swiftly followed by a crowning as Glastonbury Festival’s Emerging Talent Competition winner; follow-up ‘Revolution of Mind’ was named one of BBC 6 Music’s Albums of the Year, while 2021’s ‘Behave Myself’ saw Clash praising the record as “some of her most finessed and contoured songwriting to date”. Having firmly carved out her niche of rousing, laser-sharp social commentary, it’s a side to Roach’s songwriting that will never leave her (not in this political climate at least). But sometimes, life sends you to a place where you have to finally turn your eye on yourself, and it’s with this in mind that She Drew The Gun presents fourth album ‘Howl’, out via Submarine Cat Records.

Recorded alongside producer Ash Workman (Christine & The Queens, Metronomy) who helped bring the tracks’ pop side to life during sessions at his Margate studio, Louisa Roach also worked with her son Cole on ‘Howl’’s demos: the beginning of a familial working relationship that they’ve already shaken hands on to continue. It’s a heartwarming note in an album story that’s been far from plain sailing. Roach doesn’t claim to be ‘healed’ (if such a thing exists), but as she prepares to release She Drew The Gun’s impressively vulnerable fourth, she’s somewhere along the journey with a document that shows just how far she’s come.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Howl
A2 Mirrors
A3 Became
A4 Shine On
A5 Rise
B1 Washed In Blue
B2 Nothing Lasts
B3 What’s The Matter
B4 Conjuring
B5 Ritual
B6 Out

Led by vocalist Jack Lawther and guitarist Rory O’Rourke - on 'It's All Been Done Before' - their second EP of 2024 - Flat Party build on their distinctive theatrical flair, doubling down on heavy distortion, sky-reaching vocal harmonies, wide-eyed orchestration and soaring choruses.

Co-produced with Chris McCrory (Walt Disco, The Joy Hotel), across the new EP Flat Party hint at influence from 70's glam-rock, jagged art-rock, noughties alt-rock and everything in between - all the while flirting with ideas surrounding hedonism, desperation, promiscuity and blurry-eyed romanticism as they continue to carve out their own unique universe of colourful indie-rock.

New single and EP title track "It's All Been Done Before" closes out the EP track listing in a state of melancholy. Adorned with searing guitar riffs and punctuated by Jack Lawther's introspective lens on intimacy and self-doubt, Lawther said:

"I’ve always loved songs that contradict themselves. The music of this song is quite melancholic and unsure of itself, while the lyrics are just pure love. It’s kind of fitting that the relationship I was writing about didn’t work out in the end; I was singing something that I didn’t believe and that’s evident in the song. Musically, this is the most “alt-rock” we’ve ever been; it’s romantic, desperate and boastful."

With collective influences ranging from Big Star, Suede and Sparks to Japanese Breakfast, The Replacements, Manic Street Preachers and David Bowie, Flat Party's music and overriding ethos historically has been rooted in escapism, yet their vision for the future of the project is more ambitious and sprawling than ever before, as Lawther explains...

"In comparison to the subtle optimism of our debut EP, the songs on our new EP are dark, hedonistic and dramatic.. There’s always been that side of the band present, so it felt right to represent it properly. Sonically, it’s all a lot more intense than the first EP too and we’ve really made the most of our musical arsenal when it comes to the arrangements."

TRACK LISTING

A1 - Circle
A2 - Paranoia/Delicate Dawn
A3 - Shotgun
B1 - Madonna
B2 - It's All Been Done Before 

She’s In Parties are a hazy and ethereal quartet whose own idiosyncratic amalgamation of shoegaze and dream-pop belies their relatively young years.

This EP is the band's most politically driven body music yet. “It’s a timeless topic, people have always and will always sing about injustices, often though, people want an escape and sing about things like love because sometimes that’s easier than telling the truth.” Katie says, “I’m certainly not a political person and would opt for escapism in music, but sometimes there are things that happen in our society or on social media that you just can’t avoid. They’ve been plaguing my mind especially, so I’ve been writing about this stuff a lot more and it has now become a prevalent theme in this next EP”

'Puppet Show' sees the band in their most lyrically mature state yet. It tackles post coming of age worries and the existential realisation of the world’s issues from social media, to wars, and personal anxieties of feeling helpless to it all.

TRACK LISTING

1. Puppet Show
2. The Man
3. The Times
4. FSM
5. Ballad Of The Broken Nebula

‘Make It Up’ is the long player follow up to FEET’s debut album ‘What’s Inside Is More Than Just Ham’ which catapulted them into the indie-rock spotlight in 2019. Crowd pleasing thrillers such as ‘Petty Thieving’, ‘the anthemic ‘English Weather’ and more recent crowd favourite ‘Changing My Mind Again’ have solidified the band as one of the most exciting guitar acts on the scene.

‘Make It Up’ distils the FEET of old with a fine-tuned, cohesive, and compelling new output that builds on the sonic DNA of their debut, while effortlessly taking it to the next level.

“There’s no throw away ideas on this album and everything has to have its place. It has to be ironed out and perfected,” explains frontman George Haverson. “I don’t like to say polished, but it is perfected to a point where everything can be done in its fullest form. I feel like we’ve got 12 complete songs on this album and not 12 ideas. We’ve made the FEET machine and now it’s a case of inserting the right idea and the output is a great song. Before, it felt a bit more like we were throwing shit at the wall. This time round, everything feels a bit more refined.”

“Being in a band is a big chunk of time in your life, but this is a choice we all make, and we don’t ever have to even think about coming back to FEET. It’s like our child, really, and we’re all the surrogate fathers of this band! That keeps us together, this desire to create and make something that’s truly great.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Better Than Last
2. The Real Thing
3. I’m Wrong
4. Greasy Boy
5. Why Would I Lie
6. Truly Awful
7. Sit Down
8. No Vision
9. When You’re Feeling Strange
10. Bullseye
11. On The Wire
12. Goodbye (So Long, Farewell)

If one thing is clear from the offset of revelatory fourth album ‘There’s A Big Star Outside...’, it’s that Swim Deep is no longer the same band you’ve always known.

In some ways, Swim Deep’s fourth album – full of acoustic guitars and floral notes courtesy of a Mellotron keyboard (one of the finest musical exports from their native Birmingham) – has no business being as luscious and evolved as it is. But ‘There’s A Big Star Outside...’ could only have surfaced as a result of such testing years. It takes the youthful dreaming of their debut, and the excitable experimentalism of its follow-ups, and leads it to a more assured space, aided hugely by the input of producer Bill Ryder-Jones, who became a mentor throughout the journey. “A lot of the album, Bill’s drawn out of me,” Ozzy nods. “That sense of boldness and not hiding behind the music that he’s instilled in me has really made the album flourish, and be what I want it to be. It’s a cliché to say, but I feel I’ve been writing towards this record my whole life.”

It’s fitting that this is the message Swim Deep have arrived at, because ‘There’s A Big Star Outside...’ genuinely does feel like a golden moment for the band. Across more than a decade in the industry, they’ve revelled in the highs and weathered the lows – but their fourth feels like an album that exists outside of all that. It’s one that’s less about chasing the next rungs of success and more about really nailing their flag to the mast as artists, as adults, and as a group who were always in it for more than just fleeting scenes and early buzz.

TRACK LISTING

1. How Many Love Songs Have Died In Vegas?
2. Very Heaven
3. These Words
4. Robin
5. Don't Make Me A Stranger
6. First Song
7. Big Star
8. It's Just Sun In Your Eyes
9. So Long, So Far (Marble-Bellied Baby)
10. Fire Surrounds

Following the band's two acclaimed EPs 'Redevelopment' and 'In A Middle English Town', the new album arrives on the heels of two sold-out "secret" London shows and the album's vibrant first taste "Bethnal Green". Home Counties have consistently retained an distinct element of unpredictability across their releases, and whilst new single "Wild Guess" opens with one of the band's most 'traditional' introductions, the song quickly escalates into familiar unbridled, joyous bedlam. Produced and recorded by the band's guitarist Conor Kearney and mixed by Andy Savours (Black Country New Road, Rina Sawayama, Sorry), speaking more on "Wild Guess", the band's Will Harrison said:

"Wild Guess is the oldest song but latest addition to the new album. It voices a variety of concerns: day-to-day financial worries, fear of social isolation in old age, even a looming future of ecological collapse. It was written as part of an experimental side project which saw never the light of day - and in its original form was like a deranged version of the Wii Sports loading screen, hosting a detuned Ed Miliband speech in replace of the vocals. We revisited the song many times over the years but it never felt quite Home Counties. Over the last year however, as our sound was shifting we gave it one last go. It was an exercise in restraint, holding ourselves back to allow the song to breath. That said, we couldn’t resist retaining some of the original chaos of the original demo, sticking in a drum and bass inspired drop at the end. In that way, the song sets the new parameters of where Home Counties is at the moment..."

Prioritising the beauty in the ordinary and unanimously leaning into a fun, exploratory way of thinking, debut album 'Exactly As It Seems' presents a notable sonic shift for Home Counties, embracing a more dance-orientated sensibility and an ambitious inventive attention to detail, all with a focus on melody in its purest form.

With last year’s ‘In A Middle English Town’ EP propelling their live set into full-on hedonistic party territory, the addition of new vocalist Lois Kelly in late 2022 completed their transformation, with the band fully embracing the power of a good time. “We just love songs that are dance-y and we want our gigs to be fun. On our last tour we were finally at a stage where we had enough new material, on top of the last EP, where every song basically felt like a dance song: that’s the music we like to listen to and the shows we want to go to. I don’t really consider us a guitar outfit anymore. We want to be a more melodic band, with pop tunes and catchy songs," said Will.

On the Home Counties stereo when it came to finalising their debut album, a list of favourites as varied as they come were given air time: jungle (the genre, not the band), Talking Heads, Britney Spears, The Slits. At the centre of it all is nothing except simple quality. “We just appreciate something if it’s a banger rather than having to put a criteria on it,” says Conor.

Thematically, meanwhile, the band have been traversing the ups and downs of London life, documenting their findings as they barrel towards the second half of their twenties and all that that entails; laments on “renting and how rubbish landlords are and how unaffordable it is”, the feeling of getting older; turning 25 and not wanting to go clubbing and feeling guilty about that – always managing to balance the duality of lyrical frankness and musical buoyancy with gusto.

With an eye for the day-to-day, all-too-relatable details of crap modern living, coupled with an ear for hook-filled, grin-inducing melody, the pay-off is one riddled in joy rather than despair. Or, as Conor succinctly sums up the current ethos of the band: “My life is ruined cos I can’t afford rent, but I’m gonna dance about it.”

TRACK LISTING

A1. Uptight
A2. Bethnal Green
A3. Funk U Up
A4. Dividing Lines
A5. Push Comes To Shove
B1. Wild Guess
B2. You Break It, You Bought It
B3. Cradle, Coffin
B4. Exactly As It Seems
B5. Posthumous Spreadsheets 

Under the moniker She Drew The Gun, songwriter Louisa Roach began by playing solo gigs around Liverpool, she quickly caught the attention of The Coral’s James Skelly who she began working with at Skeleton Key Records, recruiting band members along the way. At first glance Roach’s fuzzy psych-pop may suggest that the Wirral born songwriter is another ‘Cosmic Scouser’ but then you’re drawn into the spirit of rebellion, songs that rally against injustice and food banks and celebrate outsiderdom. Roach was late to music, releasing her first LP ‘Memories of the future’ after a decade of motherhood and studying at college.

TRACK LISTING

DISC 1 - Memories Of The Future:
SIDE A
Where I End You Begin
Since You Were Not Mine
If You Could See
Chains
Pebbles
SIDE B
What Will You Do
Poem
I'm Not Alone
Be Mine
Pit Pony
Or So I Thought

DISC 2 - Revolution Of Mind:
SIDE A
Resister
Something For The Pain
Arm Yourself
Between Stars
Wolf And Bird
SIDE B
Paradise
Ocean Song
Revolution Of Mind
Dopamine
Resister Reprise
Human

The follow-up to the critically acclaimed Revolution Of Mind, which was named among BBC 6 Music’s Albums Of The Year, is produced by Ross Orton (Arctic Monkeys, The Fall, The Kills, Working Men’s Club). 

Under the moniker She Drew The Gun, songwriter Louisa Roach began by playing solo gigs around Liverpool, she quickly caught the attention of The Coral’s James Skelly who she began working with at Skeleton Key Records, recruiting band members along the way. At first glance Roach’s fuzzy psych-pop may suggest that the Wirral born songwriter is another ‘Cosmic Scouser’ but then you’re drawn into the spirit of rebellion, songs that rally against injustice and food banks and celebrate outsiderdom.

Roach was late to music, releasing her first LP ‘Memories of the future’ after a decade of motherhood and studying at college. The second LP ‘ Revolution of Mind’, released October 2018, again produced by James Skelly, continued the fine work laid out on her 2016 debut. Announced in the top 10 albums of 2018 by BBCRadio6 Music, the record was one of the runaway indie successes of the year. In 2019 the band completed a sold out UK tour and played a string of UK festivals including main stage performances at Glastonbury and Blue Dot among others. In 2020 the band played virtual gigs to help raise money for Greenpeace and the Music Venue Trust among others and look forward to a proper return to live music.

TRACK LISTING

1. Origin Song
2. Next On The List
3. Behave Myself
4. Diamonds In Our Eyes
5. Cut Me Down
6. Class War
7. Innerspeak
8. Panopticon
9. All Roads To Nowhere
10. Roses Tale

John Murry’s third album is starlit and wondrous, like being wrapped in the softest black velvet. It’s an album of startling imagery and insinuating melodies, of cold moonlight and searing heat. It’s a record that penetrates to the very heart of you, searing with its burning honesty, its unsparing intimacy and its twisted beauty.

‘The Stars Are God’s Bullet Holes’ is not an album for an ordinary world, because it’s not an ordinary album. It’s an album to dive deep into and submerge yourself in, and to emerge from aware that this world is a remarkable place, and that John Murry is a remarkable artist.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: There's a palpable sense of rock and roll groove on this one from Murry, with the fuzzy bass and power-chord riffs being wonderfully offset with surprisingly light vocal accompaniments from the backing singers. Dynamically intricate but surprisingly simple audio constructions perfectly displaying Murry's unmatched songcraft.

TRACK LISTING

1. Oscar Wilde (Came Here To Make Fun Of You)
2. Perfume & Decay
3. The Stars Are God's Bullet Holes
4. Di Kreutser Sonata
5. I Refuse To Believe (You Could Love Me)
6. Ones + Zeros
7. Time & A Rifle
8. Ordinary World
9. 1(1)1
10. Yer Little Black Book