Now Hear This: Bring Me the Horizon, Common, Empress Of, Crowded House, Bakar and Rhye, plus spotlight artist Spunsugar

This week’s Now Hear This playlist starts off heavy and calms down by the end, kind of how I hope 2020 is going (yeah, right). Bring Me the Horizon kick things off with “1x1”, their Nova Twins collaboration from Post Human: Survival Horror, a project that feels more than appropriate for the current “end times” vibe. This week I also reviewed Elvis Costello’s wonderful, quirky new album Hey Clockface, while my new colleague Rupert Hawksley checked out the latest Eels record. Also, our chief album critic Helen Brown reviewed Sam Smith’s album, Love Goes – read her writeup here.

Singles-wise, there are some great offerings from Empress Of (a collaboration with Amber Mark for “You’ve Got To Feel”), HER (“Hold On”) and London trio Famous (“Nice While It Lasted”). Also a bunch of intriguing cover choices, including grandson’s breathtaking and faithful tribute to Linkin Park on “One Step Closer”, and Karen O and Willie Nelson doing their take on “Under Pressure”. You should check out the new EP from Common, titled A Beautiful Revolution Part One, which just dropped. I’m a fan of “Say Peace”, his funk-riffing collaboration with fellow rapper Black Thought.

Jake Bugg is on a roll with his pacey track “All I Need”, built on buzzy guitars and rousing choirs. I like R&B artist Rebecca Garton’s song “Comfortable” with Jeremih, and Keeya’s “Paradise”. If you missed it earlier this week, there’s a phenomenal video accompanying Rhye’s Eighties disco-influenced “Black Rain”, starring actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson (directed by his wife, Sam Taylor-Johnson). Also tilting over to the funk side of things is Jawny with “You Got a Man” (possibly interpolating New Young Pony Club?), and multi-instrumentalist and producer LEISURE, with the woozy “Eye 2 Eye” (off Side A, his major label debut for Interscope Records).

London artist Bakar is back with his first new music in a year – the single “1st Time” is the first glimpse of an album due for release in 2021. Also back: Crowded House! I’m very excited by the return of my favourite New Zealand band; “Whatever You Want” is their first new music in over a decade and is accompanied by a video starring Mac DeMarco in his acting debut. Dua Lipa brings a little je ne sais quoi to her collaboration with Belgian pop star Angèle, while US singer Becky G teams up with Puerto Rican artist Ozuna for yet another sultry reggaetón bop.

I’m excited about the announcement of a new book about artists’ relationships with their fans from renowned photographer and filmmaker James Marcus Haney. Fanatics includes a foreword by Sir Elton John along with words from Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Maggie Rogers, Metallica’s Lars Ulrich, and Beck.

“This book is a culmination of a decade of touring the world and the truckload of film negatives that have amassed in that time,” Haney explains. “It captures the emotions, fashions, and faces of the 2010 decade through live music. And it is only now, from the depths of pandemic, do these photographs remind us of a time, so recent yet so different, and represent the ultimate experience to look forward to again.” Fanatics is out on 30 November.

In other music-related news this week, grime MC Ghetts has teamed up with Puma (the shoe brand) to announce Suede Music, a brand-new music space in London dedicated to breaking up-and-coming talent. The studio, which is based in Ladbroke Grove, will be opened by Ghetts as he rerecords a song of his choice, along with two young black artists from his hometown. Also, Sarah Dallin and Keren Woodward of Bananarama fame have released their autobiography, Really Saying Something, and it’s a must-read, packed full of stories about two best friends who challenged the public perception of what a girlband could achieve.

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My spotlight artist this week is Spunsugar, a band formed in the Swedish Bible Belt from where they escaped to seek a new life. Their debut album, Drive-Thru Chapel, was released earlier this month – listen out for nods to Joy Division, Duran Duran and The Cure, and read my Q&A with the band below.

Hi guys, tell me about your band

Spunsugar is an alternative rock band that wants to be a shoegaze band but ends up sounding like a metal band doing covers of pop songs. And we don’t have a drummer! Most drummers are terrible at what they do anyway and we thought Garageband could do it better.

What would you say are the core themes you’re drawn to for your music?

When we met, something we all could feel united in were our upbringings. All of us have had crazy childhoods in one way or another. We bonded in that. The feeling of being a f***up from the get-go. Not that we wanted to be. I think we were just born into it and are still trying to get out of that feeling. The band is one way of achieving that and loads of songs on the album is about that. At the same time, we’ve never actively talked about what kind of band we wanted to be or what message we wanted to convey. We just want to be a rock band that plays rock music because we love rock music. If we talked about anything, it was just that. The band was supposed to be separate from politics and such and be just a band. Kind of like KISS, but without the costumes and the make-up.

How have you found this strange and tumultuous year?

I think we found ourselves kind of stressed out from making the album with a lot of crazy s*** going on in our private lives as well. Then came this whole Covid-thing and turned the whole world upside down. Strangely enough, it made it easier for us to take it a bit easy and focus on making the album as great as possible because we didn’t feel the pressure to play a lot of gigs. We could turn our focus on the things we are good at. We as a band have always enjoyed more being in the studio rather than on a stage somewhere. So even though everything was kind of bananas, we found some solace in the idea that nothing’s normal right now anyway. It took the pressure off.

What do you have lined up for the rest of 2020?

We’ve been trying new things, musically, and just finished recording a new single that we hope to release as soon as possible. We’ve collaborated with Joakim Lindberg, who produced and recorded the album, and Martin Nilsson from our label-buddies Need For Speed, which we all like and respect a lot. So that’s something we look forward to. There was a lot of fatigue after the album since we did almost everything from artwork to videos ourselves. Even if we got some help from our friends, it was a tiresome process. Going forward and doing new music has helped us get over that. We have some shows planned, but we will have to see how the covid-situation evolves here in Sweden before we say to much. But we're really looking forward to write and record more music.

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