BEST OF 2013

PURE BATHING CULTUREM O N E Y | LANTERNS ON THE LAKE

A GRAVE WITH NO NAME | BATHS | DEAP VALLYALUNAGEORGE

BALLET SCHOOL | POLIÇA | HOLY GHOST!FUTURE OF THE LEFT

SUMMER CAMP | FOREST SWORDS | PINSFACTORY FLOOR

GOLD PANDA | AUSTRA | MELT YOURSELF DOWNJAMES HOLDEN

SWEARIN’ | ARCADE FIRE | CATE LE BON

WELCOME

@LondonInStereo

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WOLF ALICEBROS

TENNISMEAN STREETS

DENATHIN ROPE

SEBASTIEN GRAINGERGOING WITH YOU

LORDETENNIS COURT

CYMBALSTHE NATURAL WORLD

KENZIE MAYHIDE AND SEEK

AUTRE NE VEUTPLAY BY PLAY

DEPTFORD GOTHFEEL REAL

JAMES HOLDENGONE FERAL

THE LONDON IN STEREOTRACKS OF THE YEAR

STAFFON REPEAT

Welcome to the London in Stereo 2013 round-up.We really just want to point out to you some of our favourite articles this year. From cover features to reviews, here's a quick look at the work of the incredibly talented people that are part of London in Stereo.We've had so much fun going from gig to gig, making sure you all know about the best of the live music in London. But with everything going by so quickly, and deadlines seemingly arriving every week, it's great to have a look back on everything that happened in 2013.It's been an incredible year and I hope you enjoy our best moments, we couldn't do it without you.Here's to the next.

LIVE REVIEW

INTERVIEW

Holy chafing ball-sweat, Japandroids. Perhaps you are misanthropic, sadistic pricks. Perhaps you’ve not heard of heat exhaustion. Perhaps you didn’t plan for tonight to be the hottest of the year so far. You’ve yet to hit the stage and the floor of Dingwalls is but a pool of communal sweatWe hate you for this, Japandroids. So, why, Japandroids? Why are we still here?

Your speech after Fire’s Highway about this being your last trip to London on the seemingly endless Celebration Rock tour, “let’s make the last time the best time”, the way a band with double or triple the members of yours could produce no more energy than you do just one song in, the joke about how that was a mere warm-up – that isn’t a joke at all – as you launch into The Boys Are Leaving Town and without breathing room work through to Adrenaline Nightshift, pushing us further than the bleep test-enforcing bastard of a PE teacher who made high school the shitfest that high school so absolutely was.

The set spanning your two short albums and early EPs, the tonsil-tearing screamalong of The Night Of Wine And Roses, the fact you blow the PA at the start of Continuous Thunder (the closest thing to a slow-burner your repertoire has seen), the story of the kid who came up to you earlier and asked you to play the rarely-outed I Quit Girls, the way you told him it probably wouldn’t happen, the way you fucking played it anyway,

The fucking House That fucking Heaven fucking Built, the shared insanity, ecstasy and bodily fluidsof your audience, the choice of cramped venue sans photo pit barrier, like a forgotten relic of the once-thriving toilet circuit thatwill cause a lone bouncer to lookon in frustration at the stage-diving or crowd-surfing you will solovingly encourage.

Closing the show with the punk cover For The Love Of Ivy, without a dip in the power you’ve displayed for the past 90 minutes, the way you say goodbye in a manner that’s both badass and humbled and how you don’t ego-trip back onto the stage for a false, laboured encore, how no quantity of Lucozade Sport could replace the lost fluids, the forced empathy one feels with Lady Macbeth as even the longest shower is inadequate to wash off the sweat of tonight, the existence of literally hundreds of rock bands with more technical ability than Japandroids but who somehow possess less than a fraction of your energy, your enthusiasm, your glorious, noisy Canadian charisma, the fair chance there are no two people out of the billions on Earth we’d rather down a couple of beers with and sweat out our vital organs in the presence of, the yelling like hell to the heavens?

That’s why we’re still here, Japandroids. That’s why you’re good.

We are on our way to a gig in the van and at a snail’s pace we crawl through the city traffic. As a child, I’d always imagined London to be a fast moving, buzzing city but today it feels sluggish and it takes forever to move a few yards forward. We’ve been here a handful of times before but we are still always childishly impressed when one of us spots a famous landmark that we’ve seen on TV. Silhouettes of imposing towers tickle the grey clouds above them. It’s impressive. We usually like to play a London game of counting fried chicken shops that we pass but we always lose count or lose interest; today it was the latter. Fascinatingly, everyone always seems to be travelling with purpose in London;I don’t see anyone just ‘out for a stroll’ and people anxiously beep their horns, hopeful that it will make the traffic suddenly kick into gear and move forward. People on foot pass us with their heads bowed down, talking on their phones; presumably they are making important calls about stock markets or some such alien concept. The lights ahead change to green but we’re still hardly moving, like the traffic is stuck in some invisible mud. We’ll probably be late for soundcheck and this always makes me restless. In the passenger seat, I wind my window down and hear a car nearby blasting the radio; the presenter is talking about being on holiday and his co-presenter laughs with intensity at everything he says. It isn’t helping my gig nerves one bit. I rest my head on my arm on the window frame and in the back of the van the fried chicken shop game has re-started “Euro Chicken, Sam’s Chicken, Perfect Chicken, Chicken Cottages”.

TALES FROM THE CITY

INTERVIEW

I’m really bored of boys in bands. I’m bored of going to shows and not seeing a single girl on stage all night. I’m sick of standing next to crowds of ‘lads’ who heckle through the set. It makes me sad when I look at a festival line up and count a total of three girls playing across the whole weekend.I don’t know why it’s really started to annoy me so much lately. Perhaps it’s from seeing acts like Haim or Savages play and realising that music feels more personal the more you can relate to it. It’s like that Los Campesinos! line, “Four sweaty boys with guitars tell me nothing about my life.” I have no desire to slag off acts like Peace or Parma Violets, but I just don’t find much in their music that speaks to me. It’s not that I hate men in bands. I love Pulled Apart By Horses, DZ Deathrays, Deftones, Brand New, The National… I could go on, but that’s the thing. I could go on for a lot longer than I could list my favourite girl groups. I just want things to be a little more equal.I hate hearing acts described as a ‘female duo’ by my fellow colleagues. You’d never call Foals an all male five piece. And let’s not even get started on the, “She’s a girl, but she can actually play drums” line. If you say that to me, I will spit in your pint when you’re not looking.But the thing that annoys me most is, I don’t know who’s to blame.Whose fault is it that there aren’t more girls forming bands? Maybe it’s mine. Perhaps I should be practicing what I preach. Anyone want to start a band? Shout at me on twitter.

INTERVIEW

INTERVIEW

How happy are you with the new record?

Julia: Oh, we’re thrilled with it – not just in terms of the songs, but also the overall sound. And putting it out ourselves has been really satisfying.

Falco: I think this album, although it doesn’t fall too neatly into the trap, will be more easily appreciated by people who liked the band in the first place. It definitely flows more as one piece than the last record. Sonically as well, we listened to the vinyl last week, and it just sounds so present and rich.

Did starting your own label give you more freedom?

J: The freedom it gave us was on an operational level. It’s been hard work but the reward comes when you go ‘Hey, we did this ourselves and we did a really good job’.

F: There’s a certain size of band, which we probably are but only just, who can get away with it because there’s a certain devotion which I’m very proud to say some people have to our music. It means we can finance the making of the record, even though it’s not going to help us

put a down-payment on a yacht.

J: Right now for a band at our level getting signed is nearly impossible. We’re lucky that we can do it ourselves because of things like crowdfunding, which we weren’t originally into.

So what changed your mind?

J: We realised it’s how you approach it – we weren’t pitching ourselves to play people’s living rooms, we just said ‘Do you want to help with putting out the record?’

And were you surprised at how quickly you reached 100%?

F: It spat on my nipples and introduced me to its mother, if I may invent an allusion. I don’t want to say it was a vindication but it was really heartwarming. People seem to have faith in this record and it will repay that faith several times over.

To focus on the album, where does the title come from?

F: I wrote a song in 2006 called ‘How To Stop Your Brain in an Accident’. It was filed away and then all of a sudden with all of these songs there was a sense of trying to make sense of a chaos which just immediately seemed appropriate.

Two tracks, ‘The Male Gaze’ and ‘Johnny Borrell Afterlife’, were taken from the earlier EPs – were they always intended to go on the album?

F: Yeah, when a song’s strong enough it tends to make its own case. With the record there are traditional rock songs sandwiched in between ones which are a little bit more multifaceted – because sometimes

you’ve got to have some meat and potatoes to enjoy the tuna and custard more appropriately.

One of the most intriguing songs is ‘Singing of the Bonesaws’ – where did that voice come from?

F: It was just a decision taken in the moment. Like the first time you decide to try skiing and if you’re in Trinidad and Tobago tough, you’re just going skiing. Initially when I performed the lyrics I wasn’t sounding like a BBC newsreader from the 1952 – it just happened. Stewart Lee said he plays an exaggerated version of himself on stage and there’s something about that in any good art. If there was a caveat on everything you said you’d never get towards saying anything of any critical use. Where did the voice come from? A deep illness, living inside my mind and belly.

How’s the set working now with the mixture of songs?

F: The set will pretty much always go: some guitar songs, some keyboard songs in the middle, then some other guitar songs and then a bloody big fuck around at the end. It’s just that the actual songs move round. Some people always want old songs and some people want just new songs and you have to find a middle ground to disappoint them all.

Finally, has married life affectedthe band?

J: No not at all. It’s a bit calmer if anything.

F: The next record is going to be a collection of Christmas songs.

LIVE REVIEW

INTERVIEW

When probed about his ambitions for MONEY, front man Jamie Lee said this: “Our aim with this band – in all things we do – is to create the world afresh on our own terms.”It’s easy to sneer, or dismiss the notion as the misguided idealism of youth, but this Manchester-formed four-piece have put in an impressive amount of effort into constructing their own mythology thus far. They’ve performed in an array of esoteric venues; they’ve created a series of deliberately-abstract promo videos; they’ve leaked a few intriguing press shots, portraying band members, lips-locked, or seemingly suspended in mid-air.The assertion “on our own terms” proves portentous, because from the moment Lee abruptly appears before the capacity crowd tonight, it’s obvious who’s in control. Beginning on the bar at the back of the room, he subsequently weaves his way through the crowd, stopping mischievously to plant smackers on bemused men, or to twirl girls made giddy by his attentions, all the while singing an eerie, sea shanty-cum-folk ditty named ‘Paradise’ a capella. His voice is hauntingly clear, swinging wildly between a bellow and a whisper.It’s simultaneously one of the most unnerving and mesmerising beginnings to a gig I’ve ever witnessed.When the band finally join him, they launch into ‘So Long (God Is Dead)’, the song that moved Bella Union’s Simon Raymonde to sign them. It’s not difficult to see why: the song proffers a sort-of subaquatic beauty, hewn from layers of chiming guitar, shimmering synths and undulating beats. Lee’s ethereal falsetto breaks into yelps at the crescendo, the sound of cymbals crashing all around him,

like waves against rocks.Superb current single ‘Bluebell Fields’ arrives midway through the set.On record, it’s four minutes, 41 seconds of reverb-laden brilliance, redolent of A Storm In Heaven-era Verve; live it’s a magnificently sprawling affair, featuring a frantic middle-section of ‘I Am The Resurrection’-style rhythms and dissonant guitar effects, and culminates in Lee pogoing and speaking in tongues under the flickering red lights.Lee’s presence is hypnotic throughout: one moment he’s stripping to the waist whilst making eyes at the front row, or skipping over to kiss the keyboardist, and the next he’s sat calmly, strumming an acoustic guitar.Bar actually engaging us in conversation, he does everything in his power to break down the fourth wall, even placing his mic stand in the middle of the crowd for set-closer ‘A Letter To Yesterday’.It’s credit to the musicianship on display that these antics only serve to accentuate the mysterious beauty of the material. The constant presence of ambient noise helps on that score too, with each song rising gradually but majestically out of the fug.Clocking in at just 40 minutes, and featuring only six proper songs, tonight’s set is merely a tantalising glimpse of what MONEY are capable of. But with debut album The Shadow of Heaven due in August, we won’t have to wait too long before we can immerse ourselves in their world, on our own terms.

RECORD REVIEWS

You suspect that many would be able to recall where they were upon first hearing MØ, AKA Karen Marie Ørsted. Sultry and rebellious, the Danish pop troubadour exudes a striking strain of undeniable inimitability, rare, yet deliriously addictive when mixed with a back catalogue that pulsates with strutting anthems and bubblegum pop with astonishing ease.I, for example, stumbled upon her somewhat unexpectedly, sandwiched between the sticky throes of a Brighton nightclub and mutterings of “the new Grimes”, sloshing about the bowels of the brilliant Great Escape festival – and I haven’t forgotten her since.Snippets of tracks were hard to come by at first. The hypnotic clinking of ‘Glass’, the lustful purr of ‘Maiden’, even the boisterous swagger of ‘Pilgrim’ were curiously tricky to unearth, seemingly restricted to jagged crevices of the internet, revealing themselves to

anyone who cast a passing glance intheir direction. The predicament with MØ is that, well, once you have savored that initial, exhilarated teaser fizzing across your tongue, you are always craving more. Thankfully, our thirst has been somewhat quenched through the release of her Bikini Daze EP, four tracks of pure pop perfection, sixteen minutes that effortlessly encompass everything we love about MØ.‘XXX 88’, co-produced with notorious juggernaut Diplo, slinks somewhat sluggishly from the speakers, but wastes little time bursting into vivid colour, a cascade of fluttering percussion underpinning MØ’s call-and-response yelp. The opening track finds Ørsted in sympathetic spirit, crooning lines such as “Buddy, don’t you cry when she goes, ‘cos life is cynical despite your heart of gold”, leaving us unsure whether to feel reassured or punching the air in euphoria. ‘Never Wanna Know’ is a gentle reminder that MØ can break your heart, too. A heady combination of brutally honest lyrics (“But I never wanna know the name, of your new girlfriend”) and soaring strings leave us positively swooning, until the booming drums and succession of trumpets signal the confident saunter of ‘Dark Night’For all its posturing and venomous delivery, Bikini Daze’s standout moment is also its quietest, the EP’s closing track, ‘Freedom (#1)’. An affirming, fragile conclusion, it simply reinforces the fact that we quite like delicate MØBe under no illusion that, at first glance, Bikini Daze glistens beneath a sugary pop coating, but it’s worth so much more than that. It writhes, it spits, it’s alive. It’s a strain of pop music that I certainly wouldn’t take issue with occupying the top spot of the charts. Now Miss Ørsted,about that debut album, it can’t comesoon enough.

RECORD REVIEWS

Clearly harshed out by critics that knocked his languid debut ‘Within And Without’ for floating in one ear and out the other rather too readily, Ernest Greene has hit back with an album of start to finish club bangers, influenced mostly by chart-topping dance trio Swedish House Mafia. Alright, you got us. ‘Paracosm’ is more of the same: an immaculately- produced set of

elevator-ready chillwave snoozers for those who prefer their haircuts asymmetrical and their Starbucks to come with extra foam. But don’t feel bad, Washed Out is so slick that criticism slides right off him without leaving any hard feelings.

Prolific is a word that has its ambiguities and The Men are a group that stretch its meanings to new lengths. Having released three albums in as many years, theirs was a sound once thrillingly based on slackjaw, sleazy rock and punk. But on last year’s ‘Open Your Heart’, an irking shift to something more country and wistful entered the fray. Even more so on ‘New Moon’, where

the whisky-soaked ire of Mark Perro leans more to a Springsteen- meets-Dylan nocturnal slur that doesn’t set the night alight nearly as much as its predecessors.

Introverted, menacing, bleak and oddly compelling: The debut album from once Tri-Angle records signed producer oOoOO is a distinctly claustrophobic affair. Yet, amidst the record’s dark atmospherics, eerie clattering beats and groaning, distressed vocals lies a secret warmth, found in the delicate piano loops, wispy R&B flutters and strangely straight-up pop refrains.

Drawn together underneath a blanket of static noise, muted percussion and lurching, cyclic rhythms, ‘Without Your Love’ finds San Franciscan man Chris Dexter shaking off the irksome genre definitions that marred his early EPs and exceeding expectations.

INTERVIEW

INTERVIEW

Black ops? Karate chops? Microscopic robots and insect hospitals?

It can only mean one thing – They Might Be Giants are back in London with Nanobots, a new album of scintillating zany pop tunes, tucked safely under their arm. But go hear some of its 25 unreasonable songs over 45 impossible minutes for yourself when they’re performed with a joyous smile at the O2 Shepherds Bush Empire on November 19th.

There, you can experience the surreal world of John Flansburgh and John Linnell. Since 1982 they have been plying their singular brand of art-pop on the world, from their humble start in Manhattan’s East Village holding down regular jobs as regular dudes playing tiny venues, to hitting paydirt with the platinum-selling album Flood – boasting hit singles such as ‘Birdhouse in Your Soul’, ‘Twisting’, and ‘Istanbul (Not Constantinople)’ – a mere eight years later. Armed with just an accordion, some outlandish lyrics, a guitar and a drum machine, the duo have succeeded in capturing the public’s imagination with their high tempos and even loftier lyrical madness.But John and John haven’t restricted themselves to just refining and perfecting their uncanny brand of whimsical rock with uncanny lyrics for the entertainment of adults. They have also created a series of albums and DVDs for children. And made plenty of incidental music for television – the most renowned being the irreverent opening tune for sitcom Malcolm and the Middle in You’re Not the Boss of Me. Thirty years, 15 albums and approximately 1,000 songs later, the group entered Patrick Dillett’s New York studio (coincidentally, the recording spot of another ‘giant’ project – David Byrne & St Vincent’s album Love This Giant) to record Nanobots with a full band.So, what then is a nanobot? It’s a hypothetical, very small, self-propelled machine, especially one that has some degree of autonomy and can reproduce, according to the Oxford Dictionary. Given the microscopic nature of songs like Tick, Hive Mind and Didn’t Kill Me it’s easy to see how

the idea of the tiny creation with the capacity to accomplish big things might serve as a guiding principle for the entire record, so much of which is built upon a delicious kind of purposeful brevity. But it also boasts a powerful psychedelic edge that recalls some of the headiness of the Yoshima-era Flaming Lips.Speaking to John Flansburgh from his hotel room in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I asked him if the album – which sounds meticulously crafted – took a long time to make. “Everything we do takes too long to make,” he laughed. “There was a fair amount of editing on the record. We probably recorded another dozen songs so we do make an effort to put our best foot forward with the song selection and we can be pretty cruel about our own work. We’re not always right, as there have been songs that have ended up as B-sides or been pushed off albums that have become some of our most popular songs with our fans so… But we don’t want to repeat ourselves too much. If we have too many manic up-tempo songs we’ll just prune off the weakest ones, which can be a strange enterprise at times. These days there are more outlets for that kind of stuff.”Such as the internet, I suggested? “Yeah, the internet is the safety net for all second-rate ideas,” John said. “Things can finally flourish in obscurity!”After all of these years, what is it about the band today that should make people come and check out They Might Be Giants? “I wouldn’t want to be presumptuous, but we are confident in our presentation,” John explained. “So many things have evolved. In some ways we are exactly

the same and in some ways we are grizzled veterans. We are in a singular place as a band because we started many years ago and we’ve never taken a serious break. There’s been no rehab, there have been no reunions! We’ve just been working on our craft. When we started the band we weren’t kids – we were working in New York and had real jobs and perfectly earthbound expectations of what was going to happen in our lives. So we approached this project in kind of a different way than your typical rock biography, where a bunch of teenagers get together and all of a sudden the world turns upside down. We worked as a local band out of New York for like, four years, before we even made an album. So we’ve taken a very different kind of path and I’m not sure how much that’s even a story people want to tell.”During their early years, They Might Be Giants did have one rather lucky break – when John Linnell snapped his wrist. It led to an invention that put the band on the map and captivated the curious. Unable to perform on stage, the band created a Dial-A-Song service where anyone could call their Brooklyn answering machine and it would feature a new song (almost) every day. That is, if the machine was functioning.“We had just started playing out in New York City and had crossed that crucial bridge between your friends no longer coming to your shows, but strangers are coming,” John recalled. “If you’re a local band that’s kind of a golden moment where you are transitioning between something highly theoretical and something that’s actually quite real. At that point John [Linnell] was working as a bike courier

and had an accident and that was how we started our Dial-A Song service.“We both suspected that it would be a good exercise in loosening up as songwriters and in the way we recorded – because by then I think we were already getting a bit precious. And the challenge with Dial-A-Song was to keep things rolling every day. But for our audience it was a very glorious and extra-mysterious concept, and very unlike the way most people were being introduced to bands. It put us in a completely different category so we weren’t just those people rocking out at the nightclub, we were kind of an enigma. And I think that set us up for the rest of our career. From that moment on people have been looking for us to do the most original work we can create and that’s a very different role for a band than just being hitmakers or whatever.”That ability or freedom to follow whatever whim you fancied at the time – is that what liberated you to indulge in the bizarre and follow your natural musical instincts?“It definitely taught us some things! In some ways it taught us about how important it is to communicate,” John admitted.“Because I think a lot of the bedroom rock overdubbing impulses we had that we thought were completely delightful were actually quite tedious for people to listen to over a phone line. So we learned the value of being more direct and the value of a graphic arrangement and how to craft powerful lyrical points of view. Because when we did Dial-A-Song and when people called up, if the tune didn’t make sense to them they would hang up almost right away. There was a cruelty to it for us as we could hear the

machine disengage. Almost overnight we changed how we wrote songs – especially as we only started the band as home recording enthusiasts. We learned a lot of pretty valuable stuff from Dial-A-Song. As a duo it was a very powerful way to work. But when we got in theatres or venues it was the opposite – it was a much rowdier setting. Playing out as a live band offered a tremendous number of advantages as we could play at a completely different volume, and going and engaging with an audience seemed fun. And anyway, there was a lot of drinking and dancing going on.”After so many years and so many songs, do you find it easier to write songs now or is it getting more difficult“You learn stuff all the time as you go along. I think when I first started writing songs it was as if it wasn’t even real! We now obviously have strategies and interests when it comes to writing songs that make it more interesting,” John said.On one of Nanobots’ darker tunes, Black Ops, the group display a penchant for the psychedelic, as well as the political, as Flansburgh sings:‘Black ops/ Black ops/ A holiday for secret cops/ Black ops/ Black ops/ Dropping presents from the helicopter/ It’s been a long year/ We’ve been so far from home, too many people here/ Here come the drones…’The strong rhymes seem almost twee at first, until they are repeated for effect and then varied before it dawns on you the song is referencing drone attacks and the role of the long-distance operator flying the killer robot. “In the mid-90s we would have lots of conversations about how rhyming wasn’t necessary.

We viewed it as kind of an antiquated technique. But now, in our decrepi-tude, we realise that you can work with rhymes in a way that is really powerful and if you invest the time it will reward you on a completely different level. That said, we also go through phases. For a long time I was trying to write the most simple song possible. I have also tried to write a song out of a two-chord progression. And I collaborated on an album with Mike Doughty [of Soul Coughing] where I put together a number of tracks for him to write lyrics for and my goal was just to make one massive riff to propel each of the songs. So we have tried to create challenges for ourselves. It’s a way to approach the song as a topic – it’s such a short method of expression and such a small format – and it’s amazing how versatile the song is as a tool. I feel like a lot of people have given up on the song – the structure of verses, choruses and bridges, intros and codas, but I still think it’s a very powerful way to work. I love songs!”

LIVE PHOTOGRAPHY: DELOREAN

The year is 2004, George Bush is the President of the United states, and the words "social" and "media" have yet to collapse into each other. I was 21. Nick and I landed in London as part of a hip-hop group we started as teenagers, Automato. We were in town to play a concert at Return To NY, Arthur Baker's famous electroclash party. Those words - "electro" and "clash" - had most definitely collapsed into each other...There were six of us travelling with Automato when we landed on British soil. Six boys. Six lanky, goofy boys from New York City on their first trip to London to play a party called Return To NY. How fitting! Even then we travelled with a lot of equipment: tape echoes, electric pianos, vintage drum kits...oh, and did I mention SIX BOYS? We had enough man power to fill the starting line of a basketball team and still have one guy sitting the bench, ready to sub in. You'd think we would have learned to keep our overheads lower by now, but that's a story for another time. Back to this one: We landed at Heathrow to meet our tour manager, Jon, and piled into a sad excuse of a Sprinter vehicle. Off to the Holiday Inn lads! What happened after that...it's a little blurry...but here's what I can say definitely happened: 1. We played a concert. 2. We ate things we believed British people ate. 3. I met a girl. 4. Morgan, one of the six members, met his future wife. 5. There was an incident at French customs after officers found a joint in our tour manager’s cigarette pack. 6. Our vehicle broke down outside of London and we played tag in a field of neon-purple lavender. 7.... Well who really cares what happened?What I remember and what matters is how I FELT being in London for the first time. I was excited, ecstatic even, to be across the ocean in the motherland of so much music I loved. Radiohead, Blur, Aphex Twin, The Beatles, The Smiths, Badly Drawn Boy, Portishead, Squarepusher, Bloc Party, David FUCKING Bowie...they were all part of me already. And now here I was, age 21, in a band, in THEIR town to play a show with MY band. "This fucking rules," I thought, as I wandered aimlessly, sans-smartphone GPS, through London.

TALES FROM THE CITY

WRITERS:DANNY WRIGHTLAUREN DOWNLUCIE GRACEWILL GRANTRHIAN DALYLUKE MORGAN BRITTONGEMMA SAMWAYSJACK URWINGEORGE O’BRIENDAN CARSONBRONYA FRANCISEMILY BRUCEJAMIE MILTONJACK MCKENNATOM EDWARDSMATTHEW BRITTONNATE ROCKWELLTOM JOHNSONJAKE MAYPAUL ARTROCKERJEN LONGTOM HINTONSAMMY MAINESAM BETTSAL HORNERLUCY DEARLOVEEL HUNTSAM HURSTDAVID LAURIEAIMEE CLIFFLARA PIRAS

SIMON WILLIAMSMATTHEW FRENCHHENNING LAHMANNCOREY MINAGHJOHN DORANGEOFF COWARTLEE WAKEFIELDFRANCESCA BAKERALED SCHELLAMY GRAVELLEELLA SMITHFABIANA GIOVANETTIJAMES BALMONTLAURA ELEYNATHAN STANDLEERHYS BUCHANAN

PHOTOGRAPHERS:SONNY MALHOTRASEBASTIAN NEVOLSLUCY JOHNSTONRACHEL LIPSITZMARGA MONERSEBASTIAN BARROSJOSH HOLLIDAYTOM BOWLESHOWÅRD MELNYCZUKBEN PRICEMERLIN JOBST

ILLUSTRATION // DESIGNMARK GAMBLEJOEL WILSON

THANKS, YOU GUYS