This week’s round-up of newish releases from Will Linley, Southern Wild, Jumping Back Slash, Niis, Thulubuke, and Spoek Mathambo.
Editors Note: Spoek Mathambo is releasing so much music it is very hard to keep up. Yassis.
could this be forever? | Will Linley | Island Records/Apple Music | HE
From the first piano notes on I Loved, I Lost, it’s clear that this is pure-play pop, wearing its essence on its sleeve. Pop today is proud and unrepentant, even cooler than its niche cousins, with their fixation on authenticity, credibility and all the rest – while denying the reality that all music is at its root, pop music. This may mean that pop music is in fact the most unpretentious, authentic music there is! And Linley is in the local vanguard. Melody, songwriting, production, even sunny optimism! This is music that can shift your mood, define an era, as well as pique the interest of 13-year-olds. And there’s not much djoot that can say that.
The Art Of Feeling Nothing | Southern Wild | Just Music/Apple Music | LMN
47 seconds into the first track of this band’s latest “offering”, my immediate thought is: Fuck. Another generic-sounding Prime Circle, Parlotones, kak SA drivel band.
I gotta admit, the lead singer’s voice is buttery AF, but this is SA toppie rock at its finest. Dad rock. So cheesy, so cringe. I hate it, and I love it. No, I don’t. I’m trying to be nice.
I especially love it when his otherwise nice voice breaks into “CAAAN WE PLEASEEEE JUST STAAART AGAIN” in perfect generic-rock falsetto. Amaze. Amaze. Amaze. But not.
Their Spotify bio reads: “Southern Wild are an alternative rock band from Cape Town, South Africa. Known for their intense performance and heartfelt songwriting…”
Alternative to what, exactly? Good music? Heartfelt songwriting? Naah, kak man. Did they write their own Spotify bio, glazing themselves or what?
To my currently bleeding ears, this is absolute trash packaged with a semi-decent voice. It’s as if Michael Bolton had a baby with Prime Circle and shat out Southern Wild.
The Art Of Feeling Nothing. Well, I’m feeling poes annoyed that I ruined my Spotify algo now, so there’s that.
Catastrophizer | Jumping Back Slash | SWAK Catalog/Bandcamp | RY
This is a music review about quitting music reviews.
In an ideal world any one of the tracks on Catastrophizer would be number one on the 94.7 charts and people would be dancing in their cars like their mothers delivered them straight onto the dancefloor at Piano Lounge in the late 90s, the whole album smells of jump scares and religious epiphanies. It is an album that asks and confidently answers the age old question, “How many shriek samples is too much?”
The Birds Don’t Care Bruv is case in point, just one man trying to confuse the fuck out the listener with ADHD sequencers, squawking, fairy dust water drizzling sounds, howls, space lasers. The cumulative effect is, who needs shrooms?
No, I am genuinely asking, I know a guy.
And good god is it bouncy! Little Pockets of Time Between Atrocities and Horrors is this bouncy little jaunt that turns into a fuzz guitar rock out and then teletubbies off into a black hole of pleasant squeals and doom notes.
Is Catastrophizer drum and bass? Is it ambient? Is it math rock? Is it “at the intersection of” every dance genre ever? Is it up its own ass? Is it a conniption fit? Is it fantastic?
Yes, yes, yes, yes, no, yes, yes, and motherfucking YES.
On Rainydaze, JBS contends that “My songs could never save us.” He is, once again, gloriously wrong.
Play Niis | Niis | Rise Records/Apple Music | LMN
Niis, an LA post-punk/punk band, recently dropped their latest serving, and boy do they serve.
Play Niis, a six-track EP via Rise Records on 26 October. I’ll admit, it took a sizeable amount of manipulation to get Roger to let me write a review about a non-South African band, but he said “go for niche”, which I did, I guess…
The name Niis is actually pronounced “nice”, so yeah I’m just saving you from confidently saying it to someone, thinking you know ball only to discover the person you’re bandsplaining to knows better. (This happened to me last night at Bohemia, fr fr)
Mimi Doe started the band with guitarist Ryan McGuffin back in 2020. I truly love these band origin stories, especially when it’s two mates getting into a studio/room/garage and going: “fuck yeah, this works.”
Niis cites some key influences as Crass, Rudimentary Peni, and Hole. Yes, that Hole, as in Courtney Love, and these inspos for the band should give you some idea or semblance of the company we’re keeping here. I find their sound is laden with girly angst, and I’m fucking here for all of it. Their lyrics are powerful, albeit simple and direct, which suits their sound perfectly.
Mimi tells Alternative Press: “My tea is always in the songs”, and apparently that tea is piping fucking hot Ceylon and not tepid, flavourless rooibos. When she goes through a breakup, she has studio time booked the very next day, pouring all her beautifully raw emotions straight into her fucking badass and amp-you-up music. I’d say that’s quite the turnaround; hey, the rest of us are still deciding whether we should delete the photos.
Sometimes the only fucking thing you want to say is that straightforward. You’re hurt, and you’ve had enough of someone’s kak, so why complicate it?
INHLABATHI EPHALISHINI | THULUBUKE | Thulubuke Music/Apple Music | HE
“Porridge of the soil”? But it may also mean something to do with messing with someone else’s bag. The maskandi with the programmed beats. Is it Shwi Nomtekhala? No. Is it Phuzekemisi? Also no. Thulubuke has built a style incorporating old-school maskandi picking and an updated, almost pop-style production, with the observational insights and commentary characteristic of the style. People’s poetry, in a formalist tradition. It may seem traditional, but it’s always evolving!
Guzu | Spoek Mathambo | Bandcamp | LMN
It’s been a minute since I’ve listened to anything by Spoek Mathambo, but Jesus H Christ, Guzu is a solid record. From the first 30 seconds into the album’s first track, “Broke Myself Trying To Fit Into A Shape you Could Hold”, I know that we’re in for a treat.
Eclectic is a word I use far too fucking often but I’m unsure how else to describe it—guitars, guitars, drums, bass, drum machines, this album has it all. It’s giving Dilla in just how much fun Spoek clearly had making this album.
Jazz, rock, fusion, utter madness in the most fucking beautiful way possible. Like, I know this is the type of music I probably couldn’t play for many of my “basic” friends and acquaintances; they just won’t fucking get it.
The Kids Are Alright is what I believe should be a Ke Dezemba summer track, and this is a shout to all you tech DJs out there: BUY IT and SPIN IT. It’s uplifting, and it’s the first dance electronica track I’ve heard in years that isn’t house that has me bopping from side to side as I write this with an epic hangover and a bum knee, which is giving me nothing but pain. Yes, I’m saying this track is healing me, babes; it’s IMMACULATE.
Mathambo has for the better part been in my life for the last fifteen years; with each EP, album or even single he’s put out, he’s pushed the envelope in what he does musically, how he melds different genres with such fucking ease and grace.
Guzu, to me, however, is his fucking tour de force, magnum opus, masterpiece; it’s his full house steak gatsby, his Kobe beef, his black pearl, if you will.
I have absolutely no notes. (And even if I did, who the poes am I to give them to this musical mage?)
Contributors: HE – Hagen Engler | LMN – Lloyd Martinez Newkirk | RY – Roger Young