Lucky Number Music

In coordination with the Worm Moon, London collective HMLTD have today shared “The End Is Now” and its accompanying video, the second single to be taken from their ambitious second album The Worm, due Friday 7th April.

Continuing a push in sonic experimentation, “The End Is Now” combines 70’s soul with English folk to set the scene for The Worm, evoking the apocalyptic zeitgeist of the 21st Century and a generation’s psychological terror at the threat of world-ending climate change. “‘The End Is Now’ tells of how the titular Worm was finally awoken by hydraulic fracking of the English countryside, and swallows England whole” explains frontman Henry Spychalski. “The Worm here is both a metaphor for capitalist greed, and the embodiment of a whole generation’s anxiety, dread and fear in the face of ever-looming apocalypse and world-ending natural disasters.”

Directed by Spychalski, the accompanying video for ‘The End is Now’ was visually inspired by the films of Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Václav Marhoul’s film The Painted Bird and acts as an origin story for the album’s hero.

The new cut follows “Wyrmlands” in affirming HMLTD as one of the UK’s most ambitious and creative talents. Created over the course of two years with a cast of 47 musicians – including a gospel choir and a 16-piece string orchestra – the collective’s second full-length The Worm is less a concept album than a fully-fledged musical universe, transcending genre and medium. Set in a disorienting anachronistic version of Medieval England – as steeped in dystopian sci-fi fantasy as it is folklore and Old English mythology – it’s part political polemic, part deeply moving psychological journey.

Alt-rock breakouts Momma return today with their first material since last year’s acclaimed Household Name album, with the release of their fiery and immediate new single, “Bang Bang”.

Songwriters Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten collaborated with producer/bassist Aron Kobayashi Ritch to write and record the track after getting home last year from an extended American tour. “Bang Bang” expands upon the band’s signature dynamics in bold new ways, and is yet another Momma song destined for repeat listens.

“Allegra and I ended up getting COVID at the same time, so we decided to isolate, get drunk, and write together,” Friedman explains. “Within a night we had demoed a hot sounding song about great sex.” Weingarten adds: “We wanted to write something lyrically different than anything else we’d done – just super literal and crude. We shared it with Aron and he sent us back a new version with a lot of added extra production: drums, bass, synths, acoustic guitar etc. It felt totally different and fresh. The finished song has a lot of classic Momma – heavy guitars and catchy melodies – but packaged in a different form. It feels immediate, like a whole new sound for the band.”

Following US tours with the likes of Wet Leg, Snail Mail and most recently Death Cab For Cutie, and ahead of performing at Coachella and opening for Weezer and Modest Mouse this summer, the band return to EU and UK shores this month in support of Alex G, with all UK dates already sold out. All dates and tickets on their website here.

London-based trio Dream Wife – vocalist Rakel Mjöll (she/her), guitarist Alice Go (she/her), bassist Bella Podpadec (they/them) – today announce that their highly anticipated third album, entitled Social Lubrication, will be released on June 9th and also share the brand new single “Hot (Don’t Date A Musician)”.

Social Lubrication showcases a band in electrifying form. An entirely self-written and self-produced album, with the only outside influence being the heavyweight mixing duo of Alan Moulder (Nine Inch Nails, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Killers, Depeche Mode) and Caesar Edmunds (Wet Leg, Beach House), the incendiary and riotous record finds the band once again tackling big subjects in their trademark unapologetic manner where, with the band being adept at merging the political with the playful, vital statements are hidden within hot and heavy anthems about making out, having fun and staying curious. Social Lubrication, in the band’s words, is “Hyper lusty rock and roll with a political punch, exploring the alchemy of attraction, the lust for life, embracing community and calling out the patriarchy. With a healthy dose of playfulness and funthrown in.” The playfulness of the album is to the fore on “Hot (Don’t Date A Musician)”, the silly, sexy second single shared from the album to-date. Inspired by Rakel’s grandmother’s sage advice – advice that she, herself, didn’t follow – the track wryly pokes fun at musicians, themselves included. “Don’t date a musician,” sings Rakel over infectious, B52’s-style drums and jagged, angular melodies. “They’ll think you’re competition / I was never competition, I was just… hot.”

Rakel says, “Dating musicians is a nightmare. Evoking imagery of late night make-outs with fuckboy/girl/ambiguously-gendered musicians on their mattress after being seduced by song-writing chat. The roles being equally reversed. Having a laugh together and being able to poke fun at ourselves is very much at the heart of this band. This song encapsulates our shared sense of humour. Sonically it is the lovechild of CSS and Motorhead. It has our hard, live, rock edge combined with cheeky and playful vocals.”

“Hot (Don’t Date A Musician)” follows “Leech”, the album’s bold and explosive first single, a rock-heavy, call-to-arms for empathy, in a world still propped up by patriarchal systems and underhand codes of silence. These themes – exhaustion with the patriarchy, a rejection of the systems built to contain us – simmer and spit throughout Social Lubrication. In conjunction the album’s celebration of community is a middle finger to the societal barriers enforced to sever connection, playfulness, curiosity and sexual empowerment. “Music is one of the only forms of people experiencing an emotion together in a visceral, physical, real way,” says Alice. “It’s cathartic to the systemic issues that are being called out across the board in the record. Music isn’t the cure, but it’s the remedy. Calling the record Social Lubrication harks to that. It’s the positive glue that can create solidarity and community.” “The album is speaking to systemic problems that cannot be glossed over by lube,” says Bella. “The things named in the songs are symptoms of f-ed up structures. And you can’t fix that. You need to pull it apart.”

Today, HMLTD return with the announcement of their second album, The Worm – due for release on Friday 7th April. To coincide with the news, the London collective have shared lead single “Wyrmlands” and an accompanying video directed by frontman Henry Spychalski.

Created over the course of two years with a cast of 47 musicians – including a gospel choir and a 16-piece string orchestra – The Worm is less a concept album than a fully-fledged musical universe, transcending genre and medium. Set in a disorienting anachronistic version of Medieval England – as steeped in dystopian sci-fi fantasy as it is folklore and Old English mythology – it’s part political polemic, part deeply moving psychological journey, and finds frontman Spychalski drawing on his own psycho-spiritual struggles to construct a modern parable about the impotence felt by individuals stuck inside gargantuan, labyrinthine systems of power that they are powerless to change.

In contrast to their debut album, the acclaimed 2020 release West of Eden, which explored toxic masculinity and the breakdown of Western society, The Worm is framed as a spiritual quest within a delusion. In that delusion, Spychalski’s shadow self is projected and embodied as a giant worm that swallows England, and which must be slain in order to achieve salvation. The concept came to him in a fever dream back in 2020, before being fully fleshed out with the band’s recording line-up of Achilleas Sarantaris (drums), Duc Peterman (guitar/production), Seth Evans (keys) and Nico Mohnblatt (bass).

Spychalski explains,“We’re told to believe that anxiety and depression are purely material and biological – like a parasitic worm that can be removed with the right treatment. I think that really these conditions reflect the world that surrounds us – like colonies that a far bigger Worm has made in each of us – the psychological havoc wreaked by our inescapable capitalist reality and the looming apocalypse it has created.”

Released today, first single “Wyrmlands” and its accompanying video – directed by Spychalski himself – introduces the world in which The Worm takes place: one where England has been swallowed by The Worm and renamed ‘Wyrmlands’, along the way regressing to a Medieval, feudal society.

“‘Wyrmlands’ tells the story of a guerrilla resistance movement against the Worm” he notes. “The lyrics recount their tales of subversion and subterfuge: counter-offensives, tortured confessions and haunting vignettes of the strange new land in which they find themselves.”

The video is intended to explore the liminal space between the fantasy world in which most of the album takes place (“Wyrmlands”), and the base reality which births that delusion: a violent collision of the real and the unreal; of our delusions and the traumas that create them.”

By conjuring a parable of human struggle and salvation – of a society impotent and festering inside the intestines of a giant parasite – HMLTD visualise capitalist realism and spiritual alienation as a mythological beast. And with its hopeful resolution, this utterly unique exercise in world-building might just help inspire alternative realities, or at least offer a spiritual crutch to all of us within this one.

HMLTD will also play two special live shows at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts on Thursday 18th & Friday 19th May. For tickets, head to the band’s website.

Priestgate have today announced their second EP One Shade Darker for release on 3rd March. The EP’s newest single “White Shirt” – an anthemic homage to their hometown of Driffield – arrives today. Priestgate kick off 2023 with a Dork Hype List accolade under their belts (“The best new live band on the planet”), following an NME 100 nod in 2022, and will headline the Dork Hype List tour next month, which includes a show at Colours in Hoxton. Full live dates and tickets available NOW.

Speaking about “White Shirt” vocalist Rob Schofield explains: “It’s about Driffield – whether it be missing it, loving it or hating it… it’s about home. Where we’re from doesn’t really have a creative community, there’s some good joiners – just no bands. It’s about seeing the same old stuff growing up, I’d never really left the place all that much before the band started. I had it in my head that I’d end up making coffins with my dad.”

Commenting on the forthcoming EP One Shade Darker, Rob adds: “It’s our attempt at pushing the sound to another place, but we never sit down and say “let’s make this sound like X artist or Y artist” – we write each song then see if they all work together afterwards. It’s just how we are as a band; we’ve always found ourselves wanting to see what will happen next. It’ll always sound like us to a certain degree, maybe just with a different haircut if you will.”