Lucky Number Music

Today, Dream Wife take on capitalism and faux-activism with the latest single from their new album Social Lubrication. Titled “Who Do You Wanna Be?”, the track is “about running on the capitalist treadmill and falling face first on the pavement. Hollow slogans, social media activism without action, leftist infighting, monetising feminism, ‘girl boss’, all soul crushing nonsense. Capitalism consumes everything. We should tear down the unreachable anxiety filled idea of perfectionism and move from hyper individualised narrative to collective action to create hopeful, rebellious, collective, systems of care. This is a call to arms for change.”

The single releases alongside a performance video filmed in an abandoned leisure centre pool in East London, watch below now.

Today, London collective HMLTD have unveiled a new video for “Days“, taken from their widely acclaimed new album The Worm, described as “a triumph of ambition” by The Sunday Times, and “One of the most well-executed concept albums of recent times” by Loud & Quiet. The video arrives ahead of two special performances at London’s ICA this week (18th & 19th May), where the band will perform The Worm in full for the very first time.

The band have also confirmed two hotly-tipped special guests for their upcoming live performances – Heartworms (18th May) and Picture Parlour (19th May) – tickets are on sale now.

Born of his “failure to accept the impermanence of things”, ‘Days’ finds frontman Henry Spychalski detailing love and loss, memory and melancholia, and time and its unravelling – as he explains: “In “Days”, the Worm that stalks the album takes on a new, particular meaning – as that kernel of doubt which, like a parasite, can burrow in and bury itself inside a relationship – growing inside its warmth until finally it overcomes it.”

The song’s accompanying video, directed by Spychalski, is in part an homage to Chris Marker’s 1962 film La Jetée, transplanted into the world of The Worm.

London-based trio Dream Wife have today announced their brand new single “Orbit” and tour dates across UK, IE and US. “Orbit” follows the previously released singles “Leech” and “Hot (Don’t Date A Musician)”, and is taken from their highly anticipated third album, Social Lubrication, which will be released on June 9th.

The band explain, “Written through the joy of jamming together and locking into the groove like a multi limbed space age organism, ‘Orbit’ has a dance rock edge from the early noughties of bands like New Young Pony Club and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Lyrically, it was inspired by post-lockdown London coming back to life and sharing a space through friendship and community. And how each day you never know what’s in store for you or how a stranger can become someone close to you -for a day, a heartbeat, a phase, or a lifetime.”

Watch the Sophie Webster directed video for “Orbit” below:

The band’s autumn tour kicks off stateside in September for a number of shows before their UK/IE leg in October, which includes their biggest London show to date at Electric Brixton. Ahead of the tour, they’ll also be performing at a number of summer festivals and have just been announced as special guests at Le Tigre’s London show. All dates below and tickets on sale HERE.

Ahead of the arrival of their new album – The Worm – due this Friday, 7th April, London collective HMLTD have today shared the record’s title track, “The Worm“.

Conceptually and musically, “The Worm” is the centrepiece of the band’s new full length. It’s the clearest distillation of its two major themes: the powerlessness of individuals stuck and suffering inside systems of power that they are unable to change, and the spiritual struggle to overcome one’s inner demons.

“‘The Worm’ is by far and away the most ambitious song we’ve made to date,” tells frontman Henry Spychalski. “We recorded it with a 16-piece string orchestra in Athens and, later, a small gospel choir in London. It was inspired by Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’. For the cacophonous outro which closes the song, we asked the orchestra to play the part with the ‘sensazione de un verme’ (the sensation of a worm). The lyrics are the clearest admission that the album is a symbol of my depression and battle with it.”

The track arrives alongside a new video directed by Spychalski. Set in Wyrmlands, the imagined future in which The Worm has swallowed England and society is split between those who support it, and those who have chosen to resist.

“The video for ‘The Worm’ shows the final stand of the resistance,” notes Henry. “We shot the video in an abandoned, desecrated church in London’s East End to emphasise the spiritual nature of the song and its themes of struggle and salvation. In the video, I wanted to show man’s inner demons physically manifested as real, living, breathing entities – the Worm within man.

It was inspired by the films of the polish auteur Andrzej Zulawski, and in particular his unfinished masterpiece On The Silver Globe. The chorus of extras which make up the congregation are all fans of ours who answered a general callout on Instagram, without whom the video would not have been possible – so our eternal gratitude to them here cannot be overstated”

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.