THE STUN N I N G N EW ALBU M O U T 10 T H JU LY
PVRIS.CO M
FEATURING THE SINGLES DEATH OF ME, HALLUCINATIONS AND DEAD WEIGHT
P RE- O RD ER N O W CD • LP • DIGITAL LIMITED EDITION COLOURED VINYL AVAIL ABLE AT INDEPENDENT RECORD STORES & HMV
JULY 2020 Issue 56
HELLO.
There are some things that, as a magazine editor, you have on your proverbial publishing bucket list. For a while now, bringing Run The Jewels to the cover of Upset has been one of them. The days of thinly defined genre boundaries have long since passed, and Killer Mike and El-P have rarely, if ever, stayed in one lane. Playing rock shows, working with such scene legends as Zack de la Rocha and Josh Homme and projecting with a raw, propulsive power which sounds far, far more ‘punk’ than so many of the bands that would tag themselves in such a way, right now - both because of the way they use their voice, and world events around them - Run The Jewels might just be the most important band on the planet. One thing’s for sure - their new album ‘RTJ4’, which dropped a few weeks ago, is certainly one of the best of 2020. We’re proud to have them grace the front of our magazine.
S tephen
Editor / @stephenackroyd
Upset Editor Stephen Ackroyd Deputy Editor Victoria Sinden Associate Editor Ali Shutler Scribblers Alexander Bradley, Dillon Eastoe, Jamie MacMillan, Jasleen Dhindsa, Linsey Teggert, Rob Mair, Steven Loftin Snappers Daniel Cavazos, Jessie Morgan, Jonathan Weiner, Mason Fairey, Olof Grind, Sarah Piantadosi, Tim Saccenti, Wyatt Clough P U B L I S H E D F RO M
W E LCO M E TOT H E B U N K E R.CO M U N I T 10, 23 G RA N G E RO A D, H A S T I N G S, T N34 2R L
RIOT 4. MIKEY WAY 8. PROTEST THE HERO 10. THE GHOST INSIDE 12. THE WINTER PASSING ABOUT TO BREAK 16. CASA LOMA FEATURES 18. RUN THE JEWELS 24. DREAM WIFE 28. THE GLORIA RECORD 32. THE BETHS REVIEWS 36. PVRIS 38. PHOEBE BRIDGERS TEENAGE KICKS 38. ORCHARDS
All material copyright (c). All rights reserved.
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Riot_ EVERYTHING HAPPENING IN ROCK
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THIS MONTH IN ROCK
The Ghost Inside’s world turned upside down in 2015. Now, they’re back with a new album. p.10
There’s a cruel irony when it comes to the title of The Winter Passing’s second album ‘New Ways of Living’. p.12
ELECTRIC DREAMS Words: Alexander Bradley.
Electric Century, the meeting of minds between My Chemical Romance’s Mikey Way and Sleep Station frontman David Debiak, are returning with more than just their second album.
Four years on from the 80s new-wave debut album ‘For The Night To Control’, the duo are back with a new Electric Century album and a graphic novel by the same name. It’s a bold, visually striking project which reunites Mikey with Shaun Simon with whom he worked on the graphic novel ‘Collapser’ last year. Electric Century’s synopsis reads, “Johnny Ashford, former sitcom-star, drives drunk through a storefront and gets arrested. His aspiring actress girlfriend bails him out, and he begins seeing a hypnotherapist. Dr. Evers sends Johnny to his “happy place”: 1980s Atlantic City, where he relives his childhood on the boardwalk, hardly noticing
shadowy spectres all around.” The musical side of the project is as mysterious as the plot right now but for the haunting, pianoled, melody which accompanies the trailer for the project. But, in the hope of shedding some light on Electric Century, the world of graphic novels, his disjointed plans for 2020 and the Way family work ethic, is Mikey Way to guide us.
Electric Century, the album and graphic novel, is a huge project - how long has it been in the works?
This project has been in the works for a couple of years now. It organically grew into what it is now through some chance circumstances. Back in 2014, after we had recorded ‘For The Night To Control’, I had a sliver of an idea that maybe we could make Electric Century, a kind of fictional band. I had just left rehab and didn’t really want to tour at the moment, so I thought it could be cool to make a fictional landscape and narrative that the band exists in. Maybe the band could perform remotely over the
“NO MATTER WHAT STORY I TELL, THERE’S ALWAYS GOING TO BE A HINT OF HORROR. I JUST CAN’T HELP MYSELF” MIKEY WAY
internet even or in an animated fashion. I took this idea and kind of tucked in away for quite some time. We went through that release cycle, did some fun stuff and put it to bed. The way we make albums with Electric Century is, Dave and I fire voice memos back and forth and stockpile what we feel is quality. The voice memo ping pong never really ends for us, so this process started immediately after ‘For The Night To Control’. When we eventually have enough great pieces to facilitate an album, we start demoing.
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NEW WAYS OF LIVING Words: Linsey Teggert.
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There’s a cruel irony at play when it comes to the title of The Winter Passing’s second album, ‘New Ways of Living’. Alas, the Dublin five-piece aren’t secret soothsayers who predicted life in lockdown, but rather the title refers to the conclusion of the
previous chapter in the band’s journey. A far cry from the negativity that currently punctuates our day-to-day lives, ‘New Ways of Living’ is a beacon of hope. Known for their determination and relentless DIY work ethic, The Winter Passing have taken the
challenges of being a band during a global pandemic in their stride. If you need further proof, just check out the utterly charming video for the first single from the record, ‘Resist’, and try to watch it without a ridiculous grin on your face. “As it stands right now, we haven’t seen each other since late February,” says vocalist and bassist Rob Flynn. “We tried to have a band practice over a Zoom call one evening,
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“POINT US TO A S TA G E , A N D IF WE CAN’T ROCK YOU MOTHERFUCKERS THEN WE’RE NOT DOING OUR JOB” Quite possibly the most important act on the planet right now - Run The Jewels have returned at the time we need them most. Words: Jake Hawkes. Photos: Tim Saccenti. At the time of talking, El-P and Killer Mike are about to drop their fourth album as Run The Jewels. It’s a longevity that they didn’t plan for when they first started making music under the name. “We had no fucking clue,” laughs El-P, lighting an apple which he’s fashioned into a makeshift bong (needs must in lockdown, apparently). “I knew that we were dope, but I was gonna be happy if we got to tour the country and do five hundred-person to a thousand-person venues,” he continues. Instead, they’ve become a household name and eclipsed the success either of them had in their respective solo careers, something they weren’t exactly expecting to happen in their mid-40s. Even a worldwide pandemic hasn’t been enough to dent their success, with Run The Jewels 4 holding firm at its scheduled June
release date and at one point beating out Lady Gaga for the most pre-ordered album on iTunes, although El-P is putting that down to “some sort of weird glitch in the system” more than anything else. As El expresses his disbelief at the success the duo are having, Killer Mike dials in on FaceTime from his car and takes over where he leaves off: “I knew this shit could be big, should be big, but I didn’t know if it would be big and I didn’t know the depth of what bigness it would be.” Throughout the call, the two take it in turns to give opinions, back each other up and crack jokes, not once disagreeing or talking over each other. “I knew that El and I had something special,” Mike continues. “But the one thing you can’t account for is luck. You can’t account for the luck of bumping into Zack [de la Rocha]
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It’s rare to find a band with a work ethic as tireless as Dream Wife’s. It’s been two years since the release of their debut selftitled album, which saw them play shows across the globe including festivals, support slots with the likes of Garbage and The Vaccines, as well as their own headline shows. Now they’re gearing up for their highly anticipated follow-up ‘So When You Gonna...’ which sees them explore their craft in a whole new way.
Words: Jasleen Dhindsa. Photos: Sarah Piantadosi.
“By December we had played about 150 shows, so it was a lot,” vocalist Rakel Mjöll reflects from her family’s summerhouse in Iceland where she’s currently isolating. Her fellow bandmates drummer Alice Go and bassist Bella Popadec are isolating together in London. She continues: “We didn’t come back much to London at all, we were on the road, and it was an amazing, time, but after we finished that we decided to not jump back on the road but give us some time to write and only do festivals in the summer. To have the first start of the year leading into the fall as a period to write, it was incredible. “We started writing [for the new album] after we gave ourselves a good six weeks break, and it was the longest time we’d been apart from each other since we started this band, which is ridiculous,” she laughs. Not only is the band’s love for what they do, seen in the fact they gave themselves such a short break between album cycles, it’s also seen in how they didn’t feel the need to delay the release of their album, as so many artists are doing in the current global pandemic. Alice explains this choice: “Obviously there were options to delay, but we thought it was really important to keep the date. [Sharing music] is always a positive experience, and it still reaches people in the way it would otherwise. [We’re] just taking it day by day and being really thankful that we can release this music in this internet age. It’s a
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GLORIA DAYS Words: Rob Mair. Photos: Daniel Cavazos.
“It’s always been a goal of mine, creatively, to think in a timeless way, and not just think about writing in the moment,” says Chris Simpson, while discussing the 20th anniversary and reissue of The Gloria Record’s ‘A Lull In Traffic’.
endeavours,” he says with a certain self-effacing humour. “Whatever magic Mineral had, it resonated with people. The amount of people Mineral connected with… with The Gloria Record, it was just a small percentage of that. “I think, at the time we were very young, and things had gone very well for us in Mineral. There was a part of us that assumed we must be great, and everything Having made his name in would continue to go well for Mineral, The Gloria Record was us; like ‘OK, we’ll go and start Simpson’s next vehicle – a much another band’ – it’s no big deal, more atmospheric indie-rock right? I think there was a lack project than the one with which of maturity in the sense that we he made his name. Now, with a didn’t understand that starting significant milestone to celebrate, over with a new project really did Simpson is reflecting on just why mean starting over.” the record continues to be a fan Yet The Gloria Record – despite favourite from his extensive back- Simpson’s initial disappointment catalogue. at the response – has remained Yet The Gloria Record didn’t steadfastly popular with a solid get off to the best of starts when core of fans – and will now get the they formed at the tail-end of chance to find a new audience the Twentieth Century, with thanks to a much-anticipated Simpson disappointed by the – and long overdue – reissue of fans’ response to the group’s first their high-watermark EP ‘A Lull material. Before disbanding, In Traffic’. Mineral had signed a deal with Considering the group’s initial the major label Interscope, and lifespan coincided with the emo Simpson expected to simply carry boom of the late 1990s and early over the success of one act to 2000s, their atmospheric take another. on indie-rock had much more “I remember, initially, being in common with the genre’s despondent – as I have been more nuanced bands than it did ever since in all my creative with the pop-rock stylings of
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The Get Up Kids and Jimmy Eat World (with whom Mineral had previously released a split single). Indeed, it would have been easy for Simpson to have chased after some easy emo dollars – even more so thanks to the major label connection which was already in the bag, and leverage created by the Mineral name. Instead, The Gloria Record leaned into six-minute-long, almost post-rock influenced soundscapes, which owed as much to British shoegaze and indie of the time than it did to the emo forebears in Rites of Spring or Sunny Day Real Estate or the propulsive pop-punk of Saves The Day or Lifetime. “I think we were conscious of not wanting to sound like that,” says Simpson, when asked why they decided to move in this direction. “I think, when we came out of Mineral, Jeremy [Gomez, bassist, and The Gloria Record co-founder] and I really wanted to distance ourselves from that. That’s not to say we intentionally wrote material that was different, but in the marketing of it, we really wanted to try and make something that stood on its own legs. “And, ultimately, we were not interested in making polished pop music,” he continues. “I don’t think Mineral would have
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DYING
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“I’m back on my soapbox,” announces The Beths guitarist Jonathan Pearce, while discussing the merits of love songs with bandmate and songwriter, Liz Stokes. “Love songs always have an angle, and that angle is the context of a musician’s life,” he continues. “Some angles are played out and don’t need to be written again – and I think this is one of the reasons there are so many successful and brilliant and loved female and non-binary artists in indie and alternative music right now. There’s a whole well of great songs, and the themes that occur to those people don’t occur to privileged white boys. Those songs haven’t been written and played out yet. They’re written from a different perspective, and they’re very valid and worth hearing, and that’s what people want.” There’s no doubt that plenty of people were hugely invested in the stories of Stokes and her bandmates (completed by bassist Benjamin Sinclair and drummer Tristan Deck). Full-length debut ‘Future Me Hates Me’ proved to be a call-to-arms for like-minded people the world over, in large part thanks to Stokes’ perspective
ELIEVE Words: Rob Mair. Photos: Mason Fairey.
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