STACK #222 April 2023

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APRIL MUSIC

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What’s a gal to do when she’s just released two majorly massive singles in a row, from the soundtrack of her film debut? She releases another one, obviously! That’s what Whitney Houston did 30 years ago this month, when I Have Nothing hit number one after previous singles I Will Always Love You and I’m Every Woman had achieved the same.

THIS MONTH:

Depeche Mode (p80)

boygenius (p70)

DYK?

The medical term for ’tone-deafness’ (or the inability to comprehend pitch) is amusia. Yep, that’s your mate who can’t sing for peanuts. But if that mate also speaks a tonal language (Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese), amusia can affect their ability to understand regular speech! Thankfully, convo context is often enough for these particular amusiacs to get your gab – in a similar (though simplified)

way that an English-speaker would understand ”I choose you” over ”I chews you”.

Private Function (p68)

Looking back at the stories behind our favourite album covers, this month it’s Frenzal Rhomb’s hilarious A Man’s Not a Camel (1999).

“All fab, no flab...” Check out our feature review of Frenzal Rhomb’s raucous new record The Cup of Pestilence on page 79!

”From memory, in 1999 we were drowning in beer,” reflects Frenzal Rhomb vocalist Jay Whalley. ”The Man’s Not a Camel album had been named, but we had little to no interest in what the cover would look like.” And why would they, when the title was such a gas? For those in the dark, the phrase is used by a thirsty person, to prompt a companion to help slake said thirst, via the purchase of a drink. ”Lucky for us,” continues our storyteller, ”the genius minds of artists Fox Trotsky and Geoff Rundell from the aptly named Giant Beer company recognised the high brow, Renaissance polymaths that we were, and came up with the idea to replicate Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man ... but with a camel... and a beer background.” ZKR

64 APRIL 2023

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