STACK #232 February 2024

MUSIC FEATURE

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when you don’t really know who you are, or what you stand for. I think as I got older I realised I needed to live and respond in a way that aligned with what I believed was important. So, I think the origins started internally, and then by building a life from that place it becomes external too, because you have finite time and resources. Bend has one of those choruses which feels as if we loved from before it was written – like its melody was always meant to exist exactly like this. Did its melody and message come together for you very quickly? Haha, that is cool and nice of you to say. This song came all at once. As long as it took to play it, was basically as long as it took to write it. I was playing late one night in my hotel room where I was staying while on set for a movie. It was at a time where I felt stretched beyond my capacity, and this song met me in that moment. There’s a really beautiful piano you’ve used across the album – it’s up-up-upper registers have the grimy tinkle of an old analogue instrument. We can hear it especially at the end of Terrible News and across All in My Head ! Where does it live? Woohoo, I like this question because I like the piano a lot. They are actually two different pianos, but they have much in common. Both upright, boxy things. The piano in Terrible News was at Echo Zoo Studios in Eastbourne. It sits kinda neglected in this random hallway outside the studio, so we set up some mics out there and clanged away. The All in My Head piano is the new piano in our house. It’s a Sauter, a German beauty... The album finishes on the beautiful All in My Head , and it’s possibly the first time we’ve heard [Gang ofYouths’] Dave Le’aupepe duet with a femme voice.You have said of this song’s sense of isolation that ”Two people can be in that place and still feel kind of lonely, but they’re in it together.” Do you think this idea could be seen as a central tenet to the whole album? Yes, I think that really speaks to the journey of our inner lives. So much going on within us has the potential to isolate us, but when we can reach out and connect with each other, there’s a lot of meaning and beauty in that...

Faith Crisis

Pt 1 by Midde Kids is out Feb 16 via EMI.

MAJOR CHORDS, MAJOR CRISIS Confusion, despondence, and a bright gut-driven hope are twisted all the way through Middle Kids’ outstanding third album.We put some questions to vocalist Hannah Joy about how she – alongside bandmatesTim Fitz and Harry Day – assembled the disarming and vivid Faith Crisis Part 1. Words Zoë Radas

right now: What can we have faith in? What can we believe in, have hope in? There’s a big cultural deficiency in hope right now (and for good reason), but we believe it can and must be found. Dramamine is such a little slice of sunshine. ”The human trampoline” is an inspired term for people-pleasing.What do you see as the beginning of your transformation away from that state? I guess people-pleasing happens a lot more

The title of this album is bold, and possibly confronting for those listeners who associate ’faith’ with religion only. Of course, there are all kinds of crises of faith, but did you waver at all on the record’s name? Yeah, for sure. We sat with it for a while before making the final call. I guess we were conscious of the fact that the title could neg some people, but I think in the end it was just such an undeniable thread of the record it felt strange to back away from it. It’s just a really important question to us

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Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears in the clip for Take Your Mama (2004)

This time 20 years ago, we’d just met a fiercely fabulous new band assembled within the gay nightclub circuit of New York: Scissor Sisters. Announcing their arrival with thumping glam rock original Laura, followed by an unexpected cover of Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb, the band’s self-titled debut landed on February 2 of 2004. It wasn’t long before third single and coming-out anthem Take Your Mama obliterated the charts and had us all hollering about growing up ”like a good boy oughta” along with frontman Jake Shears. Scissor Sisters went on to become the best-selling album of the entire year in the UK, and won Best International Album at the 2005 BRIT Awards.

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24 FEBRUARY 2024

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