STACK #163 May 2018

MUSIC NEWS

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TOURING 2/05 - 14/08

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H e's lost the locks and the hat somewhere between crazy- popular debut album Chaos And The Calm (2015) and here, but James Bay has not abandoned his songwriting abilities, nor the arresting qualities of his voice. Electric Light is certainly a step in a new (electronic) direction for the 27-year-old Englishman; first single Wild Love features gently pulsing synths and a beautiful melody which recalls that Miike Snow classic Sans Soleil , and second cut Pink Lemonade veers into a bit of disco- rock a la The Killers. Find out what else he's been cooking up when Electric Light comes out on May 18. JAMES BAY

MISSY HIGGINS

T he title of Missy Higgins' fifth studio album is a term coined by Perth philosopher and geosciences professor Glenn Albrecht, who created the portmanteau from the words 'solace' and 'nostalgia.' It's all about distress at environmental change, "when your endemic sense of place is being violated," he explains. Nine-time ARIA Award winner Higgins interprets that theme through her singular songwriting skills and instantly recognisable pipes, on her first album of originals in six years. Our Jeff is impressed: " Solastalgia is the sound of an artist pushing her boundaries, thematically and musically," he says. "The result is a triumph." Read the full review on page 20. ZKR

Solastalgia

by Missy Higgins is out now via EMI.

TROPICAL F-CK STORM

Electric Light by James Bay is out May 18 via Universal.

H ere’s an electric guitar. Now it’s a swan arching its neck! Now it’s a chainsaw. Now it’s a giant, stick-legged alien picking its way over a wasted city! Now it’s a handful of bioluminescent plankton. But also, it’s still an electric guitar. That’s the mastery of invocation which Tropical F-ck Storm wield on A Laughing Death In Meatspace ; Gareth Liddiard, Fiona Kitschin, Erica Dunn and Lauren Hammel don’t seem to see the usual parameters of their instruments, nor do they look at song structure as a series of boxes to be ticked. Every instrument makes a sound – communicates a

thing – and you can put those things together however you want; that approach usually results in something too batsh-t busy to work (or which relies on kooky samples or artificially warping the human voice to extremes), but A Laughing Death In Meatspace doesn’t just hurl rainbow pâté against the wall hoping something will stick. They're using kitchen cupboard ingredients to make purposeful magic you didn't know could exist, with Liddiard’s allusive lyrics as weirdly mnemonic as ever. Fearsome and dynamic, quietly agonising, spine-strokingly cool stuff. ZKR

TOURING 3/05 - 26/5

A Laughing

Death In Meatspace by Tropical F-ck Storm is out May 4 via Mistletone/ Inertia.

TOURING 24/7 - 25/7

14

MAY 2018

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