The Friday Dispatch
Clarissa Connelly, Shaznay Lewis, Lovefoxx, Iggy Pop and Corridor
Clarissa Connelly creates her own transcendant symphony
Clarissa Connelly often hears spectacular melodies while walking in rural Denmark, but loses some magic in the scramble to capture them. “It's never possible, but the work getting there is somehow worth it,” she explains.
Where does that magic come from? It’s the question that inspired the Scottish-born artist’s new album World of Work – released last month on Warp – which plays with divinity in its weighty presentation. You hear that most in her heightened vocal performances, which feel as though they come from a transcendental place. That theatricality allows her “to be free of the boundaries of my personality, because that’s very narrow, being Clarissa,” says Connelly. “It creates spaces that are more open. It’s important to be awake in the present.”
World of Work tackles huge ideas – the push and pull between work and desire, faith and doubt, life and death. Inspired by Bataille's L'érotisme, the record describes desire as that place where we feel connected to something bigger than ourselves. The process of making music was a good symbol, given the mundanity and flashes of divinity that are a part of creation. “There’s a lot of work to it, getting where you want to go. The moment of surprise in that chord that gives you the feeling of the roof falling off that I’m always trying to find in music, it’s not always that it succeeds but that exploration is the whole point for me.”
Shaznay Lewis is starting a new chapter
With almost three decades as a member of seminal girl-group All Saints, a brief solo career, a role in the now cult-hit Bend It Like Beckham and ongoing work as a songwriter, Shaznay Lewis has plenty of industry experience to draw from. Independently releasing her second record Pages this week, for Lewis it marks the first time that she’s been able to work free from label intervention and the consideration of others. “I haven't had to think about how it needs to sound production-wise or who needs to sing what, or writing in a way that suits a certain voice. All these other things that start at the top of the list before I even get to the song. It just starts to take away layers of the enjoyment of creating,” she says. “With this project it was always, first and foremost, about the song. My shoulders felt light because I was just able to do art. It’s been great.”
On this record, working the right people — including her own, newly-minted label imprint — was much of what brought creative pleasure back into the process for Lewis. “We just wanted what we were doing to be the best that it could possibly be and I loved that,” she grins. “I'd go into those sessions super excited, like a first time artist. That's the energy that I feel was missing for a very long time. I did not know what was going to happen with this. I had no management. I had no label. I decided to do this journey on my own - none of the usual people that I would work with. I felt like I was completely out on a limb, just sort of throwing caution to the wind and not even hoping for the best, just being excited about whatever it was that I was doing.”
Lovefoxx from CSS on Lovage
When I was sixteen with two jobs, I was always hanging out with people who were older than me. I was friends with a stylist, and we were just going around town during the day, I don't know, maybe to a supermarket, and she played me Lovage: Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By. I was a horny teenager and I. Lost. My. Mind.
After that I was always walking on the street and listening to this record, I was cleaning my house and listening to this record, it was this record all the time, for many years. I thought it was very grown-up of me. There's so many moanings! But I needed it to make sense of what was in my mind, I guess.
Jennifer Charles, the female voice on the album, really impacted me. How is a voice like hers possible, and this interpretation? I don't care much about Mike Patton, but I think the yin and yang of their energies is great. I actually noticed the lyrics this time: the man going "I'm a man" and she's like "I'm this, I'm that". That's the female experience! We are so multi-universal and dimensional, you know. I just thought it was super sexy.
They explain in the beginning of the album that "lovage" is an aphrodisiac. And I remember when I broke up with a boyfriend while I was in Japan, I wanted to feel like myself, so I put on this album, and it brought me back to when I was eighteen years old. So I decided I was going to get a tattoo of whatever came up when I Googled "lovage", and it was a plant.
I can't place this album with any music scene or anything, it was like an island in my mind. A sex island in my mind. It's one of those records where one song is finishing and I can hear the next one coming. I imagine scenarios around the train and the bed and the flowers and the candles – very kitsch.
Because I was really horny when I was a teenager, I was thinking about sex all the time. Even when I closed my eyes, I was thinking about sex, it was kind of disturbing, you know. And this album only made it worse!
As told to Orla Foster
Three things to get excited about this week
The session: This week, Ibibo Sound Machine dropped by Crouch End Studios to record “Them Say” from their latest record, Pull the Rope. "‘Them Say’ is about coming to a new place, a new experience of life, being caught between two worlds and ultimately staying strong in one’s own identity," the band explain. "It builds from an initial afrobeat rhythm as synth arpeggios, horns and BVs gradually enter to give it a more sweeping feeling which aims to embody the sense of space and distance the track speaks to lyrically."
The book: With a career spanning decades, genres, and forms, Arthur Russell is an artistic marvel and the subject of much fan-fascination. Now, in a new book, writer Richard King pulls together extensive archival material on the composer and cellist to produce a compelling look at his life and previously-unseen work. Travels Over Feeling: Arthur Russell, a Life is out now.
The artist: New York-born indie songwriter Simone has been steadily honing her craft and blazing her trail since her first release in 2019. But, aside from some social media activity and a recent tour of college town bookstores, she has been relatively quiet since 2022. Today, she’s back with her new single “Linger.” Brought to life by the production team behind Lucy Dacus and boygenius, the track is the first off of her forthcoming EP, Someone You Remember. “‘Linger’ is a song I’d been trying to figure out for a while before I finally sat down to finish it,” she says of the track. “I had the first verse written but couldn’t figure out where the song should go for months. It hit me one day that this was a song about remembering. There was a relationship I was in that had been over for a very long time, but for some reason I kept finding myself recalling very specific times we had together, even though this person was so far removed from my life.”
Something Old, Something New
Every week, one of Best Fit's writers or editors share their recommendations of two records they love - one from the past, one from the present. This week, writer Ross Horton on Iggy Pop’s Free (2019) and Corridor’s Mimi (2024)
With an artist as legendary and as mercurial as Iggy Pop, you’re bound to find curios oddities and scattered across s60 years’ worth of catalogue material. Arguably the weirdest of them all is 2019’s nu-jazz/art-rock hybrid Free, produced by renaissance man Leron Thomas and guitar master Noveller (Sarah Lipstate) and featuring lyrical contributions from Dylan Thomas and Lou Reed. There are a couple genuine career highlights for Iggy on the record. “Sonali” — with its skittering rhythms, doom-laden atmospherics and yearning vocals — almost feels like Iggy’s direct response to Bowie’s ★. “Loves Missing” also holds its own, with a heavy, sexy groove that feels like a continuation of 2016’s Post Pop Depression. “Dirty Sanchez,” another high point, stands out for simply being truly obscene, as if inviting you to some kind of Mariachi bacchanal. From top to bottom, Free is a low-key but extremely worthwhile listen for those hungry to dig deeper into the world of Iggy Pop.
On the complete opposite side of the art-rock spectrum is Corridor’s latest release (and masterpiece), Mimi. An exercise in texturally rich, psychedelic indie-rock, Mimi builds on foundations laid by artists like Iggy Pop in the late 70s while overlaying left-of-centre modern techniques. Across the album, you’ll find motorik drums, thrumming Sci-Fi synth lines cribbed from Tangerine Dream and Devo, queasy narcotic bops à la Deerhunter (especially on “Mon Argent” and “Mourir Demain”); chiming, glassy post-punk, and, most importantly, an incredible wealth of ideas crammed into just over half an hour of music. Nonetheless, it’s completely taken me by surprise to see a band take 5 years between releases come back refreshed and better than ever but not be greeted by any major fanfare or momentum. Perhaps it’s because the lyrics are in French? Perhaps it’s because Deerhunter were still active the last time Corridor released an album? Perhaps it’s because nobody knows who they are? Whatever the reason is, if you haven’t heard Mimi yet, don’t let yourself be a stranger to it or to Corridor. This may just be the album of the summer.
Listen to the week in new music by following our Discovery playlist
Dropping at midnight every Thursday, follow our playlist for a taste of the best new music from the most exciting breaking artists – 20 new tracks, top-loaded from the last five days in music and on repeat among out editors and writers right now.
Leading the selection this week are new tracks from Lip Critic, October and The Eyes, Wu-Lu, flowerovlove and coverstar dear francis.