The Friday Dispatch
Casper Grey, The Innocence Mission, Renée Reed, Rise Or Die Trying, and Shower Curtain
Casper Grey’s righteous indignation
For rising London rapper Casper Grey, music is about attitude over genre. “I think if there was any genre I’d like to be part of,” Grey says, “I’d say post-genre, just because the definition of the word is limitless.” Having come of age in the early and mid-00s, the musical landscape was, as he says, “probably at its most experimental.” If you ask him about his early inspirations like M.I.A and Switch, he’ll tell you he can’t begin to put a label to the tracks they were churning out. And he’s inspired by that that.
Having grown up in a tumultuous environment, Grey grew fiercely withdrawn to keep a tight grip on reality. Not afraid to push boundaries in art, with loaded vignettes and brutalist soundscapes, he acknowledges that in life, he’s still guarding his full truth for himself. His real name, for example, isn’t Casper Grey. That’s saved for government officials and close friends and family. Instead, Grey is a persona of sorts that allows the born-and-raised Londoner to embellish his life, to wear the brooding metaphorical mask: “My real long Irish name, which has all these silent letters in it, I don't have to tell anyone that, because that's not for you. I'll give so much to Casper that you won't need it.”
In conversation, Grey comes across as a voracious, self-taught student. He's able to drop the production credits or spawning point of any genre or artist that comes up in conversation. It’s perhaps why fusion is such a major aspect in his work and sees him try and marry the likes of jungle and grime with blues melodies.
On his debut album, JUNGIAN JUNGLIST, Grey puts this encyclopaedic knowledge to work. The project is less an album than a dynamic barrage, bristling with anger, frustration, and discomfort. Your own emotions can crackle in the dark depths, Grey offers; they can throw themselves against concrete walls until they disintegrate. “Essentially, when you come down to it,” Grey explains, “you're just channelling an emotion with the tools that you have.”
This week at Best Fit, we’ve been bumping Negative Spaces, a nu-metal, 90s rock-inspired record from Poppy. Also out now is Denzel Curry’s KING OF THE MISCHIEVOUS SOUTH; the latest EP from Hovvdy, Live at Julie’s; ep2 from newcomer two blinks, i love you; the long-awaited, often-teased “Merry Christmas, Please Don’t Call,” a new instant classic from Bleachers; and “So Far,” the debut single from the latest hyperpop one-to-watch, Saila. Seminal Swedish underground duo Studio's lost 2006 debut West Coast was announced for a reissue in January and will also hit streaming services again after disappearing a couple of years back.
The Innocence Mission return for their thirteenth LP
Eternal anomalies in the inconstant business of music, The Innocence Mission are that rare type of band able to faithfully occupy their own niche without ever coming close to feeling stale. Each of their albums is like a world in miniature, where even the smallest of tonal shifts is enough to create a sense of evolution and renewal. When it hits perfectly it’s nothing short of a superpower, albeit at the more modest end of the spectrum, amped up on demureness and poetic observation.
The sense of wonder inherent to Karen Peris’s luminous voice deserves much of the credit for that, earthed as it is by dewy and spacious arrangements that bloom in unhurried and quietly elegant ways: Karen’s flowing piano chords meeting the exceptional guitar work of high school sweetheart turned husband Don and the sympathetic basslines of Mike Bitts, a core member of the band since they formed in ‘86.
Midwinter Swimmers, the trio’s thirteenth studio album, is one of their most spectacularly beautiful, deserving of mention in the same breath as the classic Befriended (2003) and the earlier Small Planes (2001). Arriving almost five years on from the last Innocence Mission album See You Tomorrow, which found them judiciously indulging in a slightly grander, more layered sound, Midwinter Swimmers finds them mostly deviating back to the mean, luxuriating in familiar sonic spaces made new with greater insight and deepened affection.
Birthed partly during the intense early years of the pandemic, with her two children home from college, Peris says she was obliged to write the songs for Midwinter Swimmers in unusual places so as not to interrupt their Zoom classes: in the garage, in the attic and, in the case of “John Williams”, sitting cross-legged on the floor of her bedroom like she was a teenager again. “I was just trying to be quiet, but it did make the experience of writing those songs memorable in a new way,” she says. “Just being in a different physical space than usual was interesting.”
The introduction
Born and raised in Lafayette, Louisiana, 26-year-old Renée Reed is broadcasting a Cajun-inspired brand of folk that you don’t want to miss.
Describe your sound… Natural expression of emotions, experiences and musical influences.
How you started making music…. Natural expression of emotions, experiences and musical influences.
Favourite Cajun tradition…. Mardi Gras in Mamou.
Best French word… There are so many great French words. I don’t know if there’s a favourite, but I love the phrase « C’est toujours quelque chose » which means « It’s always something.»
You’re also a visual artist. Show us the last thing you drew…
Renée Reed’s latest single “On A Good Day” is out now via Keeled Scales
From the archive….
Celebrating and remembering George Harrison with his latest reissue, we’re bringing back this interview the former Beatle gave to the BBC just 10 days after the band broke up in 1970. Filmed for their special series, Fact or Fantasy?, Harrison discusses his religious revelations and encounters with the Krishna movement.
Something Old, Something New
Every week, we share recommendations from the Best Fit community on two iconic records — one from the past, one from the present. This week, features editor Hayden Merrick on Rise or Die Trying by Four Year Strong (2007) and words from a wishing well by Shower Curtain (2024).
I’ve spent the past few years feeling sick with guilt because I’m a “music journalist” and all I want to listen to is heavy pop punk released between 2005 and 2010. Obviously that’s an exaggeration, but I do have a serious soft spot for unnecessarily chuggy guitars that never leave the key of D major, beatdowns in the key of happy (in the words of one song title), and super-cheesy yelling about never looking down etc. When I discovered Four Year Strong — a Massachusetts band among the progenitors of so-called “easycore” — at age 15, it blew my tiny mind. They gave me endless supplies of energy and happiness. I traced their lineage backwards and discovered hardcore and emo and tons more awful music. Chiefly, I got way better at guitar: Alan Day and Dan O’Connor — who co-sing, co-write, co-shred — craft genuinely brilliant, lightning bolt lines that are so elaborate and speedy you can barely tell what’s going on half the time. This might also be because they usually can scream through an entire track. But in recent years, Four Year Strong have refined their style so that the arrangements don’t always sit at a ten (they put out a superb record this year that is closer to Deftones than New Found Glory). Still, their debut, Rise or Die Trying, will always remain the one I come back to. It’s the one that reminds me of cycling home from school dangerously fast so I could resume my quest to master every note. I’m still working on it.
I don’t trust people who listen to shoegaze in the summer. But when it comes time to rearrange the furniture in my flat so I don’t have to work with chattering teeth next to the ice-cold single-glazed window, I know I need swirling indigo guitars and vocals so soft they melt like snow if you even squint at them. If you’re like me, then you’re obviously spending these darker-than-usual days listening to Shower Curtain, a Brooklyn quartet fronted by Victoria Winter (no Jack Frost on guitar though, I’m sorry to report) whose debut album, only a month old at this point, takes inspo from the usual foot-fetish suspects but ditches much of their flab. words from a wishing well — a title in keeping with lowercase luminaries like my bloody valentine — is fizzy, feisty, and to-the-point. The guitars are gargantuan. Winter’s lyrics are clever and curious (there’s puking, identity crises, the burning of a neighbour’s furniture). And where many bands employ flange and feedback to compensate for flimsy song structures, Shower Curtain are economical with the shoegaze toolbox, using only the necessities to enhance their otherwise rock-solid pop arrangements that would just as easily work in the hands of grunge-adjacent acts like Momma or even more stripped-back indie darlings Slow Pulp.
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 from the last five days in music that we’ve got on repeat in the Best Fit office right now.
Leading the selection this week are new tracks from Yoshika Colwell, Crayon, Marta Knight, UCHE YARA and coverstar Geographer.
I really think that musicians, probably musicians and cooks, are responsible for the most pleasure in human life. Motown music — which was very popular when I was a teenager — whenever I hear it, I instantly become happier. This is true of almost nothing!
- Fran Lebowitz