The Friday Dispatch
HONESTY, Sinéad Harnett, Yaya Bey, Life Without Buildings and English Teacher
HONESTY and the quest for imperfect electronica
The origins of Partisan Records-signed Leeds collective HONESTY are an exercise in patience and divine timing. Coming together as a therapeutic endeavour born from the ashes of various musical projects and a pandemic lockdown, Josh Lewis and fellow progenitor Matt Peel found themselves with a clean slate and a desire to enjoy creating in its simplest form, experimenting with synthesisers and traditional instruments to concoct an expansive electronic soundscape.
“Towards the second half of 2020, when they let us out for a little bit, I would pick George up and we’d head over [to The Nave] twice a week or whatever,” says Lewis. “Coming into the studio and just working on music – not with any kind of [idea] to form a band at that stage, just writing on synthesisers and seeing what happens – it was pretty therapeutic, you know? A few months later we realised we had a bunch of tunes and that’s when it started to be like, oh, is this a thing now?”
What quickly became apparent was the shared urge to leave all propensity for creative ego at the door – inflexible personalities and frustrating loops of internal politics having marred each of their previous experiences in bands. “Bands are like that more often than not. [I’m] done with that, too old for that,” says Peel. “I just want everyone to chip in whatever is good.”
HONESTY release their debut mixtape BOX today. Unbound from time constraints and overarching album thematics, it sees them delve into their extensive archives to piece together a left-field tapestry with a patchwork mentality. An undulating blend that segues between dance, house and trip hop, BOX is a home for the wayward scraps.
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Sinéad Harnett heals her inner child on Boundaries
If Sinéad Harnett’s second album, Ready is Always Too Late was a roadmap to self love, her third is about what happens when you finally reach that destination. A love letter to her inner child, Boundaries – released today – draws on Harnett’s lessons from therapy to grapple with what it truly means to put yourself first.
While it was a break-up that provided Harnett with the impetus to start her journey through therapy, it also came paired with the quiet isolation and anxiety of the pandemic. “It was the first time that you could stop and really look in the mirror, because our lives are so packed. It was reflection time. That kind of started and coincided as I was writing this album,” she says.
Created over a two-year period, Harnett ended up with sketches for around 150 songs for the record, routinely returning to and finessing the ideas that stuck. Writing as she was going through her therapeutic sessions, she stayed true to her original sentiment, treating her lyrics like diary entries. “I like to be quite loyal to the feeling and the emotion at the time,” she says. “So that's why some of the songs are still kind of younger Sinéad, less grown Sinéad, because I guess that was true at the time. I like to see how I've grown since then, or perhaps fallen off.”
Shirley Manson on Siouxsie and the Banshees
Siouxsie is the one who's had the greatest impact on my career. As a teenager, I just wanted to look like her; sound like her; be her. But I was a redhead, I was freckled. I was about as far from the dark mysterious goth as you could get. But she was the one that grabbed my attention.
“Love In the Void” was the first track I'd ever heard of Siouxie, on John Peel. Unlike a lot of the punk music that was on the radio at that time, this was a woman singing and sounding really fierce and confident. On this track in particular, she's got this sarcastic ‘nanananana’ call that felt to me like a subversion of many of the girl groups from the 60s.
She sounds really primal, really brutal. On every single Garbage record, there is a tiny Siouxsie moment. It may not sound like that for the casual listener, but there is at least one moment where I’ll try and fuck with my phrasing or a backing vocal would be a total rip off of her - just done through my funnel.
I thought I understood where she was coming from in a funny way. It wasn't intellectual; it was just a sound and a feeling and it blew me away. And then later on, I saw what she looked like…
I dyed my hair once [to look like her]. Jackie magazine had free brown hair tie in a little plastic pocket on the front. I think I was 11 or 12 years old… and my dad cried. I looked really weird. It looked like I’d thrown my head into a puddle of mud.
Three things to get excited about this week
The shows: This week, Best Fit announced not one but two shows we’re hosting in London. On 2 May, we’re excited to welcome Swedish underground legends The Embassy to The Social for their first UK show to date. Later in the year, we host Esther Rose at The Lexington. Tickets for each are on sale now.
The documentary: Today, a new documentary about Village Voice photographer James Hamilton is releasing in theatres. After spending decades behind the camera capturing both the minutia of New York City life and portraits of the famous (Bob Marley, Meryl Streep, Patti Smith, Jack Nicholson, and more), Hamilton finally has his turn out in front. Titled UNCROPPED, the film is both a portrait of Hamilton the man and also a portrait of the New York culture he so tenderly immortalised.
The album: Known principally as a photographer, most notably for his 1990s images of clubbing culture and the gay scene – as well as the cover of Frank Ocean's Blonde – Wolfgang Tillmans new record Build From Here is more assertive than his earlier work in music. Stressing rhythmically and verbally the notion of constructing something positive, even out of challenging situations, he encourages us, “Just be strong.”
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, Best Fit writer Alice Brown on Any Other City by Life Without Buildings (2001) and This Could Be Texas by English Teacher (2024).
Leeds is probably one of the greatest cities in the world. I am, as a resident of almost six years, incredibly biased. But you don’t have to take it from me. Rather, consider the latest offering from indie four-piece English Teacher, This Could Be Texas, as the latest evidence.
A fixture of the Leeds local scene, English Teacher have had a strong grip on that ever-elusive ones to watch” label for a while now. And despite my early cynicism around the band as well as my post-punk fatigue (Sorry! Enough is enough!), I wholeheartedly believe they’ve managed to make something genuinely exciting with their debut album. It’s a project so innovative and exciting that even placing them within the confines of post-punk feels somehow unjust.
As a body of work, This Could Be Texas is restless and unrelenting. With tracks constantly flitting from playful to pensive, the band swell beyond any preconceived notions of what could be achieved on a first record. “The Best Tears Of Your Life” even enacts an autotune drenched chorus reminiscent of a Charli XCX ballad without seeming at any point out of place.
“Broken Biscuits” is a personal highlight, an insight into austerity Britain with lyrics that wouldn’t be out of place in a state-of-the-nation novel - think Ali Smith’s “Seasonal Quartet” set to an irregular time signature. Equal parts graceful and devastating, the record a true testament to front-woman Lily Fontaine’s power as a wordsmith above all else.
Whilst we’re on the subject of crafty ambition, breathy vocals and dancing guitar plucks, it seems only fair to pay respect to Life Without Buildings’ turn-of-the-millennium masterpiece Any Other City.
The album, more specifically track '“The Leanover,” has fallen victim to the bizarre tradition of former favourite — and even forgotten — bands blowing up on “the algorithm.” A current music marketer's dream somehow pillaged by a short-lived experiment into art-rock by a quartet of artists based in Glasgow, looking to “have a laugh.” Brilliant stuff.
Beyond this recent resurgence, however, is a genuinely gorgeous album that I find myself returning to time and time again. Lyrically lucid, at points entirely illegible, it’s the voice of Sue Thompkins that truly makes this album one of the greats. Her collage of snatched sounds all come together to something transcendent. The melodies are almost too enticing and dreamy, sitting somewhere beyond the monotony of the every day, and it’s easy to get lured into the album’s slippery, at points anxiously fragmented, world. The tracks all work well in isolation (New Town is probably one of my favourite songs ever), but work best in absent minded succession.
I love this album for lots of reasons. Of course, it’s truly sonically stylish and had a life well beyond itself in inspiring generations of artists to come, even cited as a reference point for English Teacher’s ‘Nearly Daffodils’. But there’s also something to be said for mythology behind a band itself, a mysterious dynamic that simply hooks you in and makes you want to know more, even if there isn’t. And while we may always wish we could scratch that itch of seeing what Life Without Buildings could have made next, it’s perhaps the ephemerality of this cult classic that has allowed it to burn bright all these years later.
Listen to the week in new music by following our Discovery playlist
Dropping at midnight every Thursday, follow our 20-track playlist for a taste of the best new music from the most exciting breaking artists.
These are the songs our editors and writers have on repeat right now, taken from the hundreds of tracks released in the last seven days. Leading the selection this week are new tracks from Previous Industries, Amanda Cy, LYLO, Human Interest, and coverstar Pem.
It feels like people are constantly uncovering Life Without Buildings...which is a good thing!