Francis of Delerium is finding her sound
Following a string of incisive, grunge-splashed EPs – All Change (2020), Wading (2021), and The Funhouse (2022) – Francis of Delirium’s debut full-length arrives at a creative zenith. “This felt like we were writing our second album. We didn’t get that opportunity to have the debut album be a collection of my whole life,” Jana Bahrich explains, referring to the adage that an artist spends their whole life on their first album and a few months on their second. “It’s much more concentrated. Every time we wrote an EP, I thought, this one’s gonna be the album,” says Bahrich. “And it just didn’t happen. I couldn’t write in each of those worlds for long enough. Like, there was just a full stop at the last song we’d write for each EP. This album was the first time it felt like there were a lot more songs that were connected to each other.”
Thematically cohesive, Lighthouse drills into juxtapositions of quiet beauty and loud ugliness – butterflies and breakdowns – something communicated during the first minute of the first song. “Twirling ballet dancers on the corner of a 7-Eleven / At the end of our lives we’ll say we loved each other forever / And when it ends, I will never love again,” Bahrich sighs in a reticent whisper before she’s interrupted by a roar of thick guitars reminiscent of contemporary acts such as Bully and Mannequin Pussy. But despite these clear influences, Lighthouse still stands as its own, singular work. The album, for example, notably marks a gentle departure from the grunge sounds of the band’s previous EPs.
“I’m writing pop songs with Not Pop instrumentation,” Bahrich summarises, “and that kind of lends itself to songs where the choruses are simple. I took this Adrianne Lenker songwriting course last month. She was like, the verses should give the choruses their meaning, and your relationship with the chorus should change as the verses move forward. So I guess I’m trying to let the verses do the work.”
Nothing Personal are on the rise
Norwegian trio Nothing Personal are all about contrast, using improvisation and sound collage to build brightly coloured song worlds that fizz with character.
All three members have other projects on the go – Solveig Wang in neo-soul octet FIEH, Dorothea Økland as one-third of indie-pop band Klossmajor, and Thea Emilie Wang (no relation to Solveig) as a solo artist and as a member of AURORA’s touring band – but with Nothing Personal, they wanted to create something totally different. Something they’d never really heard before.
Partly inspired by a course that Solveig took with experimental vocalist and composer Sidsel Endresen (“a Norwegian legend, a genius”), the Nothing Personal universe was conceived as a safe space in which the trio could explore new things, no matter how impulsive or off-the-wall. “Sidsel had an assignment that was to make a collage out of song ideas and field recordings, and to be really creative with what we perceive as music and what we perceive as noise,” says Solveig. “I loved that assignment and I wanted to do more of it.”
Listening to Nothing Personal is to sample a tasting menu of unexpected pairings of sounds and textures. There’s a reason they titled their 2022 debut The Alchemy of Nothing Personal. “We were making new stuff on different components that we didn’t really know how to play and turning that into gold,” says Dorothea. “Also, it was really interesting to play around what makes a song feel like something personal, to explore what kind of sounds or effects are triggering different emotions in the listener.”
John Lurie on Aretha Franklin
My father was sick and was dying, and it was just me and him in the living room and he was stuck in one place on oxygen. He hated the TV but the TV was on, and Aretha Franklin was on. I didn’t know who she was. This thing came over me: I was moved, I got chills, and I thought I was going to start crying. I didn’t understand what was happening to me. I had to hide it from my dad because I was embarrassed. That was the first time that music really threw me across the room and baffled me. It was like someone had put LSD in my coffee or something.
It was at this college, and at the end when she finished, all the kids jumped up in unison and roared like you’ve never seen. My dad said this thing, and it didn’t strike me at the time, but years later it did. He said, “I can see that they’re really moved by it, and I think it’s real, but I don’t feel it.” So, instead of saying, “Kids, your music sucks, you should be listening to Bach, Stravinsky or Duke Ellington,” he was saddened by the idea that evolution had left him behind – that he couldn’t hear what they were hearing. I appreciated him so much in later years for that.
As told to Olivia Swash
Three things to get excited about this week
The DJ: On Tuesday, a flurry of stories and message screenshots hit Fred Again’s Instagram, but not for the reason you might expect. “@nzparliament, please please can anyone help us with this!” read the caption. Fred, as it turns out, was trying to expedite a passport for Tessa Hills — who goes by Messie — an unknown DJ he’d stumbled upon during a trip to New Zealand, and wanted to bring on his Australian tour. The outreach worked, and Messie boarded a plane, passport in hand, for Perth just over 12 hours later. Though Messie has been bubbling up around NZ circles for a few years, the new exposure via Fred may just be her big breakout moment. So, here’s your warning to check out Messie’s mixes early and stay ahead of the curve.
The compilation: Faye Webster, Courtney Barnett, Julia Jacklin, The War on Drugs, and more are joining forces for a new compilation album to benefit abortion access. NOISE FOR NOW VOL. 2 is available for pre-order and drops on 21 June via NOISE FOR NOW, a registered non-profit which will donate proceeds from the record to Keep Our Clinics.
The documentary: To compliment their forthcoming memoir, a new Beach Boys documentary covering the period between the release of their first single, “Surfin,” up until their 1980 Independence Day concert will drop on 24 May. "There's love in the music and people can relate to the love, regardless of whether you're two years old or 92 years old. For me, music is about love. Love is the message I want to share. I hope people feel that in my music. That makes the hard work worth it," says Brian Wilson.
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 Owen Morawitz on Crime in Stereo’s The Troubled Stateside (2006) and Koyo’s Would You Miss It? (2023).
The more I read about emo, the more I feel that we’ve been thinking about nostalgia all wrong. A quick cursory search dredges up features and lists revolving around endless “revivals” and the right time for the right kind of resurgence (subjectively speaking, mind you). And yet, all of these temporal considerations appear to skip over the fundamental factor that truly motivates nostalgia: space or, to put it more accurately, home. Nostalgia isn’t just a wistful backward glance at the past or a failure to move on. It’s a deeply felt yearning for place, for the safety and security that comes from presence–at an etymological level, the word literally means “homecoming ache”.
This explains why many of my favourite emo-adjacent albums come from and are fixated on one location in particular: Long Island, New York. Silent Majority, The Movielife, Taking Back Sunday, Glassjaw, Brand New — these are all beloved groups that have stamped their name on the intersection of emo and hardcore. And they also, at one point or another, all made Long Island their home. And so, too, did Crime In Stereo.
“Everything Changes/Nothing Is Ever Truly Lost,” the 59-second-long, Walt Whitman-referencing opener to their second full-length, 2006’s The Troubled Stateside, makes this clear from the jump: “Home: Embrace the concept, can’t afford the place.” Notions of ideology and Bush-era precarity aside, it’s a breathless track that still bristles with the restless energy of youth. Pounding drums, searing guitar progressions, and Kristian Hallbert’s emphatically yelled vocals soundtrack the explosive revelation that the desire for relentless touring, measured success, and the dim glow of highway signs do little to ease “the long chains of space around our throats.” Sure, “doing the music thing” can be fun and all, but, ultimately, lurking in the background is always that dreaded “coming home.” Long Island awaits.
Fast-forward a decade or two, and those same complexities of homecomings thematically anchor newcomers like Koyo. The group — whose moniker derives from the Japanese term for the autumnal changes in leaves — proudly rides for their hometown. Would You Miss It?, the quintet’s 2023 debut LP, opens with “Greetings from this island life” before quickly turning to shared suffering, solitude and the sweet relief of someone close. Vocalist Joey Chiaramonte yearns to feel, to love, and to find his peace. Echoing Hallbert’s sentiments above, Chiaramonte is resolute in washing away his pain: “Watch it leave me/ Watch it go/ Heaven see me/ See me take this by the throat.”
Later, during album centrepiece “Anthem,” space and time, place and legacy become fused into a rallying cry for renewal–defiantly not revival. The track’s music video intersperses footage of rowdy youth hall pile-ons with empty Massapequa streets and leafy fields, propelled swiftly by churning riffage and a bass-heavy thrum. Rather than resting on the seductive pull of nostalgia, Chiramonte stresses the silver lining of finality and the “rush” that comes with looking forward: “We grow old and die off/ But the best has yet to come/ And when our time has passed/ You’ll just know you’re the next one up.” As Koyo hints, this fire won’t go out as long as someone carries the torch. And as we know, everything changes, but nothing is ever truly lost.
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 Chiedu Oraka, Hour, ILLIT, Anastasia Coope, and coverstar Jodie Nicholson.