The Friday Dispatch
Magdalena Bay, TaliaBle, Suki Waterhouse on Sharon Van Etten, and Chiedu Oraka on Spandau Ballet
Magdalena Bay want to defy your expectations
“As soon as we started trying to make a pop song, it’s very difficult,” Magdalena Bay’s Mica Tenenbaum says. “I don’t know if restraint is the right word, but there is definitely an exact craft to it. And I think now, as we’ve continued to make music, we’re closer to finding a way to mesh all that we learned about crafting a pop song with whatever it is about non-pop music that we like. Whether it’s atmosphere or experimentation or just weird song structure.”
Imaginal Disk, the new album from Tenenbaum and her musical partner Matthew Lewin, is the fruit of that desire to marry accessibility with eclecticism. It is patently the most “out there” thing Tenenbaum and Lewin have recorded together, precisely because it is neither normal nor strange, but instead a heated wrestling match between pop convention and the more fanciful tangents and progressions that threaten to twist pop’s form up like a pretzel.
“Ironically, we’re in this privileged position where we didn’t have like, three number one worldwide hits,” Lewin fairly points out. “They had this expectation that they were gonna keep breaking chart numbers and having massive smash hits. Luckily and unluckily, we don’t have that expectation on us. So I don’t know if people are going to listen to Imaginal Disk and be like, ‘oh man, I don’t know if there’s a ‘Time to Pretend’ on this.’ I think what would be a positive thing is if we start to be seen less as a pop group and more like an ‘alternative’ group.”
TaliaBle is on the rise
North London punk rapper and visual artist TaliaBle is fighting for fluidity, revelling in the chaos, and creating mosh pits queer people can twerk in.
Striving towards self-confidence is at the root of the 25-year-old’s music journey. "I literally just wanted to make one song," she says, somewhat incredulous of her own success. "At the time, I didn’t express myself and open up about how I felt, so I wanted to hear myself say how I felt. It was a growth thing for me."
Her time at Central Saint Martins (CSM) university massively influenced TaliaBle’s presentation of herself through its teaching of fashion communication and promotion. Reiterating punk’s DIY spirit, TaliaBle’s costumes are handmade and often made in collaboration with other CSM students. For her first few gigs, she constructed costumes for other people to wear on stage, each of which illustrated lines from her songs. TaliaBle took on the role of a narrator on stage, and as she observed how the costumes created characters out of the people that wore them, she began to take on a new role herself. And so, her own unique ‘character’ was born: ‘TaliaBle’. This new persona wore a mask and revelled in performance art, eager to escape any confines suggested by the category of ‘musician’.
"I learnt so much about myself from being on stage and performing," she says. "That’s my favourite part of music. The stage element. It marries the visual with the music for me. And it’s about experience and creating a feeling in the room. It is chaos: a bunch of different ideas at once."
Suki Waterhouse on Sharon Van Etten
“Seventeen” by Sharon Van Etten is something I haven't been able to stop listening to, it's been on my repeat playlist constantly. It's always a song I dream of emulating, even just a little bit, though I haven't quite gotten there yet. The production, the writing, I'm really obsessed with Sharon Van Etten as a person. She's someone I look up to as an artist, someone whose trajectory I'd love to follow.
Brad Cook, who produced my first album and much of my second, also has a strong connection to her. When I went to North Carolina to record, I didn't know that Brad had a history with Sharon — he's toured with her, loves her, and knows her so well. It felt like a bit of kismet.
This song makes me feel nostalgic for the past, even though I'm still quite young. I first listened to it when I was 27, but it made me nostalgic for the New York I experienced at 16 or 17. In this new phase of my life, I really relate to that feeling of remembering how things used to be — walking the streets, feeling like you owned them, wearing a fucking fedora hat.
There's a lot of that in this song. I often feel like I want to write just to not forget, because forgetting how things felt at different times is probably what I'm most scared of.
As told to Kelsey Barnes
Three things to get excited about this week
The podcast: For the past year-ish, the legendary producer Rick Rubin has been running his own flagship interview podcast: Tetragrammaton. Each interview is no shorter than an hour and goes deep into the subject’s psyche and into the minutiae of their work. As if anyone would expect less from Rubin. In a recent standout episode, Rubin interviewed Beabadoobee, with whom he collaborated at Shangri La as she recorded her latest album, This Is How Tomorrow Moves. The pair go song-by-song, discussing the inspirations behind each album track and the transformative power of Rubin’s California studio.
The artist: After years of releasing music, 19-year-old flowerovlove is finally having her breakout moment. The South London-born artist’s latest song, the infectiously bubbly “breaking news,” has caught like fire — and for good reason. On “breaking news,” flowerovlove dishes out pop perfection at its finest. This latest track is a marker of an exciting artist that is on the rise. Hopefully, there will be more to come soon.
The exhibit: Calling all New Yorkers — this is the final weekend of the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibit, Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm. Displayed alongside a variety of archival Macca material, the museum is showing some of his never-before-seen photography work. Catch it while you can!
Something Old, Something New
Every week, we share recommendations from members of the Best Fit community on two iconic records - one from the past, one from the present. This week, Hull rapper Chiedu Oraka shares his thoughts on Rouk3n’s "So Lit” and Spandau Ballet’s “Gold”. Oraka’s latest music video, “Helly Hansen 6,” is out now. He has also just announced a run of live shows in the UK.
If Rouk3n plays his cards right, he will be the future of the northern rap scene and I think he proves this on “So Lit”. The bars are executed brilliantly on this smooth beat - I think you’ll like the way he flows effortlessly. The chorus is well catchy. Perfect for them late-night cruises on the motorway. If you turn this song right up, I’d be surprised if you didn’t nod your head for the full thing. This one slaps.
Spandau Ballet’s “Gold” is a song that will remain in folklore forever. They don’t make anthems like this anymore. Name me a song that can shut down Carpool Karaokes, funerals, weddings, christenings and pre-drinks. This was one of my uni songs. A lot of drunken nights have been spent butchering the “Gold” lyrics. Groups of lads all over the UK have jumped up and down in unison chanting the chorus of this song. It’s just what we do when this type of song comes on. You feel indestructible. It makes you always believe.
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 in the Best Fit office right now.
Leading the selection this week are new tracks from dog eyes, Hello Mary, ratbag, Wax-Tree-Cast, and coverstar Julie Dawson.