The Friday Dispatch
Fabiana Palladino, X-Ambassadors, Phosphorescent, Th' Faith Healers and Mannequin Pussy
A decade in the making, Fabiana Palladino’s full-length debut is a tribute to selfhood through the medium of silky, confident pop. She tells Best Fit about trusting the process for this week’s digital cover.
Some of the tracks on the self-titled record - released today with a glowing endorsement from the likes of Lorde – poured out of Palladino during the first two Covid lockdowns, partly as a delayed reaction to the breakdown of her relationship the previous year.“I don't write my best songs in the depths of despair,” she says. “I have to process things before I write about them.”
Once she did get started, the songs inevitably began to form around all these new rules of engagement with loneliness and being alone. Intrigued, she began to seek out other people’s experiences of loneliness, reading around the subject and looking for examples of people trying to unpack feelings similar to her own. “What I realised, and what made me feel better, is that loneliness is really a universal thing,” she says. “Anyone can, and everyone will at some point, be faced with it. It’s a part of the human experience, and I just hadn’t really delved into that properly before.”
“It’s funny, because I’ve never been someone who needs to be around people and I can be quite solitary. I definitely need space, and I do sometimes get quite drained by social stuff. Part of this album was me finally realising and accepting that as a part of my personality, because there are definitely times when I go a bit too far with retreating and I have to really make an effort to see other humans.”
Like all good pop craftspeople, Palladino knows how to balance the personal and universal in her music. In dealing with her own feelings of isolation, she realised that she wanted others to hear these songs and to feel less alone in their own lives. “That’s what music has always been for me,” she says. "The music I love is pop music. It's designed for people to connect with and relate to. With this album, I felt it had to be really direct. I didn't want it to feel too obscure or cryptic.”
X-Ambassadors on confronting and embracing their hometown
For Sam Nelson Harris, the making of Townie, X-Ambassadors’ latest album, stemmed from a multitude of converging moments. Entering his mid-thirties, he began to find himself looking back on his life to date. Going through the pandemic and quiet lockdowns, like many he found himself with the pause for reflection. On top of everything, Harris’ brother Casey, who has been blind since he was a baby, had started a family. “My whole life has been in some way, shape or form helping to take care of my brother,” says Harris. “That really was a big thing for me. I was like, ‘Oh shit, he doesn't need me anymore? Who am I?’”
“I was so fascinated about making a record that felt like Upstate New York,” says Harris, noting the irony in that statement. “I had for so many years fought against this part of myself that was from there,” he explains. “When we moved to New York, I was like, ‘We’re a Brooklyn band now.’ Even when I lived in Ithaca, I didn’t want to be from Upstate New York, I just wanted to be from somewhere else.” Growing up in the city, best known for its Ivy League Cornell University, Harris saw the economic divide between his college town and the surrounding areas, the state itself a vast expanse of exquisite natural beauty. “Lots of room for sad, depressing towns,” he says, half-joking.
Sitting down to write in the bright heat of Van Nuys, Harris struggled to conjure the crisp air and fall colours of his hometown. “I had a full blown panic attack in LA, trying to work on this record,” he says. “I was trying to write these very introspective songs and trying to make something that felt like Upstate New York and it was so hot. Not the vibe.”
The band searched for a studio that could inspire the atmosphere they were trying to mirror, initially looking for options in Ithaca before casting their net a little wider. Eventually they discovered The Outlier Inn. A residential studio in the Catskills, it had recently played home to recordings by the likes of Big Thief and The War on Drugs. Arriving with what they thought were the bones of their record, it didn’t take long before new songs began to find their way to the surface. “The second we got there, it just felt so good,” says Harris. “I felt like a kid again, which was so awesome. I think that I really needed to feel that joy in this record, which on surface level is very heavy and slow and very introspective. I needed to be surrounded by joy to do that.”
Across the twelve tracks of Townie, X Ambassadors build a world that has the sepia-tinged feel of an Upstate New York which can never be discovered. Steeped in deeply personal nostalgia, it’s as much a postcard to 90s youth as it is a tribute to a physical place. Evocative lines and imagery take you to a world that felt bigger, where connection wasn’t so expendable and where dreams had space to grow.
Matthew Houck on Phosphorescent’s “Song for Zula”
I would never have predicted that “Song for Zula” would become far and away the most known Phosphorescent song. It's surprising and a wonder to me. It's one I've not talked about before, and I'm still torn about choosing it. But there are no two ways about it, the song changed my life as far as being able to sustainably do this.
There is one thing that I have wanted to clear up: I'm not the narrator of this song. At the time I had some pretty tumultuous stuff happening in my personal life, but it's not about me, it's a song for Zula. I wrote this about a baboon in a cage in a New York zoo. It just happened that I had a motorcycle and would ride around the city a lot, and I came across her in this enclosure. She was in a bad way. She had just gotten abandoned by her mate but was still trapped in there. It was heartbreaking.
Just through loitering around, I learned a little bit about how they were trying to bring in another mate for her. You couldn't help but feel concerned because she was visibly damaged and a mess. There were all these other babies jumping around, and she had just been shunned. I don't even know, actually, if her name was Zula. From what I tried to find out, I think it was. This wasn't a very long period, but over the course of several weeks I went and saw her a few times, and each time, she was a little worse than the last. But the final time I went, she was gone.
I've been hesitant to ever talk about “Song for Zula” because people have brought so much of themselves to the song that I don't think it really matters what specific thing I was writing about. But it's a weird one, with that last verse for example. I think for a while people were rightfully questioning whether I was saying that I wanted to kill my ex-lover. They thought it was me saying that I wanted to kill the source of my frustration. But it's not that at all. It's a song for Zula, and I wanted to give her some strength, because she was this majestic animal, trapped by circumstance.
I feel a lot of ways about this, actually. It's such a devastating song to me, but I would have thought of it as very niche, something that wouldn't have mass appeal. It's been really illuminating to hear all these interpretations that have come down over the years, and amazing to see what it became. Something happened with this song.
Three things to get excited about this week
The podcast: After time away from the spotlight, Lily Allen is slowly reemerging into public life. For her latest project, she’s teamed up with her lifelong friend and TV/radio personality Miquita Oliver to host the podcast “Miss Me?” The two meet twice a week to discuss all things life, work, industry, reminiscing about the 90s, and everything in between. It’s truly a fun listen for all from a pop culture icon.
The book: Giving a look behind the curtain, David Bowie’s hairstylist Suzi Ronson has released Me and Mr. Jones, a memoir on her time working in the Bowie scene. As one of the minds behind many of Bowie’s iconic looks — including Ziggy Stardust — the memoir fuses fashion and music history to create a novel and exciting portrait of the “raucous” world of rock in the 1970s.
The documentary: During the final weeks of his life, Ryuichi Sakamoto was filmed at the piano by his son and the resulting film OPUS is one of the most minimal and affecting things you’ll ever see. Even if you’re not overly familiar with the prolific Sakamoto’s life or work, OPUS will reduce you to tears and remind you of the power of music and the joy of performance.
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 Joshua Mills on Th’ Faith Healers’ Imaginary Friend (1993), and Mannequin Pussy’s I Got Heaven (2024).
Th’ Faith Healers never made it easy for themselves. Two albums and a clutch of EPs built the band a catalogue of droning, repetitive rock that could never find a place on the radio. But if one of their records catches you in the right mood, it can be downright hypnotic. Their 1993 swansong Imaginary Friend is their most accessible effort, and yet it still includes those uniquely Faith Healers sounds like album closer “Everything, All At Once Forever.” It’s simply a two chord song with the titular phrase-cum-mantra sung over and over. It’s more transcendental meditation than song, but at 20 minutes long, it’s somehow still too short. Of course, there are easier entry points on Imaginary Friend, and that’s what makes it perhaps Th’ Faith Healers’ most universal album. “See-saw” is appropriately lurching, with a terrific lead riff complimenting Roxanne Stephen’s perfectly detached vocals. “Heart Fog” is a rare effort from the band at a traditionally structured track - as though you grabbed a Breeders song and stretched it to breaking point. A krautrock-Britpop hybrid band may sound like a horrible idea, but for five blissful years, Th’ Faith Healers made it work. Artistically, at least.
The first snare blast on I Got Heaven’s title track is like a starter pistol going off. Mannequin Pussy knows they have 30 minutes to say what’s on their mind, and they don’t waste a second of their fourth album. There’s no time to be coy; this is open hearted, fiery stuff from the off (we’re barely a minute in before the first sexually explicit reference to Our Lord & Saviour Jesus Christ). There’s no risk of the energy dipping, and even if there were, any doubts are put to rest with a collection of ripping hardcore tracks. “Of Her” is the best of the bunch, a track on which Marisa Dabice’s vocals rise to a frenzy. “I was in control,” she spits, sounding anything but. And yet, I Got Heaven compliments that pure acceleration with a subsidiary collection of melodic, textured noise-pop tracks. “Nothing Like”is the brightest cut of that subset, with a skippy beat and joyful chorus. “I Don’t Know You” brings vulnerability into Dabice’s performance along with shimmering keyboards. “Loud Bark” dips into old school alt rock with its bellowed, instantly sticky hook. All of this in half an hour, glazed with walls of fuzzy guitars, a Spector/Kevin Shields-esque sweet spot between beauty and brute force.
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 Chloe Slater, es.cher, Toni Sancho, Lip Critic, and coverstar The Itch.