PLUS ONE MAGAZINE

  Two years on from dropping a record that deserved a place at the annual international post punk conference (if that doesn’t already exist consider this a trademark application, cc: IPO), Australian post-punkers  Clamm  have been tightening up and doubling down.   

Taking to the  Thekla  stage for the second time that day, a solo Jamie T had at his disposal a bellowing, devoted choir which knew exactly what was coming as soon as it spotted an acoustic four-string waiting just next to the spotlight.

Let’s get one thing straight – n o matter how many times you’ve gone back through  your 15-year-old copy of   Panic Prevention  this year, you’re not   about  to get  a second helping  her e . A nd  if you think about  it   do you really want 36-year-old Jamie T , born Jamie  Treays ,  to try and copy what he did in 2007?

The pumped up, tightly wound first single from  Automatic ’s new  album   Excess  boldly proclaims a ‘New Beginning’ and while tightening things up from the  LA trio’s   2019 debut  Signal  it’s not  necessarily  a huge leap forward . I t is, however, a surge of energy that handclaps manically in front of your face and demands your attention . This  surge  is almost exactly reprised towards the end of the record on the hectic synth-punk of ‘NRG’,  just in case your eyes were starting to droop , a lthough they really shouldn’t be .

  “I am safe here” sneers Charlie Drinkwater four songs into Priest’s much-anticipated  My Other People ,   and you can bet your life he’s not the only one. F ans of a certain genre , faced with  the London four-piece’s second album , will also be feeling distinctly secure ,  greeted with a reassuring but well-executed take on the post punk du jour. With vocals along the lines of Yard Act’s spoken/sung delivery and   jagged  toilet-circuit -sink-shaking  riffs ,  My Other People  achieves the confounding quality of sounding instantly familiar on first listen.  

Now summer has (kinda) arrived, what better way to soundtrack those sun-drenched barbecues than with some brand new highly-polished urbane soul?  Manchester-based singer-songwriter Mica Millar has been bubbling under for a while now, firstly fronting cult local quartet Red Sky Noise, before embarking on a solo career, earning her chops with an extended stint on the road with her expertly drilled ten-piece band.

Weird nightmares, we’ve all had them. Rabid  uzi -wielding Teletubbies hunting you down through the jelly swamps of Atlantis on your  wedding day  while both moons flash like strobes and Enya drums in a Slayer tribute band… or something. Right?

  Skinty   Fia   is a celebration , both planned and unplanned . The third album from proud Dubliners   Fontaines  D.C. is  at every turn  an unashamed embrace of the band's Irishness , but it is also  a  wild-eyed  affirmation  that they are every bit as good as we  always  hoped they would be. 

Never let it be said that Crows do things by halves – where debut album  Silver Tongues  was recorded in  near-total dark ness , the  sessions for their   brilliant follow-up  Beware Believers  were marked with games of hide and seek where the seeker carried knives.

Unlike many contemporaries, the supremely influential Killing Joke can still boast their original line-up as a draw to paying punters. With these guys we’re not talking one or two founder members fleshed out with a bunch of Kens. 

Released on Merge records with none other than the members of Hot Chip manning the studio controls, Ibibio Sound Machine ’s fourth album ‘Electricity’ is yet another recording heavily influenced by the recent global malaise. 

The brainchild of Leeds musicians Jed Skinner (keys) and Matt Woodward (drums), Galaxians infectious funk instrumentals could make a cadaver’s rotting arse wiggle. 

Are You Haunted?  is the fourth album from Aust r alian alt-poppers Methyl Ethel , the beguiling  musical  brainchild of Jake Webb. He  already  knows the answer to that question – "we all have these ghosts that linger in our present predicaments" – and just as the speout of the corner of our eyes, the record has no fixed form, shimmering just out of reach of our common understanding.

Brighton based Metronony’s seventh album ‘Small World’ released on Because Music, is yet another existential release from a band forced to get back to basics in 2020; the world as we know it stopping and everyone getting off for a few months. Frontman and only remaining constant member Joseph Mount, suddenly confined to barracks with his family like the rest of us. finding unexpected solace in his immediate surroundings; the inspiration behind the record’s title and whose artwork comprises an old photo of public parkland taken by Mount’s mum.