Plus One's Artist in Focus: Metz

Photo credit: Vanessa Heins

              

METZ are playing us like a fiddle, offering up a brace of new songs to give a tantalising look at where their heads are at on their forthcoming fifth album, and obviously we’ve been sucked in. ‘99’ shoves upbeat and atmospheric verses down concrete steps for a typically discordant chorus, and ‘Entwined’ takes a sharp left turn for a dreamy middle section bookended by joyful noise.

boygenius ‘the record’ (album review)

“Supergroup” feels like one of the most loaded terms in music. It’s a statement of fact, but one which carries a potent subtext of inevitable creative differences and clashing egos, underwhelming output and bitter recriminations – in a word, disharmony. But boygenius, the collaboration between Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, is the very definition of harmony and respect, a united front against the concept of “women with guitars” as a genre. 

Duke Garwood 'Heavy Love'

Duke Garwood is the multi-instrumentalist genius that has graced our blues scene for years: with four albums down and a new one in the midst, Garwood is one of those diamonds in the rough that is only just coming to surface. 

Hawk Eyes 'Everything Is Fine'

It doesn’t seem 5 minutes since I was interviewing the supremely affable lads in what was then ‘Chickenhawk’, in the run up to the band’s first (and if memory serves me correctly, somewhat problematic) recorded release. During the intervening 6 years, lead singer/guitarist Paul Astick and guitarist Rob Stephens have tinkered with the line-up, changed their name to ‘Hawk Eyes’ and knocked out a couple of belting records, ‘Modern Bodies’ and ‘Ideas’, leaving them on the verge of breaking through to wider acclaim.