NoNewWaveNoFun

CHIHUAHUA - Violent Architecture E.P It's been a long old week here at NNWNF headquarters. I awoke on Wednesday morning feeling like I'd been run over by a truck - and not in the ultimate expression of love ' There is a light that never goes out' type way. I was drenched in sweat and had, what I can only describe, as a honking cough. It made me sound like a defensive Sealion fearing for the safety of it's young. Inevitably, I had to get myself a test to ensure I wasn't struck down by ..you know what. Thankfully, after getting my result a day later, I was negative of..you know what. The relief was tangible, but I still felt like a sack of spuds. Unfortunately, this has meant this review has taken a bit of a back burner until I felt vaguely human. The aches and pains have eased somewhat, but I'm still indiscriminately coughing up fragments of my thigh bone. Anyway, enough of my woes, let's get NOISY.  The power of noise can never be underestimated. I'm

  Frail Jonny, AKA Jonathan Wright   hails from Ashville, North Carolina and creates rich, expressive alternative pop   with multiple themes.   We got our new writer Ryan Doyle Elward to take a listen to his new E.P.   Afterlives Vol. 1 , NC artist Frail Johnny’s first major release under the moniker, begins with ‘The End of It’, by youthful vocal tones adjoined to reverb-heavy piano, where it seems to parallel for a time some of the same soft sounds and thoughtful stories found in Death Cab for Cutie’s more boyish ballads. Track one matures quickly though, taking on layers of strings mid-way and addressing ideas of impermanence. In fact, the full effect of certain elements in the first song are only felt after listening to the album in its entirety, giving the bloom of voices at the word honey - a haunting presence that comes from ruminating on painful memories. ‘ Our Secrets ’ continues that exploration of his past, highly specific and personal at first, then expanding into a

                                           COW - Notemakers There's an optimism in the air. A sense that life as we once knew it is beginning to return to some sense of normalcy. In the UK, Covid restrictions are tentatively being eased and the instruction to stay indoors to protect the NHS has been lifted. Shops are once again open and it's even possible to now go and have a beer, albeit outside a venue in limited groups. For me, it's meant the day job has now begun again and the majority of my time is no longer my own, by hey - nothing lasts forever. Live music in a venue with other people may be a little bit further down the line, but anticipation for such events is certainly starting to grow. I last went to a gig early March 2020, just as things were beginning to get that much weirder; it's almost felt like we were destined to watch live music on screens forever more since then. There's so many bands that I've developed a rapport with in the last year, that

  Kissing Party (Photo by Eric David Lough) I'm not going to go on too much about how much I've struggled to motivate myself in recent weeks - that much should be obvious by the lack of consistent content. Writer's block is a bit of a cliche, but as everyone and a Golden Salamander knows (niche Netflix Morman forgery documentary reference) - the cliches are all true. They exist for a reason and that reason is to give someone like me something to cling to or avoid like the plague; delete where applicable. What do we want? Procrastination. When do we want it? Some time next week. Something was needed to buck that trend and thankfully it was found in the most unlikely of places; well, unless you live there. Denver, Colorado is not an area of the U.S you would instantly think of as hotbed of musical creativity. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it has a plethora of talented songwriters of different genres producing great material - but it certainly doesn't get the fanfar

    Campfire Social (Photo by Holly Mason) It's the third month of Lockdown here in the UK and the seemingly never-ending nature of it all has had effects of all of us. I'm sick to the back teeth of talking about it, but here goes:  Personally, I've found this one tougher than I expected. Being stuck in without much interaction at the height of winter is not what we're wired to do as Human Beings; I could feel my mental health grasping at straws. In February, I got approached by a well known Music review site to join their ranks, before realising it's model charged bands and artists to get reviewed and paid it's reviewers for little more than a few lines of good copy - In effect, payola. The fact I considered it, if only for a couple of days, did not help.  It got to the point a couple of weeks ago where I found myself on the brink of pulling the plug on this blog entirely. Something I started as a means to sharing music I love had become yet another

Is it that time of month already? Apparently so! It sneaks up so quickly on us all, I swear time gets shorter the older you get - not that I have much concept of time these days. I don't know about you, but the only reason I know it's still February is that Valentine's Day was recent and my Birthday is round the corner (*Note* It's early March for fans of buying vinyl records as presents for people they don't know..). It's not a particularly important Birthday this year in terms of it being a nice round number or a signifier of life beginning, as the last one was. Showing my age they eh? Own it Stephen.. OWN IT! Anyway, enough of the kind of middle-aged rambling usually reserved for a  LCD Soundsystem single - let's get on with the good stuff. Submissions Hold is our monthly section highlighting four of the best submissions received by the blog or that we stumbled upon during our adventures in sound. Last month we had a wonderfully mixed bag fr

                                          Something new for you here at NoNewWaveNoFun,  a slight change of medium - it's the message don't you know! Yes, we've decided to host a series of video interviews with some of the bands or artists that we've featured on the blog so far. We get to know them better, what makes them tick and what would light up their Musical Heaven or terrorise them in Musical Hell.                                             Hall of Mirrors by Cross Wires First up is the lead singer of East End Post-Punks Cross Wires - Mr Jono Chapman! Those of you who have been reading the blog for some time will re-collect that one of the first singles I reviewed was their November 2020 single ' Hall of Mirrors' after them being one of the first outside submissions I received. Here's what I made of it at the time:   Cross Wires  have managed to strike a good balance on ' Hall of Mirrors ' - especially considering the time taken to record the

    Campfire Social (Photo by Holly Mason) NoNewWaveNoFun favourites Campfire Social  return with a video for their new single ' It's Not Goodbye (To Those We Left Behind', released today. The single is the bands' first release since August 2020 single ' Awake In The Wake Of A Wave' and will feature on the 6 track ' Everything's Changed'  E.P, scheduled for release in March on Mai 68 Records. You can buy the single at their Bandcamp page below.  2019 saw the band set sail as guests of Belle and Sebastian along with Mogwai, The Buzzcocks, Teenage Fanclub et al on a jaunt round the Med - a true highlight in their blossoming career. 2020 was set to be busy year for them too with a slot confirmed for the SXSW Festival in Austin; before the obvious curtailed their plans. They'll be performing live virtually for the world's largest showcase festival between March 16th-20th.                                                .  It's Not Goodbye (To

                                                                             The word prolific is often overused in the descriptive sense; an average goal-scorer in the Premier League goes on a hot streak and suddenly they're a "prolific marksman". It's also a word that appeals to those tasked with articulating the requisite hyperbole to describe those with a knack for consistency in the creative arts.   Mark.E. Smith  of  The Fall  was often lumped with 'prolific' because he was:  a)  Notoriously vague and hard to pin down.  b) Incredibly difficult in interviews and  c) Producing album after album of cryptic, often flawed but often GENIUS, work that defies conventional categorisation.  Claire Welles is certainly an artist who can could afford a wry smile whilst reading that opening paragraph. Unlike Mark was, Claire is not so hard to track down and is much more accommodating - but what she does share with him is the consistent and challenging body of work th

It's that time of month for Submission Hold - the second in our series of mini reviews of submissions received here at  NoNewWaveNoFun HQ  . Once again, I've spent hours trawling through the seemingly never-ending submissions we get sent through the Contacts section of the blog and on our social media pages ( Facebook here ,  Twitter here ,  Instagram here ) to find 4 of the best that we've received from all over the world. Last month's Submission Hold proved to be incredibly popular - in fact it is the most popular piece on the blog so far, with several hundred views to date. The artists from Vol.1 were   sleeplore from Pennsylvania, ya from Spain (via Russia) and two from the UK - County Durham's Vice Killer and Kent's Uncool Paul.     It's all the more reason to keep sending those new singles and E.Ps to the blog, as we're willing to listen to whatever you have to offer and who knows- it could be your music getting featured next month.