Archy Ivan Marshall has the world at his feet. After two feverishly received albums as King Krule, plus another low-key outing under his own name, this extraordinarily gifted 25-year-old from Peckham in South London adds further depth and substance to his oeuvre with another wondrous long-player called Man Alive!. It arrives packed full of his trademark sonic ambition and compositional skill, as well as the now-familiar corrosive lyricism and lurid social observation. Marshall has emerged as a pack leader amongst his peers, leading the charge in a fearless blurring of genre divisions, one minute seeming to drag the listener through the trashiest punk experience, the next ushering in a soundworld that’s apparently hi-tech and forward-looking.

Like any great artist on the rise, Archy's life is moving fast. There’s a lot to catch up on, after 2017’s sprawling masterpiece, The Ooz, broke through amid Mercury Prize nominations and minds-blown media plaudits. Unlike that record, Man Alive! doesn’t aim to present any kind of narrative thread, or Brexit-era state-of-the-nation address, just a collection of snapshots and stories, artfully sequenced into a dazzlingly coherent whole.

This third King Krule album was written as a direct reaction to the non-stop energy of touring The Ooz, and then partly recorded at Shrunken Heads in Marshall’s native stamping ground of Nunhead, with ‘Ooz’ co-producer Dilip Harris. Midway through those sessions, however, Archy found out he was going to become a dad for the first time, and he decided to move up to the North West to be near his partner's family, ready for the baby’s arrival.

“I should’ve had it all wrapped up before my daughter was born,” says Marshall with a sheepish grin. Impending parenthood came at a felicitous moment for him, as he was beginning to feel trapped in South London’s suburban lifestyle of all-eclipsing drunkenness and depression, which existing fans will know was a recurring theme in his earlier music.

“It was just the easiness of it,” he reflects today. “There really is nothing else to do here, especially when it turns to winter. Everyone I know has jobs, whereas I’d sit on my arse all day sometimes not doing anything, then I’d go to the pub with them when they finished work. It became a bit habitual. Then, right in the middle of the record, this big change came in my life that I didn't really comprehend initially. It was like, ‘Oh, I’d better get my shit together!’ To be honest, I was really glad to get away from all that so I could focus on more pressing matters – like keeping a child alive and stuff.”

The new album’s title, he explains, “is an exclamation, about the times we live in. Like, ‘Fucking hell, man!’” He stole the title from a CD that his uncle gave him back in 2013 with some of his uncle’s own music on it, and originally planned to use it for his last album.

“More and more,” he explains, “I've been put off by the intention of speaking about what's going on in society as a black-and-white thing, or trying to get to the bottom of why we’re in this position. So the album is mostly made up of snapshots and observations. There are a lot of real-time-and-place moments, songs talking about walking through the park just over there and getting a head injury, then there are other tracks which are just simplicity, looking at one particular situation and reflecting on it as somehow being super-profound.”

Release: February 21st, 2020, XL Recordings/Remote Control
Words: Remote Control

Anna Cordell has always been a maker. From her youngest years spent singing and writing folk songs on her nylon string guitar, to the first stitches of her clothing design work, and all the way into motherhood, Cordell has a natural flair for creation.
 
After taking an almost decade long hiatus from music making - a period in which she became a mother to five children and began working on her now thriving clothing label - Anna has made her return to music, with her first full-length record Nobody Knows Us released on Valentine's Day 2020.
 
Recorded in Lyttleton, New Zealand by Ben Edwards (Aldous Harding, Marlon Williams, Julia Jacklin) Nobody Knows Us is an album that wears its heart on its sleeve.
 
Taking inspiration from folk writers of the 60s and 70s, from Sandy Denny to Nick Drake and Sibylle Baier, as well as more contemporary counterparts like Midlake and Weyes Blood, Anna has created a collection of songs that stay true to her belief in the value and power of art.

Release: Ditto Distribution, February 14th, 2020
Words: Brain Drain PR

A collection of ten merciless and arresting new songs, Please Daddy showcases the best of Sarah Mary Chadwick's songwriting and story-telling, whilst, crucially, offering moments of lightness and humour too. With the addition of woodwind instruments and golden, flourishing melodies, Please Daddy represents a step forward, suggesting "that it’s still possible to find meaning when you’re weighed down by feelings".

It’s hard to think of a musical career today so dedicated to plumbing the depths, so unafraid to put its hand into the fire.

This music is hard. Not in the sense of machismo or of complexity or of book-smarts or even tunelessness (there’s melodies for days), but in the sense that you will come into contact with great pain. It’s probably Sarah’s, but it might be yours, and as such this disc needs to be handled carefully, as though it glows with some kind of half-life accrued from traumas across a lifetime. 

Release: Rice Is Nice Records, January 24th, 2020
Words: Rice Is Nice, Clarence Bigley

Okay Kaya is the project of Norwegian-born, New York-based Kaya Wilkins. Watch This Liquid Pour Itself is her new album and Jagjaguwar debut.  

Watch This Liquid Pour Itself  is filled with images of pools of sweat, oceans, and other forms of wetness. In these images, Kaya swims through her melancholy and anxiety — not as a way of cleansing herself, but as a channel for reaching their true depths.  Throughout the fifteen songs, Okay Kaya listens, responds, and takes a deep breath before she dives in.

Kaya has been playing music since she was a tween, learning songs on her acoustic guitar and listening to Cody Chesnutt (even playing in a black metal project). Her music and artistic process has a cyclical nature, like water circling a drain. Reacting — whether physically on set, or alone with her guitar — has become an integral part of her writing. Kaya’s lyrics encompass a vulnerability and playfulness that allow for unlikely juxtapositions. Her interest in parodying certain elements of pop songs allows her to showcase her humorous side, but it’s important to her that the songs remain vulnerable enough to connect with an audience. In these multi-layered lyrical approaches, the songs take on new meanings depending on who is listening.

Collaboration is central to Kaya’s creative process. Although she remains at the center of her artistic process, and recorded most of Watch This Liquid Pour Itself herself, she also collaborated with producers Jacob Portrait (UMO, Whitney, (Sandy) Alex G) and John Carroll Kirby (Solange, Kali Uchis) to fully realize her ideas for how this record should sound. Each of the music videos for the new record are co-directed by Kaya and Adinah Dancyger, and were shot respectively in Germany, Japan, Norway, and New York. 

Release: Jagjaguwar, January 24th, 2020
Words: Jagjaguwar