New music this week: Tame Impala, Marina, Mosa Wild and Lupa J, plus spotlight artist Anteros

In her weekly column, music correspondent Roisin O'Connor goes through the best new releases of the week

Anteros

Are we still in the EU? Is Theresa May still Prime Minister, or are we all being ruled by that monkey from the photo that looks like every journalist headshot ever?

Anyway, onto the music. Tame Impala are back! Kevin Parker’s moniker is sounding decidedly Arcade Fire-y on new single “Patience” thanks to the Seventies disco piano he’s introduced on the track. I’ve never been that enamoured by Arcade Fire, if I’m completely honest, but I like what Parker’s doing here: melding uplifting Nineties-style house synths over the keys and a funky drum beat. It feels heady and tropical and other-wordly – perfect for when they headline Coachella festival later this year.

Brooklyn-based artist Tōth used to hang out in punk and hardcore bands but has since struck out on his own after encouragement from his friend Kimbra. Many of the new songs on his forthcoming album were written in the summer of 2016, while he was recovering from a broken foot and a long battle with alcohol. Not to mention nursing a broken heart after “consciously uncoupling” from his partner of 11 years. Practice Magic and Seek Professional Help When Necessary is out in May – for now you can hear his mesmerising new single “When I Awoke”.

I’m really impressed by the new single “Night” from Mosa Wild, who are a four-piece from Ashford in Kent. Along with hanging out with Maggie Rogers on tour, they’ve been making music inspired by The National, Bon Iver and The Maccabees, and driven by singer Jim Rubaduka's rich baritone. There’s been an explosion of great new bands of late, but Mosa Wild sound like they’re going to offer something a bit different.

There’s also a great new MARINA track called “Orange Trees”, one from my fave up and comer Arlo Parks, plus “Coming & Going” from Somali-Canadian R&B artist Amaal, and Glowie's empowering single "Cruel", which draws on her experience of being bullied at school.

Australian singer Lupa J wrote her brilliant new track just over a year ago when she was in “a really unhappy place”. “I had barely any friends in the city I lived in; instead focusing my energy on a long term relationship that was starting to eat away at me and my sanity more than it grew me," she says. "I was starting to realise more and more I had a lot of previously repressed & unexplored queer desire."

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If you’re around in London over the next week there’s so much going on in live music. Woman’s Hour are playing the final show of their tour at The Dome in Tufnell Park tonight (!!!); if you’re lucky you might be able to grab one of the last tickets. There's Childish Gambino on Sunday 25 and Monday 26 at the O2 Arena, and the sublime Another Sky are playing Bethnal Green Working Men's Club on 27 March.

Between 27-30 March you can catch one (or two, or three or four) of the legendary Annie Mac-curated shows for AMP festival, which are taking place at 14 different venues around the city. Headliners include Two Door Cinema Club, who are back with brand new music, and Circa Waves.

Also on the AMP lineup you’ve got Theophilus London, Mahalia, Chip, Koffee, Kojey Radical and Rina Sawayama. Not to be sniffed at. Oh, and if you’re feeling politically minded this weekend, there’s always the “March for the Future” happening tomorrow in central London.

That said, if you’d rather stay in, you could do worse than to watch a new Boiler Room documentary, Soft Boy, about the booming underground hip hop scene in Ireland (I’m serious). The film follows Dublin-based record label and artist collective, Soft Boy Records, which was launched by rapper Kojaque after being told by labels and managers that his accent would be viewed as a “gimmick”.

Now he’s championing a wave of talented up and comers, who are working out of bedrooms and DIY studios to create music that covers everything from Dublin’s gentrification problem to the Repeal the 8th movement. If you didn’t guess from the label name, there’s also a big effort to address the pressures on Irish men to live up to tired notions of masculinity, with talent in the shape of artists like Kojaque himself, Kean Kavanagh, Luka Palm, Brièn, Matt Finnegan, Five to Two, Gaptoof Henry Earnest, Wastefellow and jar jar jr.

“'Soft boy’ was just something we'd call each other as a kind of joke,” Kojaque tells me. “Usually you hear it from people who are uncomfortable expressing their own emotion, but you can't expect everyone to have the same grip on themselves as you might have.”

“There seems to be an absolute explosion of great music coming out of Ireland at the moment,” he acknowledges, “it's sort of surreal, we're in this absolute boom in terms of creativity and interest in art and music, and yet it feels harder than ever to live as a full time musician, at least in Dublin it does.

“I'm quite worried about what Brexit will do for musicians and artist in the UK, it's a scary time for anyone living there. It's hard to say how it will affect things such as where a large international band would tour, maybe it will have a positive effect, meaning that bands will begin touring in Ireland in order to travel easier over to the UK, maybe it will have the opposite effect, we are on the edge of Europe after all.

“Either way, there does seem to be an opportunity for Ireland in the mayhem that is Brexit, whether we decide to seize that opportunity, I think, is predominately down to how we as creatives decide to mobilise ourselves, Dublin is squeezing us out to make way for foreign investment and new headquarters for British companies, I'd love to see an emphasis put on art and music, it's such an important part of our identity and such an integral aspect of living.”

My spotlight artist this week is the splendid Anteros, whose debut album When We Land is out RIGHT NOW. Fronted by singer Laura Hayden, this four-piece band make retro-sounding, uplifting pop with extra bite. I caught up with them to chat about the build-up to the new record and lots more, see below:

Hi gang, how excited are you to be releasing your debut album?

It feels like a huge moment of release. We’ve been working towards this since the very end of 2017, so it’s been a lot of excitement to contain for quite a long period of time. We are planning on getting very drunk with our close friends tonight and thank them for putting up with us over the last 18 months (we are hoping to make up for missing so many birthdays, break ups and other milestone celebrations…)

Tell me a bit about making it: song picks, production, any fun studio stories...

We had a folder with a lot of demos to choose from, so spent quite a long time deciding on which tracks we felt worked best together. When approaching the album, we didn’t want to make one album full of “Breakfast” type tracks, we wanted variety and we wanted it to be dynamic. Otherwise, there would be no point in releasing an album, it becomes monotonous when you’re four tracks in. Working with Charlie Andrew was awesome, he is so good at understanding everyone’s strong points, quirks and most importantly he listened to us, and what we wanted from this record. He spent time with us individually and would make sure we were in the right headspace. Even when we were recording a tricky part, or we felt out of our depth with an arrangement, we still felt comfortable. We left London for a couple of months (off and on) where we spent 12 hours in the studio, then living under the same roof, which was quite intense. However it was mostly fun, and relatively drama free.

Laura, you have always been somewhat badass when it comes to cheering on fellow women in music – what do you make of the current music landscape in the UK and are there any changes you'd like to see?

I must say that enjoy our Twitter conversations about this a lot. There is so much to discuss in regards to this topic. It seems crazy to me how unbalanced the music industry is, the current gender divide across all regions is 70% male to 30% female. You see this when you realise who is behind writing the songs and who is producing the record, to who is at the head of record labels. Across the participating countries’ collecting societies, women represent 20% or less of registered composers and songwriters in Europe. 12% of songwriters of the 600 most popular songs from 2012 to 2017 were women. I have a lot of respect for women getting into music production, because it is still such a boys club. In the US and Canada, only 6% of recognised producers are women. For example, on Cardi B’s album Invasion of Privacy there are 30 producers are listed as producers, 0 of which are women.

I feel that for a very long time, women have been encouraged to stay at the front: to be teen idols in pretty clothes, make a lot of money through appearances and endorsements, etc. whilst men are getting stuck in and building long term careers in the music business. Please don't get me wrong, there is nothing bad about celebrating femininity - and a pretty dress can be pretty empowering - but we as women should also be celebrated and accepted for wanting to have music careers that surpass our 40s. Change is happening slowly, but I believe there is still a lot of work to be done. It is going to take more than just singing about being a strong woman and slapping “Feminist” on a t-shirt.

What songs are you keen to play to a live audience that you haven't had the chance to yet?

We’re actually keen to try them all out! We started rehearsing some of them after Christmas, and everyone was feeling a little nervous about it. It is not a nice feeling to dread playing a new track in the set, especially when ones like ‘Breakfast’ get people going. Luckily, they’ve felt great to play so far, especially when we’ve found there are a lot of ways we can place them in the set, and still sounds consistent. If we had to pick, “Afterglow” and “Wrong Side” are probably the favourite new additions. That could change after our tour in April, when we get to test them infant of crowds (fingers crossed!).

Are we going to get to see you at a few festivals this summer?

You will indeed. We can’t wait for festival season. Some of them have not been announced yet, so we can’t reveal the full list. We’re very excited to be playing Reading & Leeds, as well as coming back for Truck festival. Truck was a special one last year, so we are coming back for more.