Pop Mutations presents:
HOUSE Of ALL
+ Special Guests
Saturday 13th April
Stereo
18+

Advance tickets available at https://www.citizenticket.co.uk/events/pop-mutations/
Onsale Friday 17th at 10am

How odd it is that the first reports of the existence of HOUSE Of ALL only appeared only
early this year, followed by a magnificently-received debut album and two UK tours.
Praise was immediate and ecstatic, in spite of controversy from former management of
The Fall, who took offence at Martin Bramah's off-the-cuff description of the band as
"part of The Fall family continuum". Despite this self-evident fact - Bramah was The Fall's
original singer before switching to guitar, and with the other members (Peter Greenway,
Paul Hanley, Steve Hanley and Si Wolstencroft) HOUSE Of ALL collectively spanned the
entire length of The Fall's career. Controversy arose, resulting in a full Guardian article on
the band months before the album's release - a scant three days after it was announced.
Their two brief tours were flawless; nearly every show sold out, and the latter tour was
bolstered by"Bay City Pistols", a limited package that sold out in two weeks.
Even before the first album was released, HOUSE Of All re-entered the studio to record a
still-mysterious second album, which will be debuted on the April 2024 dates below.

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

Holiday Ghosts

+ Special Guests

Saturday 6th April

Stereo

18+

Advance tickets available at citizenticket.co.uk/events/pop-mutations/

Holiday Ghosts are a band that contains multitudes. Give a listen to their upcoming album, Coat of Arms, out March 29 on Fat Cat Records, and several seemingly disparate facets immediately come into focus. Powerful, gut-punch punky garage rock; classic jangly indie pop; songs of protest and resistance; songs that resonate emotion and introspection. The four-piece line-up of Katja Rackin (drums, lead vocals), Sam Stacpoole (lead guitar, vocals), Morgan Lloyd-Mathews (bass), and Ben Nightingale (rhythm guitar, vocals), who came together to hone their skills on the band’s previous album, 2023’s equally kinetic Absolute Reality, have perfected a skin-tight flow that grabs onto the listener and refuses to let go until each brazen lyric and earworm hook has worked itself into their brain. Across its ten tracks, Coat of Arms marries the band’s signature style of self-assured indie with a new brand of urgency, serving songs that feel more direct, more compelling than ever before.

“Not to put it down to the genre, but I feel like there is a bit more punkiness in this album,” explains Kat. “It’s a bit more upbeat. The difference between this album and the last one is that this one is more succinct.” “It’s definitely more condensed,” adds Sam. “Every record we've done in the past has been a lot more focused on exploring all these different avenues that we've been down over the years. We've been very varied for a really long time.” Coat of Arms is the second album the band recorded with Phil Booth (The Cool Greenhouse, Sleaford Mods, Proto Idiot, Freak Genes), and was mastered by Alan Douches at West West Side Mastering. “When you listen to the drums, the beats are very stripped back, it’s not like there are loads of fills everywhere. It's similar with the guitars as well, like they’re as pure as possible.” “It gives a nice amount of space for everything to have its own feeling,” finishes Kat.

If it sounds like Kat and Sam are the type to finish each other’s sentences, that’s because they are. Holiday Ghosts began in Falmouth, UK in 2016, and since then, Kat and Sam have been the band’s two consistent members—Morgan and Ben joined in 2019, during the touring of the band’s North Street Air album. Over the next eight years and five albums, the band have toured extensively across the UK and Europe, played festivals like Latitude and Left of the Dial, become BBC Radio 6 darlings, and generally carved a robust spot for themselves in the UK music scene. The challenge for a band that has accomplished so much is to stay fresh and present new ideas to their fans: with Coat of Arms, they strived not only to exceed their audience’s expectations, but their own as well.

“Musically, I would say that we really wanted to make something that was more singular than our previous work, and for the record to be short and sweet,” says Kat. “We wanted to make this one a bit more poppy than before. We have always focused on showing as much variety as possible on an album, partly because we've never wanted the band to seem to have a specific genre. Now that we have existed as the sum of our parts for quite a long time, it feels we can be more certain in making a set of songs that we feel like is a tight package of one side of ‘our music’.”

Coat of Arm’s lead single, “Sublime Disconnect”, is a perfect distillation of the sound Holiday Ghosts have perfected over their career. Kat’s driving drumming style and staccato vocal delivery propels a rousing guitar melody and breakneck bassline, until a catchy chorus of “ba ba ba’s” erupts over the entire endeavor. However, the song’s buoyant demeanor belies a deeper lyrical meaning. “I’m Iranian, my parents were both born there and moved to Sweden after the Iranian revolution in the ‘80s,” explains Kat. “I was born in Malmö and moved to England when I was eight. I grew up as a child with little attachment to Iran as I tried my hardest to blend in with the people around me, but the older I got the more different I felt and the more blurred my sense of self got.”

“Sublime Disconnect”’s lyrics speak to this dissonance of identity, with lines like: “And now they ask who am I and where am I from/Will I find peace when I belong?” “In hindsight I can pinpoint a few incidents of racism that planted this seed that I didn't fully belong here, that Sweden or England, weren't really my home,” say Kat, “nor is Iran as I have never been there as my parents aren't allowed back. The song is partly putting this question out there: what does it mean to belong?”

“Sublime Disconnect” can be seen at the album’s political crux, the track and anchors the band’s activist identity. “I think this question of belonging is kind of rhetorical though, because I don't think there is peace for anyone except for those that make the rules,” says Kat. “I think living under governments where the immigration policies are getting more and more dystopian has also hugely contributed to this song and the notion of belonging. The line: ‘Does your future burn bright? And what about me? A free pass, favour, till I’m back on my feet,’ is a reference to privilege versus having to start from scratch, about the obliviousness that some people have towards the struggle of others.”

Another track that speaks to the band’s social consciousness, while also maintaining their uplifting musical style, is “Big Congratulations”, a rollicking number whose head-bopping chorus might be the catchiest of the bunch. Starting with an alt-country-tinged guitar line, the song culls from a rich history of 1980s UK indie pop (think classics like Shop Assistants or The Flatmates), but with a decidedly modern, 21st century spin. “The lyrics in ”Big Congratulations” are a sort of a narrative about excess, and the need to fulfill yourself with consumerism, keeping up with the Joneses,” says Kat. “There's a constant promise of a better life with better connections through what you might purchase or how you can upgrade your life. At the end of the day, that quest for happiness can be more of a snake eating its own tail kind of thing.”

Much like “Sublime Disconnect”, tracks like “Big Congratulations” also speak to Holiday Ghost’s ability to mesh cutting lyrics with attention-grabbing music—something that was expressly designed when writing Coat of Arms. “One of the things that we really focus on is trying to get lyrics across as clearly as we can,” says Sam. Maybe 70 percent of what we really care about in the songs is making sure that we're singing lyrics that we are proud of, and that lead the song more than just a musical hook.” Kat continues: “Often, the way I write a lot of the songs is writing the words first, and then the music kind of grows around it. One nice thing about the band is that it's a real collaborative thing. So with the songwriting, especially with the ones on this album that Sam and I wrote together, we’ve really merged.”

Kat and Sam demoed the majority of the album across five days in an Airbnb with just a drumkit and a guitar, before all four members came together in live writing and recording sessions with Phil Booth—and as a result, Coat of Arms might be the most cohesive, collaborative album Holiday Ghosts have ever made. “On previous albums, I would write a song, and then we'd sort of work on that, then Sam would write a song, and Ben and Morgan would normally write one or two songs as well,” explains Kat. “The process would be quite separate. Whereas I think the nice thing about this album is that it's all come together very collaboratively. Me and Sam even wrote some of the words together, and we did a lot of the demoing together from the start. We’ve really grown.”

According to the band, while around half of the songs on Coat of Arms speak to their political leanings, the other half are more traditional Holiday Ghosts: songs about deep emotions and personal introspection. The title track, written and sung by Ben, is a prime example, a track about learning to know yourself and the spoils of self-actualization. “The lyric “The voice in your head only whispers’ was an old line I’d written and ended up being the apex of the chorus in “Coat of Arms”, explains Ben. “The song is about having sympathy for the stoic, realising that the stiff upper lip will eventually tremble given the right impetus, how a slight change in the wind can result in a falling facade." Musically, Coat of Arms is a bit more laid back than the more uptempo songs like “Sublime Disconnect” or “Big Congratulations”, but holds onto the album’s emotional core.

“Energy” is also about self-exploration, but this time, the weird lengths people will go to find their life purpose. Inspired by a Devo deep cut (“Golden Energy”), the track takes a new wave vibe and mixes it with buzzing, garage-riff guitars. “The song talks about all the different and personal quests people swear by and that define what provides their life's vital energy,” says Sam. “I always find these things really funny and fascinating because everyone swears FACT to something that obviously only works for them because it ticks some deep personal box. I’ll never forget a man named Thor telling me that I should take an ecstasy pill to cure my flu,” he laughs.

In the end, perhaps the thing that ties everything Holiday Ghosts does together is this sense of being able to observe, dissect, examine, and understand the forces that make being a human being so damn interesting. Whether it be the political awareness, the deep knowledge of the legacy of rock music that makes them tick, their emotional openness, or their collective songwriting prowess, Coat of Arms is the culmination of a band who know exactly who they are, and yet never tire of exploring new avenues of actualization and evolution.

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

Gerard Love (Full Band Show)

+ National Park

Thursday 4th April

Stereo

18+

***NEW DATE ADDED DUE TO DEMAND***

Advance tickets available at https://www.citizenticket.com/events/pop-mutations/

Thrilled and honoured to be hosting the first Gerry Love headline show since 2012 and an incredibly rare outing by National Park to boot!

Gerard Love -

This is a full band show : Dave McGowan, Bob Kildea, Tom Crossley, Noel O’Donnell and me, Gerard Love. In the last couple of years, I’ve done solo shows, duo, trio, quartet, quintet shows, all playing stripped back, stretched out, soft-focus approximations of my songs but this show is a full band show : live drums and live amplifiers set at normal stage volume, playing more recognisable versions. There will be songs from the Teenage Fanclub era, songs from the Lightships album, some new songs, maybe even a cover version. I don’t get the chance to play with this formation too often, we have a couple of shows in London in late March, and as we will be rehearsed, I thought  - why not book a show in Glasgow, at Stereo? And why not ask John Hogarty if National Park would consider playing too? Make it a double rare occasion.

National Park -

National Park’s music has been described as having some similarities to The Velvet Underground, Galaxie 500 and Yo La Tengo “without sounding like anything else” (Byron Coley, The Wire). On their last release, they describe themselves as occupying the space between the visceral and the whistleable. 

Formed in 1997, National Park gigs have been rare since the early 2000s, with just occasional releases and one-off gigs. With John playing in the Pastels through the 2010s, Simon with Trembling Bells, Youth of America and now, Dragged Up, and Eilidh with her band, Sacred Paws, there was always the delusion there’d be more shows at some point. It turns out the right moment to wait for was opening for Gerard Love at Stereo on April 3rd.

Outside - National Park (2024) a compilation of releases and almost-releases is coming later this year.

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

Gerard Love (Full Band Show)

+ National Park

Wednesday 3rd April

Stereo

18+

Advance tickets available at https://www.citizenticket.com/events/pop-mutations/

Thrilled and honoured to be hosting the first Gerry Love headline show since 2012 and an incredibly rare outing by National Park to boot!

Gerard Love -

This is a full band show : Dave McGowan, Bob Kildea, Tom Crossley, Noel O’Donnell and me, Gerard Love. In the last couple of years, I’ve done solo shows, duo, trio, quartet, quintet shows, all playing stripped back, stretched out, soft-focus approximations of my songs but this show is a full band show : live drums and live amplifiers set at normal stage volume, playing more recognisable versions. There will be songs from the Teenage Fanclub era, songs from the Lightships album, some new songs, maybe even a cover version. I don’t get the chance to play with this formation too often, we have a couple of shows in London in late March, and as we will be rehearsed, I thought  - why not book a show in Glasgow, at Stereo? And why not ask John Hogarty if National Park would consider playing too? Make it a double rare occasion.

National Park -

National Park’s music has been described as having some similarities to The Velvet Underground, Galaxie 500 and Yo La Tengo “without sounding like anything else” (Byron Coley, The Wire). On their last release, they describe themselves as occupying the space between the visceral and the whistleable. 

Formed in 1997, National Park gigs have been rare since the early 2000s, with just occasional releases and one-off gigs. With John playing in the Pastels through the 2010s, Simon with Trembling Bells, Youth of America and now, Dragged Up, and Eilidh with her band, Sacred Paws, there was always the delusion there’d be more shows at some point. It turns out the right moment to wait for was opening for Gerard Love at Stereo on April 3rd.

Outside - National Park (2024) a compilation of releases and almost-releases is coming later this year.

Pop Mutations presents:

Cende

+ Special Guests

Saturday 30th March

The Flying Duck

18+

Advance tickets available at https://www.citizenticket.co.uk/events/pop-mutations/

The return of short-lived indie rock group, Cende delivered a stirring brand of power pop. Guitarist Dave Medina, Porches drummer Cameron Wisch, and LVL UP drummer Greg Rutkin were all recent graduates of Purchase College when they first moved into Brooklyn music venue and housing unit David Blaine's The Steakhouse. The trio began playing together in 2013 after discovering a shared appreciation for garage punk outfit the Marked Men. Bassist Bernard Casserly (Normal Person) soon rounded out the lineup, and with Wisch and Medina acting as main songwriters, the quartet self-released the EP Cende in early 2016. Featuring production by Ronnie Stone and guest vocals by Frankie Cosmos, Cende's full-length debut, #1 Hit Single, arrived in May of 2017 on Double Double Whammy. The band toured the U.S. and Canada with (Sandy) Alex G and Japanese Breakfast in support of its release before announcing in November that they were parting ways in order to focus on other projects. Cende played two farewell shows with Vagabon and Radiator Hospital in Philadelphia and New York City, with their final show falling on December 9, 2017 at the Bowery Ballroom.

Pop Mutations presents...

OBJECTIONS (Leeds)
Characters from Bilge Pump, Beards, Nape Neck and more making an incomparable noise!
https://objections.bandcamp.com/album/bsa-day-better-luck-next-time

DRAGGED UP
Local garage rock noise outfit

CR@M
Glasgow green anarcho hardcore

18+
29th March 2024
7.30pm
The Glad Cafe

Pop Mutations presents:

Hurry + U.S. Highball

+ Gerry Love

Saturday 23rd March

The Glad Cafe

Advance tickets available at citizenticket.com/events/pop-mutations

Hurry:

Hurry were formed in Philadelphia PA by Matt Scottoline in 2012. Their fifth album - and fourth for Lame-O Records was released in Summer of 2023. "Don’t Look Back" takes cues from all the usual suspects—a Pitchfork review of the band’s 2016 LP Guided Meditation compared Scottoline’s songs to Matthew Sweet and the Posies, and those comparisons still make sense this time around. Tambourine is employed liberally; the record takes its title from a song by Teenage Fanclub (“Don’t Look Back” off 1995’s Grand Prix), who famously named one of their records after a Big Star song (with 1993’s Thirteen).

Founding member Matt Scottoline has grafted the best qualities of ‘90s bubblegum power pop—the pitch-perfect songwriting, the pop-rock sheen, the borderline saccharine vocal melodies—onto something far more raw and emotionally resonant.

On one hand, Don’t Look Back is an ironic title: These songs are about reflecting on failed romance from a more mature emotional vantage point. But as both a title and collection of songs, Don’t Look Back is also a self-affirmation of sorts—to learn from the past without being mired in it, to stay focused on the present, to feel hopeful for the future. You couldn’t come up with a better analogy for power pop if you tried.”

U.S. Highball:

No Thievery, Just Cool - released in Spring 2023 on Lame-O Records - is the fourth album in as many years from Glaswegian jangle-pop outfit U.S. Highball, comprised of lifelong friends Calvin Halliday and James Hindle.

This time around, the boys decided to put the neighbourhood to work, enlisting a host of friends and external collaborators to beef up their characteristically propulsive pop nuggets. Jacob Ewald--frontman of recent tourmates Slaughter Beach, Dog--duets with James on a soaring version of The Mr. T Experience’s "Big, Strange, Beautiful Hammer," and Manda Rin--one third of Glasgow indie legends Bis--lends her trademark emphatic yelp to the effervescent "Tiny Partick." On album closer "Out of Time," Aussie stalwarts Darren Hanlon and Shelley Short provide sun-soaked harmonies that elevate the song’s ruminative coda to something transcendent, while Joe Howe--typically known to traffic in jittery electronics--unleashes a rousing saxophone solo slap-bang in the middle of "Paris 2019." The record was masterfully mixed by Melbourne-based legend-in-the-making Snowy--best known for his work with The Ocean Party and Ciggie Witch--whose ardent ear for detail helped breath fresh life into the songs during the mixing process, bringing out the best in Halliday and Hindle’s unorthodox arrangements.

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

The Hanging Stars

+ Special Guests

Friday 22nd March

The Glad Cafe

18+

Advance tickets available at citizenticket.co.uk/events/pop-mutations/

On A Golden Shore arrives as The Hanging Stars reflect on a year of triumphs. With an Americana Music Association Bob Harris - sanctioned award and a Nashville sell-out in Third Man’s Blue Room with Jack White approvingly looking on, they’re a leading light in the UK Cosmic Americana cohort. Their standing has allowed them to pay less attention to any preconceptions of what they are ‘supposed to be’. On A Golden Shore - their fifth album and their second for the pioneering Loose Music, following 2022’s Hollow Heart - finds them definitively themselves and presents a set of disparate songs whose fundamental linkage is the band that made them.

On A Golden Shore was recorded at Edwyn Collins’ Clashnarrow Studios with Sean Read producing. Singer/guitarist Richard Olson, drummer Paulie Cobra, multi-instrumentalist Patrick Ralla, plus freshman bassist Paul Milne – laid down the album’s backbone over eight days. Mostly recorded live, even the solos done as a piece. Much is first take because trying better, it never worked as well. Pedal-steel player Joe Harvey-Whyte created and added his parts at his London studio bringing ‘shimmery psychedelic goodness’.

Smartly sequenced On A Golden Shore proceeds in clusters of songs; commencing with the free and easy choogle of ‘Let Me Dream Of You’, encompassing the sunny glam of ‘Sweet Light’, the baggy Balearic waft of ‘Happiness Is A Bird’, the pan pipes and bongos of the exotic ‘Golden Shore’, through to the rolling banjo of ‘No Way Spell’ and the celestial cascades of ‘Heart In A Box’. Fashioned instinctively On A Golden Shore is ultimately an album of sensation as much as thought, filled with fleeting moments of blissful excess, and stumbling, rushing flutters of sound; its evanescent psychedelia, divine choruses, and shards of strings combine into an infectious, compelling Cosmic Heartbreak Boogie.

Pop Mutations presents:

Hurry + U.S. Highball

+ Jutland Songs

Friday 22nd March

Leith Depot

Hurry:

Hurry were formed in Philadelphia PA by Matt Scottoline in 2012. Their fifth album - and fourth for Lame-O Records was released in Summer of 2023. "Don’t Look Back" takes cues from all the usual suspects—a Pitchfork review of the band’s 2016 LP Guided Meditation compared Scottoline’s songs to Matthew Sweet and the Posies, and those comparisons still make sense this time around. Tambourine is employed liberally; the record takes its title from a song by Teenage Fanclub (“Don’t Look Back” off 1995’s Grand Prix), who famously named one of their records after a Big Star song (with 1993’s Thirteen).

Founding member Matt Scottoline has grafted the best qualities of ‘90s bubblegum power pop—the pitch-perfect songwriting, the pop-rock sheen, the borderline saccharine vocal melodies—onto something far more raw and emotionally resonant.

On one hand, Don’t Look Back is an ironic title: These songs are about reflecting on failed romance from a more mature emotional vantage point. But as both a title and collection of songs, Don’t Look Back is also a self-affirmation of sorts—to learn from the past without being mired in it, to stay focused on the present, to feel hopeful for the future. You couldn’t come up with a better analogy for power pop if you tried.”

U.S. Highball:

No Thievery, Just Cool - released in Spring 2023 on Lame-O Records - is the fourth album in as many years from Glaswegian jangle-pop outfit U.S. Highball, comprised of lifelong friends Calvin Halliday and James Hindle.

This time around, the boys decided to put the neighbourhood to work, enlisting a host of friends and external collaborators to beef up their characteristically propulsive pop nuggets. Jacob Ewald--frontman of recent tourmates Slaughter Beach, Dog--duets with James on a soaring version of The Mr. T Experience’s "Big, Strange, Beautiful Hammer," and Manda Rin--one third of Glasgow indie legends Bis--lends her trademark emphatic yelp to the effervescent "Tiny Partick." On album closer "Out of Time," Aussie stalwarts Darren Hanlon and Shelley Short provide sun-soaked harmonies that elevate the song’s ruminative coda to something transcendent, while Joe Howe--typically known to traffic in jittery electronics--unleashes a rousing saxophone solo slap-bang in the middle of "Paris 2019." The record was masterfully mixed by Melbourne-based legend-in-the-making Snowy--best known for his work with The Ocean Party and Ciggie Witch--whose ardent ear for detail helped breath fresh life into the songs during the mixing process, bringing out the best in Halliday and Hindle’s unorthodox arrangements.

Pop Mutations presents:

Hurry + U.S. Highball

+ Jutland Songs

Friday 22nd March

Leith Depot

Advance tickets available at citizenticket.com/events/pop-mutations

Hurry:

Hurry were formed in Philadelphia PA by Matt Scottoline in 2012. Their fifth album - and fourth for Lame-O Records was released in Summer of 2023. "Don’t Look Back" takes cues from all the usual suspects—a Pitchfork review of the band’s 2016 LP Guided Meditation compared Scottoline’s songs to Matthew Sweet and the Posies, and those comparisons still make sense this time around. Tambourine is employed liberally; the record takes its title from a song by Teenage Fanclub (“Don’t Look Back” off 1995’s Grand Prix), who famously named one of their records after a Big Star song (with 1993’s Thirteen).

Founding member Matt Scottoline has grafted the best qualities of ‘90s bubblegum power pop—the pitch-perfect songwriting, the pop-rock sheen, the borderline saccharine vocal melodies—onto something far more raw and emotionally resonant.

On one hand, Don’t Look Back is an ironic title: These songs are about reflecting on failed romance from a more mature emotional vantage point. But as both a title and collection of songs, Don’t Look Back is also a self-affirmation of sorts—to learn from the past without being mired in it, to stay focused on the present, to feel hopeful for the future. You couldn’t come up with a better analogy for power pop if you tried.”

U.S. Highball:

No Thievery, Just Cool - released in Spring 2023 on Lame-O Records - is the fourth album in as many years from Glaswegian jangle-pop outfit U.S. Highball, comprised of lifelong friends Calvin Halliday and James Hindle.

This time around, the boys decided to put the neighbourhood to work, enlisting a host of friends and external collaborators to beef up their characteristically propulsive pop nuggets. Jacob Ewald--frontman of recent tourmates Slaughter Beach, Dog--duets with James on a soaring version of The Mr. T Experience’s "Big, Strange, Beautiful Hammer," and Manda Rin--one third of Glasgow indie legends Bis--lends her trademark emphatic yelp to the effervescent "Tiny Partick." On album closer "Out of Time," Aussie stalwarts Darren Hanlon and Shelley Short provide sun-soaked harmonies that elevate the song’s ruminative coda to something transcendent, while Joe Howe--typically known to traffic in jittery electronics--unleashes a rousing saxophone solo slap-bang in the middle of "Paris 2019." The record was masterfully mixed by Melbourne-based legend-in-the-making Snowy--best known for his work with The Ocean Party and Ciggie Witch--whose ardent ear for detail helped breath fresh life into the songs during the mixing process, bringing out the best in Halliday and Hindle’s unorthodox arrangements.

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

Scout Gillett

+ Tulsa Queen

+ Zerrin

Thursday 21st March

The Glad Cafe

18+

Advance tickets available at citizenticket.com/events/pop-mutations

“Home” is a tough thing to pinpoint for someone who’s constantly in motion. Scout Gillett knows this well, but since relocating from Kansas City in 2017, she’s found one in Brooklyn’s DIY scene, playing in multiple live bands and even starting her own booking company to organize local shows. Her intrepid nature results from a childhood spent running barefoot through rural Missouri and coming of age in Kansas City’s punk scene. Her debut solo album no roof no floor features shades of all her past and present lives: a bold and spirited yet warm, intimate meditation on trust, surrender, and what makes a home.

Following the sudden overdose of a lover in 2018 and the onset of the 2020 quarantine, Scout returned to Missouri in search of reprieve. Instead, she was dismayed to find that her hometown was suffering; friends and family members were caught in the grips of drug and alcohol addiction. “Nothing was as I’d remembered,” she says. “I felt homesick for a home that no longer seemed to exist.” Overcome by grief and helplessness, she retreated inward, channeling her fears and frustrations, as she always had, into songwriting. “I meditated on surrender,” she says; “I recited the serenity prayer. I realized that I’d never be able to save anybody but myself.”

Back in New York in the standstill of the pandemic, she sat with the raw emotion of what she’d written. The songs were more vulnerable than any of her prior work, and it was a while before the notion of sharing them even occurred to her. Then Nick Kinsey, the album’s producer, called from his recording studio The Chicken Shack in Stanfordville, New York, and an unmissable opportunity presented itself. Kinsey told Scout that his friends Ellen Kempner (Palehound) and David Lizmi (MS MR) had relocated upstate, and were interested in working on an album with her. It was an intimidating proposition – Scout was a longtime Palehound fan, and she was nervous at the prospect of recording with such established musicians. Never one to stay in one place for too long, though, she set those fears aside. “I woke up and wrote ‘trust’ on my hand every day I was there. I pushed myself to trust the unknown, and trust that I had a message I was ready to share with people.”

That trust was rewarded with an album that pulses with life. The sprawling fields, open skies and farm animals upstate felt familiar: “They reminded me of home as I’d remembered it, home without worry.” Recorded in a big wooden barn with the doors wide open, there’s a sense of spaciousness on no roof no floor befitting its title. On some songs, there are even audible cricket chirps. The arrangements, too—which feature contributions from Kempner, Lizmi, and Kevin Copeland (The Big Net)—reflect Scout’s rural roots and her indie spirit; a fusion of upbeat, guitar-driven melodies and folk/country instrumentation like pedal steel, harmonica, and tenor banjo. All of these elements are underpinned by Scout’s signature soaring, velvet vocals and open-hearted lyricism – she sails from a hushed whisper to dulcet spoken word to a cathartic belt with ease. “We did the vocal takes in the pitch black darkness of night in the country, void of light pollution,” she remembers. “I stared out at the stars through the open door as if singing to them.”

Above all, there’s a strength in the vulnerability of this record. The pain is on full display – in her mournful declaration “you know I had to go” on “lonesome dove,” or the heart-wrenching crescendo on the album’s title track – but so is the love. She arrives at her thesis on the haunting six-minute centerpiece “hush, stay quiet”: “you can only save yourself,” she muses over a resolute guitar. We can’t always know what to expect, even in a place we’ve been before. With a little trust, though, we can find a safe place within. No roof required.

Pop Mutations presents:
The Umbrellas
+ Special Guests
Saturday 9th March 2024
Mono

Advance tickets available at citizenticket.com/events/pop-mutations

The Umbrellas are four renegade romantics crafting irresistible indie pop hymns. The band’s self-titled
2021 debut album became a breakout moment, winning critical praise and sparking an international tour.
Follow-up LP ‘Fairweather Friend’ goes a step further – absorbing the sonic attack of their live shows, it
balances this with studio finesse, allowing the San Francisco four-piece to become the band they’ve
always aspired to be.
It’s a record overflowing with highlights. The candyfloss melodies of introductory track ‘Three Cheers!’ are
matched to an impactful percussive punch; ‘Say What You Mean’ finds The Umbrellas working with total
confidence, letting the song ride out to its chiming conclusion, four voices working in precision. ‘When
You Find Out’ offers rotating notes of guitar punctuated by a vocal that pushes past angst to accept a
world full of hope. A lean 10 track affair, it grasps towards beatific pop while fuelled by a sense of risk, and
the precision that comes from long months on the road.
The Umbrellas coalesced around a group of musicians who would frequent legendary San Francisco
record emporium Amoeba Music. Singer and guitarist Matt Ferrera links with bassist Nick Oka, while Keith
Frerichs is the powerhouse drummer. A chance encounter with Morgan Stanley singing karaoke at a
Fourth of July party cemented the line-up around an avowed thirst for melody. “All of us love really
earnest pop songs,”
Nick points out. “I guess we got to a point in our lives where we wanted to be genuine.” Playing shows at
San Francisco’s vital DIY redoubt Hit Gallery, The Umbrellas would share line-ups with local heroes such as
April Magazine and Cindy. Recording their debut album across a two-day spell at Matt’s parents’ house,
the results won a devoted cult following. Yet the experience of touring bonded them tightly and allowed
the volume to tick up a little higher, and higher, and higher. “I think we got tired of people saying, oh
you’re so much louder than I thought you’d be!” laughs Matt. “Our early recordings are sweet and
earnest... and we wanted it to be louder.”
Kicking off sessions in November 2022, the band used an ad hoc space Matt created in his basement,
working across a four-month period. Sessions were a little more relaxed in terms of timescale than their
debut, but The Umbrellas were incredibly focussed on the project. “We gave ourselves more space for this
album,” says Keith. “We wanted time to sit on the songs, and really work on them.”

Allowing their live dynamic to bleed out on tape, The Umbrellas are at once more physical and yet also
more controlled on their new album. Take opening track ‘Three Cheers!’ – the peppy, sun-soaked rush
masks a barbed lyric, courtesy of Nick Oka. “It’s a pseudo-political song about power struggles that occur
in a job situation, or a friend group. It’s an observational song.”
‘Toe The Line’ has an unkempt, rollicking sense of energy, the playful relationship analogy of the lyric
pushed to the speed of light by Keith’s ultra-fast punk drumming. ‘When You Find Out’ meanwhile
epitomises their unified, egalitarian way of making music – with The Umbrellas, each voice counts. “It
sounds different from any song we’ve ever written together,” says Morgan. “It shows how much we’ve
grown. Trust helps us to build the songs. It’s definitely a team effort.”
It’s also a record of ambition. ‘Say What You Mean’ stretches past the four-minute mark, the viola
performance informed by Estonian minimalist composer Arvo Pärt. ‘Gone’ was the first song attempted
for the new album, and the last they actually finished, endless re-writes transforming it into a manifesto
of control and release.
Taken as a whole ‘Fairweather Friend’ is a bold indie pop triumph, crafted with purpose and attention.
Taking their time over each note, the four-piece have strengthened their songwriting, adding depth and
assurance while unlocking their potential. Some bonds last a lifetime – The Umbrellas are ready to
capture your heart.

Flora Yin Wong is an experimental artist and writer from London whose work incorporates field recordings and early instruments such as singing bowls, yangqin and kemence, processed through pedals, Max/MSP, as well as text-based storytelling and abstraction. She cites early musical influences from the city’s diverse sub-cultures from UK garage to underground DIY bands, having grown up on council estates in Camden, to underage clubbing in Soho and Mayfair.

In October 2020, her debut album “Holy Palm” was released on Modern Love records as a double LP vinyl. Prior to that, she released on Berlin label PAN on the ambient ‘mono no aware’ compilation which she worked on conceptualising. Her debut EP ‘City God’ was a tape on New York imprint PTP, was inspired by the Daoist tradition of tutelary deities and the afterlife.

She has performed at institutions and galleries like MACRO Roma, Volksbühne Theatre Berlin, Palais de Tokyo, V&A Museum, Fondation Beyeler Basel, Somerset House, Triennale Milano, King’s Place, The Jazz Cafe, and Cafe OTO London, as well as clubs like Berghain, Printworks London, Razzmatazz Barcelona, SOTO and Metro in Kyoto, WWWB Tokyo, Kyiv, Antwerp, Bratislava, Frankfurt, Rotterdam, Vienna, Switzerland, Brussels, Shanghai, Seoul, Hong Kong, Sydney, and Atonal and 3HD Festivals in Berlin, Semibreve Portugal, FIBER Festival Amsterdam, and Wiener Festwochen in Vienna, MUTEK Peru, Buenos Aires and Montreal, New York’s ISSUE Project.

She regularly guests on radio shows like Rinse FM, NTS, Know Wave, The Lot Radio, and Boiler Room, with a trimestrial residency on LYL Radio. This year she launched her record label Doyenne feat. artists inc. Susu Laroche, Lisa Lerkenfeldt, Martyna Basta, and YL Hooi. Her second album is due this September on Modern Love, and her multi-channel composition for Paris institute’s INA GRM will be released as a split EP next year following a residency for their iconic 48-channel diffusion system. She is currently working on remixes for Ale Hop on Nyege Nyege Tapes, for duo Animistic Beliefs and Tokyo producer Ena.

Her first book ‘Liturgy’ was released in July 2021 on New York’s Primary Information – exploring abstract fiction and non-fiction, interlinking themes like religion, modern mythology, paradoxes, and delusions. This year she launched the record label Doyenne based around the concept of the ‘divine feminine’. The brand new album ‘Cold Reading’ has been release Oct. 27th, 2023 via Modern Love.

Pop Mutations presents:
Frankie Rose + SRSQ
+ Special Guests
Friday 23rd February
Stereo
18+

Advance tickets available at https://www.citizenticket.co.uk/events/pop-mutations/

After spending nearly two decades establishing herself across New York and Los Angeles independent music circles, Frankie Rose returns with a fresh form, aesthetic, and purpose embodied in her new album Love As Projection. Celebrated by countless critical and cultural outlets over the years for her expansive approach to songwriting, lush atmospherics, and transcendent vocal melodies and harmonies, Love As Projection is a reintroduction of her established style through the new lens of contemporary electronic pop.
Painstakingly written, recorded, and engineered through some of the most tumultuous times in history, this new collection of songs harnesses the power and propulsion of Frankie's early DIY-centric punk days without losing sight of the immersive, dreamlike world-building she's been known for in recent years. Featuring beautiful, ethereal songs like lead-off single "Anything," "Sixteen Ways" and "Come Back," this album is more than a rebirth, a refinement, a resurgence – it's a culmination of influence, a newly-defined scope using the tools at her disposal, and the most personal and accessible collection of art-pop that Frankie has delivered yet.

SRSQ (pronounced seer-skew) is the moniker of singer, musician, and elemental force Kennedy Ashlyn. From foundational years as co-founder of visionary shoegaze duo Them Are Us Too (alongside the late, lamented Cash Askew) through her growing body of solo work on Dais Records, she has steadily honed her multi-octave range and moodswing songcraft into an increasingly potent poetic voice. 2019’s celebrated debut, Unreality, showcased a deepening gift for melodic dynamics and emotive exorcism – a mode she half-seriously coined “griefwave.” The album’s passionate response prompted extensive live dates, further sharpening her natural performative instincts.
2022 further confirms Kennedy as an essential generational talent, able to synthesize private struggles and sorrows into stirring, redemptive anthems. Hers is a music of tumult and triumph, darkest night breaking into brightest dawn, where anguish blurs and becomes acceptance. SRSQ’s seeds have only just begun to bloom; looming tours, videos, and more will inevitably hasten an already radiant refinement.

“Dedication to my work will be my saving grace, and ultimately I’ll destroy the bullshit ideas of who I am or how I have to be, and experience true freedom.”

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:
John Myrtle
+ Sunny
+ Ruby Gaines
Sunday 11th February
The Flying Duck
18+

Advance tickets available at https://www.citizenticket.co.uk/events/pop-mutations/

John Myrtle is a Birmingham-raised London-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who writes feel-good sun-soaked anthems. After releasing a bundle of tracks on his soundcloud in 2018, John released his debut EP Here’s John Myrtle in July 2019, followed by mini-album Myrtle Soup in 2021, all performed and produced to tape in John’s bedroom. John has supported artists such as Marina Allen and Katy J Pearson, and in 2023, embarked on a UK & European tour supporting Kate Bollinger. 2024 will see John hit the road again with a new crop of songs and will release his first studio-based album.

Pop Mutations presents:

Hayden Pedigo

+ Special Guests

Saturday 10th February

The Glad Cafe

Advance tickets available at citizenticket.com/events/pop-mutations

Pedigo has lived many lives, having been homeschooled in Amarillo, Texas by his truckstop preacher father; run for Amarillo City Council in 2019, aged 25—as documented by Jasmine Stodel’s SXSW-premiering, PBS-acquired film Kid Candidate—and struck up pen-friendships and collaborative partnerships with the likes of Terry Allen, Charles Hayward (This Heat), Werner “Zappi” Diermaier (Faust), and Tim Heidecker. A move south from Amarillo to Lubbock in 2020 put a spark to the powder keg of his creativity. “It’s even more flat, desolate, windy and dirty – like being on Mars,” Pedigo observes. “It’s pushed me to create more because there’s not really much to distract.”

The move produced not only The Happiest Times and its predecessor Letting Go, but also an Internet presence that showcases a panoply of ever-more outlandish outfits and an effortless deadpan wit. Both the former and the latter helped parlay him into the fashion world, too, having walked the runway for Gucci and been photographed by Hedi Slimane.

After touring with friends and collaborators Jenny Lewis & Devendra Banhart in the US, with a special appearance at Tiny Desk in November, Hayden Pedigo is now ready to present the Happiest Times He's Ever Ignored on his first Euro journey.

Freakender, Pop Mutations & 432 present:

Novelty Island

+ Special Guests

Sunday 4th February

The Hug and Pint

Novelty Island is the project of Liverpool-based songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and

producer, Tom McConnell. McConnell grew up between Newcastle and Liverpool and

takes inspiration from the pop music, surrealism and melancholy of the North.

After a series of psychedelic EPs, the debut Novelty Island album How Are You Coping

With This Century? was released in Autumn 2021. It led to the Novelty Island live band

performing at Glastonbury Festival and supporting Sea Power and The Pale White

around the UK.

McConnell then turned to recordings he’d made at Abbey Road Studios and Damon

Albarn's Studio 13 for the second Novelty Island album, Wallsend Weekend Television.

The album was released in March 2023 and followed by a 10-date UK headline tour.

Both Novelty Island albums have received five-star reviews from Shindig and R’n’R as

well as support from Mojo, BBC Radio 6, BBC Introducing and Absolute Radio.

McConnell also creates the surreal imagery around Novelty Island in the form of

papier-mâché props, dreamy animations, claymation videos and a never-ending

Instagram account.

Freakender, Pop Mutations & 432 present:

J. Mahon

+ Special Guests

Tuesday 23rd January

The Hug and Pint

18+

Raised in North Queensland, Australia, Jarrod Mahon is not one to shy away from bold new endeavours.Once parting was ways his previous record label in 2019, Mahon chose to go fully independent, relocating to Berlin in 2019 (where he still resides), despite having no contacts at all in the country. What’s more, having recorded/performed under the pseudonym Emerson Snowe for over a decade - during which time he home-recorded five albums and 13 EP’s, toured with the likes of King Krule and Ariel Pink, played showcases SXSW and the Great Escape, the works - Mahon took that brave, most uncommercial decision to release under his own name and start almost totally anew.

“There was never really a concept to that name [Emerson Snowe] other than having some kind of separation from who I was as a person,” Mahon explains, “using a moniker gave me that confidence to push myself further mentally and to give myself some kind of a freedom”. And through the process of creating what would become his debut album, Mahon saw that he had outgrown the need for this protective persona. Everything Has A Life was meant to be the debut Snowe album”, he admits, “but after I finished mixing it with Syd [Kemp, co-producer] I realised that I had actually grown a lot and was much more comfortable with who I am and what my personal beliefs are.”

The choice of Everything Has A Life as the the album’ title, pulled from beauteous opening track ‘All I Know’, neatly summarises this new outlook: moving on from ‘self-pity’ of the past-self by becoming present for the loved ones around you, improving understanding of one’s own self, via the wider world at large.

That track marks the first written during a lockdown stint in LA where Mahon wrote and recorded everyday for 2 months, produced nigh on 250 demos and birthed the bulk of the record. It also brought Mahon back to his all time favourite, Sufjan Stevens’ Ilinois and its blend of widescreen orchestral landscapes and more candid, naked acoustic-leaning variations - an important influence for the album's stylistic contrasts. Another key inspiration for the record too brought Mahon back to his roots - those full-bloom strains of his Mum’s Beloved Neil Diamond, an annual Christmas irritant to Mahon as a child, yet an artist he’s come to respect in adulthood.“Whatever the reason, with age I came to love the big show band sounds,” he says, “the idea of a performer on stage with a massive orchestra with strings was amazing to me.”

With the help of producer Syd Kemp (Ulrika Spacek, Vanishing Twin, Thurston Moore), such grand designs could be met. - “When we first met he asked me if I would like real strings on it. I said ‘of course’.” Enter Magda Mclean on violin (Caroline/the Umlauts ), and Gamaliel Rendle Traynor on Cello (Sweat, Fat White Family, whose strings helped lift the record to romantic new heights.

He continues: “I said to Syd that the only thing I wanted to achieve with this record was that I wanted it to make me cry at one point. And we got there eventually.” The final culmination of all these strands, Everything Has A Life is indeed a treasure trove of emotive riches. Locking into that bittersweet, quintessentially ‘pop’ combination of triumphant rhythms and confessional, stream-of-consciousness lyrics plucked straight from the heart, Mahon faces up to years of substance abuse with a series of gorgeous, blushing melodies:““I was using, I was drinking, I was lying to my friends, I was messing up again,.I was hiding from myself”, he joyously chants on ‘The Growing’.

A banquet fit for an indie king, Everything Has A Life is loaded with psych-pop lusciousness (“All I Know”) and anthemic glam fuzz ( “Death Of The Ladies Man”, “Deadstar”, or “Sonny is my Best Friend”); recalling that foundational Sufjan Stevens influence too with shambling flecks of country (“Charly (Romantic Heart”). There’s also those lo-fi crepitations of ‘My Man’ and “I can’t” harking back home-recorded demos that lie at the core of Mahon’s creative process.

As an album recorded independently on Mahon’s behalf - though which now finds the light of day on Swiss Indie label Taxi Gauche Records - a DIY approach runs through all the way through his aesthetic. On Instagram, Mahon will advertise limited runs of handmade mix-tapes, t-shirts, drawings and prints. He tours with band members he met over years spent in Germany, as part of a long process of emerging out of his shell - “I didn’t even know what instruments they played! I just wanted them to be around because it somehow felt right.”, he explains.

“I love this album”, he concludes. “I am so happy with how it happened, the people involved and where I am as a person now. To have something like this body of work to actually pinpoint such a massive change in my life is something amazing to have”. And if there was one final take away from this story of self-discovery that underpins the creation of Everything Has A Life, it’s a lyric, again, from ‘The Growing’ - “If there’s one thing that I’ve learnt is that we’ve got to learn to grow”

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:
Modern Nature
+ Special Guests
Monday 18th December
The Glad Cafe
18+

Advance tickets available at https://www.citizenticket.com/events/pop-mutations/

No Fixed Point In Space, the third full-length album by Jack Cooper’s Modern Nature, takes the palette of sound and themes that were honed on 2021’s Island Of Noise and launches them into an expansive world of openness and vivid technicolour. It’s a music that hasn’t been heard before; as melodic as anything Cooper has produced but framed by rhythms and instrumentation that reflect the chaos, unpredictability and colour of the natural world.

“With this record,” Cooper explains, “I wanted the music to reflect nature: beginnings and endings, arrivals and departures, process and chance. I wanted the music and the words to feel like roots, branches, mycelium, the intricacies of a dawn chorus, neurons firing, the unknown.”

“The way you see or hear music in your head is abstract and magic… often far more beautiful than what eventually appears on tape. When you sit down with an instrument and begin translating an idea, it quickly conforms. I’ve tried to develop this music without thinking in terms of set rhythms, time signatures, folk or pop structures, syntax; the devices you associate with the music world which I come from. I wanted to make music that was abstract, free and honest, whilst still being predominantly tonal and recognisably song based. New music! It feels like time to make something that no one has heard before.”

Certain moorings – woodwind, percussion, strings and Cooper’s lambent voice – are still present and recognisable from No Fixed Point In Space’s predecessor, Island Of Noise, but the new record marks a shift to utilising musical notation as a point of departure, from which the group explore the space around suggested notes and rhythms to create a semi-improvised, semi-composed ensemble performance. These explorations of partly organised chance were recorded live and directly to tape.

“Part of it is a reaction to what I hear out in the world,” continues Cooper. “Modern Nature’s music has certain threads that run through it. Music is increasingly sterile and informed by the grids and convenience of digital recording. Music needs the swing of humans for it to resonate on any level below the surface.

“I think the most important aspect of that idea is collectivism; the rhythm, melody, timbre, dynamics, all the aspects of music are not the responsibility of one instrument, they are the responsibilities of all the instruments. The vocals are no more important than the bass. That makes the music move in an organically unpredictable way. Like a flock of birds or a school of fish, notes breaking the surface and then disappearing. That’s how I want this music to feel.”

This approach gives the music a remarkably fresh feel; songs pulse and evolve. The changes between movements, verse and choruses are almost all ambiguous. During the album’s opener, Tonic, a verse of hushed brevity washes away into a passage of overwhelmingly vibrant orchestration.

Cooper devised musical notation for the players to follow in every song. Within this set of loose parameters or signifiers, they were able to explore the pieces on their own terms.

“Most of the arrangement and orchestration is notated, but the musicians are all imaginative interpreters’” he says – and for the record, they include: Anton Lukoszevieze, Mira Benjamin and Heather Roche of Apartment House, Alex Ward (This Is Not This Heat / Spiritualized), Dominic Lash, Chris Abrahams of The Necks, Julie Tippetts (FKA Julie Driscoll) as well as long-term collaborators Jeff Tobias (Sunwatchers) and Jim Wallis.

There is a perceptible but graceful tension audible in the record. This approach is remarkably effective on Orange, where voices merge together in the refrain ‘turning again we go round and recover’, a phrase that provides the piece with a sense of momentum, even as the instrumentation resists being confined to an equally circular repetition and pulls in contraflow against the vocal lines. The melodies and words move in a similar way to the music, partly improvised, dissonant poetry.

The swing of one particular human present on No Fixed Point In Space is especially noteworthy. The legendary Julie Tippetts (Driscoll) adds her distinctive voice to the record, on what is her first appearance on a recording for several years. Tippetts’ ability to evoke a landscape, whether physical or interior, has always been a feature of her vocal performances. Throughout this record her voice does the same to great, purposeful effect, not least on the closing track Ensō, where she takes the lead.

“Ultimately,” concludes Cooper. “This is music I’ve always wanted to hear. I read a quote of Einstein’s via Merce Cunningham that said there are “no fixed points in space” and that felt right. It felt like what I was trying to achieve here.”

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:

Holy Wave

+ Special Guests

Saturday 9th December

Stereo

18+

Advance tickets available at https://www.citizenticket.co.uk/events/pop-mutations/

Holy Wave is a band of multi-instrumentalists from El Paso, Texas, USA. Since making a move to Austin in 2008, they have cemented themselves as a unique force in the national and international touring circuit. After perennial performances at Levitation (Austin Psych Fest) and countless tours and festival appearances in the USA, Europe, Latin America, and Africa, Holy Wave is poised to continue expanding into new spaces and places around the world. The band has 3 critically-acclaimed LPs and 3 EPs (The Reverberation Appreciation Society, Burger Records, Volante Discos) under their belt, with a fourth LP, Interloper, slated for release Spring 2020.

- - -

“Austin five-piece Holy Wave is certainly dreamy in a sense, but theirs is the kind of dream that’s more vivid than blurry, more present than passing.” - Consequence of Sound

“They've got the far-off, dreamy vocal wash of the shoegazers, but their guitars and hooks are anything but subtle” - Pitchfork

In 1983, Nancy Andrews and Linda Smith shared a big house in Baltimore with a continuously revolving cast of artists and musicians. It was there the like-minded artists formed their first band, Ceramic Madonna Head (with Plastic Arms), a short-lived project which included housemates Elizabeth Downing and Peggy Bitzer. By the time the lease was up, Linda and Peggy had decided to move to New York where they would form a new band called The Woods while Nancy and Elizabeth remained in Baltimore and formed a performance art band called Lambs Eat Ivy.

While playing guitar in The Woods in the mid-80’s Linda purchased her first 4-track cassette recorder and embarked on a pioneering decade of solo, DIY home recording with a series of cassettes and 7” records of smart and moody singer-songwriter bedroom pop music. This trailblazing period was recently documented on the Captured Tracks retrospective compilation “Till Another Time: 1988-1996.” Her band, The Woods, made a record which was shelved for decades but will finally see release in 2023. During this same period Nancy pursued art, animation and filmmaking with occasional forays into music including another short-lived collaboration with Linda called The Gertrudes as well as a 7” under the alias Pinky on Harriet records in 1992. The friends stayed in touch but hadn’t worked on a project together in nearly thirty years.

In 2020, Linda rediscovered in the back of a drawer some old tapes of Nancy’s songs she had recorded for her in the 90’s. In the process of digitizing the old recordings she was inspired to reach out and float the idea of a new collaborative recording project with her old friend. “A Passing Cloud” is the fruit of their rekindled long-distance musical conversation. They began the songwriting process by flipping through Nancy’s pulp fiction collection and pulling provocative phrases from the lurid titles and hard-boiled storylines. Then, they set out to create new stories from personal, feminist perspectives. All the songs were composed incrementally by passing tracks back and forth between Maine and Maryland during the late pandemic. A Passing Cloud’s lovely and beguiling pop music may be borne out of isolation but it draws us in with a carefully rendered intimacy made possible by decades of artistic collaboration.

Pop Mutations presents:
Fred Armisen - Comedy For Musicians But Everyone Is Welcome
+ Special Guests
Monday 4th December
Mono
18+

The star of Portlandia, Fred Armisen, will be heading on a full UK tour for the first time, bringing his show Comedy For Musicians But Everyone Is Welcome to our shores. Tickets go on sale Wednesday 27th September at 10am.

Fred Armisen is one of the most diversely talented performers working today. He is an actor, comedian, voice artist, screen writer, producer, singer and musician best recognised as a cast member on NBC’s Saturday Night Live from 2002-2013, which won him a Peabody Award.

His career began as a musician in the Chicago based posed punk band Trenchmouth as well as the Blue Man Group. His transition to comedy came with the 1998 underground short film Fred Armisen’s Guide To Music And South By Southwest which followed him through the Austin, Texas South by Southwest musical festival posing as a journalist.

As co-creator and co-star of the famed sketch comedy series Portlandia, Armisen was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series in 2012, 2013 and 2014. He was also nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 2014. In 2013 Armisen, along with the other writers won a Writers Guild Award for Outstanding Comedy/Variety Series, and they were nominated again in 2014 and 2018. Portlandia received the prestigious Peabody Award for excellence in 2011.

Fred’s film career features many small, but memorial roles including characters in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Eurotrip, Tenacious D And The Pick of Destiny, Battle Of The Sexes and Zoolander 2. He also leant his voice to the features Super Mario Bros., The Lego Ninjago Movie and the Smurfs. Television credits include 30 Rock, Modern Family, Parks & Recreation, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job and Yo Gabba Gabba to name a few.

Armisen was recently seen on Netflix in his original stand-up comedy special Fred Armisen: Stand Up For Drummers.

Pop Mutations present...
Caleb Nichols (USA, Kill Rock Stars)

support from
Dancer
Radio Banter

22/11/2023
7.30pm
18+
The Old Hairdressers

We're stoked to welcome Bristol's Tara Clerkin Trio back to The Glad Cafe on Sunday 19th November!

'Drifting from dubby minimalism to smudged acid jazz, Tara’s stark and tuneful voice acts as the vehicle for her concise poetic lyricism. The group coalesce disparate influences into a cohesive sound, reflecting a romantic view of a familiar world.' — THE WIRE

Tara Clerkin Trio are Pat Benjamin, Sunny Joe Paradisos and Tara Clerkin, three musicians involved in a number of cult Bristol bands over the years before confidently settling down in triangle formation. Their time has been richly spent: continuous writing and recording, extensive live performances across Europe and Japan, a cultivation of local and more far-flung artistic connections (musical and otherwise), and a monthly NTS show that, through the voice of others, speaks most obviously to their own unorthodox interests.

Not far off two years from the day, Bristol's Tara Clerkin Trio return to World of Echo and the EP format for a five song collection of quixotic, emotional redolence titled 'On the Turning Ground'. https://taraclerkintrio.bandcamp.com/album/on-the-turning-ground

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:
Colleen Green
+ Special Guests
Monday 13th November
Stereo

Advance tickets available at https://www.citizenticket.co.uk/events/pop-mutations/

Colleen Green is a DIY singer-songwriter and visual artist from Lowell, MA.
Following the release of her classic debut album “Milo Goes to Compton” in 2010, Green started to make a name for herself in the lo-fi bedroom pop scene of Los Angeles. She soon became known in punk circles across the country for performing alone on stage with nothing more than a drum machine, a pair of sunglasses, and her iconic electric guitar.
In September of that same year Green signed with Seattle-based Hardly Art Records, a subsidiary of the legendary Sub Pop label, and went on to release 2015’s “I Want to Grow Up” which brought her international renown and critical acclaim from the likes of Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and the New York Times. Following the success of this album, the readers of LA Weekly voted her Best Solo Act of 2015.
Green’s pride and joy is the full-album cover of Blink 182’s Dude Ranch that she released in 2019. The recording has since become beloved by fans of both acts and even led to a guest appearance on Mark Hoppus’s Apple Music radio show.
She has performed in 20 countries including Brazil, Chile, Japan, Italy, Spain, Poland, Czechia and Norway.

The past 10+ years have seen Green continue to grow, learn, and improve, and she hopes to keep following that trajectory indefinitely by staying cool, being nice, and believing in love.

Pop Mutations present a double-headline show with Dali Muru & The Polyphonic Swarm and Susannah Stark!

Dali Muru & the Polyphonic Swarm (Dalia Neis, Enir Da & Chrls Lamouroux), sit in the middle of a Venn diagram consisting of medieval inspired troubadour poetry, cinema soundtrack and primordial electronics. Gesturing toward ancient lineages of poetry and storytelling, Dali Muru is driven by the spell of the spoken word, minimal percussive refrains, oneiric textures & deep melodic synths, channeling cinematic imagery, enigmatic narratives & spiritual frenzy. Their self-titled debut album was released on Stroom in 2022 , and their recent refracted audiobook 'Murmur of the Bath Spirits' was just released (again on Stroom) in April 2023. Since their releases, they have performed live at a variety of venues and festivals across UK and Europe including Rewire Festival, Den Haag, Ideal Trouble Festival, Paris, Meakusma, Eupen, and Listen Festival, Brussels. Their music has been featured extensively on NTS radio, Movement Radio Athens, BB6 Late Junction, and Radio Al-Hara among others.

--

Susannah Stark is a singer, composer and visual artist from Fife, Scotland. She makes experimental pop songs and soundscapes formed out of exploration into softness and vulnerability. These soundscapes; orchestrated by voice, field recordings, keyboard, trumpet and distorted percussion, are intended to evoke places - both internal and external - connected with experiences of faith and being. Playing live with her are trumpet player Philip Cardwell and drummer Laurie Pitt (Golden Teacher, Dick 50). Her debut album ‘Time Together (Hues And Intensities)’ released by Stroom in 2020, was described by Noel Gardner in The Quietus as “a seven-song serving of gossamer dub-pop experimentalism" and its live performance constellation by Jude Browning in MAP Magazine as "music suspending weightlessness and opacity with the unfathomable facets of existence".

Pop Mutations, Freakender & 432 present:
Snõõper
+ Special Guests
Monday 6th November
The Hug and Pint

Snõõper doesn’t play fast; they play at the speed of Snõõper. They maintain super precise instrumentals and skillfully melodic vocals, even though they’re flooring it almost the entire time. The project began in 2020 as a collaboration between local Nashville punk mainstay Connor Cummins (guitar) and Blair Tramel (vocals), an early education teacher with a sideline in wickedly funny animation and art. As their cassette tapes and homemade videos began to find scattered fans around the world, the duo brought the project to the live stage in late 2021 with the addition of Cam Sarrett (drums), Happy Haugen (bass), and Ian Teeple (guitar). Thus, Snõõper was born.

Snõõper is a band who, in a 33 ⅓ RPM world, make 45 RPM music they play at 78 RPM. Their debut album, Super Snõõper, was recorded at The Bomb Shelter in Nashville. It follows EPs “Music For Spies” (2020), “Snõõper” (2021), and “Town Topic” (2022), as well as the live album LIVE AT EXIT​/​IN 11​-​23​-​22 released this past February. Given the brief glimpses into Snõõper’s music from their 7”s, EPS, and thrilling live performances, one might wonder if the group could hold the line for a full album. The answer is an enthusiastic yes. In the words of Henry Rollins, “Speaking selfishly, I want Snõõper to hurry up and make another album. Super Snõõper is a really cool record.”
Snõõper are known for their raucous live show which integrates many different artistic mediums — music, video art, puppetry, assemblages, and more —  to create a unique experience for each performance. The band is currently touring Australia and will return stateside for a handful of shows.