The Guardian Indie

1. One to watch: Friedberg

   The London-based four-piece led by Austrian singer-songwriter Anna F serve up the coolest dance punk this side of LCD Soundsystem

   For economic and other practical reasons, it’s increasingly rare for singer-songwriters to seek shelter in a band, but that risky shift has paid off for Anna Friedberg. She grew up learning guitar and writing songs in her bedroom in Austria, then evolved into solo artist Anna F, supported by her side hustle as a sports journalist. Tiring of working alone, five years ago she formed London-based dance-punk outfit Friedberg with guitarist Emily Linden, bassist Cheryl Pinero and drummer Fifi Dewey.

   Excellent early singles Lizzy, Yeah and Go Wild established the band as a great go-to for tracks that leaven emotion with motion, always tugging at your sleeve, dragging you to the dancefloor. LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy would be proud. Friedberg’s woozy, off-kilter warmth warps punk-funk into slinky new shapes.

   Friedberg’s single Hardcore Workout Queen is out now. Their debut album of the same name is out on 11 November via Clouds Hill

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2. Morrissey claims Johnny Marr blocked new Smiths greatest hits album

   Former Smiths frontman claims Warner Music proposed reissue programme including best-of called Smiths Rule OK!, but Marr rejected proposed artwork

   Morrissey has claimed that Johnny Marr is opposing the release of a new Smiths box set and reissue programme.

   The Smiths frontman posted a statement to his website, claiming that a greatest hits album called Smiths Rule OK! was being planned, alongside reissues of the band’s 1983 debut single Hand in Glove and follow-up This Charming Man, plus a deluxe box set of their self-titled debut album.

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3. Tindersticks: Soft Tissue review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week

   (City Slang)
   From 70s soul to glowing strings, the cult outfit continue to illuminate the fringes of pop music, celebrating the beauty in small things

   It’s easy to see the initial part of Tindersticks’ career as a missed opportunity. There was a brief moment, around the time of their eponymous 1995 album and its successor Curtains, where it looked as if the Nottingham band’s lushly orchestrated, emotive songs might find a wide audience: the former briefly reached the Top 20, the latter propelled them to a major label deal. But they were doomed to remain a critically acclaimed cult concern, bigger in continental Europe than at home. They were a band that remained slightly out of step, too twilit and idiosyncratic for an era when British alternative rock tended to brash primary colours and singalong commerciality, their image too down-at-heel and their mood too downcast, their music more suited to soundtracking the demanding films of French director Claire Denis than the goal roundup on Match of the Day.

   Yet there is a sense that cult status has served them well in their second act. Tindersticks reappeared in 2008 after a five-year hiatus and devoid of half of the original members. Most bands who reform, whether they would admit it or not, are in thrall to nostalgia and the expectations that come with it: their new material at best a fair forgery of old albums everyone knows, there to fill space in the setlist between the huge hits everyone has paid to hear. But the rejuvenated Tindersticks weren’t hemmed in by their own past or powered by the need to revisit former commercial glories. They’ve spent the last 16 years quietly pushing forward and making hugely impressive albums, their remarkable qualitative consistency spiked by the fact that they’re sure enough of their audience to throw them the occasional curveball, as on 2021’s Distractions: made remotely during lockdown, it dealt in samples, loops and bursts of noise and featured arrangements so sparse that the music behind frontman Stuart Staples’ voice occasionally seemed to be barely there at all.

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4. One to watch: Sarah Kinsley

   The leftfield US singer-songwriter has turned grief into a life-affirming debut album that’s at once widescreen and intimate

   Born in California, raised in Connecticut and Singapore and currently residing in New York, 24-year-old Sarah Kinsley makes deft alt-pop that combines musical and geographical experience-collecting. Having trained in classical piano and violin from childhood, she studied music theory at Columbia University and then began swerving left: self-recording and releasing around the turn of the decade; making light but intricate tracks influenced by the likes of St Vincent and Angel Olsen. A TikTok video responding to the comment “women don’t produce music”, in which Kinsley filmed herself tapping on walls and thumping sofas – eventually combining the sounds to produce the backbone of 2021 track Over + Under – sent her viral.

   Her newly released debut LP, Escaper, takes its title from a period of grief, mourning the death of a close friend. “Escapism became the most natural survival instinct,” she toldNME. “I just wanted to transcend life, become someone else.” Yet, far from being a heavy album, Escaper – made with producer John Congleton (a regular co-conspirator with many of her musical heroes) – bubbles with life, taking elements of Kinsley’s classical training and leftfield self-production and combining them in ways that nod to artists such as Mitski. Recent single Realms is as orchestral and widescreen as it gets, while Beautiful Things is a tender piano ballad. Both are sides to Kinsley that she wears well.

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5. English Teacher on winning the Mercury: ‘We are proof that arts funding works’

   The Leeds-based band – and first non-London act to win the prize for a decade – were quick to highlight the part that regional funding played and lamented recent cuts
   • Alexis Petridis: ‘English Teacher are worthy Mercury winners – but the question of the prize’s future hangs heavy’

   Not 18 hours after Leeds indie band English Teacher won the Mercury prize for their debut album, singer Lily Fontaine told the Guardian: “We’re still pinching ourselves, really.” Their Top 10 widely acclaimed This Could Be Texas beat the favourite Charli xcx, along with efforts by the likes of Corinne Bailey Rae and Portishead’s Beth Gibbons. “To win it in a room where there were people such as Corinne or Beth that inspired me is just amazing, like a dream I keep expecting to wake up from. I went up to Beth and just said: ‘You’re incredible.’”

   Earlier, this year, English Teacher told the Guardian that despite being signed to a major label, Island, enjoying radio and TV exposure and being able to play 800-capacity shows in their home town, both Fontaine and bandmate Lewis Whiting recorded their album while living at home, sofa-surfing and relying on universal credit to top up the band’s £500 a month from the record company advance. The Mercury comes with a £25,000 cheque although the band haven’t decided what to do with it. Fontaine insists: “It will be invested, not frittered away.”

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