Five Favourites: Fightmilk


We make no secret of our super fandom of Fightmilk here at Get In Her Ears. We’ve been following them since they first played live for us back in 2018, and now – after having had the honour of them headlining many more of our gigs, and being obsessed with their albums Not With That Attitude and Contender, our fandom has only continued to grow with the recent release of their new album No Souvenirs. Reflecting on themes of getting older, particularly as a woman in music, the album exquisitely showcases Fightmilk’s ability to hone their sound, creating perfect punk-pop; angsty and uplifting in equal measure. Instantly catchy singalong anthems, combining the band’s trademark tongue-in-cheek wit with a swirling energy and gritty raw emotion. From fuzzy sentimentality to fierce tirades against patriarchal society, No Souvenirs is a perfect culmination of how Fightmilk have continued to refine their sound. With shades of noughties punk-pop, combined with an injection of fresh queer joy and raging emotion, it’s at once cathartic, validating and empowering. But, most importantly, fun. A sound that’s uniquely Fightmilk; truly distinctive in its colourful charisma, but consistently evolving into something more. 

We think one of the best ways to get to know a band is by asking what music inspires them. So, following the release of No Souvenirs, we caught up with Lily, Nick, Alex and Healey to find out about the five albums that inspired the writing of the new album the most. Read about their five favourites, listen to the No Souvenirs on repeat, get tickets to see them live and watch the wonderfully DIY new video for latest single ‘Yearning and Pining‘ below:

Band pick:

Jimmy Eat World – Bleed American
We all collectively, coincidentally, fell back in love with this album HARD at around the same time. It’s such a perfect cocktail of anger, positivity, self-reflection and FUN. It’s obviously also catchy as hell. The timing of our obsession coincided with Lily sending us a demo of the song ‘No Souvenirs’, which we definitely made a conscious effort of melding into something that could sit alongside those J.E.W songs. By the time we’d recorded the title track, we even learned ‘A Praise Chorus’ for a couple of shows in 2023, though damned if we can remember how to play it now.

Lily:

Olivia Rodrigo – Sour / GUTS
My name is Lily and I’m a sucker for a Gen-Z Disney star. Olivia Rodrigo’s songwriting is phenomenal. She is so self-aware, so funny, and so brutally (ha) honest – a lot of comparable artists who write music on themes of anxiety and awkwardness feel focus-grouped to death by people who haven’t been teenagers for a long time, or they bottle a feeling at the last minute and turn it into self-deprecation, but her songs feel like they’ve come straight from her diary. Lines like “I hope you’re happy, but don’t be happier” are such an economical, Ronseal way of articulating such a big, messy feeling – it’s such a skill to reduce all those complex emotions into one line. It’s very much the Kirsty MacColl/Alanis Morrissette school of ‘stuff I wish I’d said’. Sour was my big album for No Souvenirs, but I’m so glad we got GUTS halfway through recording too. I wrote ‘Summer Bodies’ before I’d heard ‘Pretty Isn’t Pretty’, which is one of my favourite songs on GUTS, and felt so much that it was written with the same exhaustion. I felt very seen: “I could change up my body and change up my face/I could try every lipstick in every shade”. I also love that during a time where guitar music is incredibly uncool, Olivia Rodrigo has released two big grungy rock albums. We have so much in common…


Nick:

Press Club – Late Teens
I absolutely love everything about this album. The aggression, speed & ferocity of it; the blown out vocals and the sparing way it was recorded, which is really no frills and designed to capture the rawness of a live show (I read somewhere that Nat does her vocals in the booth DURING the instrument takes, which is insane to me), and of course Frank’s drumming, which is fast and nuanced without being overtly flashy. There’s always a danger in this genre that you’re going to over-complicate stuff and have one instrument’s role overshadow the others, but the balance is right on this, and it was a wake up call to keep things simple – both in terms of our individual roles, and production, with No Souvenirs.


Alex:

Eiko Ishibashi – Drive My Car (Original Soundtrack)
The words and music on No Souvenirs are as accurate as you can get to the constant screaming static in our heads, as the four of us left the lockdown era, and tried to remember how to exist in the world, let alone be a band again. In the face of that chaos, the delicate arrangements and kinetic calm of Eiko Ishibashi’s Drive My Car score were my actual soundtrack to the period – a 45 minute gap in time where I could shut out the outside world and pretend it wasn’t going to come roaring back at me once the album finished. If you can’t hear that influence on our record, fair enough! But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t find a way in there somewhere.


Healey:

Lucy Dacus – Home Video
The early summer of 2021 was a super strange time, we were coming out of lockdown and all COVID restrictions were being removed but everything still felt scary and weird. Like Lucy Dacus we’d just put out an album, but we had no way of touring it yet and had sat on the songs for longer than expected. I went for lots of contemplative walks by myself round Peckham and I’d mainly just listen to Home Video and voice note demos Lily had sent to the band group chat. I got obsessed with this one early demo called ‘Swimming Pool’ – it’s a quiet song with just an acoustic guitar and double tracked vocals. It’s sparse, vulnerable and reflective. It caused the same gut reaction I get when I listen to Dacus’ music, a homesick nostalgic pang mixed with a dose of teenage embarrassment. While the title and some of its lyrics have changed, the core emotion is still there and I think Home Video was a huge influence on letting that track gently build to an eruption of fireworks at the end.


Massive thanks to Lily, Nick, Alex and Healey for sharing their favourite album choices with us! Watch the gloriously DIY video for ‘Yearning and Pining’ here:


No Souvenirs, the new album from Fightmilk, is out now via Fika Recordings and INH Records. They’re currently out on tour – very limited tickets left, but you may be able to find some here.

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Five Favourites: Umarells

Having just shared their debut EP, One More Day, Manchester-based dream-pop group Umarells create lush, glistening soundscapes, fizzing with a rippling raw emotion. Combining elements of shoegaze, grunge and indie-pop, they offer heartfelt reflections on themes such as grief and failed relationships, each song offering their own unique sparkling musicality.

We think one of the best ways to get to know an artist is by asking what music inspires them. So, following the release of their debut EP, we caught up with Imogen, Josh, Ryan Sarah and Fuchsia to find out about the five albums that inspire them the most. Read about their five favourites, and watch the beautiful video for stirring single ‘June‘, below…

Weyes Blood – Titanic Rising
I first heard Natalie of Weyes Blood’s gorgeous Carpenter-esque voice on Drugdealer’s 2016 album The End Of  Comedy. When Titanic Rising was released in 2019 it resonated as the theme of an era of my life. Blending ‘70s pop vocals with romantic space age synth cynicism I was hooked from my first listen and rushed to see the masterpiece live in Manchester venue Yes’ pink room. ‘Picture Me Better’ – a song written about the loss of a friend – perfectly encapsulates heart wrenching grief and the hope to hear the impossible “call from beyond”. A song that inspired me to pour my own grief into our song ‘One More Day’.

Burial – Untrue
I vividly remember the first time I stumbled upon this album while exploring a friend’s CD collection. It was a revelation – nothing I had ever heard compared to its dark, gritty sound, interwoven with ethereal melodies and harmony. So melancholic. I often listened to it on my bike rides home through the city centre at 5am, after finishing my shift at a nightclub; feeling as though I was the only soul awake in the world. It’s perfect for those late nights when you’re caught between the desire to drift off and the inability to do so. The sampling on this album is incredible; the original sources are so cleverly transformed that I found myself spending hours online trying to uncover their origins. It’s a remarkable masterclass in genre-bending and structure, carving out its own distinct niche within the electronic scene. Its sound remains refreshingly futuristic, even today.

Pixies – Doolittle 
All amazing tracks and completely seminal. I became obsessed with Pixies when I was fifteen, after loading up my mp3 player for a school trip to Sorrento. I’d heard that Nirvana’s loud-quiet-loud structures were ripping off Pixies, so I downloaded some songs from Limewire. Listening to them on a coach driving along the West coast of Italy really cemented the tracks for me and I was kind of blown away by it. The guitar work is just perfect to me – simple driving bass lines, and Joey’s surf inspired riffs and bends are just amazing. The range of sounds in Frank’s voice means the album never gets boring and it contrasts with Kim’s vocals so well. To top it off, ‘Gouge Away’ is just the best final track on an album for me.

The Smashing Pumpkins – Siamese Dream
My favourite album changes constantly, but if I had to choose one right now I’d pick Siamese Dream. My first introduction to Smashing Pumpkins was at about seven or eight years old hearing them on The Simpsons episode ‘Homerpalooza’. A few years later when I hit my full-on emo phase I delved into their back catalogue and Siamese Dream was the album that stuck out to me. I’ve never got sick of listening to it. Billy and James’ guitar playing on this record is just insane to me. The dynamics of the album too are just so great, the fact you’ve got heavy songs like ‘Geek USA’ but the softer songs like ‘Luna’ and ‘Disarm’ but they work perfectly together when listening to the album in full. Billy’s lyrics as well – “Fool enough to almost be it, cool enough to not quite see it. Doomed.” on ‘Mayonaise’, incredible. Whenever I’m writing new music I find this is the album I reference the most.

Big Thief – Two Hands
This is such a beautiful album – the lyrics are so raw and heartfelt – it’s such incredible story telling. The album flows from really soft gentle tracks to heavy gritty ones so effortlessly, and everything about the way it’s recorded sounds so natural. It came out when I first got back into playing music after a really long break and I would just listen to it on repeat. The whole album reminds me of a time when I really started to feel comfortable with myself and listening to it still reminds me of that. Seeing them live at the Apollo last year was an awesome experience!

Huge thanks to Umarells for sharing their five favourites with us! Watch the beautiful new video for stirring single ‘June’ here:

One More Day, the debut album from Umarells, is out now via Fear Of Missing Out Records.

Photo Credit: Kitty Handley

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Five Favourites: Zombina and the Skeletones

Having initially blasted onto the Liverpool scene back in 1998, local ‘horror-rockers’ Zombina and the Skeletones have previously wowed audiences with their eccentric energy and intoxicating fusion of sounds supporting the likes of Shonen Knife, The Damned and Misfits. Now, having officially come out of retirement last year, the band have just released their first full-length album in ten years, The Call Of Zombina. Interweaving an eclectic array of sounds, from uptempo garage-punk and girl group pop leanings, to haunting baroque-inspired goth-rock and a swirling punk energy, the album offers a fierce return to form from the Merseryside legends; an exquisite, immersive cacophony that’s not for the faint-hearted. 

We think one of the best ways to get to know a band is by asking what music inspires them. So, following the album’s release, we spoke to Zombina and Dr Horror from ZATS about some of the albums that have influenced them the most. Have a read, and then watch the video for immense new single ‘Don’t Kick My Coffin‘ below, before listening to the full new album in all its glory. 

Zombina’s Picks:

Cocteau Twins – Heaven Or Las Vegas
This is a weird one for me, because I’m not a huge album listener. I’ve always been into bands and artists, and songs in a standalone sense, but poverty and ADHD impatience have always had me flitting around mixtapes and ‘Best Of’ compilations. I’d never have described Cocteau Twins sound as my main kind of thing, but yet I’ve returned to this record again and again and again over the years. It’s been the soundtrack for more scenes in my life’s journey than I can believe: it’s been playing whilst I’m de-cluttering, breastfeeding through the night, working out, reading my bestie’s tarot, shopping, grieving a loss, fucking OR making love (two very different things, and it works for both for me, which is no mean feat!), walking to job interviews, hungover in the tour bus, the list goes on… I genuinely listen to it several times a week. I’m Neurodivergent and I recognise this is one of my top comfort albums. The two times I have managed to write and record music as a solo project, I have only been able to eschew writer’s block by taking a “Cocteau Twins approach” to lyrics, and just letting word sounds tumble out ad-hoc. As someone who has spent a lifetime singing lyrics I rate super highly, written by my best friend, I really think was the only way I could have got past the inner critic to explore the musicality I was trying to access, and I credit this album for that.

Roky Erikson – The Evil One
I don’t remember how soon into our BFF-ship Doc Horror and I started listening to this… Oh shit, wait, yes I do – it must have been almost right away aged fifteen and sixteen, because we recorded a cover of ‘I Walked With A Zombie’ from this album on our home 4-track for the very first Zombina and the Skeletones demo! I’ve still never watched the film about Roky. I think it would upset me too much. I’m a real sucker for the under-dog, people that have struggled and suffered injustices, especially surrounding mental health. I was already floundering my way into the mental healthcare system myself by fifteen. I remember hearing about Roky’s story, and it was never extricable from how I felt listening to his music. I heard the deepest pain and the most jubilant perseverance in his voice; I held on to the thought that he had come out the other side of a dark and brutal life chapter, and still had this creative passion bursting out of him, and sounding so fucking GOOD! He was also someone who had paved the way before us. We were teenage horror movie fanatics, trying to form a band around that shared passion, and then we discover this guy and the genre he named himself – Horror Rock! I was planning to choose my top five tracks from the album, but it’s too hard. Just listen to it. Many times. Let it permeate you like it has me. I implore you!!!

Doc Horror’s Picks:

The B-52’s – The B-52’s
Zombina introduced me to the B-52’s via Cosmic Thing back when we were in school, and that was revelatory enough, but their self-titled debut turned out to really be where it’s at for me. For our generation B-52’s meant ‘Love Shack’ and ‘Rocko’s Modern Life’ and, like, ‘The Flintstones Theme’, not that there’s nothing wrong with that, obviously – but this album is something else entirely. We found it on cassette in a charity shop sometime in the late ’90s and I couldn’t believe how punk-rock this thing is. It’s got this sort of proto-Riot Rrrrl quality to it, but somehow also sounds like flying saucers coming over the horizon. They’ve somehow got way more depth than they get credited for, but are also exactly as silly as they seem. Cindy Wilson’s vocal on ‘Hero Worship’ is possibly the best vocal on anything ever! We caught them live in Manchester years later when they did Funplex and they were still phenomenal. Experiences like that are great training for staving off the I’M GETTING TOO OLD FOR THIS SHIT feeling that can come twenty odd years into being a band. Fun is fun, no matter who you are. Everybody goes to parties!

45 Grave – Sleep In Safety
I remember coming across this LP when Zombina and the Skeletones was very new, and seeing that amazing band photo on the back cover and immediately finding new role models in 45 Grave before I even heard their music. I purchased it at the next opportunity and found myself utterly baffled by the music on first listen. From what I’ve heard, it seems like I’m not alone in that. A lot of people find Sleep In Safety quite difficult to get into, but you have to stick with it!  Once you get past the tonal whiplash of the whole “oh it’s a sort of dark prog record… no wait it’s hardcore punk… oh what’s this surf instrumental doing here?” experience, it’s actually incredibly rewarding – and very much ended up as a template for what we do, in a lot of ways. It was like suddenly being given a license to disregard the constraints of genre. And then you get to the chorus in ‘Partytime’ and realise that this was the song that seemed to be coming out of that skeleton’s mouth in that one scene in The Return Of The Living Dead – the movie that you and Zombina watched alongside The Rocky Horror Picture Show a few months back and that’s what inspired you to start a spooky band in the first place -, and it’s all come full circle… But you never would have guessed that it was the same band because the chorus from ‘Partytime’ sounds like some AC/DC pastiche. Again… baffling. A couple of years later, one of our first European shows was opening for Dinah Cancer’s post-45 Grave band Penis Flytrap. She turned out to be really nice. Not nearly as scary as you’d think. Whenever I put on Sleep In Safety, I find myself transported to ZATS year one and I’m filled with the excitement of future possibilities. It’s still a weird listen even now. Our track ‘Dead Birds’ on The Call Of Zombina is a bit of a love letter to this sound.

Girls At Our Best – Pleasure
I don’t really ever discover new current music. Instead, my version of that seems to be stumbling across things from the eighties that are at least new to me – often from bands like Girls At Our Best, who split up around the time I was born. I have no clue how Pleasure even ended up on my radar. It seemed to just appear in my life a couple of years ago without me really noticing and I just kept finding the various tracks stuck in my head and before long I was just binging it daily and playing it to people, like “check this out…”. I’m not sure if I’ve successfully converted any fans yet. I ended up listening to it constantly while writing The Call Of Zombina but if you were to play to our record side by side with this one you probably wouldn’t make any connection between the two. Pleasure is all major key sunshine and The Call Of Zombina is more like a night in Dracula’s castle… But it was very subtly informed by Pleasure on some subliminal level. It’s just great. Every song has about 20 legitimate hooks apiece, loads of inventiveness, earworms and strange instrumental choices. You have to wonder who they were and what happened to them. They made this one excellent album then fucked off.

Huge thanks to Zombina and Doc Horror for sharing their Five Favourites with us! Watch the new video for ‘Don’t Kick My Coffin’ below:

The Call Of Zombina, the brand new album from Zombina and the Skeletones, is out now via 9×9 Records. Buy it now.

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FIVE FAVOURITES: NikNak

The genre-blending sounds of Leeds-based electronic artist, producer, and DJ NikNak are inspired by an eclectic collection of music and media. Her brand new album, Ireti, released via Accidental Records, leans into Afrofuturism, exploring the ways in which humanity and technology intersect, and has narrative crossovers with iconic dystopian films and video games like Blade Runner and Cyberpunk 2077. The record is a distinctive, cell-tingling fusion of jungle beats, jazz nuances, dub, reggae rhythms and cinematic electronics; all of which help to sculpt NikNak’s elusive, yet exciting new sonic universe.

We think one of the best ways to get to know an artist is by asking what music inspired them to create music in the first place. We caught up with NikNak to ask about her “Five Favourites” – five tracks that have inspired her songwriting techniques. The thing is, she made so many great recommendations, that we decided to keep them all – so there’s nearly double the amount of tracks for you to sink your teeth into!

Check out her extensive list of choices below, and scroll down to watch the video for NikNak’s latest AI inspired single ‘Pandora’s Box’ featuring AGAAMA at the end of this post…

 

1. Willow Smith – ‘Big Feelings’
There’s these clips of Willow in the studio recording and piecing together elements of her latest album, Empathogen, with Yussef Dayes in there recording drums with her at one point…then I saw her Tiny Desk Concert and it blew me away; especially seeing a mostly all female line up of musicians vibing together. Her re-work of ‘ Wait A Minute’ is so glorious and uplifting. To think that she’s only 23 too!? To end on ‘Big Feelings’ takes me back to Jamiroquai and Herbie Hancock. Watching this performance made me go buy the album and has inspired me to work with more live musicians in the future. Brilliant stuff.

2. Mia Koden – ‘Hot Take’
This tune reinvigorated my love of 140 in recent years and gets bonus points for referencing the histories and all the wonderful things that make 140/dubstep so special. It’s kinda rare nowadays I think to come across music that makes a point of referencing its origins in authentic ways. What Mia has done here is make a track that is 100% her, but I also feel my ancestors through that baseline and multiple drum switch ups.

3. Jlin – ‘Open Canvas’
It was really hard to pick something from Jlin’s album, Akoma. I saw her live for the first time at Bristol New Music Festival alongside Ryoji Ikeda and was blown away by both performanceS, but seeing Jlin use the MPC live was something else entirely. I fully admire her work and she’s someone I’d love to connect with one day. Her music makes me feel nostalgic and warm – big vibes.

4. Loraine James – ‘Gentle Confrontation’
I’m kind of cheating a bit here, because I’d put the album in this too since it’s the same name, but the intro to Loraine’s newest album is beautiful and really imposing of where her sound has taken her in recent years. Picking a tune from her discography at this point is really hard for me, as I’m a big fan of her ever-evolving work. I just love that there’s a sense of play in her work, which is so important and richly evident.

5. Dennis Brown – ‘Get To Love In Time’
Dennis Brown is my fave reggae artist I think, and this song always takes me back to the exact moment I’d heard he passed away. I think this was the first time I’d really had an artist’s death impact me. If I didn’t get into production, I would have become a bass player simply because of reggae and the beautiful grooves underneath all the other instruments. Dub plays a big part in my music I think, whether I realise it or not. All the delays and reverbs, and the noise that comes from all of that, all play important parts in my music consciously and subconsciously, and I love that. RIP Mr. Brown.

6. Missy Elliot – ‘Whatcha Gonna Do’
Her discography is nuts, as we all know, but I’d say my favourite song of hers has to be ‘Whatcha Gonna Do’ from the So Addictive album. Whenever she works with Timbaland, magic happens and I think in hindsight, this era of R&B/Hip Hop really gifted us with a version of Afrofuturistic music in mainstream. This was one of the many tunes that helped me to see that we can literally make music be and look like anything we want, and that we don’t have to follow rules. It’s something we don’t really see now in the same way anymore, but Missy is definitely one of the pioneers of this.

7. Boxcutter – ‘Rusty Break’
Before this tune came into my life, I’d been introduced to DJ Shadow’s ‘Endtroducing’ and Cut Chemist’s ‘The Audience Is Listening’, and loved how they’ve been able to adapt, sample and repurpose classic drum breaks into new patterns and loved that. Then came Burial, and around the same I think came Boxcutter’s ‘Rusty Break’ and he took things to a new level. I think I was in my first year of uni at this point… I don’t know, I feel like I was hearing so much music that everything was influencing me in a variety of ways both in and outside of my studies, particular in my undergrad studies but ‘Rusty Break’ is up there for sure!

8. Burial – ‘Archangel’
I remember sitting in college going through a YouTube dark hole at lunchtime or free period, and I found an anime video someone cut to this track… immediately I was hooked and had to listen to everything Burial had put out at that point. Sampling Ray-J’s vocals in such a dark and atmospheric tune was nuts. The textures and gridless drums were nuts. Burial introduced me to another side of music production, another way to break rules and approach it like a sketchbook instead of it being so regimented.

9. Seed. – ‘Afronaut’
I’m a little bit biased as I’m now a member of Seed., but the first time I heard ‘Afronaut’ it made me an instant fan of them and Cassie’s phenomenal writing skills. All of the time signatures, melodic craziness, everything altogether is next level; and all the ways the keys, chords and tempos change and intertwine with each other throughout the track is very inspiring. Plus, XANA’s verses are just cherries on top. More rules broken here. As someone who can’t read music and didn’t learn to classically play an instrument, hearing talented musicians play such transformative music was another big moment for me I think too.

Thanks to NikNak for sharing her favourite tracks with us!

Watch the video for her latest single ‘Pandora’s Box’ below

NikNak’s upcoming UK Tour Dates 2024
(DJ sets unless otherwise noted. * = Ireti live)
May 23, 24, 25, 26, 28 – Leeds Art Gallery – Inner Ireti immersive installation at Leeds Jazz Festival (DJ set and artist talk at 1pm on May 23)
May 25 – Leeds, Headrow House
May 31st – Birmingham, Centrala,
June 6 – Newcastle, Cobalt Studios*
June 29 – Brighton, Fortune Of War
August 30 – Belgium, Meakusma Festival*
Sept 7 – Utrecht, Gaudemaus Festival

Follow NikNak on bandcamp, Soundcloud, Spotify, Youtube, Instagram, X & Facebook

Kate CrudgingtonLeave a comment