Drahla

This year, Drahla make their long-awaited return with their astounding second record angeltape. It’s an offering that was not only interesting for the Leeds-based art-rock experimentalists to make, but offers an intriguing world for audiences to explore with a similar curiosity that informed the songwriting process. This inclination to eschew conventional melodic structures and embrace uncertainty across their latest material gives fans an unfiltered insight into a challenging transitional period the band found themselves in following the release of their 2019 critically acclaimed debut, Useless Coordinates. That blistering introduction, described as a “darkly affecting uncompromising listen”, along with the success of their Third Article EP from 2017, saw them share stages with Parquet Courts, Ought, Buzzcocks and several more. angeltape, recorded with Matthew Benn and Jamie Lockhart in 2023, is an altogether more introspective and abstract examination of the self: “The core is off kilter I’m sure / When you feel too detached for your own words,” Brown intones on ‘Lip Sync’, an early glimpse into Drahla’s extraordinary artistic evolution.