Articles
Digital versions of select articles featured in the print issues of NEGATIVLAND.
MARY IN THE JUNKYARD - ISSUE TWO
May 2025
Having snuck into the AAA section of a festival on German soil, it’s a relief to meet the members of mary in the junkyard. Singer Clari Freeman-Taylor, drummer David Addison, and bassist Saya Barbaglia have emerged as the ones-to-watch in London off the back of a half-dozen rock-folk singles that are as beautiful as they are creepy.
TRANS-SIBERIAN EXPRESS - ISSUE TWO
May 2025
When the members of Trans-Siberian Express first get to set in St. Pauls, they take to their roles like they were born for them. How could they not? Most of them work in kitchens when they’re not onstage. Now, a few years after the band’s story started – beginning with a stoned podcast, a squat, and a nine-minute song – they’re cooking up something even tastier.
WELLY - ISSUE TWO
May 2025
We meet Welly in the smallest and most iconic venue in Bristol, The Louisiana. It’s presented household names like Amy Winehouse and The White Stripes, but today they’re taking a more domestic swing; Welly are debuting their first album, Big in the Suburbs. It lives up to the name in buckets and spades.
DOG RACE - ISSUE TWO
May 2025
It’s just turned midnight by the time we’re photographing Dog Race. Their keyboardist, Dillon Willis, has just turned 27. We’re stood by an electric pylon and watching Katie Healy - their vocalist, and Shelley Duvall’s near-perfect likeness - flit between the low hanging branches of a tree with leaves that snap at her hair. It’s the buzz from the electricity - we’re standing too close and, since they were in Germany, haven’t heeded the security guard’s warnings. Her red prairie dress is the only thing we can see with any clarity.
GETDOWN SERVICES - ISSUE ONE
September 2024
If you’ve been to a gig in the Southwest of England in the last couple years, chances are you’ve seen Getdown Services warming the crowd into fanatic explosion.Having been introduced to the scene as a kind of novelty – two blokes in their late-20s with their shirts off, ranting about the Naked Chef’s 15-minute dinners – the pair, childhood friends Josh Law and Ben Sadler, quickly established a close-to-cult following for their sprechgesang approach to disco.
WYCH ELM - ISSUE ONE
September 2024
After performing hundreds of gigs for the better half of a decade, it seems almost surprising that there’s still something that seems so coy and secretive about Caitlin Elliman, the frontwoman of wych elm. Perhaps I’d guessed that having given so much of her art, of her story away on the stage and in her band’s three EPs, she’d be an open book.
YARD ACT - ISSUE ONE
September 2024
Yard Act’s first album, The Overload, came out while I was in my first year of university, and it soundtracked the whole year for me. I know I’m not the only one; things changed because of that album. ‘100% Endurance’ soundtracked my best friend’s first love; a love that still endures now. A boy I once dated was invited onstage to sing ‘Peanuts’ at one of their gigs and told me the story every time I saw him, just as proud of it as if it had happened the night before.