The New Cue

The New Cue The New Cue is a music newsletter filled with interviews and recommendations that hits mailboxes onc

What do you wish the 18-year-old you knew?“That you can legitimately believe and bet on yourself and your fortitude and ...
17/08/2026

What do you wish the 18-year-old you knew?
“That you can legitimately believe and bet on yourself and your fortitude and inner-strength and that you will fail, you will slip and fall, you will make horrible mistakes, but you can transcend them.”

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Afghan Whigs frontman Greg Dulli takes on our Life & Times interview. It includes an A* anecdote about Peter Falk. It’s a free edition, link in bio.

What was the home that you grew up in like?Extraordinary. So, I grew up in a house in Newburgh, New York that was built ...
13/08/2026

What was the home that you grew up in like?
Extraordinary. So, I grew up in a house in Newburgh, New York that was built by an American architect named Stanford White, who also built Madison Square Garden.

Wow!
He built the arch in Washington Square Park, and the house that he built in Newburgh that I grew up in, he built it the same year that he was murdered. So he never lived in it. He was murdered in 1906 at Madison Square Garden at the rooftop theatre by the jealous son of a billionaire. It was called the case of the century in American history because it was an opening night of a Broadway show and the Rockefellers, the Astors, they were all there. They were all witnesses in that case.

But this house that he built for himself was a Victorian house with a lot of beautiful woodwork inside. Had 28 rooms. It was very, very cold. My parents bought it for $30 thousand and we froze to death in it. But I had the most amazing dreams and places to play hide and seek, and places to be scared in. That’s the house that I watched The Exorcist in. I loved to get scared in that house. It was a perfect setting for watching horror films.

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Multi-talented and acclaimed American rapper, singer, songwriter, poet, writer, director and actor Saul Williams is in the Life & Times hot seat this week. It’s a free edition, link in bio.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?“In light of what’s just happened, being alive is a pretty good one. Just...
03/08/2026

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
“In light of what’s just happened, being alive is a pretty good one. Just fu***ng managing to keep going. It’s been a rough ride and it’s taken a lot of strength but in a weird way it feels good to have had to draw on some of that resilience that all humans have when they’re going through things. It actually connects you to being alive and what it means to be alive.”

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Today we’ve got a heartening Life & Times chat with producer, songwriter and musician James Ellis Ford. It’s a free edition - link in bio.

https://thenewcue.substack.com/p/the-new-cue-614-august-3-james-ellis

What’s the worst thing that anyone’s ever said to you?“I’ve got one for both of us. It’s people telling us that we’re li...
27/07/2026

What’s the worst thing that anyone’s ever said to you?
“I’ve got one for both of us. It’s people telling us that we’re like Jez and Super Hans off Peep Show, because so many people make that same joke and it’s never been funny. It’s unoriginal. I want it in writing. So now, if anyone says it after this interview, they are genuinely just embarrassing.”

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Today we’ve got a very funny, sweet and enjoyable Life & Times chat with Getdown Services, the brilliant Bristol-based duo who have carved their own Academy-sized niche in British music over the last three years by simply being true to themselves. It’s a free edition - as always, link in bio.

How do you spark creativity?“I never did a day’s gardening in my life until I was 50. I moved here to Portugal and it da...
20/07/2026

How do you spark creativity?
“I never did a day’s gardening in my life until I was 50. I moved here to Portugal and it dawned on me that I could grow almost anything here and most of the things that I really loved to see growing, I could get for free. That they have green waste tips here and people pull out the surplus s**t that grows in their garden and put it there. I learned about rerouting plants and which plants you could do that with and I started really getting into gardening to transform the garden at the house that I have here. It was lawns all the way around, which makes absolutely no fu***ng sense in in Portugal. It’s very long dry summers, so I wanted to change the that. Also, I wanted to live in a jungle-y environment so I planted a jungle, more or less. I found doing it that it really made me inspired. My mind would go into a very creative mode while I was doing very mundane, simple, kind of meaningless tasks in the garden. I found it really opened up my mind to be inspired. So, yeah, gardening.”

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Following the release of his excellent new collaborative record with Panda Bear, we kick off the week with a Life & Times chat with Spacemen 3 co-founder, musician and producer Sonic Boom, aka Pete Kember. It’s a good one. Might inspire you to get into gardening. It’s a free edition - link in bio.

What is your earliest memory?“My earliest memory is of The Troubles. We had a Gelignite bomb thrown into our house in 19...
13/07/2026

What is your earliest memory?
“My earliest memory is of The Troubles. We had a Gelignite bomb thrown into our house in 1973, I think. I was four, being bathed by my sister, and I remember being wrapped up and rushed out of the house, and you know, being in the street, wrapped in a towel, with army, police everywhere. And that was my earliest memory of The Troubles. We were a big Catholic family living in a mostly Protestant neighbourhood and I had Protestant mates my whole life and, listen, I had a fu***ng great childhood. I came from a family who loved me. You get to a certain age where you realise that actually being loved is a privilege because there’s so many people that are unloved and they don’t have that connection. I came from a very good family in that sense, even though we grew up in chaos and mayhem. Within our home there was love and music, and a lot of laughter. Very old school dad, very new school mother, like, she’s really progressive, just in the way she thought about life and raised ten kids.”

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Read our free-wheeling Life & Times interview with the incredibly productive Belfast-born composer, artist and producer David Holmes. It’s a free edition - link in bio

Do you have a temper, and if so, how does it manifest?Oh, absolutely. I have a strong reaction to injustice. One of the ...
06/07/2026

Do you have a temper, and if so, how does it manifest?
Oh, absolutely. I have a strong reaction to injustice. One of the earliest examples of this is when I was at school and there was this boy, he will go unnamed, who used to go around pulling down girls’ pants in the playground. He would have been about 11. It was too old for that kind of stuff. The school wasn’t doing anything about it, and I was quite tall, believe it or not, for my age. I went up to him one day, and I just punched him in the face. He didn’t do it anymore. I got suspended from school, but it stopped. I have a temper when it comes to people doing things to other people that I perceive to be fundamentally wrong.

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In today’s edition, we’ve got a Life & Times interview with Catherine Anne Davies, the fabulously talented, super smart and eloquent singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist better known as The Anchoress. She tucked into our questions with enthusiasm and good humour - it’s a free edition, link in bio!

What’s your pet peeve?“People who think they’re kind and declare it. I hate people who think they’re nice because they’r...
29/06/2026

What’s your pet peeve?
“People who think they’re kind and declare it. I hate people who think they’re nice because they’re left-wing, they’re some of the meanest people I’ve ever met.”

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Yard Act frontman James Smith takes on our Life & Times questions and talks about painting, the time Kim Gordon stole his chair, getting a Skittle stuck up his nose and much more. It’s a free edition - link in bio.

How do you spark creativity?“The way I’ve been doing it recently is just living in the moment. Most bands release their ...
22/06/2026

How do you spark creativity?
“The way I’ve been doing it recently is just living in the moment. Most bands release their best work first album or second album and that’s because when you’re in your late teens or early twenties, it’s when you’re having all your epiphanies, your first fall in love or your first get your heart broken or first real hardship or grief and that’s why all the best rock’n’roll music is written by young people and the most vital and alive music. The thing that’s kept Embrace fresh is that I’m a really fu***ng slow learner and I’m still having epiphanies now as a 55-year-old man every bit as much as I was in my teens and twenties.”

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In today’s edition, Embrace frontman Danny McNamara takes on our Life & Times interview. He was in a good mood when the interview started, having heard the news that the band’s new record was flying high in the midweeks, and in an even better mood as it ended because he received confirmation that the indie-rock veterans had got their sixth Top 5 album. A very nice fella and a very enjoyable chat. As with every Monday, it’s free for all to read with a bonus audio version of the interview for our legendary paid subscribers. Link in bio!

What’s the best advice you’ve been given?“I’d written a song that was called Get Better, a song on the last album. It wa...
08/06/2026

What’s the best advice you’ve been given?
“I’d written a song that was called Get Better, a song on the last album. It was all about someone losing their partner. I said to Gus, ‘Listen, I feel as though I’m an imposter and I’m trauma-baiting with this song because it’s so visceral the way that I’ve written it and it sounds like I’ve actually experienced this loss but actually I haven’t, I’ve kind of sewn together all of these vignettes over time and I’ve structured it into a song but I do feel like I’ve taken advantage of a topic’. Gus was like, ‘Listen, man, you don’t need a doctor’s note to write a sad song’. I thought that was such a lovely line, and I included that line in Last Man Alive, which is a song on The Canyon. I think that’s a great bit of advice for anyone who’s creating work, because if it’s coming from you, it has an integrity that you shouldn’t question. I’ve taken that bit of advice from Gus and I apply it quite regularly to the writing process, maybe subconsciously, but you can write about anything. There should be no topic that you’re not allowed to write about, and that was a good bit of advice.”

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In today’s edition, Alt-J frontman Joe Newman takes on our Life & Times interview. Very nice fella, the chat taking in M&S, Captain Kirk, the record he made with his dad and much more. Joe’s debut solo album is out later this month under the moniker of JJerome87.

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