New music review with singles from BAD WITH PHONES and The Youth Play
- Julia Mason aka The Decibel Decoder
- 7 hours ago
- 4 min read
Our weekly fix of the best new music as Julia Mason (aka The Decibel Decoder) brings us her new music review with singles from BAD WITH PHONES Human and The Youth Play CDMX
Artist: BAD WITH PHONES
Track: Human
BAD WITH PHONES aka Manny T Deroy is a South London artist/musician and self-proclaimed luddite, swearing that a healthy relationship with the self beats any amount of doom scrolling session you can get through your phone. Like a time traveller from the future, he has come to remind all those who this message resonates with to slow the fuck down, show love to yourself and to get away from your phones.
Manny stopped carrying a phone for six months, as a sort of social experiment to see if he could live in the 21st century without one. “I wanted to see why we all feel so obligated to own one,” he explains, smirking as he recalls the annoyance of all the friends who struggled to reach him. The Deptford-born bassist and producer is a one-off, a future don of weirdo pop, R&B, rap and post-punk, who transmits songs that are epic and iconic, low key hypnagogic and soaked in bliss and damage, like Tyler The Creator, Grace Jones or Basquiat if they’d grown up in 1990s Deptford listening to Sade and David Bowie.
Manny’s father was a preacher, while his older brothers played in the church band. This upbringing was the backdrop to his music, but Deroy’s sound is decidedly genre-agnostic. Raised to Togolese parents who exclusively listened to gospel artists, Manny started to explore his brothers’ record collections and became affixed with the likes of Wu-Tang, Notorious B.I.G. and TLC.
2024 BAD WITH PHONES album CRASH combined the high-wire duality of immediate recognisability and authentic individuality. The album is packed with intimate anthems and comedown soothers for the day after a mangled night out. Now, emerging again in 2026 BAD WITH PHONES is evolving with The man who eats metal meat EP, a five-track voyage that moves rebelliously through a smorgasbord of styles; from spacious spoken word contemplations, to soulful alt-pop, laced together by cosmic atmospheres.
“The man who eats metal meat EP is an alter ego, an embodiment of a version of myself that's a reminder of my resilience, determination to triumph and bounce back no matter what”, explains Manny. “The new character rides spaceships and has a crew of other travellers who travel through worlds and observe realities they blend in with the times and sometimes they don’t. In this version of reality there's not so much blending in”, he further explains.
New single Human is, on the surface a high energy, rude and naughty club song to dance to, but it’s also a very personally important song for BAD WITH PHONES.
“I wrote Human for my son who passed away days after he was born. The whole thing felt like an out of body experience”, Deroy explains. “Human is about birth and death respecting the way life plays out. I could rationalise that maybe the kid got all they needed from the planet maybe they thought they didn’t need to experience any more. We all go through things in life no one’s exempt from a heart break. I’m glad I was able to express my experience, and I genuinely hope it is a help to anyone who’s experienced something similar. I believe if you have life, you should celebrate it and ultimately the song is a celebration of life. It’s my anthem to liberation of all kinds”, he further explains.
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Artist: The Youth Play
Track: CDMX
CDMX is the new single from London-based four-piece The Youth Play, the follow-up to Sunday, continuing the band’s run of impressive, emotionally charged alternative rock.
The lyrics were written by frontman Diego Bracho; it is the band’s most personal song to date, tackling memory, identity and the complicated relationship we have with the places we once called home. More than a decade after leaving his hometown of Mexico City (CDMX), Diego found himself confronting a question that has never quite disappeared: "why did I leave?" It isn’t a song searching for regret or certainty, but one that examines identity and questions what ‘home’ actually means.
At the heart of CDMX is one quietly devastating image: becoming "a stranger in your old house.” It’s a feeling that extends far beyond geography; returning to a childhood bedroom that no longer feels like yours, reconnecting with old friends who have built lives without you, or realising that the places which shaped you have continued to evolve in your absence. It’s a song about the strange grief of recognising that while you can revisit somewhere physically, you can never truly return to the moment you left.
The Youth Play have always explored the ways our lives intersect with the wider world, but CDMX marks a subtle shift in perspective. Rather than focusing on labels or politics, the song reflects on the universal human experience of culture, identity and coexistence; how we carry fragments of every place we’ve lived, and how those places continue to shape us long after we’ve moved on.
Musically, the band’s signature blend of driving post-punk, shimmering guitars and soaring melodies provides an uplifting counterpoint to the song’s emotional weight. Like much of their songwriting, CDMX refuses to sink into melancholy, instead finding hope in uncertainty and beauty in the questions that never quite find an answer.
Originally from Mexico City, Diego Bracho moved to the UK to study music after leaving a career as an environmental scientist, believing he could connect with people more meaningfully through songwriting than scientific research alone. Alongside bassist Alex Hanrahan, who also left an office career to pursue music, he met guitarist Harrison Ballard and drummer Finley Bruce at ICMP, where The Youth Play was formed. Together, the four-piece combine Diego’s melodic songwriting with the atmospheric textures of Slowdive, The Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine, creating music that pairs introspective lyricism with cinematic alternative rock.
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