TV Priest signed to Sub Pop Records to release their debut album “Uppers” on February 5th. The album was originally set to be released through Hand In Hive this fall, but will now be released through their new label next year. The band has shared the album’s lead single “Decoration” alongside its music video. The new single follows the release of “This Island,” which is on the album as well as standalone singles “House of York” and “Runner Up.”
TV Priest, are the London-based four-piece you need to get behind. Right now. No ifs, no buts. The childhood mates, led by frontman Charlie Drinkwater, only formed in 2019 but are already on a rapid ascent to the top with legendary label Sub Pop snapping them up earlier this year off the back of just four massive singles.
TV Priest was borne out of a need to create together once again, and brings with it a wealth of experience and exhaustion picked up in the band’s years of pursuing ‘real life’ and ‘real jobs’, something those teenagers never had. Last November, the band – vocalist Charlie Drinkwater, guitarist Alex Sprogis, bass and keys player Nic Smith and drummer Ed Kelland – played their first show, to a smattering of friends in what they describe as an “industrial freezer” in the warehouse district of Hackney Wick. “It was like the pub in Peep Show with a washing machine just in the middle…” Charlie laughs, remembering how they dodged Star Warsmemorabilia and deep fat fryers while making their first statement as a band.
Unsurprisingly, there isn’t a precedent for launching a band during a global pandemic, but among the general sense of anxiety and unease pervading everything at the moment, TV Priest’s entrance in April with the release of debut single House Of York – a searing examination of the Monarchy set over wiry post-punk and fronted by a Mark E. Smith-like mouthpiece – served as a breath of fresh air among the chaos, its anger and confusion making some kind of twisted sense to the nation’s fried brains
Debut single House of York put the monarchy in its sights and quickly made it to the BBC 6 Music airwaves thanks to its chaotic energy. Along with follow-up tracks This Island, Runner Up,Slideshow and Decoration were equality brilliant.
It’s the same continued global sense of anxiety that will greet the release of Uppers, and it’s an album that has a lot to say right now. Taking musical cues from post-punk stalwarts The Fall and Protomartyr as well as the mechanical, pulsating grooves of krautrock, it’s a record that moves with an untamed energy. Over the top of this rumbling musical machine is vocalist Charlie, a cuttingly funny, angry, confused, real frontman. Uppers sees TV Priest explicitly and outwardly trying to avoid narrowmindedness. Uppers sees TV Priest taking musical and personal risks, reaching outside of themselves and trying to make sense of this increasingly messy world. It’s a band and a record that couldn’t arrive at a more perfect time.
Debut album Uppers is scheduled for release in February 2021.
Honey Lung have released their first new music since their recent EP “Post Modern Motorcade Music”. The Sweet and slow, ‘Room’ was the first peep from the foursome since May this year. Drawn out and emotional, ‘Room’ is a total Melon Collie era Smashing Pumpkins ode. Feedback heavy and imbued with a guitar-orchestrated sparkle, it’s a lush personal piece that’s pretty ideal for the autumn to winter transition. “’Room’ is quite an intimate, personal song that details a time in my life” frontman Jamie Batten said. “We shot a music video for the track with a friend of ours out in Berlin. The video is essentially me being edgy af for 4 minutes.”
Now the London four-piece Honey Lung have shared a new single “Oh So Real,” out now via Big Scary Monsters. It’s the follow-up to their previous track “Room,” and it also follows last year’s EP Post Modern Motorcade Music. A version of “Oh So Real” originally appeared on a vinyl-only demos and singles collection, “Memory”, which was released by Kanine Records in 2019. “Oh So Real” has both the chunky grit and gentle-hearted nature of Silversun Pickups, with gnarly, rumbling guitars acting as a segue to their sentimental chorus. Their hook-driven guitar noodling is as sharp as ever, and they even delve into a steamy Black Sabbath-esque breakdown before returning to their heartwarming selves.
Honey Lung · Jamie Batten, Harry Chambers , David Sherry, Omri Covo
“Oh So Real” released on Big Scary Monsters Released on: 2021-01-21
The latest apple of our eye, Anna B Savage, is putting out her debut via City Slang Records in a couple of weeks, and I can personally say that there hasn’t been a debut I’ve been this excited about in quite some time. The stunning video for the London singer’s unbelievably vulnerable first single off of “A Common Turn”, “Chelsea Hotel #3,” has been on a near loop at my house since it came out nearly a year ago, and its follow-ups have been just as arresting. In addition to having the privilege of pressing A Common Turn to vinyl,
The London based singer-songwriter Anna B Savage makes question-mark-music, captivating and powerful, navigating various recurring themes including female sexuality, self-doubt … and birds. Often questioning the validity of her own thoughts and feelings, her songs are heavy with unanswered queries. Is this even real? Do we have what I think we have? How did I get to this point? Is anyone listening? Or the record’s opening and most potent question: “Do I understand this?”.
Yet these questions are buoyed by her ability to conjure melodies and lyrics so devastatingly candid, vulnerable and honest, that somehow still manage to be bewitchingly charming, utterly modern and often funny. ‘A Common Turn.’ “For me, ‘a common turn’ is those moments of decision where you think ‘I’m not taking this anymore, whether it’s the way someone else is treating you or the what you’re treating yourself” Savage explains.
From a young age, Savage has also always been surrounded by music. The daughter of two classical singers, Savage spent her childhood birthdays in the green room at the Royal Albert Hall, as her birthday falls on the day Bach died and her parents were booked to play the Bach Proms each year. Her 2015 EP was deeply intriguing as a project, it contained four songs, all of which paired Savage’s deep, rich voice with lyrics rife with insecurity and unfinished business and was released with very little accompanying information about the artist.
The success of the EP caught Savage off guard, triggering a form of imposter syndrome, stifling her writing and ultimately affecting her mental health. At her lowest point Savage wasn’t sure if she could continue making music. At one stage her well-meaning parents started to cut out arts administration jobs for her and put them on the bed for when she arrived home.
In the five years between her first release and this forthcoming one, Savage ended the bad relationship mentioned previously (“I was so small by the end of it”), took up odd jobs, moved across the world twice, got herself a lot of therapy and eventually built herself from the ground up again. “I sat in the sun and read, and I ran my book club, and I went swimming in the Ladies Pond, and I went on trips, and I got drunk, started smoking again and going to parties, and I started dancing again and seeing my friends and, most miraculous of all, I started to like myself.”
For the last three years, focused and reenergised, Savage wrote music for her debut album, stitching together influences and references “One month I printed out all the lyrics, blu-tacked them to my wall, and drew lines between each corresponding idea. Making sure I’d lyrically covered all the themes I wanted to, linking ideas, deleting repeats, and making me look like a literary serial killer”. The album is littered with personal and cultural references (Rocky Horror Picture Show, the Spice Girls, female pleasure, mental health, and a ceramic owl mug by Scottish alt-rock legend Edwyn Collins, among others), all of which are now sewn into her music like talismans.
Savage got in touch with William Doyle, (FKA East India Youth – 2014 Mercury Prize nominee)’ having seen his social media post asking artists to contact him if they wanted to experiment together. From their first meeting, William provided ambitious yet elegant production to the demos Anna brought him, and ultimately gave a definitive shape to the record she had at one point deemed officially impossible to finish. Theirs is a blending of earth and industry, of human feeling and mechanized deconstruction of expectations and barriers. As a pair, they were able to make a record that is, in Savage’s words, “about learning, adapting, growing, being earnest and trying really f***ing hard.”
Savage’s music is deeply vulnerable, without being submissive. The subject matter could weigh these songs down, but instead they soar as she lays claim to her own fragility. There’s an intoxicating catharsis woven through the album and the stories she tells are of taking up space, finding connections, and owning the power in not knowing all the answers. Hers are songs for anyone who thinks hard, feels deeply, and asks big questions.
During the years since the release of her debut EP, Savage has also been making a film with two collaborators. The film can be read as in conversation with this album. More details of that will be released at a later date.
“As mentioned in Chelsea Hotel #3, I’m done with being ashamed in any way of taking ownership of my own pleasure. This whole album is about questioning, exploration and trying really fucking hard. Hopefully a vibrator is a good companion for most of these things. To sum it up in two words: wank more.” –Anna B Savage
Following their hugely successful second album ‘The Age Of Immunology’ (roundly raved over by The Line Of Best Fit, PopMatters, Pitchfork, Q, MOJO, The Quietus and Uncut) and one of Rough Trade, MOJO and Uncut’s albums of 2019. Fire Films announces the first in our ‘Baptism Of Fire’ series of live streams for 2021, beginning with the transcendent psychedelic pop of Vanishing Twin and brought to you via Noonchorus on 20th January.
Vanishing Twin present ‘Pensiero Magico’ (Magical Thinking), a surreal document of their live show, augmented for 2D in a one-hour live performance special. Vanishing Twin will explore all sides of its schizophrenic self, from hypnagogic jazz to quixotic squidge pop to peeling electronic thunder, all set in multiple monochromatic worlds. Viewers will have access to exclusive merchandise designed by the band for the event including screen-printed hoodies and t-shirts and will also be entered into a raffle to win one of two dubplates created for the performance.
Check out Vanishing Twin’s newly released show trailer, a production by Tentacle and recorded by Gareth Finnegan, for a taster of their arresting live show later this month. Our ‘Baptism Of Fire’ live series will bring special performances from Fire Records artists direct to your living room throughout the year
Cocktail umbrellas and chlorinated fantasies! It’s time to get cool in the pool with Vanishing Twin. “Fantastical soundscapes that are as welcoming as they are unusual.” All Music
It’s tempting to think that you have all the answers, screaming your gospel every day with certainty and anger. Life isn’t quite like that though, and the debut album from London four-piece TV Priest instead embraces the beautiful and terrifying unknowns that exist personally, politically and culturally.
Posing as many questions as it answers, “Uppers” is a thunderous opening statement that continues the UK’s recent resurgence of grubby, furious post-punk music. It says something very different though – something completely its own. Four childhood friends who made music together as teenagers before drifting apart and then, somewhat inevitably, back together late in 2019, TV Priest was born out of a need to create together once again, and brings with it a wealth of experience and exhaustion picked up in the band’s years of pursuing “real life” and “real jobs,” something those teenagers never had.
In November 2019, the band – vocalist Charlie Drinkwater, guitarist Alex Sprogis, bass and keys player Nic Bueth, and drummer Ed Kelland – played their first show, to a smattering of friends in what they describe as an “industrial freezer” in the warehouse district of Hackney Wick. “It was like the pub in Peep Show with a washing machine just in the middle…” Charlie laughs, Unsurprisingly, there isn’t a precedent for introducing an album during a global pandemic, but among the general sense of anxiety and unease pervading everything at the moment, TV Priest’s entrance in April with the release of debut single “House of York” – a searing examination of the Monarchy – served as a breath of fresh air among the chaos, its anger and confusion making some kind of twisted sense to the nation’s fried brains.
It’s the same continued global sense of anxiety that will greet the release of Uppers, and it’s an album that has a lot to say right now. Taking musical cues from The Fall and Protomartyr as well as the mechanical, pulsating grooves of Kosmische Musik, it’s a record that moves with an untamed energy. Over the top of this rumbling musical machine is vocalist Charlie, a cuttingly funny, angry, confused, real frontman.
“Decoration,” Uppers’ center-piece, has a streamlined groove soundtracking Charlie’s lyrical vignettes that captures the absurdity and mundanity of life. Its opening and closing line (“I’ve never seen a dog do what that dog does”) is a misremembered quote by Simon Cowell about a performing dog on Britain’s Got Talent. Charlie says, “We often said it in the studio as a kind of in-joke when someone did something good or unexpected. Having already toyed around with the ‘Through to the next round’ line,’ this seemed too good to leave out.” And the chorus “It’s all just decoration” is credited to 2-year old niece of Alex’s fiancé, who reassured him after he pretended to be scared by Halloween decorations.
“Press Gang” is inspired by Charlie’s grandfather’s life’s work as a photojournalist and war correspondent on the UK’s Fleet Street from the 1950s to the early 1980s. The song is about the shifting role in the dissemination of information and ideas, and how the prevailing narrative that the “Death of Print Media” has contributed to a “post truth” world.
Album closer “Saintless” is the most personal and raw moment on Uppers. Charlie wrote a note to his son after his birth, following a difficult period his wife had faced during and after the pregnancy. The song is about how as parents we’re fallible and human, and while the world can be a difficult place at times the one thing that gets you through is giving your love to those that need and appreciate it. “Saintless” rides a motorik beat, with guitars, bass and synths building layers of intensity and emotion that replicate and swell with the message of the track.
Uppers sees TV Priest explicitly and outwardly trying to avoid narrowmindedness. Uppers sees TV Priest taking musical and personal risks, reaching outside of themselves and trying to make sense of this increasingly messy world. It’s a band and a record that couldn’t arrive at a more perfect time.
“Press Gang” is Out now – our new one from our album ‘Uppers’, out on Sub Pop Records next month. “Uppers” It’s about Charlie’s grandad, news cycles, truth, chip paper, and information. It’s also pretty loud. Lots of love to Joe Wheatly for another wild ride making the video & big love to all the crew who helped us out over a very cold weekend.
“Press Gang” by TV Priest from their album “Uppers” (Release Date: 02/05/2021)
Born of the same South London scene that’s produced the likes of black midi, PVA and Squid, white-hot septet, Black Country New Road found their band name using a random Wikipedia page generator. The transparent artifice of that is actually fitting: With only three singles to their rather unwieldy name, including 2019’s “Athens, France” and “Sunglasses,” and this year’s “Science Fair,” the U.K. up-and-comers are growing and changing before our eyes, already reimagining the few songs they’ve released for their debut album For the first time, due out February 5th, 2021. Frontman Isaac Wood’s hypnotic speak-singing shifts subtly away from “speak” and towards “sing” on the album, so as to more effectively meld with the band’s mercurial instrumental outbursts. Their thunderous post-punk, spiked with discordant jazz, feels both explosively raw and carefully, ingeniously crafted.
Our new single, ‘Science Fair’ is out today with a new video directed by Bart Price.
The post-punk scene has been nothing but great so far… Idles, Shame, Black Midi, Sorry, Fontaines D.C, Protomartyr, Iceage, Parquet Courts, Guerrilla Toss, SQUID, Shopping, Viagra Boys, Ought… and now Black Country New Road ..2021 is going to be a great year
After just two singles they were declared “the best band in the world” by The Quietus, with glowing reviews from The New York Times, NPR, and The Guardian. Debut album, ‘For the First Time’ is due on 5th February 2021. Black Country New Road is Lewis Evans (saxophonist), May Kershaw (keys), Charlie Wayne (drums), Luke Mark (guitar), Isaac Wood (vocals/guitar), Tyler Hyde (bass) and Georgia Ellery (violin)
Taken from the album ‘For the first time’, To be released 5th February on Ninja Tune:
Debut album on Specialist Subject from the partly California-raised ‘anarcuties’ Charmpit. Quietly subversive cultural politics with a barrelful of musical sugar to ease the medicine down. File under femme, not twee (then burn the filing system; they’re anarchists). “Cause A Stir” by Charmpit (by Emma Prew) London via California DIY pop(star) punk band Charmpit are gearing up to release their much anticipated debut full-length on the 3rd of April. Titled Cause A Stir, the album is being released by the always excellent Specialist Subject Records and follows on from Charmpit’s previous releases on Keroleen Records and Everything Sucks.
This London x California 4 piece, Charmpit, deliver Pop(star) Punk in a queer, DIY “Anarcutie” package. Through playful harmonies, sparkling guitar and to-the-point lyrics, they place a high value on friendship, the power of femme, and FUNctional social justice politics. Their debut LP Cause A Stir is a shining showcase of powerful song-writing twisted up in their hot couture and glittering vision. Charmpit got their start in 2016 during the DIY Space For London’s ‘First Timers’ project; an annual series of workshops, skill-shares and first time performances that ‘celebrates demystification’ and pours fresh, diverse, new talent into the UK music scene. They are what ‘First Timers’ dreams are made of! Releasing their first 7” vinyl single,
New single from upcoming CHARMPIT LP ‘Cause A Stir’ out 3rd April, 2020 on Specialist Subject,
London-based band Dry Cleaning have shared their new single “Scratchcard Lanyard,” which also serves as their debut release with 4AD Records and should appear on their debut album, which is on the horizon soon.
The band has shared the creative music video for the song which marks the directorial debut of artist duo Rottingdean Bazaar which sees vocalist Florence Shaw singing in a miniature nightclub that is shot in a stylistic fashion. The song itself is a compelling art-punk rock effort that has some sharp angular guitar riffs that perfectly set the table for Shaw’s delivery that feels like a mix between Protomartyr, U.S. Girls and Parquet Courts. All good things.
‘Scratchcard Lanyard’ is a treatise on the joy of life’s little pleasures, where air fresheners become mighty oaks and Instagram filters are glamourous holiday destinations. The South London band explain further – “In the search for your true calling in life, it’s easy to try so many things that you end up confused. It can lead to an enormous build-up of frustration. You may fantasise about exacting revenge upon your real or imagined enemies. Ephemeral things and small-scale escapist experiences can provide some relief!”
The companion video for ‘Scratchcard Lanyard’ riffing on the song’s celebration of the humdrum – inserts vocalist Florence Shaw into her own miniature night club. Rottingdean Bazaar are artists James Theseus Buck and Luke Brooks. Their work includes design, creative direction and fine art practices, and the duo live and work in Rottingdean, East Sussex in the UK.
Dry Cleaning is Nick Buxton (drums), Tom Dowse (guitar), Lewis Maynard (bass) and Florence Shaw (vocals). Firm friends for years, they only started making music after a karaoke party in 2017 inspired a collaboration. They wrote instrumentally to begin with and six months later Shaw, a university lecturer and picture researcher by day, joined on vocals with no prior musical experience.
Dry Cleaning’s music is simple – direct and uncomplicated. The Feelies, the Necessaries, the B52s and Pylon all served as inspirations when the band first came together. The small and intimate garage / rehearsal space had a huge influence on the sound; both of last year’s EPs Boundary Road Snacks and Drinks and Sweet Princess were written here. The quartet have finished work on their debut album, with details to follow soon.
Dry Cleaning share the song ‘Scratchcard Lanyard’, the group’s first release on 4AD Records.
Sault and the incredible ‘untitled (black is)’ double album from the band of mystery themselves has just this minute landed!
Mystery is a rare commodity in rock and pop these days. The internet has made investigative journalists of us all, and an artist who expends a lot of effort creating an enigmatic aura will almost invariably find themselves revealed online. So hats off to Sault, who managed to release two albums in 2019 – titled “5” and “7” – without anyone managing to conclusively solve the puzzle of who was behind them.
The incredibly elusive band Sault released their debut album “5” on Vinyl via independent record label Forever Living Originals. The record fuses African, soul, funk and post-punk vibes amongst other flavours. With support from Radio 6’s Lauren Laverne and USA’s KWRC and KEXP, the band are set to go from strength to strength becoming one of the most prolific bands of 2020 with a barrage of material up their sleeves.
It was not for want of trying. Some people suggested the involvement of a London-based musician called Dean Josiah, whose CV boasts co-writing and production credits for Michael Kiwanuka, the Saturdays and Little Simz – the last of whom raved about Sault on social media. Others have posited that British soul singer Cleo Sol and Chicago-based rapper and sometime Kanye West collaborator Kid Sister – both signed to Sault’s label, Forever Living Originals – are the vocalists. But no one has confirmed or denied anything. Sault’s 2019 release is an incredibly strong collection of tracks, a near perfect blend of Soul and Post-Punk aesthetics that works powerfully and seamlessly together.
Political and thought provoking, “5” challenges existing structures and forms while simultaneously keeping listeners moving and dancing.
Without pausing for breath and hot on the heels of their exhilarating debut album 5, the elusive Sault returned with their sophomore full length titled 7. The signature hybrid of funk, dance, post-punk, soul and disco is front and centre once again, confidently delivered with their typical fearless nature. If 5 had you out of your seat,7will have you dancing in the streets….Spread the word, Sault are back at it!. “7” is a great album with strong percussion and vocals, tight production and solid song writing, really great music that’s catchy, accessible, and all around awesome…
You can understand why people are intrigued, because both of Sault’s albums are fantastic, walking an idiosyncratic path that zig-zags between ESG-esque post-punk funk, early 80s boogie and something approaching neo-soul, without ever really fitting into any of those categories or sounding like straightforward homage. Whoever is on drums is clearly a big fan of Can’s Jaki Liebezeit: their playing adds a strange, hypnotic intensity to tracks even as laidback and sunlit sounding as 5’s We Are the Sun. Elsewhere, the dubbed-out spaciness of the production consistently gives everything a weird, disorientating edge, no matter how poppy the melodies get. The mysterious Sault returned with album number three that was announced when the whole album was played on BBC 6 Music’s Gilles Peterson’s show. This is the most essential album for 2020. The 18 track album is an absolute joy whilst delivering a powerful message. Each tracks title nods towards revolution, expression and a celebration of black culture. The sound once again mixes R&B, funk, soul and hip-hop together. For fans of classic soul, ESG and groove.
For all the sparseness of the arrangements – drums and bass, the odd wash of electric piano or blast of fuzzed-out guitar and synth – Sault seem as interested in writing songs as constructing grooves. Virtually every track is concise and to the point, rarely tipping over four minutes, and even the furthest-out moments – 7’s Red Lights or 5’s warped closer BABE – come with really powerful hooks woven through them. The net result feels simultaneously exploratory and confident, a really appealing, intriguing combination. Whoever they are, Sault sound like they know what they’re doing.
Depending on your definition of “supergroup,” Adulkt Life are either a handpicked ensemble of some of the U.K.’s most fondly recalled punk acts—spanning the culty riot grrrl of Huggy Bear to the overcast take on West Coast American garage rock of Male Bonding—or just another collection of nobodies who stumbled into each other’s lives at a record store. Either way, Book of Curses sounds as complex as its individual band members’ back stories, fusing the influences of grunge, post-punk, and post-hardcore icons like Flipper, Wipers, and Nation of Ulysses with modern sensibilities.
With their debut record out today, Chris Rowley—co-vocalist for Huggy Bear coming off a quarter-century musical hiatus—gave us an enlightening and frequently cryptic breakdown of each of the record’s tracks, touching upon moral decency, “hopelessfullness,” and raising kids in a world that struggles with such concepts. Reading Rowley’s scattered thoughts on the project, that silent “K” in the band’s name starts to make a little more sense.
1. “Country Pride”
Simply put, it’s an escape song, it’s the embodiment of too much casual racism and sexism and the need to stop accepting it as part of your day-to-days’ poisons that’s not going to kill you necessarily but… We should all get a sense of humor, right?
It’s a reverse-engineered anthem with all the jingoistic bits and flag-waving burned and buried—our protagonists aren’t ideally suited in a perfect world, but as we said, it’s a messed up one, so tradeoffs in car parks and behind supermarkets better count for something!?
2. “JNR Showtime”
Maybe we’re becoming too mistrustful or cynical about decency and morals and goodness in the world!? The little things that used to give us hope and make us want to love our neighbors—working for a children’s charity for a good few years we’ve heard and seen some stories you would not want in your head…and having children myself you can’t help but become more repelled and vigilante in your thinking however wrong this is to admit. The scumminess of wrongness turned out to be shown for what it is. Cowards and liars should be scared. Always hurts to play this dark rager out, but that’s what you do with poison, innit? Suck then spit!
3. “Whistle/Country”
John’s guitar part translated to the drums and bass so quickly it unlocked a feeling in the room as we practiced it. It’s a plea for authenticity, whatever that means, a song about illusions or cutting through bullshit. Who knows, it’s a series of images linked to what it says in the lyrics—old guys round fires, wanting to be real/looking from a slightly (?) younger point at experience and rich lives lived. But who decides what that is, and if things are tough like they have been for us at points? Is anything better? But this is optimistic, a stone skimmer for the lost generations…
4. “Taking Hits”
This is the Adulkt Life (please don’t worry about pronouncing the “K”) “battle anthem.” We needed to write a song that lifted us up, and the KO’d and arisen scream for deliverance got us there. We were and are a lot of the time about boxing—fights, failures, movies, writing—and this became our backdrop, complete losers (as the idealistic and too sensitive can be) finding a glint or glimmer of something to believe in again! We’ve traded the Joyce Carol Oates book around us a good few rounds, so this is a thanks to no one and for nothing.
5. “Flipper”
I used to love the weird second Flipper album Gone Fishing and really didn’t understand it in the context of what I was listening to at the time, and it’s haunted me a bit with my probable misreadings.
Anyway, John wrote a guitar part that was akin to how I thought the Flipper record was. So it had the subterranean feel and we knew it was going to be a sodium light noir journey of a track, episodic and about revenge, making do, looking after family but risking it all because of your postcode or what yer famz do. The clapping coda is the triumph in the murk if you like…and so we had to name it “Flipper” in homage.
6. “Stevie K”
Kevin’s bass tearing into this idea with Sonny rocking after him set the touch paper for a cyclone of a track that John sabotages beautifully from a chronological sense with feedback lacunas. It’s meant to be a mod anthem, but who cares about the mods anymore anyway?
So it’s a cool song for Steve Kroner from Nation of Ulysses, a band that we loved and that was ruined for regular life by (they were/are just “too much”) and wanted to cast Kroner as a catcher-in-the-rye type figure, literally beyond good and evil…ice-cream under the pier as bottles fly.
7. “Room Context”
One of the first Adulkt Life songs that sort of arrived fully formed—a paranoia anthem casting spells and occulting damage against those who would trespass against us. The album was originally called “Deliver Us From Evil” for a host of reasons we won’t go into. “Room Context” is against power structures and authority charlatanism. It’s for misfits and outcasts, it reminds me a bit of, like, a record biz version of the De Palma movie The Fury, but I’ll get over that in a week or two. Being an older band, I felt not just like we’d be tarred with an ageist brush maybe, but there were whole swathes of audiences/fans who were not allowed or were shunned from feeling part of something. We don’t hate “the kids,” but we definitely don’t get them anymore.
8. “Move”
In the context of feeling separated from activism or rebellion or underground action, because of age or class or gender roles, I tried to write a Wipers song for the disenfranchised using the Kelly Reichardt film Night Moves as the inspirational germ for the narrative. I say all this loosely, but we’re all big film fans and lovers of cinema discourse in Adulkt Life, and that film/filmmaker is “the bomb” as they say—and aptly—here. To move forward we have to get rid of guilt impulses and relationships to past failures or success/require new dialogue. The changes in this are always hard to play if you’ve seen us play the two times so far we have. You’ll know what I’m talking about.
9. “Clean (But Itchy)”
This was Sonny’s defining moment in the young Adulkt Life story. His epic movement of boulders and rock face to scrape and bash this wild styler into shape. John was conducting hot lab sources and Sonny went after him with little concern for his well being. Maybe you can hear this? It’s a lovers’ quarrel played out large—the worst curses, the can’t-take-it-back moments, the no apologies stuff all rolled into one, but perversely it all sounds weirdly sexy, too. Who would’ve thought?
10. “New Curfew”
This ends the Adulkt Life record Book of Curses. Everyone—well, the three people that’ve heard it—think it’s strangely prophetic, and that we were ahead of a curve with prophesying this one, out of the sound dust and word play. Who would’ve wanted to predict where we are now, for goodness sakes, so this is an urban/suburban paean to disappointment, fear, hopelessfullness. In the face of age and responsibilities—the law, your belief/our belief in it, or turning away from it—at a certain point we/you will be replaced and our energies and counter intuitions gone. When you have children of your own or are around kids, you’ll know. They are the future, whether you like it or not. It’s a parents’ prayer in the smoke and petrol.
Adulkt Life’s debut LP Book Of Curses available November 11th.
The Fat Angel Sings 