“There’s a lot of emails in punk rock…” An interview with Crystal Palace duo JOHN

Words: Andy Hughes

It’s a joy to see a band you’ve championed from the off (or thereabouts) turning heads and picking up plaudits from those in the know or with a big following behind them. Whether it be the bloke who lives a street away having his local band get national radio play or your favourite band being picked up for a massive tour that’ll see them play to huge audiences. For Crystal Palace duo JOHN (consisting of two blokes both called John), we knew things were looking up when Simon Pegg (he of the Ice Cream Trilogy and – yep – Mission Impossible fame) bigged them up on Twitter, later recommending one of their early singles on a show he did for BBC Radio 6 Music.

“It’s great that someone like that liked what we do.” Says John Newton, drummer and one half of the duo. We’re in Manchester, just off Oxford Road, down from Gorilla where they’ll player later that night in support of cult noise-makers Mclusky. Right now though we’re stood in the vicinity of a noisy bridge, competing to hear each other over transit vans zipping past and trains above.

Back on Pegg, along with guitarist Johnny Healey, Newton grew up with the much loved hit TV show ‘Spaced’ and the pair both respected his work from way back when. An early advocate, he’d pave the way for future pushers, most recently the likes of IDLES and BBC Radio 6 Music DJ Steve Lamacq. With the latter, the pair were recent winners of the coveted Roundtable honours, with Lamacq and a trio of guests debating a handful of singles – picking JOHN’s ‘Future Thinker’ as the best of the lot.

“You don’t make songs to fit onto anything.” Says Newton. “We both love that song and it felt like – it is the opener of the record – I like this idea of introducing the first single as the opener. It kind of made sense, people get familiar then it’ll lead the album. In a conceptual sense it works to me. But yeah, it’s been genuinely fantastic people picking up on it – either playing it on the radio or hearing it through the radio.”

Together with musician and journalist John Robb, ‘Future Thinker’ was debated by one of The Mysterines and 6 Music’s own Giles Peterson (“I was quite worried about his response to it…”) Whilst Newton admits he was “bricking it”, particularly given the credentials and tastes of Peterson, the track toppled the rest.

“I think the unifying thing for us is everyone, in the comments that were said, really understood it for what it was.” He says, clocking the likelihood being their energetic approach and ear-splitting capabilities being just a two-piece.

“I never kind of thought of our band as being particularly radio friendly, but it’s good that this type of music is still able to get on certain stations when there’s a weight of music that traditionally has more airtime.” He continues. “Whether it be us or IDLES or whoever else, it’s really nice to see this type of music being able to be on more mainstream channels.”

Alongside recent single ‘High Digger’, ‘Future Thinker’ squeezed itself into the BBC Radio 6 Music B List, in good company with the likes of Cate Le Bon, Warmduscher and Pixies. Elsewhere on the wireless, the pair performed live for KEXP at the start of the year as part of an overseas special at Studio 9294 in Hackney Wick – introduced as “a band whose music has been described as brutal”.

That brutality took itself across eleven European countries late last year, culminating in a sell-out show at the Bataclan in Paris. An outfit that know the meaning of graft, JOHN have known IDLES for many years, Newton citing them as a gang he and Johnny really get on with.

“We knew them before any, I suppose, traditional perceived sense of success – however you quantify that.” He says. Even with this level of success, perceived or otherwise, IDLES have kept it local when it comes to tour support, championing the music they really believe in – the past 12 months seeing them take not only JOHN around Europe but Partisan label-mates Fontaines D.C. across America and CROWS throughout the UK (a band whose debut album was released on Joe Talbot’s label Balley Records).

“They’re people who seem to like the music, so to be invited out to do that is great. You get to share these moments with some of your best mates… It’s one of the best things I’ve done in my life, for sure.”

Sure enough, you’ll likely have noticed IDLES here there and everywhere. Whether that be on the telly or via one of their many disciples in the AF Gang sporting their merch. Chances are you’ll have also seen with each new tour announced, the rooms get bigger and bigger.

“It’s fantastic to be able to play to much bigger crowds than we’re used to and just the ability to play every night.” Says John on this. “It’s a fact, you get good with practice. Like with anything, if you’re playing basketball – you play it every day, you’ll get better at basketball. I feel like that really helped, because we finished off the recording of the second album after we came back, so we had this real kind of energy and I guess just a real tightness to our approach that came from that.”

(Photo Credit: Lindsay Melbourne)

He acknowledges that when he and Johnny travel, they’re used to much more modest production set-ups – making touring with your mates much more manageable from a logistics and planning stance (“The boring practicalities. There’s a lot of emails in punk rock…”)

“It’s amazing to be able to wake up in a new country and have the time to explore a little bit.” Continues John. “All that stuff helps with folding back into the songwriting. Seeing new places brings up new ideas and to visit eleven countries – some of which we’d been to before, some of which we hadn’t – is the best thing. Again, it makes us really happy that we started this thing and it wanders into new territories. It’s eternally surprising, you don’t necessarily expect that when you start out in a little box room…”

From the box room that birthed their initial ventures (debut single ‘Johnny’s Got A Sleeve‘ and a three-track self-titled EP, featuring Simon Pegg favourite ‘Big Game Tactics’) and through various singles and EP’s that led to their debut album (2017’s ‘God Speed In The National Limit’), October sees JOHN release their highly anticipated second album ‘Out Here On The Fringes’ (via Pets Care Records).

Recorded with Wayne Adams at Bear Bites Horse Studio in East London, their decision to go with him came down to – there’s that word again – logistics. Very much the go-to guy for bands on the noisier end of the spectrum, working with Adams was a no brainer for the pair.

“We did the first record with him and he just understood this capture of the live sound of JOHN, I guess. So why try and fix something that isn’t broken?” Says John. “But I definitely think it’s a progression.”

That progression involves expansion, with the new record featuring additional instrumentation from a number of guests, including Chloe Herington of Knifeworld on sax (‘Future Thinker’) and artist Rosanna Dean providing violin on the rapid-fire ‘Dog Walker’. On top of that, the record was pieced together through a number of separate sessions over time, split between different periods in the year (before and after tour).

“It was nice to push the production a little bit further.” Says John. “…That was quite a nice process, ‘cus it enables you to think about what else you think fits in, both conceptually or lyrically, or different types of songs. Not that an album needs a slow one or a fast one – it’s not rock by numbers – but it enables you just to have a bit of breathing space in-between to work out how to create a whole album sonically. I think an album should always be a period of time and it should record certain experiences. It feels similar to the first one in the fact that it really encapsulates a couple of years for us. That’s what I try and do when we’re writing.”

“You just know when you’ve got a good group of songs.” He adds, noting that he and Johnny rarely put too much thought into the writing, rather it comes to them once they get into the room together. Teasing that the extra bits of instrumentation and a few surprises here and there should be enough to keep the listener on their toes and add variation to the record as a narrative piece, he’s quick to add that they’ve not gone full-on second album syndrome.

“I’m not saying that we’re gonna write prog concept albums, but I think there’s a few things that we wanted to put in there that give a spirit of perhaps the places or the moments that have happened within the writing period. Hopefully people get that from it. We’re both really proud of it.”

Seeing JOHN in a live capacity, you’ll notice on stage a light box helpfully highlighting the name of the band. In the past they’ve sent out CD’s in pharmacy bags (with extra goodies inside) and leading up to the release of the new album has seen the promotion of exclusive bookmarks for lucky punters to get their hands on. Both John and Johnny work day-to-day in creative disciplines and as such, the visual side of the band is as equally important as the noisy side you need your lugholes for.

“It’s a massive tool.” Says John, who produced both the title and artwork, pointing out in the same breath that a lot of bands overlook this aspect – treating it as a necessity rather than something to enhance the album experience.

“Obviously the music has to be good, but it’s a support where you can use images, text or lyrics to really help direct how you want this thing to be received.”

“It’s super important in my eyes.” He continues. “I always listen to bands and like bands who really put the thought into it, because you can really inhabit or try and decipher these reference points that are put into the songs with the help of these visual aids. It’s super fun, it makes it super interesting for a listener, because you can pick up on things that are hidden in lyrics or maybe associate with the visual side, whether that be T-shirts or bookmarks.”

That’s right – bookmarks. Something most people haven’t thought about since childhood (I personally use gig flyer’s in my books, thank you very much.) Its choice was as deliberate as it was unique.

“We discussed doing an anachronistic object that you might usually find in a provincial museum souvenir shop. It made sense to do that because of the album’s content.” He says. “You can match up form and content I guess and create something that’s more interesting than just a CD case… It’s a well beaten track this idea of releasing something on a different form, but I think when you do it because of some kind of relevance, it still works.”

With ‘Out Here On The Fringes’ less than a fortnight away, extra bits and bobs are being added to their forthcoming ten date UK tour, including an in-store at London’s Rough Trade East and a specially curated interview with DJ Chris Hawkins ahead of their show in Manchester. The actual live dates themselves have being selling out left right and centre too, the momentum they’ve built up over the last year and beyond catapulting them into what will soon be busy venues.

“What can I say? It’s just great that this thing that started five or six years ago has snowballed into something that kind of takes you to interesting places, takes you to meet interesting, like minded people. You could be in the middle of a tiny town in the south of Belgium and have people turning up to come and see these thoughts that popped into your head… It’s an amazing feeling and it’s great when people enjoy it as much as we love making it.”

For JOHN, Newton tells me the more time they can spend touring, playing to new and old and getting their material heard in as many different pockets around the world, the better. Because what’s the alternative?

“Those are the plans. Is there anything else?” He says with a laugh. “I probably need to get a proper job at some point…”

(Photo Credit: Lindsay Melbourne)

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Album Review: The St. Pierre Snake Invasion – Caprice Enchanté

Words: Nate Holdren

In their most intense moments, all five members of The St. Pierre Snake Invasion seem to be giving their instruments a savage beating, including the singer wailing on his own vocal chords. ‘Caprice Enchanté’, the Bristol-based band’s second full-length, opens with the band pounding out an ugly riff with a weird off-kilter beat that keeps tripping over its own feet. There’s a short burst of feedback, then the track takes off again, the same riff but sober now. The track builds and builds, sounding just fucking furious, then comes a breakdown with a refrain I couldn’t get out of my head once I heard it: “There’s no one listening, there’s no one listening, there’s no one listening, but that’s no excuse to pipe down.” It’s the best slogan I know of for everyone who ever wrote a zine or played a gig to a tiny and indifferent audience or spray-painted some art under a bridge or attended a protest that didn’t stop an imperialist war.

In the remaining two minutes of the song, and the twelve remaining songs on the record, the band throws a big heap of stuff at the wall, including mean and cocky sounding palm-muted rock riffs, chunky and dissonant guitar chords, shrieking feedback, fuzzed out bass, vocals ranging from falsetto to a spoken sleazy leer, from a whisper to heavy breathing to more laryngitis-inducing shrieks and roars, and about a minute of A cappella gospel. Somehow it all sticks.

I suspect that if the band played at their fastest and screamiest for too long they might develop repetitive stress injuries. Maybe they held a health and safety meeting and said ‘okay, how can we keep all the parts on this record equally abrasive and confrontational, but not destroy our bodies in the process?’ I don’t know if they succeeded in avoiding bodily destruction, but they smashed it out of the park on confrontational. This record is almost non-stop harshness, but a lot of different kinds of harshness cut together into a creepy collage that’s all the more abrasive for the differences between the sounds. It’s like a carnival in a horror film, like ‘Through The Looking Glass’ but it’s a funhouse mirror and all the characters have fangs.

After several listens, I started to wonder if the record is in part about being overwhelmed by rapid changes. TSPSI clearly know how to rock the fuck out, and a lot more. What they’ve decided on this record is to do that, but very often they interrupt the rock by doing something else for a while, then usually come back to rocking out, but not always, with no warning ahead of time. It’s a sound – a bunch of sounds – that is hard to keep up with. The record ends up sounding like what it feels like to have a hard time keeping up.

Lyrically, the record has a quality like Nirvana’s ‘In Utero’, like an abstract expressionist painting with words. It’s not always clear exactly what the songs are about, but they strongly evoke (basically all unpleasant) atmosphere and feelings. It brings to mind the situation of being at a loss for the right words but not letting that shut you up. Have something to say but lack the right words? Then say the wrong ones. In a society that tells most people to shut up and follow orders, most people could do a lot worse than to follow this record’s example.

The logic behind the sound on ‘Caprice Enchanté’ was sometimes hard for me to follow, let alone predict in advance. Consider ‘Carroll A.Deering’, the album’s fourth song. It has a hook that’s so catchy I walked around my house singing it for about half an hour the other day. It’s one of the most pop moments on the record. Then about 90 seconds into the song there’s a weird little jazz bit with some disturbing whispering then an aggro thrashy part followed by a bit that genuinely sounds like a hymn, then more tough guitar in a percussive feedback-drenched outro. For a song (or maybe a creative refusal to play a song, or maybe it’s to play four songs all at once?) that’s under four minutes it all become almost overwhelming. The song, and the record as a whole, is an onslaught, a boxer relentlessly coming at the listener with combination after combination. Any apparent breaks are just there to set up another combination.

Is this TSPSI refusing to allow the listener simple enjoyment of a hook? Or is it TSPSI teaching listeners how to enjoy a hook while it lasts, to focus in and grab hold of a snippet of melody before it’s crushed by a hailstorm of shouts, distortion, and drum fills? Are they trying to help or hurt their fans? ‘Caprice Enchanté’ doesn’t give a fuck about those questions, it just keeps on shouting, smiling, and smirking. This record is one hell of a ride. Get onboard.

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a/s/l: The St. Pierre Snake Invasion

Remember the days of the old schoolyard? Remember when Myspace was a thing? Remember those time-wasting, laborious quizzes that everyone used to love so much? Birthday Cake For Breakfast is bringing them back! 

Every couple of weeks, an unsuspecting band will be subject to the same old questions about dead bodies, Hitler, crying and crushes.  

This week: Damien Sayell – top shouter in Bristolian outfit The St. Pierre Snake Invasion!

Words: Andy Hughes

Have you ever seen a dead body?
Yes

Who is your favourite Simpsons character?
Drederick Tatum – because I love boxing and (bit of trivia for you), this character is based on boxing legend Bernard Hopkins.

What T-Shirt are you wearing?
I’m not.

What did your last text message say?
“Okay squire, I’ll give ye a bell later, thanks for letting me know.”

What’s the last song you listened to?
The Chariot – ‘Forget’

How did you meet the people in your band?
Through music.

What’s the first record you bought?
Bon Jovi – ‘Slippery When Wet’.

What was your favourite VHS growing up?
The Blues Brothers / Enter the Dragon.

When was the last time you cried?
June 1st during the speeches at my friends Mickey & Tom’s wedding – fucking beautiful it was.

Have you ever kissed someone & regretted it?
I don’t do regrets, I own my mistakes but, yes, yes, I have.

Best Physical Feature?
My divine cheekbones, darling!

Worst physical feature?
Cock (cocks are ugly).

Reasonably ok/not bad feature that you’re not fussed about?
All of it.

Do you have any pets?
I have a 60kg Old English sheepdog cross Newfoundland called Murphy Odell-Sayell.

Ever picked up any injuries on tour?
Yeah, Joe Talbot jumped on my back during an Idles show and I slipped and pulled my groin. Thanks Joe. Xx

What did you do for your last birthday?
Went to the best pub in Bristol, The Mothers Ruin and got suitably inebriated with my wife and my good friends.

Name something you CANNOT wait for?
Critical acclaim and the impending collapse of the Conservative party.

Do you have a crush on someone?
Randall from The Armed, Vasyl Lomachenko and Gillian Anderson.

What’s the shittest experience you’ve had as a musician?
We don’t talk of such things.

If you could go back in time, how far would you go?
All the way.

How do you want to die?
Going back in time to the big bang.

What’s your favourite thing about pizza?
Everything – but in particular, egg on pizza, not boiled egg though. Cracked into the middle and baked until the yolk is runny. (He’s right – Ed)

What are you craving right now?
Well, a fucking egg on a pizza now, innit!

Have you ever been on a horse?
Yes, the horse was called ‘Ginger’, incidentally.

What did you dream about last night?
A boxing combination. Jab, Jab, cross, Jab, Jab, Cross, *slip* left hook to the body, *roll*, right uppercut, left hook to the head.

If you could go back in time and kill the baby Hitler, would you?
I couldn’t kill a baby – there’s no way.

Do you like Chinese food?
Love it – Hot and Sour soup is the single greatest repast a person can enjoy.

Have you ever been on TV?
No.

Ever meet someone famous?
Dev is famous isn’t he, I’ve met Dev. Carol Vorderman goes to my gym – add her to the crush list.

What do you want to be when you grow up?
Fulfilled.

‘Caprice Enchanté’ is out June 21st! All details here – Grab a copy or two, why dontcha! 

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Album Review: USA Nails – Life Cinema

Words: Marcus Clarke

I think it’s fair to say that collectively the members of USA Nails (past and present) have a rich history; with members having played in bands such as Whores Whores Whores, Hawk Eyes (Chickenhawk), Kong, Future of the Left, Blacklisters, Death Pedals, Mayors Of Miyazaki, Silent Front and Dead Arms. It’s also fair to say that a lot of those projects delivered relatively complex musical arrangements; some on the more progressive and mathy side, others more free-form. It’s clear that the intention with USA Nails from the get-go was to channel the momentum and energy of the previous decade with a view to brevity.

So here we are, five years on from their debut with their fourth album ‘Life Cinema’. Although we’re not here to compare past performances (this is not a work based self assessment), there are few radical changes other than a new drummer in the form of Tom from Death Pedals (former percussionist Matt Reid stayed involved by providing the album’s artwork). Wayne Adams (also of Death Pedals and breakcore punks Big Lad) makes a return on production duties, whereas Dan still chugs the bass, Steven and Gareth still exchange discordant riffs (however Gareth in fact appears as lead vocalist for the first time on a couple of tracks). Even the lyrical themes remain consistent with their previous material, focusing on the drudgery of dead end work in a country heavily reliant on service industry workers who are merely placeholders for the next wave of automation.

Faced with these facts you could create art full of despair and despondency, depression even, however USA Nails praxis is to electrify with noise. There is a reason why the human brain has evolved to register disharmony and equate it with the idea that something is wrong. When you amplify your voice so loud as to scream you create overtones that clash, they do not sound “nice” to the human ear (think of a baby crying), that’s to let you know something is awry. Yes discordant music is welcomed in many subcultures of society (I am a big fan), but we should appreciate how it is effectively and artistically deployed.

The juxtaposition of the all-is-well vs. danger signifiers are perfectly exemplified on Life Cinema’s opening track ‘Smile’. Is there a more relatable allegory for discordia than having to pretend to be happy at a job you despise? The wordplay with “I turn up, I turn off”, which implicates the repetition of the day job mirroring the rituals of playing in a band. If you watch Steven on stage he wears something that is far more unnerving than a smile, for this is the underside to his nine to five obligations. We see and hear something which you are forbidden from displaying in the office: sincerity pushing its face through the screen of incongruity. This lays the foundation for the utility of this music as a form of escapism; escape from work, escape from bodily decay, escape from repetition, escape from meaningless tasks. However the folly in this abscondancy is that art imitates life, with only a thin slither of silver amalgam distinguishing real life from cinematic fantasy. And so this is the ambiguous space in between, a cacophonous cave of uncanny distorted echoes, palms placed firmly either side of the skull as they begin to rattle your empty insides.

‘Creative Industries’ is a tremendously euphoric noise-punk-pop number (originally appearing on the band’s appropriately titled ‘Work Work Work EP’). It’s instantly catchy, intentionally joyful as to mock the so-called “creative industries” (a term of course appropriated by suits devoid of creativity) that has pressured artists to produce at an unprecedented rate under social media driven late capitalism, we become buried under the cascading litanies of detritus that fill up our hand held cathedrals. It comes and goes quicker than it takes to soften your 25p noodles. The title track echoes the refrain from ‘Smile’ with “I tune in and turn off”, this altered state of tuning-in is reflected in the more restrained energy and sighing guitar riffs. This is the closest we get to a despondent USA Nails, stuck in a feedback channel of the self. It’s alarming rather than disarming.

As mentioned earlier, Gareth steps into the spotlight for the brattish nasal jaunt that is ‘Man Act’, a commentary on masculinity that achieves a more nuanced approach than say fellow noise-punks Idles, by aiming for full-on caricature rather than think piece. Again, brevity is king here and it’s worth mentioning that this entire album is only twenty-five minutes long (that’s actually a whole eight minutes longer than their last record). Ideas remain simple and straight to the point yet were you to examine a cross section of it like some sort of aged meat burger, you’d find a complex arrangement of cartilage, fat, muscle and gristle as the deep woven fabric holding together this rather appetising band.

‘Microphone’ is a speeding train that won’t stop, it’s that racing anxiety you get when dissociating into the oneiric haze, perpetually hankering over the precipice of self-actualisation and expression. ‘It’s Ordinary’ comes at you like a creepy estate agent peering their horrible face through a barbed rose bush to enervate you into signing up for an open grave in the trenches of Britain’s lost future (somewhere in the early spring of 1979 I presume). I don’t really have anything insightful to say about ‘A Fair Nickel’, so let’s just say it bangs, VERY hard.

Gareth makes a return to vocal duties, delivering a genuinely emotional tirade over ‘Work Drinks’. It’s worth noting that musically (for the most part) this is the most harmonious song on the album, and as a result you really are drawing upon different sets of emotions here. How many of us have been coerced into attending after work drinks? A sadistic practice which aims to colonise the worker’s free time (time is our most precious resource remember). It’s deeply evocative of Carl Cederström and Peter Fleming’s book ‘Dead Man Working’:

“This book tells the story of the dead man working. It follows this figure through the daily tedium of the office, to the humiliating mandatory team building exercise, to awkward encounters with the funky boss who pretends to hate capitalism and tells you to be authentic. In this society, the experience of work is not of dying…but neither of living. It is one of a living death. And yet, the dead man working is nevertheless compelled to wear the exterior signs of life, to throw a pretty smile, feign enthusiasm and make a half-baked joke. When the corporation has colonized life itself, even our dreams, the question of escape becomes ever more pressing, ever more desperate.”

And in the final throws of the song, as the harmonies begin to disseminate into atonality again, we start to hear Gareth crack as he realises that not only is his labour being extracted for profit with little return, but his bodily liquids are being drained too, and it’s all for nothing.

Skipping ahead to ‘A Sense Of Self Will Always Limit You’, which has these chattering guitars that seem to mimic the industrial foley of the modern office; the lost reverberations of a 90’s dial-up modem finally arriving at your desk, the coffee machine dithering over its own milk supply, the typing – oh, the typing. It all builds like a nervous breakdown bubbling its way up to the surface, with the hook – a very believable anecdote from what I imagine might be a line-manager or one of those upper-echelon staff members, who only comes in once a month and doesn’t know how anything works but loves to dish out unsolicited wisdom such as “a sense of self will always limit you”. And so you feel your muscles clench up and your gut roll over as you did in bed this morning when your alarm went off and you wanted to ignore it. You crouch your pinky and ring fingers on your right hand towards your palm as if bracing them for impact for the upcoming crash. Index and middle finger are locked and loaded double barrel posited in your mouth like the tooth brush you nearly choked yourself with when you realised you were running late this morning. You signal pulling the trigger thumb and there it is, one shot one kill. Sense self annihilated, you can finally take on today’s spreadsheet.

The album is bookended with an 8-bit reprise of the title track, because wouldn’t that be the ultimate joke? Once the toils of life, which seem like an endless and pointless cruel game in itself, bring you towards fatality you’re presented with a Game Over screen before being brought back to the start menu. “Try another story” it reads.

Taking a moment of retrospection on USA Nails great back catalogue, they’ve retained a clear vision, conceptual identity and sound throughout their discography. As with their last album ‘Shame Spiral’ (and indeed their interspersed EPs), ‘Life Cinema’ veers towards harsher sonics and shorter songs, it’s as if they’ve been making us do the bleep test and it’s beginning to get really intense. All evidence suggests that capitalism isn’t working, work is not working, and as long as we continue to watch people scream as they burn in their homes for simply being poor, employment stats rise while workers precariously balance their income across three minimum wage jobs; know that this discordia is the dysphoria of a broken system. The bleeps are closing in and soon it will resemble nothing more than a continuous sine-tone of feedback, the flat-line at the finish-line.

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JOHN hook up with FRAUDS for Co-Headline Tour in February!

New Year, new them, eh? On the back of releasing their debut albums at the tail end of 2017, Southern duos JOHN and Frauds are hitting the open road together for a full on eight date tour around the UK this February!

Last year had both JOHN and Frauds play their biggest shows to date, with Frauds sharing stages with the likes of Jamie Lenman (ex-Reuben) and Future Of The Left, whilst JOHN opened up for Idles.

Though they may share the same numerical amount of limbs, both JOHN and Frauds offer up two different sides of the same noisy coin (maybe the satisfying one that you’ve found in your back pocket after New Years Eve perhaps?)
‘God Speed In The National Limit‘ (JOHN) and ‘With Morning Toast & Jam & Juice‘ (Frauds) certainly bear testament to their unique live shows and you can find the dates on that handy poster at the top of this post. With it being February, you’ll have plenty of time to listen to both releases in the run up!

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