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: In the run up to the release of new EP ‘Maldon Salt / Men Like Us‘, Leeds own Carpeta.k.a. Rob Slater, answers a series of inane questions!
Have you ever seen a dead body? Animal ones yes. Human ones not sure. Try not to think about it.
Who is your favourite Simpsons character? Maybe Hank Scorpio.
What T-Shirt are you wearing? I’m not.
What did your last text message say? ‘God dammit i forgot I was supposed to answer some interview questions tonight for a feature and now had 2.5 cans’
What’s the last song you listened to? A really good song ‘Wonderbread’ I was mixing earlier by a project called Bongo Bango.
How did you meet the people in your band? – Met Morgan through Buen Chico. – Met Sop from Wormboys. – Met Cam from Thank. – Met Mike from Bearfoot Beware. – Met Chad at school (primary and secondary but met at secondary) and got to know him playing in The Unpolished age 13(?). Formed our band The Spills together age 15.
What’s the first record you bought? I think it was Livin’ La Vida Loca by Ricky Martin. Copied CD from Leeds Market.
What was your favourite VHS growing up? Hard to say what my fave was, but I remember The Aristocats being a big thing. Think it was about posh cats.
When was the last time you cried? Few weeks back when my Louie (cat) brought a mouse in. Then I thought about Rowan’s (my partner of Crake fame) song Funny Love.
Have you ever kissed someone & regretted it? Yep.
Best Physical Feature? Mountain? Or water. Also really like hot concrete.
Worst physical feature? Like a boring letter? From a bank/insurance company.
Reasonably ok/not bad feature that you’re not fussed about? Maybe like spikes? Or roads.
Do you have any pets? Yes, two cats. Eiriol the big white one and Louie the little black one. Eiriol is devastatingly beautiful and going through a pretentious teen phase (reading Nietzsche, hating her parents). Louie is like a lil cute donkey vampire bat that squeaks and sleeps in a spooky wardrobe.
Ever picked up any injuries on tour? When I do heavy drumming I get these inner thigh bruises from rimshots. Not sure if anyone else gets these?
What did you do for your last birthday? Thai Aroy Dee in Leeds (my spiritual home) then went to see Big Thief in Glasgow and spent 20 quid on McDonald’s afterwards and ate it in the hotel!
Name something you CANNOT wait for? Crawford v Spence if it ever happens.
Do you have a crush on someone? Yeah loads.
What’s the shittest experience you’ve had as a musician? Probably faking my own death.
If you could go back in time, how far would you go? I’m not sure I would.
How do you want to die? Answering questions for a feature on a DIY indie blog, peacefully.
What’s your favourite thing about pizza? Its simplicity and I like how nice it is.
What are you craving right now? Can’t say.
Have you ever been on a horse? Yeah!
What did you dream about last night? Dreamt that I chose an orange tie over a navy tie. Not sure on the significance.
If you could go back in time and kill the baby Hitler, would you? Nahhhh you can’t kill babies I don’t think.
Do you like Chinese food? Yeah course. Wawin, or Lucky Star if I’m feeling sordid.
Have you ever been on TV? Not sure. Think I was maybe on there as a kid being interviewed after coming out of the Lion King musical.
Ever meet someone famous? Yes James from Yard Act. Nice guy. You wouldn’t believe his real accent though.
What do you want to be when you grow up? A bit braver.
‘Maldon Salt / Men Like Us‘ is out October 14th 2022 – Grab a pre-order here!
Like what you see? Why not stick around and check out the other articles and interviews! Don’t forget to follow Birthday Cake For Breakfast on Facebook,Instagram and Twitter!
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: Off the back of releasing their much loved debut album ‘Thoughtless Cruelty‘ earlier this year, Freddy Vinehill-Cliffe of Leeds noise unit THANK answers a series of inane questions to coincide with an exclusive first look at their latest live session for ‘A Social Contract’!
The session comes from Hohm Recording Studio–A Bradford based Recording Studio that boasts a host of eclectic new and vintage equipment, tailor made to be the “perfect creative environment to write, track, or mix”. As one might gather from the video below, it’s very easy on the eye – full details on their website!
How did you meet the people in your band? I placed an advert in a newsagent’s window: “Weird guy wanted”. I couldn’t pick the weirdest guy, so I gave all four of them the job. The most important part of any band is that you’ve got to have a weird guy.
What’s the first record you bought? The first CD I owned was Afroman ‘Because I Got High’. The first one I bought myself was a mashup of ‘The Wheels On The Bus’ and ‘Ray Of Light’ by a Madonna impersonator called Mad Donna.
What was your favourite VHS growing up? Extreme Dinosaurs.
When was the last time you cried? I cry all the time, but it usually isn’t funny or interesting enough to be anecdote-worthy. On the first day of our tour in February I was moved to tears by the Foo Fighters song ‘Everlong’ en route to pick up our rental van.
Have you ever kissed someone & regretted it? Well son, the funny thing about regret is that it’s better to regret something you have done than to regret something you haven’t done.
Best physical feature? I have quite a hairy stomach and I think it’s pretty sexy.
Worst physical feature? Maybe it isn’t me who needs to change, maybe the world needs to change! Maybe someone needs to start manufacturing decent trousers for stocky 5’4” men.
Reasonably ok/not bad feature that you’re not fussed about? Elbows.
Do you have any pets? Not currently.
Ever picked up any injuries on tour? Several, but none of mine have been very exciting. On our first EU tour, after a show in Rouen, Lewis got his hand trapped between the van and a wall, and broke a finger. He played one more show with us in Margate, and then immediately went on to play three shows with his other band, all with a broken finger in a homemade splint. Respect.
What did you do for your last birthday? Took some magic mushrooms and laughed at the weather with my friend Steph.
Name something you CANNOT wait for? Austin Powers 4.
Do you have a crush on someone? Matt from Box Records has told me that I have to remain “fuckable”, otherwise people will stop coming to our gigs. If I get into a relationship then he will destroy all unsold copies of ‘Thoughtless Cruelty’, so unfortunately I am not allowed to have a crush on anyone.
What’s the shittest experience you’ve had as a musician? When I was 16 I entered a local battle of the bands, and the promoter fully exploded with rage because we couldn’t bring our own full backline. This fella was 40 years old sending me unhinged messages over MySpace about my lack of professionalism. My friend, we are essentially a band of children – what makes you think we even own a bass cab, let alone the means to transport a bass cab?
If you could go back in time, how far would you go? 6 months.
How do you want to die? Surprise me.
What’s your favourite thing about pizza? The crust is the best bit. Also, not that you asked, but I think the best pizza I’ve ever eaten was from a place called Big Daddy’s Pizza on Venice Beach. I have literally dreamed about their vegan sausage pizza on multiple occasions.
What are you craving right now? Big Daddy’s Pizza.
Have you ever been on a horse? Yes.
What did you dream about last night? Not Big Daddy’s Pizza!
If you could go back in time and kill the baby Hitler, would you? There’s a College Humor sketch where a guy goes back in time in order to stop 9/11, and it doesn’t work out very well for him.
Do you like Chinese food? Yes.
Have you ever been on TV? I have been a contestant on Pointless. We did really badly, and I suspect that Alexander Armstrong gave us difficult questions on purpose because he overheard me making fun of him for being a member of the Countryside Alliance backstage beforehand. I was also once an extra on Waterloo Road.
Ever meet someone famous? I’ve met several celebrities, but the best one is Bertram The Pomeranian off Instagram.
What do you want to be when you grow up? Each and every life decision I’ve made has alienated me further and further from my peers.
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At the time of writing, Isaac Wood, vocalist and guitarist in Black Country, New Road, has just announced his departure from the band, alluding to mental health reasons. Admittedly it’s come as a shock to us all, particularly with this here second album just about to land and it’s hard to imagine the band without his distinctive vocals. But with the band vowing to continue, ‘Ants From Up There‘ acts as the perfect swan song for this chapter of the collective.
After seeing the band air a lot of new material live last summer, I remember thinking there was a definite change of pace from the genre shifting drama of ace debut ‘For The First Time’. With a focus on slow burning, post-rock dynamics, ‘Ants From Up There’ swaps intensity for atmosphere, bringing in new layers of beauty and vulnerability.
The intro is a jubilant, math-y burst of staccato sax and piano stabs that towers overtop a driving, full band backing. It’s such an uplifting start that is almost over too quickly, but brilliantly leads into the sprightly, orchestral indie pop of ‘Chaos Space Marine’. It’s a head on start to the album that feels bright and elegant, but it’s when we get to shimmering indie epic ‘Concorde’ that the beauty of this record really begins to shine.
Dynamically, you can’t help but be engulfed by the songwriting here; the build in ‘Good Will Hunting’ is nothing short of heart-bursting, while the drum track on ’Snow Globes’ is incredibly encompassing. They always know how to keep you interested as a listener, but there’s a fluidity to the compositions here that feels tighter, stronger and even more engaging.
‘Ants From Up There’ retains the excitement and theatre of its predecessor but adds new levels of depth, warmth and even romance. Though it’s sad to think of this as Isaac’s last outing with the band, especially with him putting in such incredibly raw and emotive performances, I still feel hope gleaming through this record, particularly in the instrumentals. And with this I feel a lot of optimism and excitement going forward for this supremely talented group.
There was a point where Cassels seemed like a band that never stopped, with an arsenal of releases (including two full lengths) and countless tours across the past 7+ years. But, like the rest of us, the brothers Beck found themselves in the midst of some unexpected downtime, allowing them to work on new material at a slightly slower pace. Still keeping their noise punk credentials firmly in place, they looked at how they could evolve their two piece sound, and the result is their most assured work to date.
My first thought when hearing ‘A Gut Feeling’ was how raging it is. Huge riffs tower over crashing, muscular drums with ever eloquent yet snarling spoken word vocals. For this third album, guitarist and vocalist Jim looked into writing character based stories in which he found himself able to inject even more personal thoughts and feelings through these characters. It can go from intense to thrilling to even heart-breaking in the blink of an eye.
While the likes of ‘Mr Henderson Coughs’ and ‘Charlie Goes Skiing’ are arguably the most dramatic and gnarliest tunes they’ve penned, ‘Family Visits Relatives‘ and ‘Dog Drops Bone‘ nearly reduced me to tears with there brutal realism and stripped back arrangements. This is pretty potent stuff – at first I just wanted to be battered round the chops with noisy rock songs, but the depths this album goes to can be rather breath-taking.
‘A Gut Feeling‘ requires the same amount of attention that was put into it. It’s not an album that you can digest straight away. Though it has some pretty immediate moments on it, as a whole piece it’s a record that soaks into your skin more on each listen. The foundations of what makes Cassels such a great brand are still firmly in place, but with subtle sonic switch ups and a deeper understanding into composition and texture, Loz and Jim have made their best record by a country mile.
I have a vivid memory of hearing the first Rolo Tomassi EP back in 2006 and being blown away by its mathcore madness. Forever pushing the boundaries of alternative metal, It’s been extremely interesting to see this band’s journey unfold over the years.
Here we land at their sixth album, ‘Where Myth Becomes Memory’, which comes four years on from the critically acclaimed ‘Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It’. To my mind this album feels like the third part in a trilogy of albums which started with ‘Grievances’ in 2015. Though I have a lot of positive things to say about the last two albums, I did sometimes feel that the band were still working out the kinks, heading towards their masterpiece. I think it’s fair to say that this record is definitely that.
Never have Rolo Tomassi sounded so humongous. I’ve always enjoyed their sharp dynamic twists, often going from the extremely heavy to the beautifully melodic, but on this album there is this expertly executed blend which sends the songs into the stratosphere. ‘Cloaked’, ‘Drip’ and ‘To Resist Forgetting’ are superb examples of combining ethereal yet Instant melodies over the top of bone-crushing metal-core riffs. And they sound even more powerful and fearless for it.
It’s also really great to see them push the post-rock undertones of the last two records. It’s something I’ve really wanted to hear the band move into and you could not get more gorgeously expansive than ‘Closer’ or enticingly transcendent as ‘Almost Always’.
Rolo Tomassi have done this really rare thing of trimming the fat but also knowing when to hit you at the right moment. The emotional core of this album has never felt stronger, sometimes it being the instrumentation that completely catches you off guard (the piano passage in ‘Mutual Ruin’ is quite possibly the most stop you in your tracks moment they’ve made). I know I’ve already made a pretty sweeping statement in this rundown, but it must be said that ’Where Myth Becomes Memory’ is the sound of a band at their most realised and is quite possibly their strongest and best album to date.
We’ve said it a few times across these pages, but there’s definitely something in the water up in that there Leeds. It’s like you know whenever you see the words ‘Leeds band‘ that you’re going to be impressed. Although, Thank frontman Freddy does state on this record that there’s never been a good band from Leeds. Or London for that matter. But he’s wrong, because Thank have been the DIY scenes best kept secret for a number of years now and we are chuffed to finally have a debut album to sink our teeth into.
‘Thoughtless Cruelty’ continues to expand the horizons of this brilliantly bonkers band, making obnoxious noise fuelled punk for the dance floors. Recent single ‘Good Boy’ is a gleaming example of the above statement, battering your ears with hypnotic sub bass that builds into a disco punk banger from hell, sounding like Gilla Band being possessed by old Lucifer himself.
Described by the band as a stark observation of human cruelty, this is very much an edge of your seat sort of record, often exploding into a rampage of thick bass, spiky guitars, acid dipped keys and groovy beats. On top of this we have Freddy shouting his head off with superbly executed one-liners that range from anxious and intense to sarcastic and witty. The description of viewing the house that smells like grilled sausage and old boots on the electrifying ‘Dread’ is equally hilarious and grimly relatable.
As a fan of the band’s previous releases, it’s really great to see them push the limitations of the foundations they’ve already set. They’ve gone deeper and darker into their sound – everything sounds beefed up and compositionally they really know how to draw you in, scare the shit out of you then just ascend into an utterly thrilling world of chaos. ‘Thoughtless Cruelty’ is intensely smart, beautifully detailed and totally batshit crazy. Welcome to the new norm.
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Having found much acclaim for recent single ‘Good Boy‘ (including top honours in our Top 50 of 2021), Leeds noise outfit THANK are living the high life. So much so they’ve managed to resurrect former ghost botherer Derek Acorah for their latest video, showing off all the North East has to offer.
It’s all in aid of latest single ‘Dread‘, championed by a thudding bassline to rival The Fall’s ‘Blindness‘ and a button pushing exercise in the lyrics. Vocalist Freddy Vinehill-Cliffe once upon a time got into a bit of tepid water on Twitter for claiming “There’s never been a good band from London“, as he explains below.
“This song is about living in a cursed/haunted house. People have asked me if I’m deliberately referencing the ‘Ghost Realtor’ episode of Nathan For You, and the answer is maybe! I can’t remember, it might just be a coincidence, but I do love that show. In the video Derek Acorah, Paranormal Estate Agent, gives us a tour of some properties he has available in Newcastle. He also expresses his contempt for some classic London bands.
In December 2020 I tweeted that there has never been a good band from London, and people got really mad, so I’m hoping they get mad again. Love it. Unfortunately I’ve wiped the Thank Twitter account since then so the tweet has been lost to the sands of time. Our pal Liberty made this video, cheers Liberty!“
From their forthcoming debut album ‘Thoughtless Cruelty‘, recorded with Jamie Lockhart and Rob Slater at Greenmount Studios, it’s due to be released February 4th 2022 viaExploding In Soundand Box Records.
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Tell you what – we love hearing from artists when things go right. We equally love hearing from artists when things go dreadfully wrong. A song that was a piece of piss, written in 20 minutes? Or years in the making and a bastard to write?
Whether it’s a song that came together through great duress or one that was smashed out in a short amount of time, we’re getting the lowdown from some of our favourites on the one song that they can’t stop thinking about – in their own words.
Off the back of announcing their debut album ‘Thoughtless Cruelty‘ (out February 1st 2022), Leeds pop band THANK talk us through new single ‘Good Boy‘.Take it away, Thank…
Freddy Vinehill-Cliffe (vocals/guitar): “‘Good Boy’ was the first new song we wrote for the album, and it started with a voice note. Chris from Soft Issues had sent me some unreleased material of theirs, so I was feeling inspired to write something that matched their level of intensity. I’d also been desperate for ages to write a Thank song with the jumpstyle techno groove from ‘Jumping All Over The World’ by Scooter.
We were in the middle of recording our last EP, and one evening on my drive back from the studio I came up with a vocal hook which seemed to fit both ideas. When I got home I sat outside in the car and recorded it on my phone, and that voice note turned into the first verse. I’m sure it sounded like shit.
Lyrically, this one is a diss track of sorts. In the punk (and adjacent) music scene it often feels like there are a lot of bands who sing about radical politics, but don’t live their values at all. No-one is perfect or infallible, of course, but there’s a real hypocrisy in writing lyrics about social justice and then lashing out as soon as someone suggests you might not be entirely living those values. By extension, I think certain fans of political music tend to only listen to lyrics that reaffirm their worldview, rather than lyrics that might challenge and/or suggest how we could do better. In short, you might say some people only want to hear political songwriting that reminds them what a good boy they are. Also, ‘good boy’ is just a funny phrase innit.“
Cameron Moitt (bass): “The five notes I play in this song – C, Gb, Eb, Ab, Db – were specifically chosen because they form an anagram of CADGE, which Merriam-Webster defines as a verb meaning ‘to obtain (something) for free, often by persuading or imposing on another’. In a way, we have cadged interest in our music over the years by simply refusing to stop making it. ‘Good Boy’ continues that tradition.“
Freddy: “When I brought this song to the practice room it was a long, sprawling thing; there were loads of tempo changes and a false end, and the chorus almost sounded like a B-52’s song. We tried reworking it in a bunch of different ways, but nothing quite seemed to click. Then I got obsessed with Mitski’s ‘Be The Cowboy’ and it was kind of a wakeup call. Every song on that album is exactly as long as it needs to be, and not a second longer. Proper spartan songwriting where almost none of the tracks even pass the 3 minute mark. It reminded me that writing songs is often a bit like chipping away at an ice sculpture – it’s as much about what you take out as it is about what you keep in.
We couldn’t get the chorus right, so why not just scrap the chorus? The song has four verses and a middle section, and that’s it. I think there are enough hooks to make it work, and it was fun to do something with such a linear structure.
This song felt like such a departure when we wrote it in early 2019, but by the time we’d finished putting together ‘Thoughtless Cruelty’ in mid-2021 it seemed like the most “classic Thank” sounding song on there. Perhaps that’s familiarity, or perhaps we’ve just recorded the most mind bending album ever made. Only time will tell.
Theo (Gowans, noise/electronics) also wanted me to point out that the weird squealing sound at the start of the middle section is the entire track sped up.“
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Thank play a skeezy and demented skronk-rock that’s weirdly toe-tapping. Dissonant layers of sandpaper guitar and broken glass synths grate and stab over a throbbing, staggering rhythm section who just want to dance, but, like, in an aggressively drunken and leering sort of way. Meanwhile the vocalist spits the ugliest of feelings – all the bile and anti-social self-loathing that builds up in your belly during the stupid work week, despite your disappointed best intentions – in a range of voices as harsh as the emotions.
Boston hardcore band SSD asked “how much art can you take?” and Thank seem to be on a mission to find out. The band are part of a collective practice and performance space in Leeds called CHUNK, which has incubated a number of exciting bands in addition to Thank, like Cattle and Irk, and the members of Thank seem to get around a lot in other bands and projects as well, like the indescribable Territorial Gobbing and Beige Palace.
Since I live in Iowa and they live in Leeds I’ve never seen Thank live – which is a pity because they might be my very favorite current band – so I can’t speak from first hand experience, but they sound like a band who play till it hurts.
They’ve just put out a discography collecting all their releases to date: their debut EP ‘Sexghost Hellscape‘ on Cruel Nature, a split single with Blóm on Hominid Sounds, and a second EP, ‘Please‘, on Buzzhowl (If you follow underground and DIY noise rock in the UK, you’ll know those are labels with impeccable catalogues full of art aggression).
The collection, ‘Thankology‘, sounds remarkably cohesive given that the songs were written over a two year span. If I hadn’t known already, I’d have assumed it was a single album of songs all written and recorded together. That speaks to the craft, skill, and vision animating the band’s sonic mayhem. A highlight: the singer screeching “I’m KIND of happy…” on album closer ‘Two Hour Lunch‘, with a shriek that manages to sound both guilty and furious and in doing so makes the line simultaneously very sad and very funny. It’s an adult beverage kind of feeling, a complicated emotional cocktail familiar to anyone who uses jokes and records to cope with being emotionally stunted.
Thank’sbandcamp page says this release “is a precursor to the band’s debut LP proper,” which is the best news I’ve heard in a while. Go give Thank your money. Then play the record loud, use the harsh textures to scour your heart clean, let it all out – maybe have a good howl? – and enjoy bopping to all those bad feelings.
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Now here we are, months later, ready to talk about another Territorial Gobbing collaboration – one that’s a bit more easily digestible (whilst still being a bit unnerving in its hypnosis). ‘Carving Another Flute‘ is the first single from a new record out this December between Territorial Gobbing and BlackCloudSummoner
‘Heavier Than A Desk In The Factory’ – a play on the ‘Heavier Than A Death In The Family’ cult album of the ‘70s – is pencilled in for release on 04/12 via NIM, a box fresh DIY tape label out of Iowa, a state to some and that four letter word on the Slipknot hoodies of the cool(ish) kids at school if you’re my age! UK listeners can grab themselves a copy via experimental tape label Outsider Art.
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Pop music welcomes you, smiles at you, makes you feel at home, and expects little of you. Noise music does the opposite on all counts. This makes pop genres easy to dabble in, while noise tends to ward off casual listeners like myself. As such, I found ‘The Internet Made Me Parkour’, the new release from Plastiglomerate and Territorial Gobbing, a challenging listen. Both Plastigomerate and Territorial Gobbing are typically solo projects, based in Newcastle and Leeds, respectively. TG is Theo Gowans, who also plays in the no wave powerhouse Thank.
There’s a great deal of what sounds like amplified metal on ‘The Internet Made Me Parkour’ – literal metal I mean, like clattering silverware and grinding sounds, and what might be static, genuine noises. There’s also organic sounds, wet mouth sounds and sounds of human jabbering – strange sighs and mutters and lips smacking. I found those sounds the most unpleasant listening on here, they can be genuinely off-putting, like auditory versions of visual artists wearing clothing made of raw meat. There are also snippets of speech and brief samples of music, which appear out of the pandemonium offering a moment of stability to anchor you before breaking apart, dissolving into the bubbling acid bath of the rest of the composition and leaving you all the more alone and exposed. It reminded me of scenes from hell in the edgy comic books I would sneak-read in the 80s and 90s.
My casual dabbling with noise music has come in part from having an abrasive sense of humour and friendships defined by being mean to each other. In the earliest days of Facebook it was possible to post links to youtube videos without previews or to make them look like other things. At the time, friends and I often used to rick-roll each other and unsuspecting strangers with Whitehouse and Merzbow tracks. Maybe it’s because I encountered that music in that setting but it’s easy for me to think of power electronics and related extreme noise music as a kind of cruel joke. (Whitehouse always sounded to me like they genuinely hated their listeners. William Bennett, the main villain behind Whitehouse, has gone on to perform as Cut Hands, music which seems less oriented toward hurting audiences.)
‘The Internet Made Me Parkour‘ doesn’t strike me as quite as cruel, though it might be better called differently cruel. This doesn’t sound like noise that hates you and is out to get you. It sounds in a way weirder than that. Rather than the predatory aggression of some power electronics, this record sounds more like a private episode that you are overhearing, maybe forcibly (like being a kid while your parents are fighting).
As I listened, I wondered how much the record was a crafted object and how much it might be a document of a kind of intense improvisational play. It does feel playful, that’s part of what sets this apart from the feel of some other noise music, but it’s not a very generous play. It plays like my two year old plays – manic, often incomprehensible, indifferent to others and with a willingness to be violent if the mood strikes. There’s a kind of artist-as-storm-cloud quality to the record, art-making that sits far above and indifferent to perceptions by others, something made for the sheer act of its own making.
Then again, maybe it’s not art at all but anti-art – rather than a making, this might be a complex unmaking, stripping away everything, removing other thoughts from your mind by the unrecognizability and intensity of the noise. In a review, Aural Aggravation referred to listening to this record as like having your cranium scoured, which seems right. That brain-scrubbing is not entirely pleasant – I felt relief during some of the few short pauses on this record – but it might be good for you.
If pop music asks little of listeners, it often offers little to them as well. This record is so demanding that I found myself goaded to listen beyond my usual auditory ruts of post-punk and adjacent guitar music, largely, to try to find other work to help me make sense of it – Stockhausen, Throbbing Gristle, AMM, John Cage. It helped, a little, and I felt like my brain had been given a workout.
This is not a release for the faint of heart, but I do recommend giving it a listen, to see what you think when you’re done. Even if it’s not for you – and I can say, there are very few people I know who will actively like this record – at the very least you will enjoy what you listen to next all the more, a sign of being marked by this record.
Part of what’s captivating to me about music like this is how much work it is for the listener. I like to think that work can be a labour of self-transformation, like running sprints to get faster and stronger. I sometimes think that part of what art does is to use specific objects to teach us specific ways to use our minds and senses, ways that we can learn to deploy to other objects. This record leaves listeners with so little to orient ourselves that perhaps it helps us come out the other side better able to live with disorientation.
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2019’s been a difficult year but with the massive silver lining that it’s been great musically. Appropriate to both those lines of thought, my top five records of the year ended up with seven on it. Anyway, in no particular order and with no mucking about, here’s my list (Editor note: Originally titled ‘If You Only Have Time To Listen To Five Records, Then Sort Your Life Out’!)
Energetic punk collides with fall-apart no wave, driving beats and propulsive rhythm guitar get torn to shreds by feedback, fuzz, dissonance, saxophone skronk and drums that suddenly collapse. Context matters, at least a little, so hearing this at the start of the year,Tropical Trash sounded like a glorious rock and roll train wreck, before life imitated art and the year ended up more like an actual train wreck. Listening to the record again, it sounds like a message from the future, a warning of – and a fantastic soundtrack for – the breakdown the rest of the year had in store.
USA Nails play noise rock in the overlap between punk and post-punk. On this album the band dramatise days spent going through the motions: “I turn up, I turn off, I turn up, I turn off… and I smile.” If life’s a cinema, the film’s a black and white Godard, full of ennui and simmering anger threatening to boil over at any minute. USA Nails manage to take songs about distance and living at a remove and play them with urgency via massive guitar, bass, drums, and shouting. I can’t remember the last time I felt such an intense and energising connection with a record largely about disconnection.
USA Nails picked their own Top 5 records of 2019 – featuring JOHN and Psychic Graveyard – which you can read here!
This was the most disquieting music I heard this year. To my great regret, I slept on buying it on vinyl and it sold out. The songs are by turns noisey and harsh then dancey and poppy, pulling you in, then spitting you back out, pushing you through more harsh and noisey, then pulling you back in for enjoyment you’ll hate yourself for in the morning.
It’s the catchy bits that really make this unsettling. They get you to let your guard down then force you to look at a good deal of uneasy material, with themes of s&m, pornography, sexual humiliation, body horror and self-hatred, predatory masculine desire, and guilt – and the worst part is, the band make it enjoyable a lot of the time, only to periodically hold a mirror up to say ‘look at yourself and what you’re enjoying.’ It makes the musically harsh bits come as a strange sort of relief. Two of the best parts of the record, and which illustrate what I’m on about, come in the song ‘Real Control’. In a break the singer exhorts an imaginary crowd, “let me hear you say yeah!” who respond with silence then a verbal shrug, a muttered “yeah.” The song concludes “Sever your cock it’s sure to let you down.” I can’t think of another record like this.
I slept on ‘Leg’ because it starts off slow and spacious and when it came out I didn’t have the patience. I regret that. The record opens a languorous keyboard (or maybe cello?) riff, with a declarative vocal, sustaining long drawn out tones. Guitar feedback very subtly fades in over several minutes, joined by shimmering hi-hat and heavily palm-muted guitar, before opening up into a catchy and rocking post-punk riff, stopping awkwardly for a few seconds of cleaner guitar plonking dissonantly under some spoken word, then the catchy riff returns, but more off kilter, to close out the track. The rest of the record spends time in similar – which is to say, similarly awesome – territory, with occasional patches of melody that are far more catchy than they have any business being, and lots of weird, tense, repetitive parts, and some genuinely very pretty parts.
This is one of those records that’s really hard to find comparisons to. The closest thing to it that I’ve heard is Shellac’s legendary ‘Futurist’ record, though ‘Leg’ is less heavy and more tense. Appropriately enough the band have just opened for Shellac on tour. I bet Steve Albini is into this band, they’re weird and off and very, very compelling.
I think I listened to ‘I‘ more than any other record this year. Itunes on my laptop says I’ve played it about a hundred times, and I know I also listened to it on my mp3 player on the bus and at the gym as well. Petbrick are a duo, a drummer and an electronics-and-keyboardist, with the latter playing through a lot of distortion pedals. It’s very metal, yet seems to have no guitars on it. The main duo (Iggor Cavalera, formerly from Sepultura, and Wayne Adams, formerly from Death Pedals and the recording mastermind behind Bear Bites Horse studio) are joined by an all star cast of guest vocalists, mostly bellows and growls and screams, but with some surprisingly pretty singing as well.
I think this is the heaviest record I listened to all year and is one of the harshest musically as well, though it ended up being uplifting: all that shouting was a reminder that there’s a lot in the world worth shouting about.
Petbrick picked their own Top 5 records of 2019 – featuring Beak> and Boards of Canada – which you can read here!
Synthesizers and dance beats and rubbery basslines tying themselves in knots and glitchy noise and shrieking and repetition and sexualised blasphemy and self-loathing… Thank’s harsh no wave is what Girl Band would play if they decided in a moment of hungover clarity about life to turn their music into a weapon for revenge.
If I had to pick just one favourite song for the year, I would refuse to do so. If you threatened to break my fingers, I would cry, and beg, and plead, and try to explain to you there was just too much good music to make such a judgement possible. If you threatened to hurt my children, though, who I love even more than I love music, I would tearfully explain to you that songs reflect values and aesthetic choices that don’t sum up neatly, which is why numerical ranking disrespects music, and that your insistence demonstrates that you have no respect for the arts, which is ironic given that hands down the best song of the year is Thank’s ‘No Respect for the Arts’, which I have ranted about to no fewer than six different people. The other three songs on here are great too. By the end, the relentless caterwauling of ‘Please’ is what 2019 in the big picture most felt like to me.
Thank picked their own Top 5 records of 2019 – featuring Kaputt and Uranium Club – which you can read here!
The problem with generalised rage is that when it’s directionless it can turn inward and sour. Dead Arms give anger a focus – Farage and everything he stands for, the ‘Biased Broadcasting Corporation’ that’s helped that ilk gain influence, the nationalism and sexism they push – and, making a different use of the great power of massive guitar, bass, drums, and shouting, Dead Arms rail against all that bullshit with a ferocity that creates a sense of possibility. Dead Arms play a kind of anthemic punk that kept reminding me of seeing Pegboy play back in the 90s, but with added dissonance and aggression. When they rip it up nothing sounds more important, in part because they’re focused on things that matter. This is a record I played when I wanted to remember that future years could be more than just a repetition of 2019.
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There you have it: list completed. If you’re busy and only have time to listen to five of the amazing records that musicians were generous enough to give to the world this year, go play these seven. Of course there’s loads of other great records that came out this year too. You should look at Andy’s best of list for one thing. You should check out the ‘What’s on Michael Portillo’s iPod‘ features as well, which include recommendations from several of the bands I mentioned. On a five point scale, the music of 2019 scores a seven. 2020 is going to have a hard time matching, let alone surpassing, 2019’s output, but I’m optimistic.
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2019 eh? You’d laugh if you weren’t too busy crying… Bloody good year for music though.
With it being the end of the year, we’ve joined the long list of your other favourite websites to compile the best songs released this year. 50 songs sounds like a lot to work with until you have to compile said list.
Here’s the second of two parts featuring a list of the 50 best songs released this year – part one here. Continued in alphabetical order mind you, as things are complicated enough as it is don’t you think?
Long awaited new material from one Toby Hayes (ex-Meet Me in St. Louis/Eugene Quell). ‘Humans‘ reminds me a bit of early Beck in a way (though he’s not spouting gibberish about microwaves and such) and is a super cool slice of where Toby is at in 2019 Brighton.
It was hard to choose a track from the latest Cate Le Bon effort, given the wealth of worthy contenders. We were head over heels for first single ‘Daylight Matters‘ on release – such warmth in the instrumentation and as per, a real shift put in by Le Bon to make hearts swell.
The Beta Band kinda passed me by (save for that scene in ‘High Fidelity‘), but I’ve had this single on at least once a fortnight since I first heard it on the radio mid-year. Ex-Beta Band vocalist Steve Mason knows how to pen a tune, eh? Chorus on this one is sublime.
I don’t know exactly how it happened, but the past 10+ years have had a Metronomy shaped hole in them for me. How did I miss out on the likes of ‘Nights Out‘ and ‘The English Riviera‘?! What exactly was I playing at? This all changed following the release of their latest effort ‘Metronomy Forever’, particularly the delectable ‘Salted Caramel Ice Cream‘. A pop gem, love the catchiness of it.
With an opening that sounds like a dog toy gripped between the jaws of a canine, ‘The Daily Heavy‘ is the first track from the exceptionally titled new Oh Sees album ‘Face Stabber‘ and one which sets the record up more than nicely. Each player firing on all cylinders, the rhythm is hypnotising as the vocals of JPD swirl around your head almost in a murmur. A driving psych journey that hardly lets up across its 7+ minutes.
We had the pleasure of interviewing Oh Sees lifer John Dwyer earlier this year – read that here!
We’ve been bang into OMNI for a few years now and have greedily lapped up everything they’ve offered thus far. Their Sub Pop debut ‘Networker‘ took a few listens at first, but it’s definitely a grower. Lead single ‘Sincerely Yours’ once again shows off the guitar chops of Frankie Broyles, with lovely little Television-esque flourishes, whilst bassist Philip Frobos’ smooth vocals are just the ticket.
The less quirky branch of the “multimedia collective“ Crack Cloud crew, N0V3L lean more toward moody 80’s sounding post-punk and ‘To Whom It May Concern‘ is a real sharp bit of kit. From a fantastic debut LP.
The sort of act that gets David Lynch hot under the collar i’m sure, Orville Peck has been on the old radar for a while but it wasn’t until a few months back that I got fully tucked into debut album ‘Pony‘. Now he’s on everyone’s radar and more power to him! The only country sounding artist on the list you’ll be surprised to hear, ‘Dead of Night‘ deals in romance on the dusty trail as two mean hombres travel through the Nevada desert.
Opener from the debut Pizzagirl LP, ‘Ball’s Gonna Keep On Rollin‘ is similar to label-mate Guest Singer’s debut in that we’re treated to a lot of moody 80’s tinged synth-pop with an Alex Cameron feel. Bright lights, big city vibes, it’s the sort of track that might’ve been your favourite on one of those ‘Now That’s What I Call Music‘ comps way back when…
I first heard this during a bit of downtime whilst we were on our jollies in Italy. When we landed in Manchester the following week, I caught them up the road at The Castle Hotel and it was one of the best shows of the year. The Quintet based in Canada put out a belting EP earlier in the year and ‘The Craft‘ is one of the best from it – spot on, energetic post-punk.
There was a 24 hour period when I first heard this song where I played it again and again and again. Absolutely obsessed. A song about being infatuated with your mobile telephone device. The album is a cracker too.
POZI talked to us about what inspired the LP not long after release – read all about it here.
Jangly, energised post-punk out of Brighton that calls to mind much missed Manc outfit DUDS – Public Body caught our attention back in August and we’re keeping a keen ear out for whatever they’ve got planned next.
A wonderfully warm yet heartbreaking number from the late David Berman. The uplifting instrumentation is backed by words of such sorrow, made even sadder by his death not longer after the album’s release. Love the vocal delivery on “It’s not the icy bike chain rain of Portland, Oregon“.
BODEGA picked the Purple Mountains album as a 2019 highlight – more on that here.
The raucous opener from Ty Segall’s latest LP, he hopped behind the kit for this and a number of songs from the album, with his drumset heard via the left speaker and the kit of Charles Moothart heard on the right side. Great B-Movie horror video too.
‘Flipside‘ was one of our top tracks last year and cut to 2019, we’ve got ‘Discourse‘ in the top ranks too – a passionate delivery from Williamson against some of Fearn’s best beats on the record. Honourable mention to the joyous ‘Big Burt’.
We had the pleasure of interviewing Jason of Sleaford Mods earlier this year – Check that out here.
Non-stop party power from that band dressed head to toe in shrubbery. ‘Tailpipe‘ captures the sound of Snapped Ankles perfectly – maximum speed, hypnotising rhythms that make the listener feel like they’re off their nut. Nearly impossible to not find yourself shouting ‘SUCK-A-SUCK-A-SUCK-A-SUCK-A-TAILPIPE‘ by the end of it.
Big year for Squid, eh? We’ve had the pleasure of catching them a few times this year and their live set-up gets better and better. ‘Houseplants‘ kicked it off for us in the first half of the year, a total rager – the unhinged, yelped vocal of Ollie Judge hard not to love. A proper good band to get on board with in 2019.
“Baby i’m feeling fucking worthless…” One of our favourite Leeds bands knocking about at the minute. It’s a bit horrible, like – our review of their new EP suggested they’re “a kind of demented synth-rock“.
More holiday adventures – I took our lass to Bordeaux where Uranium Club just happened to be playing (convenient). I picked up a copy of this record at the show when it was box fresh and still in the stages of getting proper artwork etc. More fast-paced garage-rock-esque fun from The Minneapolis Uranium Club, it revvvs along at pace with that trademark sarcastic vocal style.
THANK picked ‘The Cosmo Cleaners‘ as a 2019 highlight – more on that here.
Featuring one of the most killer riffs in the USA Nails catalogue, ‘Smile‘ is a rock-hard rager and deals in the mundanity of everyday life in ear-piercing fashion. The album might be one of their best (a big ask!)
Super cool EP opener from Glaswegian outfit Vital Idles – The slightly strange yelps from vocalist Jessica Higgins captivate as the bass line gets right under your skin.
A record that kept my attention a lot this summer, ‘Walkie Talkie‘ is a proper driving corker from Californian shape-shifters WAND. A real joyful racket.
More sleazeball antics from Warmduscher, ‘Midnight Dipper‘ is a real funky piece of kit from their latest LP. Sounds like you’ve heard it before but then again, not quite – Vocalist Clams Baker sounds exactly like the sort of person you don’t want to meet in the pub.
Dr. Alan Goldfarb (on behalf of the band) talked us through their musical inspirations as part of our What’s On Michael Portillo’s iPod feature – Check out his picks here.
A personal favourite of mine in 2019, WOOZE came to our attention late last year through their initial singles. ‘I’ll Have What She’s Having‘ is absolutely joyous – hyperbole description wise, we hit the nail on the head back then: “Incredibly invigorating bursts of art-pop, they both manage to sound washing-line-fresh whilst sounding as if they were produced and released about forty years ago.”
WOOZE answered a host of daft questions for us as part of our a/s/l feature – Get your chops round that here!
Working Men’s Club have come on a bit since their initial single (sold out over and over) haven’t they? They’ve shifted gears somewhat since their debut and players have come and gone, but ‘Bad Blood‘ was a total gem of a debut – an exciting bit of energised post-punk that sounds as sun-soaked as the single art looks. Calling to mind the likes of Gang Of Four and Orange Juice, hearing this it’s no surprise that they’ve been building a big fan base at a rapid pace.
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For those sorts who don’t read, you can listen to all of the above (and everything from PART ONE) in our handy Spotify playlist here!
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Thankare a hell of a good band. The Leeds-based quintet play a kind of demented synth-rock with the abrasive knob turned up to the point of feeding back. There’s a lot of noise on top of distorted bass-lines that have that not-always-pleasant ear-worm quality of many children’s TV theme songs, and danceable disco beats. The lyrics are catchy but hostile refrains to match the bass, schoolyard chants and taunts by the cruellest of devil-children.
On their split with Blóm last year and on their debut, the 2017 EP ‘Sexghost Hellscape’ (one of the best releases of the year, in my humble opinion) Thank’s songs dealt heavily in themes of self-loathing. It wasn’t entirely clear, though, if the self-hatred was straightforwardly sincere or if the band were playing character songs, writing stories about self-loathing for artistic effect. Either way, the band took being open about unpleasant thoughts about one’s self and turned it up to eleven, becoming in effect so vulnerable as to be invincible, even terrifying. (Think of the difference between a child with a scraped knee crying for help, and an adult on the bus rushing at you while thrusting forth an open sore on their hand.)
Now Thank are back with a new EP, ‘Please’, a joint release by Buzzhowl Records and Exag Records. The band have added more kinds of caustic solvents to their abrasive palette, including a bit more bitter humour. The EP opens with vocalist Freddy Vinehill-Cliffe shriek-shouting “now that we are married, I know that he is watching us fuck, and let me tell you, he is loving every single minute” over the top of synths that sound like sirens, a rubbery bass line and a danceable drumbeat. Later the song goes into a changing refrain of “My god is a vengeful god,” where they replace ‘vengeful’ with handsome and loyal. It’s all at once unsettling and aggressive and funny. It’s a bit easier to take than some of the lyrics on their prior releases.
If the lyrics are just a tiny bit more palatable, Thank have amped up all of the harsh sonic qualities, with more bleeps and scrapes and feedback and buzzsaw and car alarm sounds. At times it becomes almost like monstrous video game music from another dimension. Demons in hell might play this stuff to torment ordinary pop fans. It’s really good.
I found the song ‘No Respect for the Arts’ especially arresting. It starts off with an enraged sounding chant of “pop music is bad, and the people who like it are idiots” over a distinctly unpleasant synth squeal held for about thirty seconds. Later on the lyrics go “he’s got no respect for the arts, and I hate him for that, an insufferable man.” All of these lines struck me as very funny, I think because those criticisms seem so understated compared to how harsh the music sounds and for how intensely these lines are sung. On more listens, though, I started to think that there’s something to this that’s not just funny.
Music can do all these amazing things in our lives and yet much of the time under commercial pressure music becomes reduced to a basically factory-made product, designed to manipulate and to sell. Sure, that’s trivial compared to, say, civil wars, but the two are a product of the same world. Art is about people finding a wide range of value and meaning in the world, rather than being just objects, raw material, human resources. We live in a hellscape because we are largely ruled by insufferable men (to be fair there are a few exceptions, namely some insufferable women) who have no respect for the arts for the same reason they love arms dealers, because they have no respect for human beings.
After a dozen or so listens I have come to think of Thank as music of social criticism, not only in the content but in the form. (This is wonky, I know, but bear with me, please, I’m nearly done.) This is related to the band being deeply abrasive and aggressive but not at all macho. A lot of socially conscious hardcore and thrash metal, say, voices criticisms of the world we live in while playing out music like any other band in those genres, and often taking a tough guy posture that is deeply conventional. Thank, on the other hand, make sounds that evoke the hellishness of our society; at times they sound like what it’s like to be ground down by great and terrible engines driven by people with no respect for the arts. There’s a bit of an inhuman quality to Thank’s sound, maybe because it’s music about actually-existing inhumanity.
Case in point: there’s a breakdown at the end of ‘No Respect’ that sounds like an actual person breaking down. Everything cuts out except that infernal synth squeal and some occasional scraping sounds. The singer begins slowly repeating the word “please,” first spoken, then shouted, then sob-screamed.
If you like your music weird and unsettling yet oddly catchy, this record is for you. If you don’t, well, maybe give it three listens through and see if you take away something unexpected. The insufferable men in charge seem dead set on making the world ever more of a hellscape. At least Thank have given it a hell of a soundtrack.
Whatever Brains, Portishead and Scooter – THANK talk influences behind the EP!
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Here at Birthday Cake For Breakfast, we like to get to the heart of what an artist is all about. We feel the music they listen to is just as important as the music they make. With that in mind, we’re chuffed to have noise-making Leeds outfit THANKtalk us through inspirations and listening points behind their latest EP!
“It’s really difficult to talk to anyone about Whatever Brains because all four of their albums are self-titled so it just gets really confusing. I’d heard the second one when it came out, thought it was a cool wacky punk album, shades of Pavement, Dead Kennedys, all the good stuff. I lost track of them for like 5 years and then stumbled upon this record around when we finished making ‘Sexghost Hellscape’. Quite a departure from their earlier work – to me it sounds like The Residents at their most apocalyptic with snotty Cali-punk vocals, very cool. At that point ‘Let’s Find A Cop’ was pretty much exactly how I wanted Thank to sound, and I think a lot of ‘Please’ is us trying to capture a similar energy, particularly on ‘Commemorative Coin’.”
“This album is practically flawless – it would be completely flawless if not for the daft ukulele number in the middle. The other Portisheadalbums are cool, but the songs all basically serve the same purpose. ‘Third’ is so sprawling and dark and foreboding, and I love the way the flaws and inconsistencies of the electronic elements are kind of exposed. Our friend Claire (aka Dr Onken) once described a Thank live performance as “relentless melodrama”. I would say the same thing about this album.”
“My dad introduced me to Soft Cell when I was 9 years old (weird move tbh) and I’ve been a huge fan ever since, along with a bunch of Marc Almond’s side projects. But I only heard Dave Ball’s solo stuff around when we started writing ‘Please’. This album doesn’t have any ragers quite as big as ‘Sex Dwarf’ or ‘Memorabilia’, but it’s an incredible exploration of the sleazy club/proto-industrial side of what those guys were doing. A couple of the songs haven’t aged particularly well – there’s a bit of weird orientalism and some pretty blatantly eccied-up farting about – but the title track in particular is a real treat. I will never stop being angry that someone else wrote the lyric “Hold my head up, and tell me I’m handsome” before I had chance.”
“The latest White Suns album, ‘Psychic Drift’, is essentially just power electronics, which is fun when the musicians aren’t cryptofascists (rare!). But I think this was their finest work. Obviously I can’t speak on the band’s behalf, but to me it sounds like they were trying to achieve that same kind of noise wall stuff, only using the same palette of sounds as a straight up hardcore band. It’s kind of like rock music but none of the songs have a tempo or meter, plus I’m a sucker for any vocalist who does that Tony Clifton voice. It’s properly thrilling, and even though I don’t think we ended up sounding at all similar, this is the album that inspired me when we first started Thank.”
“Scooter is probably our favourite thing to listen to in the van on tour. It’s difficult to pick an album because, let’s face it, they aren’t really an album band. I chose this one because it includes ‘Does The Fish Have Chips?’ which is basically just Blur’s ‘Song 2’ reworked as a companion piece for ‘How Much Is The Fish?’, and ‘Behind The Cow’, which samples ‘Don’t Fear The Reaper’ and ‘Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah’, and inexplicably has a Fatman Scoop verse. Mental. Expect a major Scooter influence on our next release.”
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