Continuing the thread of my review of the new Eville EP, which sees a young band push hard on the forward trajectory of a nu-metal revival, I find myself basking in the retro sound of ‘Anything,’, the latest offering from JW Paris, trashy indie / alternative trio from London. This isn’t some kind of nostalgia wank, whereby the 90s is largely misrepresented through the prism of Britpop (or grunge), but a cut that reminds us just how eclectic the 90s – particularly the first half of the decade – was. It was a melting pot of skewed guitar-led bands which were often lo-fi, ramshackle, bands who would grace the pages of Melody Maker but rarely play outside Camden, and the only way you’d ever hear any of their music would be by tuning in to John Peel, where they’d be wedged in between some weird dancy shit and the filthiest grindcore going, alongside something jangly on Sarah Records and something else entirely on Rugger Bugger records. And something by The Fall, of course.
‘Anything’, the lead track from their forthcoming EP, packs the essence of that period into just shy of three and a half energetic minutes. As much as it’s 90s indie / Britpop in its attitude, it’s the early Wonderstuff that comes through most strongly here. Before they became the beloved band of every cherry-red DM wearing sixth former, and way before the Gallagher brothers came onto the scene, Miles Hunt swaggered forth with colossal confidence, and songs that sizzled with snappy wordplay and hooks, and while I never really dug much after The Eight-Legged Groove Machine, they were exhilarating and fresh, and it’s this that JW Paris recreate here. The woo-ooh-wooooh backing vocals are a bit dandy Warhols, and there’s a lot going on, a lot of ideas and energy compressed into this neatly crafted nugget of a tune.
True revolution will come when the workers own the means of production. This is something that’s emerged in music not through an uprising, but a thoroughly screwed-up state of affairs, but one that’s very much a result of a capital-driven model. Major labels, and a fair few indies, don’t exist for the artists: they exist for themselves, for their execs, for the machine, the mechanism which enables them to gouge maximum profit for themselves, the shareholders, the middlemen, hell, anyone in the chain. And, depressingly it looks like even Bandcamp could be going this way before long. Capitalism doesn’t give a shit about art: it cares only about money, and art is simply another commodity, provided it’s got mass appeal. And who generates the profit? The artist, of course. The model is the same in any capitalist structure: without call centre and admin staff, multinational corporations would simply have no business: even banks need staff to manage the money being poured into them (although retail customers get the least service because they may be many, but they’re just your average pleb on the street, so fuck them and their wanting local branches and stuff that eat into the profit margins). But the staff who essentially generate the wealth are at the bottom of the pile with the worst pay and the worst conditions.
Sure, some artists get rich, but how many Coldplays and Ed Sheerans are there in the scheme of things? And there has been a shift since the turn of the millennium. Massive advances – or any advance at all in many cases – are a thing of the past. But labels have always been behind the time, and the concept of A&R is a longstanding joke in that labels aren’t interested in finding the next movement as riding on the coattails of whatever’s breaking in order to milk it.
This latest offering from Kill, The Icon! marks something of a stylistic shift, at least superficially: less aggro and overtly confrontational, it’s also less guitar-orientated, built around a simple and unchanging synth loop. Nagging, earwormy, irritating… the repetition does become somewhat numbing after a while, but by the end off its three-and-a-half minute duration, you start to consider playing it again anyway.
Talking to me about the single, Nishant admitted ‘It’s really different and I expect will be polarizing in terms of content.’ He’s right on both counts, in that it’s not only a departure, but also likely to alienate a few fans and critics. But this is to the good: as I’ve written before, and will likely do so again in the future, you can’t please all of the people all of the time, and nor should you aim to do so. If you do, you’re Oasis or Ed Shearan. Punk is an attitude, not a style per se, punk is creating the music and art you believe in and not giving a fuck about the reception. Kill, The Icon! are punk, and this stylistic detour doesn’t see them budge an inch in their message or tame their fury for a second. Yes, true to their credo, Kill, The Icon are calling out institutional racism and general bullshit in society, and here, specifically, the music industry:
Average White Band / For the average white fan / Making average white music for the average white man
Joshi explains: “Mumford and Sons were the archetypal Average White Band. They had the son of a near-billionaire in their midst. And they made a career out of denying their privilege. They were bankrolled from the very start, and so they had a precious resource that’s not afforded to other bands: time. Most artists are told to play more shows, work harder, network harder. But that’s a huge lie that’s perpetuated by the music industry… Everyone involved in the music industry assures us that diversity, inclusion and equality are priorities – it’s written as much on the website of every festival, booking agent, manager, and record label. But the reality is an utter lie. We’re not all running the same race.”
One benefit of being a truly independent act is that the artistic control is not only retained by the artist, so is the scheduling. That means the pokes in ‘Average White Band’ are still contemporary, as Joshi calls it out:
“Once a band has been elevated, It’s fair to ask what they do with their new-found power: are they maintaining the status quo, or are they actively seeking change to make the music industry more equitable? The reality is that the music industry has been fantastic at improving diversity in indie music, but only to the extent that it champions female-led bands who approximate western beauty standards.”
Sitting on your chaise longue / Writing all your new songs / About cliches of cliches of cliches of cliches
It’s not a matter of sour grapes here: there’s no way Kill, The Icon! are jealous, or would want to be in the position of Wet Leg. But given the same elevated platform, Kill, The Icon! would be telling it like it is and making sure their message had maximum reach. But political bands don’t tend to get maximum reach, especially when they’re from minority backgrounds. Benefits are perhaps the most ‘real’ band with a broader reach right now – Sleaford Mods are simply too obvious are more about commentary than promoting change – but while they’re white, they’re too working class to be embraced beyond a certain demographic. In keeping it real, they’re not likely to get much radio airplay – or earn huge radio royalties – any time soon.
Earlier this year, JW Paris were the millionth act to cover Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Game’ – a song that bombed on initial release in 1989 and only started getting attention when it was featured on the soundtrack to David Lynch’s Wild at Heart, and becoming a hit in 1991. What was interesting about JW Paris’ version is that it was different. It didn’t pussyfoot around being nice and delicate – not that it was insensitive or trashed the original, it just had the guts to be different instead of a predictably, safe, straight copy. And I suppose this sums the band up, really. They do their own thing – and it so happens to be good.
‘Leave It Alone’ is three-and-a-half minutes of choppy post punk with bite – not to mention a yawning guitarline that evokes the essence of Nirvana and The Pixies, straddling a magnificent strolling bassline and exploiting that classic quiet / loud dynamic – but keeping the overdrive in check in favour of a cleaner guitar sound – but with a chorus that’s eminently moshable.
Yes, of course it all pulls me back to the early 90s – no one song or band or anything specific, but that vague, aching haze of what it was like to be there in my late teens and early twenties. There’s some recycled gag about the 60s now being applied to the 90s along the lines of if you can remember the decade, you weren’t there, and there’s an element of truth on a personal level with it being the time I got into beer (and vodka) and live music, but there’s that other key element, namely the passage of time. It’s not even about memory fading: when you’re living life and simply in the midst of things, you don’t stop to take stock or pin a marker on your memory that any given moment in time was something to remember as special. It’s only in hindsight – even if that hindsight is developed in relative proximity to the event – that you often come to appreciate things for what they were. This is, of course, the nature of nostalgia, and why people in their thirties become fixated on the ‘golden age’ of music, movies, and TV, which almost invariably coincides with their late teens and early twenties before the weight of adulthood and the crushing tedium of work and shit took over. But I say this because the further a time recedes into history, the vaguer and more nebulous the recollections become.
It’s not that I can’t pinpoint where bands have leaned on Nirvana or The Pixies for inspiration, but the bigger – and vaguer – picture is that TV and radio and gigs were awash with acts which represented the zeitgeist: it’s impossible to remember all of the little bands who maybe released one single or nothing at all, who played in upstairs rooms in poky pubs, but the period overall is indelibly etched into my memory banks. And this is important, because JW Paris don’t sound like they’ve studied key albums of the time and appropriated accordingly, but have, instead, soaked up the spirit and distilled it into a sweet and powerful shot.
There are layers to this: ‘Take a look at me, am I the person that you wanna be?’ becomes ‘am I who you want to see?’ How much is projection, perception? And not just perception of others, but self-perception. Look in the mirror: are you who you want to see? And how much does that change over time? It’s not always easy to make peace with your former selves.
Speaking on the single, the band say “‘Leave It Alone’ is a deeply personal song that reflects our own inner journey of self-discovery and acceptance… With honest lyrics and a haunting melody, it invites our audience and listeners on an introspective exploration of identity and the longing for inner peace”.
And I guess that’s what the preceding five-hundred-word contemplation is: it’s my introspective exploration, as inspired by the song. A good song does so much more than fill a few minutes with sound: it enters you and takes you places. ‘Leave It Alone’ is a fucking good song.
London ‘synth-punk passion project’ Kill, The Icon, fronted by NHS Dr Nishant Joshi have been building their presence nicely in recent with a series of strong singles, kicking off with ‘Buddhist Monk’ in late 2021, and the trio have been kicking ass with pissed-off, politically-charged sonic blasts ever since, and gaining significant airplay and critical acclaim in the process.
The bio and background, for those unfamiliar with the band, is worth visiting, as the context of the music is important. As much as Kill, The Icon are a part of a growing swell of artists who are using their music to not only channel their frustration and to voice their dissent – in a way which can’t get them arrested, at least not at the moment, no doubt to Suella Braverman’s irritation – Joshi is also very much an activist.
Joshi made national headlines during the pandemic, being the first frontline NHS doctor to go public with concerns that staff were not being protected. In true punk rock style Joshi and his wife then launched a legal challenge against the government. They won the case, making huge change and were recognised by The FA and England’s football team. Fueled with frustration, in the summer of 2020 KILL, THE ICON! was born as an extension of Joshi’s activism.
You certainly couldn’t accuse these guys of being all mouth and no action, but of course, the power of music as a unifying force should never be underestimated, particularly when our government’s modus operandi is to divide enfeeble the populace. It wasn’t just Brexit, which say the country not so much split and cleaved in twain: now there is a war being waged on benefit claimants (or scroungers and fraudsters, as they’re portrayed, dehumanising society’s most vulnerable in the process); a war on woke (anyone who is opposed to racism, misogyny, homophobia is the enemy); a war on migration… everything is cut between ‘us’ and ‘them’, and the smaller the splinters, the less the likelihood of meaningful, coherent opposition, especially when even so much as having a placard in your car boot is likely to lead to a pre-emptive arrest.
While the four tracks on Your Anger is Rational have been released as singles in the run-up to its release, with ‘Danny Is A Hate Preacher’ landing just ahead of the release date, packaging them together as an EP presents a precise statement of what they’re about.
It’s ‘Heavy Heart’ that’s up first, a no-messing ballsy banger that calls out the racism that’s not only rife but seemingly accepted post-Brexit, and the second track, the gothy ‘Deathwish’ (accompanied by the first AI promo video) steps up on this, with its refrain of ‘No blacks! No dogs! No Irish!’. ‘They used to whisper / And now they shout’, Joshi observes, and sadly it’s true. For a time, it felt like we had progressed from the casual racism of our grandparents – I remember feeling uncomfortable hearing my late grandmother talk – without malice – about ‘darkies’ and ‘coloureds’, and feeling a certain lightness of being at the sense we had moved on, stamping out the BNP and becoming more inclusive… but then the right has risen again with Farage and UKIP and Britain First and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and in the blink of an eye there are flag-waving racist cunts everywhere and Christ it’s fucking ugly.
And as much as Your Anger is Rational is a unified work musically, it’s lyrically and thematically that it really comes together. With a hard, driving bass to the fore, ‘Danny Is A Hate Preacher’ explores how indoctrination from an early age spawns the next generation of wrongheadedness, how violence begets violence, and I’m reminded of Larkin’s ‘This Be the Verse’. Your parents really do fuck you up. And now it’s not just parents taking kids to racist rallies, kids are being moulded by ‘influencers’ like Andrew Tate, and again, adults are buying into and propagating this obnoxious shit too: I’ve had to defriend a number of people on Facebook for sharing his content. My anger is, indeed, rational: we’re surrounded by cunts.
The last track, ‘Protect the Band’ is slower, more measured, but again, it’s a bass-dominated grinder with a monster groove, and it’s all pinned tightly together with some sturdy drumming and it’s a magnificent dismantlement of corporate hierarchies and the way they oppress workers into subservience. Protect the brand! But will the brand protect its staff? Will it fuck.
As much as Kill, the Icon are punk in aesthetic and sentiment, they’re very much new wave in their sound and approach. And while they’re strong on the punchy slogans and lyrical repetitions, KTI are more articulate and more nuanced than your average rabble-rousing punkers.
There isn’t a weak track in here. Musically, sonically, lyrically, they’ve got everything nailed and it’s tight: there’s no waste, everything is measured and weighed for maximum impact, but it’s still delivered with a coolness and a real groove, which makes this absolutely killer work.
You know you’re onto something when you get banned from a platform, and so it is that the promo for ‘Heavy Heart’ got canned from VIMEO, usually one of the more forgiving platforms, and you have you ask ‘why?’ It features clips of various failed British Prime Ministers – notably Theresa May’s infamous grooves and various right-wing twats like Farage and Fox and Yaxley-Lennon (Tommy Robinson my arse), pontificating and being pelted with milkshake: nothing untoward, just news footage. So what’s the issue? Perhaps the platform took issue with the featuring of the visage of that out-and-out fash Suella Braverman. But more likely it was starving families juxtaposed with Churchill, toting a machine gun while smoking a cigar, because fuck me, that exposé of the dark side of British politics is hard to swallow for some. No-one wants to contemplate the possibility that Churchill was a twat – an aristocratic political defector and an imperialist – which makes Johnson’s idolisation make deeper sense.
Nishant Joshi’s words which accompany this release are a grim indictment on ‘Great’ Britain in 2023 – the nation which chose to leave the EU (albeit by a slim margin, and that’s something that can’t be stressed enough) on the basis of an ‘advisory’ referendum in 2016. Because ‘the will of the people’? Half the country didn’t even bother to vote because it was a non-issue for them, and only a slender majority of those who did made it happen. But it’s that slender majority who were the most vocal.
He says ‘I was faced with racial slurs when I was younger, but nobody has uttered a racial epithet to my face for many years. But, I know the racists who existed in the 90s are still alive and well. They didn’t die out all of a sudden, and neither did their ideas. So, the point of this song is that everyone acknowledges that racists exist. But nobody will ever admit to being racist – so where did they all go? My answer is that they all wear disguises: as politicians, right-wing journalists, and talking heads for shady think-tanks. The brazen racism has retreated into the shadows, and subtle racism has taken over.’
Will Self said it best when he said ‘Not all Brexiters are racists, but almost all racists will be voting for Brexit’. And that sad fact is, we live in not only a divided society, but, post-Brexit, a more overtly racist society. The referendum outcome has emboldened people to espouse their racist views, with racially-motivated attacks not just affecting blacks and Asians, but also Eastern Europeanss, notably Poles, etc.
Fuck’s sake. We’re a mess. Who do we think has been picking out strawberries and delivering our coffee in Starbucks and Costa thee last decade? The people shunting stacked-up trolleys for click and collect and home deliveries from the supermarket? Large fries?
In Britain, capitalism itself is institutionally racist in a century-long hangover from the empire.
‘Heavy Heart’ kicks straight in with a buzzing, fuzzing, gritty bass and kicking drums that yell urgency. And yes, this is urgent, and it and locks into a throbbing groove that really grabs you hard, a magnificently poised dance / punk hybrid. Just as punk gave voice to a generation frustrated and marginalised, so, sadly, what goes around comes around, and once again, it’s music which is a powerful medium for channelling that frustration. We need change, and it’s voices like Joshi’s which give us hope. And in the meantime, Kill, The Icon! give us a unifying energy, and exhilarating tunes.
Having recently signed to Blaggers Records, Kill, The Icon! Unveil the first taste of their debut EP in the form of single cut ‘Protect the Brand’ – a song they describe as being ‘loosely based on David Fincher’s Fight Club’.
As Chuck Palahniuk wrote in the novel on which the film is based, ‘You are not your job, you’re not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis.’ This is capitalism laid bare: the workers defining themselves by brand allegiance, working all hours to eke out a living and make themselves feel better by buying shit they don’t need with money they don’t have. It’s a fucking con, and it’s never been more transparent as energy companies rake in record profits while people struggle to afford to stay warm and feed themselves, blaming the so-called cost of living crisis on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and mass strikes taking place across the UK while rail companies siphon off millions to pay execs and shareholders while claiming there’s no money for staff wages, and the NHS coffers are bare for paying their staff because they’ve haemorrhaged billions on redundant PPE provided by companies owned by government chums like Michelle Mone.
The trouble is, it’s taken too, too long for the general populace to twig that they’re being shafted, and the government has been quietly bolstering its powers to dismantle protest and limit rights – not just workers’ rights but human rights since Brexit – that pushing back against it all is incredibly difficult. And many still don’t even see corporate brainwashing for what it is as they obediently trudge back to their offices at their own expense for two or three days a week for the ‘hybrid office experience’ corporations are insistent is essential for both productivity and wellbeing.
This realisation is the narrative of ‘Protect the Brand’, a song which the band explain is ‘viewed through the lens of an overworked and underpaid office worker who is tasked with mind-numbing, repetitive jobs until he finally engineers his own sacking. The Worker stumbles through a crisis of realization, as he starts to question the purpose of work within a capitalist framework.’
It’s driven by a mega-dense bass, and the vocal is a perfect counterpoint, a monotone that chops between corporate inanities and anti-corporate vitriol. It absolutely works, and creates a tension that doesn’t entirely resolve. Once again, Kill, The Icon! are on the money and nail the zeitgeist. Listen up, and listen good.
I thought I was pretty much abreast of happenings on the Leeds scene, but seemingly since lockdown put paid to live action for two years and since then reduced rail services and skyrocketing rail fairs have capped my forays over the county border significantly, it transpires I’ve missed out on a lot, including the emergence of post-punk influenced indie quartet Cliché Cult. They’ve banged out five singles already since forming in 2020, and this, their first with Blaggers Records, home to JW Paris, who have found favour on 6Music and on these virtual pages also.
‘Slippy’ is kinda loose-sounding, rough ‘n’ ready Northern indie with some chiming guitars that see it land somewhere in the region of Turn on the Bright Lights Interpol and Gene and Marion in that way that nods confidently in the direction of The Smiths but avoids the maudlin self-pity and whiny nasal vocals.
You wouldn’t describe them as typical Leeds, but it’s not hard to discern why they’ve built themselves a following, and fast, and if you’re looking for a song that fits the description of ‘indie anthem’, look no further.
I have questions. Not least of all, why is the bassist with A.R.T, Tiarnan Mathews known as 10” Tiarnan? I sincerely hope it isn’t because of the obvious, unless it’s ironic. But then, they all have daft nicknames, with lead guitarist Bradley Allen being known as General Sweet Tooth, drummer Scott Gordon as Dijon Mustard, and rhythm guitarist Tom Strange also known rather dubiously as Daddy Strange.
To their credit, they’ve been favourably described as ‘Bowie meets The Killers’ rather than ‘oddball creepy buggers’, which s a plus, or they wouldn’t be getting a review. I’m not prejudiced, just really busy, and give preferential treatment to acts who aren’t a bit sus.
‘Nothing Better to Do’ is pitched as ‘strolling a line between indie rock and glam, whisked together with the charm of the likes of Madness and Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ and I have to admit that this doesn’t sit comfortably. I loved Madness as a kid, but by my mid-teens I not only found them a little wearisome, but had started to take issue with their flag-waving fanbase. Granted, you can’t necessarily blame a band for the fans it attracts, but nevertheless, it can be offputting.
It’s early days for A.R.T, and there’s a lot going on here with a load of 80s indie in the nagging guitar line and a certain needling insistent groove that’s hard to ignore. There are hints of Orange Juice in the mix, not to mention a dash of funk but equally some raucous white soul and a splash of blues, before they chill the vibe with a mega sax break. Why did sax breaks seem to die a death in the 80s? Shit, we need more sax breaks. We need more A.R.T.
The Kecks go goth with their new single! Well, perhaps not quite, but ‘Tonight Might Be Different’ is certainly a slide down into darker territory compared to its predecessor, ‘All for Me’. It’s got a slinky bassline and a smooth but stutter lead guitar line that hints of late-night smokiness and even a dash of desperate sleaze. It’s not a radical shift in real terms: ‘All for Me’ made nods toward early Pulp, and this, too, expands on their Fire years death disco indie stylings, the combining the gloom and catchiness of tracks like ‘My Legendary Girlfriend’.
Lyrically, it’s an interesting one, veering between paranoia and frustration that are both relevant and relatable to many as Lennart Uschmann reflects ‘I’m so busy giving everybody else attention / My friendship starts to feel more like a disease’. But then again, these thoughts emerge from a jumble of confusion, a state which finds him ‘coming home too late and messing up the place by being way too stoned.’
Meanwhile, outside, ‘They’re kicking down the doors and making lots of noise’, and it’s all very visual, even if it is cut-up and fragmentary. It could, and probably should, all be a horrible and incoherent mess, but the end result is far from it, and it’s all in the execution.
Switching from a sinewy lead guitar to a chorus-coated echo-heavy picked rhythm that’s got that circa 1984 post-punk sound, the punchy drumming and solid bass bring a real rock swagger, and it all comes together to make for their strongest single cut yet.
Aural Aggravation 