Aural Aggravation

Scruff of the Neck

Christopher Nosnibor

False Heads preface the arrival of their new album, Sick Moon, which is due at the end of September with the single ‘Thick Skin’, produced by Frank Turner.

Front man Luke Griffiths tells it straight when discoursing on the single’s inspiration and purpose, saying ‘“Thick Skin’ is about how much I f****** hate the current political discourse. To me, politics seems to be completely and utterly middle-class from left to right – class has been seemingly removed from a lot of left-wing politics.”

It’s hard to argue when the leader of the Labour opposition, supposedly the party of the workers, is a knighted ex-lawyer. Small wonder the workers are applauding RMT union head Mick Lynch as the voice of the people, since he’s the only one who’s really telling it like it is, and using his platform opportunities to explain just why everything is so fucked. No-one else is talking about how wages aren’t the issue in the “cost off living crisis”, it’s the fact that wages are being suppressed to preserve profits. People are struggling while CEOs rake in staggering salaries and bewildering bonuses and shareholders reap megadividends at the expense of the poor cunts who do the work and so effectively make those profits possible.

Griffiths goes on: ‘It’s also about social media politics. That kind of rage and vitriol is some form of lashing out for mental health problems and it’s like a form of addictive behaviour. I understand this, dealing with depression and having a history of drug abuse, and I understand how difficult it is to not let that rage inside you come out in vicious ways. But I just feel like social media has allowed a million different forms of religion, nationalism and tribalism to be completely normalised. Our brains are rotting and there is no hope, and every time I feel like there is I’m stung again.’

Again, it’s relatable on a mass scale. Religion is no longer the opium of the people: it’s social media, and it’s divisive, crushing, and debilitating.

‘Thick Skin’ packs all of this into two minutes and forty of guitar-driven grunge with a radio-friendly edge that sits between Asylums and DZ Deathrays, in that it balances attack with melody, big guitars with strong hooks. It’s a cracker!

AA