Hip-hop, of course, factors in as well, and it sounds like many of these newer bands have at least casually absorbed a lot of trap and drill, or had their influence filtered through white British artists such as The Streets and Kae Tempest who are situated closer to rap. Ned Green of Legss puts it most directly in the song ' On Killing a Swan Blues,' saying, 'If I was an American, my experiences, they would have shaped me / Because I am British, they only make me tired.'Īnother complication is that speak-song has its own long history in indie and alternative music, going all the way back to The Velvet Underground's ' The Gift' in the late '60s, and including songs by artists such as Sonic Youth, Slint, The Fall, King Missile, Black Box Recorder, The Nails, Cake, Art Brut, and Arab Strap along the way. Some writers and outlets have simply defaulted to 'post-punk,' and while this music certainly belongs in a family line going back to early '80s, labeling it as such doesn't do quite enough to describe the style's resurgence in this moment, or how the musicians have internalized more recent musical and cultural trends.įor one thing, there's no getting around how much of this music is a direct response to the social dynamics of post-Brexit England, whether it's written into the background of the emotional drama of repressed lust in Dry Cleaning's ' Strong Feelings' or manifests as a brutal caricature of a well-to-do pro-leave voter in Yard Act's ' Fixer Upper.' The politics aren't always foregrounded, but there's an unmistakable feeling of shame, disappointment and pessimism about Britain's future permeating all of this music. And for Americans to chime in first feels a touch clueless and presumptuous, like insisting that you get to name your neighbors' newborn baby. Whatever is happening, it's hard to ignore.īut what to call it? It's odd that the issue hasn't already been decided by the British music press, who famously loves to coin genre names. Today, the wave of like-minded new bands from this part of the world is approaching something like critical mass, and its leading lights have begun releasing some of the most exciting debut albums and EPs so far this year.

When these artists began popping up around 2018, what they shared read as coincidence, if anything. bands that kinda talk-sing over post-punk music, and sometimes it's more like post-rock?' But there is something happening in the United Kingdom and Ireland, a cohort of very good bands who meet this vague, wordy description - Squid, Dry Cleaning, Shame, Courting, Sleaford Mods, Yard Act, The Cool Greenhouse, Home Counties, Billy Nomates, Legss, Fontaines D.C., Working Men's Club and Black Country, New Road among them. Talking around it is awkward: 'Uh, I'm really into these U.K. Music genre names can be silly, annoying and reductive, but you realize their stubborn value when there's a new subgenre emerging and no one has given it a name yet. In other words, it's a song designed to make you ask, 'What is this?' It's a weird but effective set of contrasts - wild but controlled, artsy but focused on basic physical response, berserk emotion colliding with detached erudition. The song's sprawling length - 8:29 - is posted on the cover art, scrambling expectations and heralding greater ambitions from a group best known at that point for a frenzied punk tune, ' Houseplants.' 'Narrator' traps that same energy within a tight Krautrock-ish groove, and when that wears out, the song coasts onwards with two spoken-word parts that illustrate feeling caught in the gravity of a self-absorbed person, the kind who lives as though they're the main character and everyone else is just a walk-on. When the British band Squid released the single ' Narrator' in January, everything about it felt like a dare.

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