‘TGIF’: Five anti-capitalism anthems from new acts
Try as it might, but capitalism’s rapacious maw hasn’t completely swallowed the independent music community, yet.
It’s never been harder to eke out some vestige of sustainable musical activity, however, let alone a livelihood. It’s all ancient history now, but once upon a time, unemployment benefits without the seething curtain twitchers, plentiful council houses and low rents, and the cherished post-war institute of the art school, were all provisions granted by the social contract which afforded working-class eccentrics, mavericks, and dissidents the breathing space to conceptualise, hone their craft, and forge a path toward taxable income in the music industry or wider arts.
Free time. Remember that? To anybody born in the late 1980s and beyond, the luxury of exerting all physical and mental energy on surviving on wages that barely cover living costs has quashed many a musical dream, and it’s a fucking heartbreaking tragedy. The wonders of the free market have created an impossibility for up-and-coming bands and artists, navigating a hellscape of closing venues and precarious work that’s robbed the country of so many potential stars.
Never forget what they took from you.
Despite its challenges, music continues to soldier on, determined to create work that’s vital and speaks to the contemporary malaise that stubbornly fogs the Western World. Some confront head-on, exoriating the political class and their economic dogmas. Others spit gritty reportage of the daily grind’s weathering of the soul. Or, one may pen a number celebrating the small but nourishing ways one may fuck over their boss. However anybody who finds their rebellion against the corporate straightjacket or leeching landlord, capitalism’s end times horror indeed inspires countless numbers taking a stake to its vampiric heart.
While there’s a litany of bands out there sharpening their lyrical barbs toward the failed consensus, we plumb for an arbitrary five, in no order, that’s taking a square aim at eternal wealth extraction and never-ending productivity.
Five anti-capitalism anthems from new acts:
Angry Blackmen – Grind
Welding a bruising fusion of industrial beats and serrated synth attack, experimental hip-hop duo Angry Blackmen hammer and twist a punishing lyrical landscape of their Chicago hometown and beyond.
Combative but always anchored with a wry humour, rappers Quentin Branch and Brian Warren weave a disorienting noise terrain that could just as easily careen through police brutality and the Black experience of an America spinning out of control as easily as an off-kilter Marvel comics reference or SpongeBob meme.
Blasting out the speakers with splintered groove, last year’s ‘Grind’ from The Legend of ABM scored the daily fatigue with leaden authenticity. Against the crumpling electronic assault, the pair emcee lines like “Working 9 to 5 / On the grind just to stay alive / Money on my mind / When I rhyme just to get a dime” with a stinging universality felt by anyone wandering capitalism’s smoking crater, powered by a tank of ambition fast running dry.
Panic Shack – Lazy
Finally releasing their eponymous debut album after a string of piquant singles and an EP, Cardiff’s Panic Shack confronts the ills of today head-on with a skint revelry, every one of their fizzy garage rock cuts gloriously cluttered and impromptu, as if you’re hanging out in their giant house share with the quartet hearing the latest on the trials of jogging, who’s in possession of the lighter, and witnessing a lifetime’s dressing down now the hot fashion flair by those who can afford otherwise.
Among such laughter, moans, and jibes that pepper Panic Shack is ‘Lazy’s lethargic celebration. A buoyant burst of post-punk bounce eagerly praising the luxury to be had in ignoring the alarm, leaving the dishes, and speaking candidly about fucking work off. It’s cathartic.
Rejecting capitalism’s unyielding pressure for productivity, singer Sarah Harvey’s “I’m lazy and I like it / I stand up just to sit back down” crackles with a confessional most of the country can relate to, whether they admit it or not.
Findom – The Living Standard
There’s a doomerism that radiates from Findom’s gutter jazz skulks.
A possible portmanteau of “financial” and “domination”, the London post-punk gang takes a surgical saw to the collective English skull and scoops out our knotty and tangled class servility, evoking nightmarish visions of austerity ghosts and faded communities in its no wave shuffle. Findom makes their political leanings clear, the Pay, Pig EP with the Gob Nation swirling with numbers, tearing apart racist dogwhistles meant to divide us, and confirming exactly what kind of Tory constitutes a “good Tory”.
Pay, Pig’s centrepiece, however, is the fetid ‘The Living Standard’. Shuffling with shuttered-up town energy and dead-end whooze, Findom’s hooting sax scrapes against its languid bass, illustrating lyricist Aldous Robinson’s chewed-up scrawls of media poison and thin porridge consumption. Capturing the grey joylessness that capitalism has ensured, ‘The Living Standard’ scores our slow, diminishing shrinkage of political possibility.
Disgusting Sisters – TGIF
Indeed sisters, Jules and Josie Hopkins combined their own idiosyncratic love of electronic music, cult films, and dollops of irreverent humour to craft an urgent club donk sound that balances emotional fervour with a nonchalant energy.
A skewed worldview through a Gen Z lens that’s only known neoliberalism at its worst, the fun the prickles underneath their dance-punk mutant disco feels wrought from the kind of party held that’s as much a staving off of grim reality as the unabashed abandon of an all-nighter in some dingy venue.
Such frissons are tapped into on Disgusting Sisters’ second single, ‘TGIF’. As the acronym suggests, the eager shaking off of the working week’s fusty oppression and the almost cryptid renewal that takes place when the night has arrived and the music is at its most intense—complete with lycanthrope howling in the background—scores that transformation we all undertake when free from our day job’s clammy grip.
Flat Party – Aching for Living
The gnawing themes of capitalist ruin needn’t present dour ruminations or overly glib pop rejections. One can ease into its mournful fug and wrestle out a damn good indie number, such as London six-piece Flat Party. With an EP and single behind them, Flat Party spins bright and chunky guitar riffs and sharp melodies that feel somewhat planted in the everyday mundanity of country as it existed in the year of our Lord 2024.
Little’s changed in those short but bewildering months. The agonising ritual of jumping from one extortionate house to another in the capital has been giving a beguilingly radiant garage hook on ‘Aching For Living’, clod-hopping through the acerbic stroll while offering the immortal lines “Viewing after viewing while I’m aching for living now”.
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