By DJ Monk
There is a line in the press release which accompanied this, the third album by Southend agit-poppers Asylums which grates with me, as no doubt it will with many ÜR readers, and especially our female ones, when singer Luke Branch refers to the fact that his wife “fell pregnant” during the writing and recording process. I mean, babies are not conceived by a woman tripping over a loose paving stone: there is a biological process involved. However, what Branch’s somewhat misworded statement serves to do is highlight the backdrop against which this new album itself was gestated and brought into the world.
Outside becoming a parent for the first time, and the changes which such events bring to one’s perspective on life, especially at the most personal of levels, ‘Genetic Cabaret’ sees Branch once again railing against the inequalities and injustices of modern-day society, with political instability and the omnipresence of technology and its consequences (especially for both personal and societal harm) very much to the forefront of his eloquently expressed lyrical acidity.
Now, I’ll admit that this is the sort of album that normally lies outside my musical comfort zone: it’s a bit too Britpop for my tastes, with all its jangly guitars and faux angst-ridden post-teenage trauma and whimsicality. However, there is no doubt that Branch and his bandmates – Jazz Miell, Henry Tyler and Michael Webster – can craft a decent tune or 12, as there is not one weak element on this impressive offering. Branch offers some interesting and intelligent insights into today’s somewhat BoJo/Putin/Trump polluted society, especially on the likes of opener and lead single ‘Catalogue Kids’, the irony-strewn ‘A Town Full Of Boarded Up Windows’, the savvy ‘Who Writes Tomorrow’s Headlines?’ and the acerbic ‘Yuppie Germs’.
If you’re looking for musical reference points, think Blur with a massive shot of The Pixies rammed up their arses – or just look to the fact that the album is produced, as expertly as ever, by the guru of alt-noise himself, Steve Albini.
Whatever way you approach it, ‘Genetic Cabaret’ is an album that fulfils the clarity of its intent and demonstrates once again that Asylums are a band ploughing their own furrow and making waves in the process. Poetically, it is an important statement, the words of which deserve, no need, to be heard.
- ‘Genetic Cabaret’ is released today (Friday 17 July). You can get your copy HERE.
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