In an
attempt to reinvest some life in this blog, and as a handy means of reflecting
on what I critically enjoy as a writer while I’m currently not doing much
writing, I thought I’d start a (hopefully) fairly regular feature: artworks
that inspire me.
To kick
this off, I’m going to start with a band who released their third full length
album, Anaesthesiology, earlier this
year. ONSIND (short for One Night Stand In North Dakota – a reference to inadequate
abortion facilities in parts of North America), consisting of Nathan Griffin
and Daniel Ellis, first came on my radar in the spring of 2007 when I saw them
supporting Mike Park at the Bridge Hotel in Newcastle. I arrived halfway
through them playing ‘Riot Don’t Diet’, whose chorus, bemoaning Thatcher’s
affects on feminist discourse, goes: ‘If that’s equality I’ll eat my hat / if
that’s equality I’ll emigrate in five seconds flat / if that’s equality I’ll
throw myself off Canary Wharf and smash a few glass ceilings as I fall.’
Arguably not the best rhymes in the world, I’m willing to let it slip for two
reasons: firstly, the song is from their demo; but more importantly, here were
2 punks from Durham in the function room of a Newcatle pub singing to a
(largely white, middle-class male, NOFX t-shirt-sporting) audience about
feminism (and other ‘political’ subjects). Not really par for the blast-beats
and power chords course, then.
Fast-forward
a few years, albums, splits and several times watching them play in some of the
North East’s classiest venues (remember the top floor of The Cooperage,
anyone?), ONSIND are back with what I’m going to lay on the line as the most
important album by a British band this year.
Released collaboratively
through Durham’s Discount Horse Records and Plan-It-X Records of Bloomington, Indiana,
Anaesthesiology sees every part of
this band’s repertoire become superlative. For a start, the instrumentation,
which is much fuller and includes use of clarinet, cornet and trombone, makes
ONSID sound a lot more like a full band than the 2-man outfit we’re used to
seeing them perform as. Secondly, the scope, ambition and detail of the lyrics
are now exceptional. With punk bands, there has always been a tendency to just
scream ‘fuck you’ at whatever the object of derision is. ONSIND have always
been cleverer than that. Partially, this must be down to the liberties (and in
some cases restrictions) afforded by predominantly playing as two men with
acoustic guitars, but I think something deeper – and much more interesting and
important – is going on. I’ve seen ONSIND enough times live to know – and not
have the fear to admit – that the songs tend to work better on record. Last
time I did see them, in fact, was at the Star and Shadow’s Christmas all-dayer
last year, when they previewed songs from Anaesthesiology.
Live, (and I do realise making this judgement on hearing them once is probably
ill-informed) those new songs didn’t stack up and I was left feeling a bit, well,
like the band hadn’t progressed too far beyond being those 2 angry lads in the
upstairs of a pub.
How wrong
I was. Anaesthesiology is an album
that needs to be listened to just like that: as an album, with good headphones
on, on a rainy day.
In many
ways Anaesthesiology is a concept
album. Not in a wanky sense, and it’s certainly not apparent on first listen,
but repeated listens begin to reveal more: more about the enigmatic Chelsea,
who this album surely is some kind of ode to; and more about – as those album
notes inform us – the ‘stories set predominantly in the North East of England
[...] for the most part based on real events and people.’
If Chelsea is the muse
for this album, David Cameron and the legacy of Tory governments is surely its
target. In an age where the North East is being labelled ‘desolate’ by Tory
peers, and not to mention the whole burnout of Thatcherism on traditionally
working-class communities in the region, it’s both patently obvious and somehow
quite refreshing that Anaesthesiology
gives the Conservative party a massive flick of the Vs. Rest assured, though,
if you think that this album is a one-trick-pony. Oh, no: other cheerful topics
include racist immigration (‘You make your case and you go home / [...] and you
go to sleep alone / But in the darkness you can hear the violent deportations /
Jimmy screaming for his life on a British Airways flight.’); the callous and
calculated deconstruction of the welfare state (‘A front bench of old Etonians
/ [...] screaming “we’re all in this together” whilst they amputate welfare’);
and mental health (‘There’s something wrong with me / I don’t think I’ll ever
be okay / I just take it day by day (by day by day)’).
The album’s crowning
achievement for me is ‘God Hates Fags’, which, while worth quoting almost in
full, somehow feels disingenuous to the band, and, oddly, to Chelsea. Based on
the death and subsequent funeral of a mutual friend or family member (that we
have to speculate on the exact identity of the deceased is not an indication of
poor song writing, but actually testament to the sensitivity with which Griffin
and Ellis broach the subject), the song steadily builds towards a sort of
anti-crescendo: an elegiac refrain in which the lines ‘the world got smaller,
things got harder’ really stand out as potent and grim reminders of the fact
that for many, life really is [still] tough in the North East.
It is the combination
of a pervasive sense of melancholy, channelled through the plight of Chelsea,
and a furious resentment of corruption and greed in the wider world which makes
Anaesthesiology not only the
stand-out British album of the year so far for me, but the most concise rebuke
to the Coalition government’s cynical policies I have seen or heard while the
party(ies) have been in power. For all of this to come off the back of two lads
from Pity Me, whose dedication to a DIY ethos is probably the most admirable I’ve
ever come across, is testament to the strength, creativity and vitality of this
region, and more importantly, to the life-affirming power that music can hold
when it is done with passion, honesty and a hearty Durham accent.
Anaesthesiology is available now from Discount Horse records.
