Thank On Regaining Their Intensity And Blending Dance With Noise

Seth White

Drummer first and foremost, but will happily give an opinion on anything rock, indie and punk related.

We chatted with Leeds’ Thank before the release of their new album, ‘I Have A Physical Body That Can Be Harmed,’ out on 8th November

Good News! Leeds dance-punk and noise-rock group Thank are back business and counting down the days to their new album release via Big Scary Monsters on November 8th. Ahead of the release I spoke to the frontman of the band, Freddy Vinehill-Cliffe. We chatted for my allotted forty minutes via Zoom and delved into all aspects of the new album. From the artwork, to the sounds, to the lyrics and the meanings behind them, we really collected a valuable read for any Thank superfans that are itching for an insight into the new record.

I’ve had the privilege of listening to your album early and I’m already a Thank fanatic. What are your feelings like in the build-up to have this piece of work released to the general public?

Freddy: Gosh! I mean I’m excited! I personally think it’s a big step up from the previous album; considering people liked the first album a lot, I hope people like this one even more! I feel like there were some die-hard Thank fans who were disappointed by the first album. They felt like maybe we’d lost our intensity since the early EP’s, I believe we’ve regained some of that intensity. But ultimately, we’ve just made the album we wanted to make. People might like it, or if they don’t, that’s also fine. but obviously they’re wrong!

It’s now less than a month until the release of your second album ‘I Have A Physical Body That Can Be Harmed’. What would you say was the main musical goal you wanted to achieve with this album?

Freddy: We wanted to translate the feeling of a recent Thank live show to a record, so it’s much more live sounding than the past couple of things we’ve released. Pre-COVID, even though we’ve been a band since 2016, we didn’t tour much at all. Not out of not wanting to… I think we used to be very disorganised I guess.

Since the pandemic we’ve toured a lot and I feel like we’ve kind of honed the live show in a way that’s really fun and exciting and this felt like a good first opportunity to really translate that to a record. It was also a much more collaborative writing experience than our first record, I really feel like all four of us have put our stamp on it. If we’re listening to music in the van, in about twenty seconds you could tell who put it on. We each have our own personal brand and it feels like this record has clear elements of all four us and represents us all individually.

Your sound is starting to seem like the perfect concoction of techno, punk and noise rock… could you give some explanation as to how on earth that happened?

Freddy: Sure! When we first started the band eight and a half years ago we had all been playing in noise rock and punk bands for a while. We were all keen on the idea of doing something more danceable. We were feeling quite inspired by LCD Soundsystem, The Chinese Stars and some friends of ours from Glasgow called Damn Teeth who we’d recently saw in Leeds around when we started Thank.

That was the initial impulse to want to do danceable noise rock. But as time’s gone on, Lewis, our guitarist and synth player, got way more into techno. Gradually that became more and more part of it. The longer you do these things the easier it becomes to combine synth with noise rock elements. As well as that, Steve who joined us as a drummer for about three years now, is a big jungle guy, so you can hear that being pulled into the album as well.

The usage of electronic instrumentation on this record is now becoming a distinctive sound of Thank – How do you feel about this progression in your music? Was it purposeful or has it just occurred this way?

Freddy: The electronic elements have been there from the beginning, as times gone on we’ve become more brave and bold in terms of how we incorporated. Our intention from the beginning was to not just be a rock band, although as time has gone on, we’ve felt more and more comfortable with being a rock band. There was a period, particularly on our 2019 EP ‘Please‘, where you can listen and tell we’re trying desperately to not be a rock band. Even though we are ramping up the electronic elements, we’re getting more comfortable with just rocking out.

One of my favourite facets of your music is the unending cynicism and gritty anger of your lyrics. You explore matters of life’s daily monotony and make frequent stinging social commentaries surrounding the current climate of the UK. How important do you think it is for artists in your realm and music in general to challenge authority and create discourse surrounding social issues?

Freddy: I think it’s important for bands and artists to have a coherent world view but I actually don’t think it’s necessarily important for that to be reflected in the music. In fact, I think when bands get pigeon-holed as a ‘political band’ it can get quite limiting. I am wary of leaning too hard into that.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that all music and music scenes are inherently political in some way, but the idea that you have to be pushing a political message is quite limiting. I think anyone who listens to Thank can probably get a pretty clear idea of our political worldview, but I don’t necessarily think of us as a political band. It’s a lot broader than that.

Can you describe to me what gave you an impulse to write about the topic of ‘woke’ scapegoating in modern media on ‘Woke Frasier’?

Freddy: It’s hard to pinpoint the specific impetus of that… I think it is just a general phenomenon that’s become far more apparent in the last five years. It’s this thing of people who are largely politically disengaged and misinformed, throwing around this word ‘woke’ and it just becoming shorthand for just ‘I don’t like this thing’.

You hear people complain about films, TV shows and games when there’s a lead character who’s not white, a man or straight and they accuse it of going ‘woke’. It’s not woke for a woman to exist! I’m sure that’s not news to anyone reading this. I guess I enjoy inhabiting the kind of character of an irritating person who, on the face of it, seems harmless, but on the inside has some quite insidious ideas. If that becomes normal it’s easy to slip some quite dangerous ideas under the radar.

The video for ‘Woke Frazier‘ is hilariously baffling. how was the process of creating it with George Chadwick?

Freddy: That’s the second video George has done for us.. we wanted to do another video in the style of ‘Torture Cube,’ the first video George did for us. In general, I’m really inspired by retro-futuristic art and visions of what the future might have looked like. There’s a song called ‘Cocoons’ by a Glasgow band called Alarm Bells and the video for that was a big reference point for this. We wanted to whole thing to feel like a broken 90’s computer game.

Your album cover is quite the feast for the eyes. Can you elaborate on what the creative vision was for the artwork and how it came about?

Freddy: So that painting is by a guy called Nick Sheehy, it wasn’t created specifically for the album. And yeah, it is quite bonkers. We were throwing around loads of ideas for artwork and basically it got to a point where we had so many ideas and then Steve suggested Nick Sheehy. We found this particular painting that matched the tone of the album, then it turned out our friend knows Nick Sheehy!

So we got in contact with Nick and managed to licence the painting to use for the artwork. A lot of the album is to to do with the realisation of the fragility and precariousness of the vessel in which you live in. These frogs piloting a puppet made out of bones and a pineapple felt like it related to that…It’s also just a cool painting. When you ask about artwork, more bands should just be like, ‘Yeah it’s cool isn’t it?’ That’s all that matters really.

One of my favourite lyrical moments on the record is during track 7 – ‘Smiling Politely‘ – In which you state that one day you will ‘die in a freak instant noodles on toast related accident’. Can you tell us more about the song ‘Smiling Politely’ and what part of your brain these nuggets of lyrical genius come from?

Freddy: A classic lazy meal of mine is instant noodles on toast, I’m sure many people can relate, but I’ve had various people in my life over the years who were very stressed out about me using metal implements to get toast out of the toaster. I’ve got this running gag that I know how I’m gonna go, one day I’ll die via putting a knife in a toaster. There’s no mystery in it for me, there’s some comfort in that.

There’s another good lyric in ‘Smiling Politely’ that goes ‘I don’t know who you are, but I don’t like your attitude’ which stems from a story from my dad about my great grandad when he moved in with him and his parents. One night he got up and tried to get ready for work, despite having not had a job for like 15 years, tying his necktie with a dressing gown belt. My grandad tried to stop him, and his response was “I don’t know who you are, but I don’t like your attitude!” Which I thought was just a brilliant response to anything.

There’s a tune on this record for nearly all rock and punk enjoyers, I guess the only thing left is to spread the message! How are you feeling about your upcoming Autumn UK and European tour dates?

Freddy: Feeling good about it! It’s always good to play in London, I haven’t played at the New Cross Inn before so that’ll be good. We always have a good time in France, particularly at more off the beaten track venues. We’re playing in Solingen in Germany, which was one of my favourite gigs we’ve ever played last time, and we haven’t been there in five years.

The Leeds date is going to be amazing. We’re putting on an all-dayer at the Brudenell Social Club with a bunch of our favourite bands. We’re supporting Cherubs in Manchester and Future Of The Left in Bristol… it’s always a good time to get exposed to a crowd that will hopefully have some overlap with you. So yeah, some really good, varied gigs. We’ve also got some really exciting gigs lined up for next year. It looks like next year will probably be our biggest yet for touring.

Lastly, I have an enticing moral dilemma I hope you can help me solve. In a world where the Simpsons have gone woke, Frasier has gone woke, my neighbours have gone woke, and my friends and family have too, what is the next step for a disillusioned young man like myself?

Freddy: Erm… wow. Well it would be easy to be sucked into the Rodney Fipplecash podcast rabbit hole, this being the podcast featured in the ‘Woke Frasier‘ video. In actuality, I think you should go listen to Thank! Also try and connect with your community, talk to your family, friends and neighbours and try and understand their points of view. Get involved with some community activism; if you’re unhappy with the direction of this country maybe you could get involved with your local anti-fascist network… There is all kinds of good stuff you can do to avoid getting sucked into the alt-right pipeline.

All that is left now is to wait patiently until November 8th rolls around the fully envelop ourselves in pure Thankmania. If you’ve read this far, you’ve got no excuse! Stream Thank’s music and enjoy the electro-noise-rock goodness.

Watch/Listen to ‘Woke Frasier’ here: