How can a song sound both muddy and clean? Be steeped in its influences yet tear out of the traps, brand spanking new? Feature lyrics of intense and heartbreaking sadness, set to music of euphoric uplift? Can a three-minute pop song really accommodate such disparity? Should it?
That’s a lot of questions, certainly, but Clean Cut Kid have the answers. The four-piece from Liverpool – Mike Halls, Evelyn Halls, Saul Godman and Ross Higginson – arrive at a time when even the most optimistic, glass-half-full sort of person has started to fear that pop as a currency, as a conduit for emotion, truth, complexity and daring, has been cheapened to the point of no return. Sure, Clean Cut Kid’s songs possess the whipsmart immediacy of classic radio pop; but there is something much deeper going on in there, too. And that’s the point: why settle for a quick-fix first draft, they argue, for the speediest, least troublesome route to a sel...
Show the rest
How can a song sound both muddy and clean? Be steeped in its influences yet tear out of the traps, brand spanking new? Feature lyrics of intense and heartbreaking sadness, set to music of euphoric uplift? Can a three-minute pop song really accommodate such disparity? Should it?
That’s a lot of questions, certainly, but Clean Cut Kid have the answers. The four-piece from Liverpool – Mike Halls, Evelyn Halls, Saul Godman and Ross Higginson – arrive at a time when even the most optimistic, glass-half-full sort of person has started to fear that pop as a currency, as a conduit for emotion, truth, complexity and daring, has been cheapened to the point of no return. Sure, Clean Cut Kid’s songs possess the whipsmart immediacy of classic radio pop; but there is something much deeper going on in there, too. And that’s the point: why settle for a quick-fix first draft, they argue, for the speediest, least troublesome route to a self-congratulatory pat on the back, when craft, hard graft, and sheer dogged, cussed bloody-mindedness and persistence can lead you to results that leap clear of the average and workaday?
This is the opposite of generic, lowest-common-denominator music. On the contrary, it is the product of restless, inquisitive minds, of musicians unwilling to cut corners or settle for compromise. “The challenge we set ourselves was this,” says Mike. “Is there a way of taking really well-written, well-formed songs and putting them through a different process so that they become what we want them to be? It’s like there’s a load of tortured elements that sort of come together around a song that’s already there, but you can play that song on anything. The more a song is just a three-chord thing, the more you can totally mess with all the other components. You can sneak stuff over the threshold that way, and it feels so much better if you do that. You let it all loose in the studio. But you have to have the song to start with.”
Well, Clean Cut Kid have certainly got those, in abundance. “Soulful pop ballads, washed in Mersey water,” is how Mike describes them. That will do for now. Pretty soon, though, they’re going to be weighed down with superlatives, and soundtracking our lives. Until then, the band should probably try to get a bit of sleep. Things are about to move for them, and fast.
Hide the rest
