Here at the Send Me Your Ears studio, we’ve been taking a listen to the latest track from Exeter, UK, band, The Issues. With a band name like “The Issues” we expected them to have a few.. .well.. issues. Their latest single, Arancini, is a fun and explosive punk rock dig at the state of UK politics.
Arancini is three and a half minutes of aggressive power, all channelled into the band’s less than favourable attitude towards the now-departed (thank goodness) Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.
Says Joe Jenkins (frontman/songwriter) ; We pride ourselves in writing seemingly stupid tunes with a sprinkling of biting truth, and that’s exactly what we’ve done with Arancini. On the surface, it’s about a gross Eton sleazeball gorging on his favourite bitesize appetiser, but really it’s an audible culmination of our generation’s rage towards the callousness and gross frivolity of our leaders. Arancini is some kind of fancy food, from what we can understand, and we love The Issues ability to perhaps be the first band in history to sing about risotto!!
Starting with a little spoken word panned to the left, the song quickly explodes with some driven bass and crunchy guitars. This is lo-fi punk at its very best. All of us in the studio were nodding our heads in time.
The lyrics of the choruses possibly, just possibly, mean that this won’t get the commercial airplay that it deserves, but we have no doubt that The Issues are a band who are breaking down plenty of barriers on the live circuit.
The interchanging of guitar and vocals in the verses reminded us, just a touch, of Rage Against The Machine’s – Killing In The Name Of. A great technique and one used well to bring the choruses to the forefront of the listener’s attention. A real singalong chorus – if your kids aren’t in the room.
The extra guitars that come in later in the song, the guitar solo panned left that leads to some lovely basswork and that discussion about the quality of last night’s risotto, all make for a damn fine song that we hit replay on immediately.
The attitude, the guttural scream, the humour – everything about this song will win them plenty more fans.
From a production perspective, we recommend that a boost around 80Hz would add some extra thump to the kick drum and a small cut around 120Hz would reduce a slightly muddy tone. A cut around 750Hz and a wide boost centred around 10kHz would balance out the track overall giving it some extra brightness and clarity. A single band compressor on the top two octaves with some make up gain would help bring even more clarity to the top end whilst still controlling the sibilance in the vocal track.
Fans of The Boomtown Rats or even Adam and the Ants and a good dose of tongue-in-cheek humour will find this track very appealing. Great stuff! More, please!!