‘Nothing Vicious’: Vinyl-groove-proof that in heather are one of Manchester’s best current exports
The band share their debut EP.
Photo: In Heather
in heather’s debut EP is not just a strong start for a band’s undoubtedly fruitful recording career to come, but a beacon of light for short-changed fans of jangle in the present.
in heather have been about town for a while. In concert, they’ve always amazed me — and infuriated me. I could never pinpoint their specific influences, their stylistic direction, or their lyrical interests. These three things all together spell out the kiss of death for an (occasional) music journalist. I knew I loved them. I just wasn’t sure why, exactly. Even after becoming friends with the group, I was none the wiser.
Artwork: Jacob Ainsworth
The four-piece group have finally put out a record. Not only do I say ‘finally’ as a fan of their work, and as of a follower of Manchester’s DIY music scene, but also as a journalist, now with no excuse to fail to work out what it is about in heather that clicks oh so well. The band’s debut EP, Nothing Vicious, has come to town. And so has the chance to sit down with the songs that have joyously soundtracked many a night in gig venues across the city.
Opening track Shy is anything but. What starts as a leering Cocteau Twins whisper quickly becomes a veering post-punk joyride… go-karting led by a rag-tag vocalist “too strange to live, too bored to die”. The bass line is bright and sparky, a little similar to Squid (if their verses amounted to anything). The cartoonish and aloof lyrics assert themselves as a series of quotable catch-phrases that XTC’s Andy Partridge wouldn’t mind nicking. Shy is the infant terrible of the EP, if you like. A delightfully snappy cut, filled with self-aware frustration, propelled forward by locomotive kit theatrics courtesy of drummer Josh Cooper. It’s a suitably chirpy start for an EP visualised by chatting tropical birds.
“I paid a witch doctor to turn into a shepherd’s pie… I was minced alive.”
Shy is also, perhaps, the only indie song in which the mention of shepherd’s pie is fitting (and not just a band trying to appeal to Alex Turner’s early 00s Yorkshire-isms).
in heather, between Shy and Bad Luck Comes To Town, quickly let their listeners know how varied they are. Bassist Zaim Choudhury, happy with his brief tirade through key-scratching and witch doctor threats, steps away from the mic to let guitarist Arlo Cooper take the lead. The post-punk silliness is swept aside in favour of an earnest, melodic lead vocal style.
This is one of the bizarre things about in heather — with vocalists swapping between songs, they come across almost like an entirely different group song to song. It’s a blessing and a curse. The interchange means their music never gets stale, rich with the ever-so-valuable allure of unpredictability and spontaneity. But it also means that they’re hard for audiences to pin down, particularly in the case of casual listeners, who tend to cling to the familiar presence of the vocalist to guide them through various musical territories. I worry that the group’s vocal shape-shifting could set them back, commercially speaking. But, then again, The Beatles did fine, I suppose.
Bad Luck Comes To Town, whilst a little repetitive at times, is full of jangly goodness: layers of shimmering guitars, intertwining or maybe contesting, with over-driven lead phrases. It may be a song of misfortune, but it holds firm to the group’s assertion of being artists primarily motivated by sunny sounds: sparkles, jangles, glimmers galore. The middle eight, however, twists and turns the tune from a vaguely familiar jangle-pop ditty into an expansive, ominous trek… storm clouds overhead. It hits you in the gut from the first listen, as if lifted straight out of a New Fast Automatic Daffodils release. The ex-seminal Sarah Records would have bitten off their right hand for a group producing these kinds of intuitive, characterful recordings.
Oh, and to top it all off, the single concludes with a delirious lead bass solo… a goth-tinted part that could very well be used to advertise a Robert Smith signature bass VI (if such a product ever arrives). Take a bow, Mr Choudhury.
To some extent, in heather remind me of The Stranglers. Not because their music is particularly similar, but because of how they seem to be unswayed by current trends. The Stranglers were a ‘punk’ group, which many punks disowned at the very first notion of a synthesiser. Their influences, rather than the movement’s typical aspersion to The Stooges, were more in line with The Doors: spiralling keyboards over peculiar waltzes. It’s hard to spell out just how essential Dave Greenfield’s screwball synthesiser parts were to a band swimming in a pool of destructive, shambolic bar chords.
in heather are of similar vein. Manchester’s current student scene, by and large, is dominated by noise. Post-punk (in its warped, un-melodic mutation), post-rock and noise-rock lives large in a town of young people angry at the world. Angry in a way that doesn’t call for jangle, melody or the conventional pop-song structure. Which is, I suppose, fair enough. There’s an awful lot to rally against. Then, there’s in heather. Third track Walking To The Lighthouse is so dramatically unfashionable in the context of the local market that it’s nothing short of cluelessly wonderful.
“Walking up slowly, lighthouse on the moor… your friends trickle down other side of the door…”
It’s sunny-side-up indie music: a twee, harmony-heavy track that nods to a young Jarvis Cocker’s lighthouse love ode (My Lighthouse), but places the narrator within the inner stairwell, rather than housing him up above in the viewing dome. I imagine that this is why it’s my personal favourite. In the outro, guitarist George Combs harmonises with stand-out catharsis, both vocally and through the acrobatics of the fretboard, creating one of the EP’s dizzy high points (in an EP of many).
in heather find themselves championing the melodic and colourful, caught in a post-modern middle-ground between earnestness and mick-take… nothing like the localised roar that is, to my ears, becoming more and more of a yelp. in heather, like The Stranglers, stick to their own guns — even if every corner of their scene tells them otherwise. After all, these lads are nothing vicious.
in heather closes their EP with perhaps their best — and most ambitious — slice of record-trading wonder. Sun Up functions like a record swap between a vigilant New Order obsessive and a rabid Brian Jonestown Massacre fanatic… Peter Hook ventures out into wind-swept Americana. The first half dips in cool shallows, quiet and crystal, then the second half swings into violent surf. Perhaps, the final reward for truly embracing eclecticism. Even the softly spoken Arlo Cooper affords himself a well-earned snarl.
Personal bias intact, Nothing Vicious is sublime jangle-pop goodness. Personal bias placed aside? Nothing Vicious is, still, sublime jangle-pop goodness.
Am I any closer to understanding why that is? Of course not. All I know is that they’re just as good on record as they are on the stage.
Nothing Vicious is out now via The Molehill.