‘A nice radio friendly song about hating your offspring’: Review –‘Kids’, KEG
Overflowing crashing percussion, blaring trumpets and flippant lyrics, indie-art-punk seven piece KEG has certainly come back with a bang with their latest single, ‘Kids’.
While the phrase might be clichéd, it’s an achievement from a band whose debut album ‘Assembly‘ set the bar pretty explosively high. If you’d told me before giving it a listen that that its creators were effectively a musical motley crew, featuring hip-hop influenced guitarist Frank, classically trained trombonist and drummer Charlie and Johnny, and balled-inspired guitarist Jules, I won’t have had a clue what it would sound like. After giving any of KEG’s previous work even a passing listen you’d be less surprised. An album punctuated by whining guitar, supernatural synth and Albert’s barked vocals, KEG have established their sound as one not to shy away from noise.
With such different inspirations, you might expect KEG formed through a hodgepodge of circumstantial meetings. In actuality, Albert, Joel (bass) and Will (synth) grew up together around the seaside Yorkshire town of Bridlington. Diffusing into the rest of the country post-education, all three collected a couple more band members, before connecting once more in Brighton. Thus, KEG was born.
In established KEG fashion, new single ‘Kids’ is a little bit of everything. The combination of a catchy brass-filled chorus, art-rock cow-belled intro and screeching art-punk vocals showcases the band’s ability to seamlessly surf genres. Talking Head’s fans will no doubt be reminded of David Byrne’s multi-genre antics, while FEET listeners might spot similarities (other than both bands’ capitalised noun names). ‘Kids’ does differ from the rest of KEG’s discography by being the track in which Albert’s tongue in most firmly in his cheek. If you couldn’t guess from the chorus, in which Albert complains about ‘shitty kids’, the track is about the anguish of a parent with health-food and Michael McIntyre-loving children. KEG explain, I’ve always had a great relationship with my mum, but there were occasional times where I remember her saying, ‘I love you loads, I just don’t like you very much at the moment. What if your kids grew up the complete opposite of you?’
The track’s accompanying music video is just as irrevent as its lyrics…
Their new single coincides with the announcement of their second EP, Girders, to be released with Alcopop! Records/BMG on September 2nd of this year. The band describes Girders as coming “about quite naturally, unconsciously it all seemed to line up”. They did, however, stress that this was ‘perhaps with the exception of ‘Kids’ which is just a nice radio friendly song about hating your offspring.”
With that cryptic soundbite ringing in our ears, it seems that listeners will just have to wait and see what KEG’s got in store on their new album.
Words by Kate Bowie
