Blaenavon are busy bouncing back from trauma and mental illness. The group went on hiatus after the release of their 2017 LP That’s Your Lot, as singer Ben Gregory penned a letter to his fans documenting his struggle with a “stress-related breakdown.” Since then they’ve regrouped and returned, turning their back on their past releases with ‘Catatonic Skinbag’.
“The song is about isolation,” says front-man Ben Gregory to Dork. “Cutting oneself off from the world to engage in fruitless sensual pleasures and pretending everything is ok. Watching fucking Netflix and drinking a bottle of wine when you should probably instead be in therapy. But there’s a way out. Art, friendship, love. You don’t have to be a catatonic skinbag. Lol.”
The lyrics capture this brilliantly. A sense of brainlessness or a hypnotized state of consumption we all can probably associate with. Gregory has not lost his story-telling knack it seems, even if he is much happier nowadays. But the music as a whole leaves much to be desired.
The break appears to have seen the group’s sound step backwards and not forwards. Innovation and artistic direction appear to have been replaced by simple and unimaginative pleasures. It’s already BBC Radio 1’s tune of the week! Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy when artists morph into something new, and Blaenavon may still with their full release but, the intimacy that supported the lyrics on previous releases is lost here. Instead, Gregory’s intensely personal words are drowned out by formulaic and repetitive choruses that alienate you – the listener- from any sense of empathy.
In one Catfish-and-the-Bottlemen-esque swoop, the band come across void of newness. When I was sat listening I thought “it’s not hard to hear throwbacks to early noughties rock here”, you know, the kind I think most hoped would never rear its ugly gel-spiked head again.
Words by Nick Ikin
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