From: Manchester
Sounds Like: The icons of old Manchester being torn down
For Fans Of: Fat White Family, Sleaford Mods, Happy Mondays
Sounds Like: The icons of old Manchester being torn down
For Fans Of: Fat White Family, Sleaford Mods, Happy Mondays
“The
simple fact is that we don’t like anything dull or boring, we always
want to be entertaining,” says Cabbage guitarist/vocalist Joe Martin.
“There’s a lot of mundanity and routine in modern life. If you can bring
some black humour into that, it’s a really effective way of getting
your message across.”
From their “anti-band name” band name to their lyrics about wanking into quiche in the name of class warfare and wishing death upon the US president-elect, no-one could ever accuse Cabbage of being dull. Martin likens his band to a Frankie Boyle standup show – the four EPs they’ve released thus far might strain the boundaries of good taste, but they also have a lot to say about the state of the world we live in. “We’ve come out of the traps with songs about necrophilia, war and capitalism,” he explains, as if reading from a checklist of well-trodden paths to pop stardom. “When David Cameron called Jeremy Corbyn a terrorist sympathiser, we took a stab at that, too. Those kind of talking points come naturally to us. But we don’t want to be pigeonholed as a political band. It’s already happened, just because we sing about relatively serious issues, but we want to move onto something else, socially, musically and politically. We’re keen to explore different realms as soon as possible.”
It’s that desire to do things differently that originally brought Cabbage to prominence in their native Manchester, where they emerged from beneath the “Britpop ash-cloud the city’s still choking under,” and has seen them feted as rock ’n’ roll’s great white hope for 2017, not least by the BBC, who included them (somewhat incongruously) in their annual Sound Of… poll. For good or ill, they’re not the sort of band you can ignore, and however their debut album – due later this year – turns out, you can bet it won’t be boring.
From their “anti-band name” band name to their lyrics about wanking into quiche in the name of class warfare and wishing death upon the US president-elect, no-one could ever accuse Cabbage of being dull. Martin likens his band to a Frankie Boyle standup show – the four EPs they’ve released thus far might strain the boundaries of good taste, but they also have a lot to say about the state of the world we live in. “We’ve come out of the traps with songs about necrophilia, war and capitalism,” he explains, as if reading from a checklist of well-trodden paths to pop stardom. “When David Cameron called Jeremy Corbyn a terrorist sympathiser, we took a stab at that, too. Those kind of talking points come naturally to us. But we don’t want to be pigeonholed as a political band. It’s already happened, just because we sing about relatively serious issues, but we want to move onto something else, socially, musically and politically. We’re keen to explore different realms as soon as possible.”
It’s that desire to do things differently that originally brought Cabbage to prominence in their native Manchester, where they emerged from beneath the “Britpop ash-cloud the city’s still choking under,” and has seen them feted as rock ’n’ roll’s great white hope for 2017, not least by the BBC, who included them (somewhat incongruously) in their annual Sound Of… poll. For good or ill, they’re not the sort of band you can ignore, and however their debut album – due later this year – turns out, you can bet it won’t be boring.
