PAISLEY art-pop provocateurs The Vegan Leather are back to inject more delirious art-pop pleasure into our lives with the release of their new EP ‘Furious, Not Ominous’.
Two years on from their acclaimed debut album ‘Poor Girls, Broken Boys’, the band have returned to their DIY roots and let their creative instincts run free, giving themselves free rein to dive into previously unexplored, and at times unpredictable, new territories while channelling the tumultuous nature of the last 18 months and their own varying emotions.
The result is ‘Furious, Not Ominous’, a nine-track EP that is ferociously urgent as it is gloriously eclectic. Fuelled by a vital sense of spontaneity and catharsis, The Vegan Leather challenge all preconceived notions of their sound and expand on it more than ever before. It’s fair to say that they’ve never sounded so creatively liberated.
Previous singles ‘Gloaming’, ‘Sanctum Sound’ and ‘Who’s Knocking On My Door?’ all feature, while the intro, interlude and outro are all a nice touch. ‘She Don’t’ Gianluca Bernacchi unleashes his inner Ian Dury, taking aim at toxic masculinity over a grooving bedroom pop instrumental. ‘Forget It’ channels nu-rave bands like Soulwax and Simian Mobile Disco with its relentless mantra-like delivery, while ‘The Grip’ is an epic conclusion – open in rather uncharacteristically considered fashion before unleashing its delirious, dancefloor-ready climax.
Playing out like a rapid stream of consciousness, feelings of anger, helplessness, fun, hope and wild abandon all come to the surface throughout.
More than anything though, the EP is a mature step forward that finds The Vegan Leather unafraid to test boundaries, bolstering their infectious art-pop with raw emotion, darker lyrical themes and playful arrangements.
Speaking of the EP, the band’s Marie Collins said “Furious, Not Ominous’ is definitely a reflection of how we were feeling over lockdown. There are some dark moments which are then countered with fun, silliness, hope and wild abandon! Tracks like Gloaming hold an eerie sense of abandonment, but then you can begin to hear anger in WKOMD, followed by a bit of madness and fun in Forget It.
“This was very much our feelings through the pandemic – feeling a bit bewildered and scared about the future of the music scene but then slowly starting to take agency and have fun. One of my favourite tracks of the EP is The Grip… we hadn’t really tackled a slower tempo song before. I think it charts a darker side to us but then bursts into a classic TVL track for the latter half.”
Gianluca Bernacchi adds “This EP is our Ulysses. Stylistically it’s a stream of consciousness from one song to the next. Lockdown spurred on so many feelings of anger and helplessness, it manifested in our work output being a bit sporadic. Where during the album there was a focus on things being more guitar-driven and natural sounding, with these songs we just had to let whatever we felt in the moment come out. That approach gave us rapid changes in style, like between She Don’t/WKOMD/Forget It, switching it up from bedroom bops to thrashy punk to full on electroclash. I’m very proud of what we were able to accomplish apart and together. Exploring the format of an EP was very freeing too, spending time on the interludes was a nice way to cleanse the palette after hours of drum programming.”
Listen below.
