Nostalgia often feels like a bit of a comfort blanket, but Flat Party prefer to use it as a trampoline – bouncing between eras and influences with the gleeful abandon of time travellers at a fancy dress party. Their latest EP ‘It’s All Been Done Before’ arrives like a confetti cannon in a library, spreading chaos across carefully organised genres and making an absolute mess of your preconceptions.
Working with producer Chris McCrory (whose fingerprints you might recognise from similarly brain-tickling escapades with Walt Disco), the London art-rock collective have transformed their theatrical tendencies into something grander – and, deliciously, darker. If their first moves were the pre-drinks, this is the 3 AM afterparty.
Frontman Jack Lawther and co. have crafted a record that’s all strutting glamour and black-mascara catharsis. It’s a heady cocktail of influences that shouldn’t work (70s glam rock and 00s alternative sharing a dance floor? In this economy?) but somehow emerges as something thrillingly fresh.
When Lawther talks about the EP, it’s clear this shape-shifting isn’t just artistic restlessness – it’s necessity. While the ingredients might be familiar, Flat Party’s recipe is entirely their own. The result is a record that proves there’s still plenty of room for reinvention in rock’s dressing-up box; you just need to know how to wear the costumes your own way.
Photos: Mat Scott.
Circle
This is a song about the darker side of promiscuous living. As a generation, we’ve become very sex-positive, which is great in one sense, but I think our conditioned ideals surrounding self-respect and sex still get in the way when we try and aim for a more polyamorous way of living. Musically, I was listening to ‘The Holy Bible’ by the Manics a lot. It’s one of my favourite albums because of its unashamed intensity, and the lyrics always push me to forget about trying to please people with what I’m writing about.
Paranoia/Delicate Dawn
This, along with ‘I’m Bored Give Me Love’, is our oldest song. Those two came in a pair, which is strange because they’re so different. I was deep into Berlin Bowie at the time and wanted to write something that was jarring, but full of beauty. There are a lot of Heroes in there, especially ‘Sons Of The Silent Age’. Lyrically, it’s about tripping; one minute, you’re in love, and the next, everybody is looking at you and talking about you, hellish.
Shotgun
‘Shotgun’ is an ode to hedonism, but it’s also full of self-loathing and anxiety. There’s a lyric in there based on a quote I read that was “The sun never sets on the British Empire, because even God couldn’t trust the English in the dark”, I thought that was brilliant. Musically, it’s a bit of a piss-take, to be honest. I wrote it very quickly as a bit of a jab at the sea of cowbell-punk bands that were impossible to escape at one point. A fair few people have told me after gigs that this is their favourite song, and I think, “Of course it is; I wrote it for YOU”.
Madonna
This song is about sexually intimidating people. You know, the sort that have seen it all before and nothing you do will make it worth their time. Lyrically, It’s deliberately off-putting and kind of creepy. I wrote it pretty much all in one go, in a stream of consciousness where I just let that horrid part of my mind take over. Musically, it’s very repetitive, which I think comes from a lot of the krautrock and industrial music I was listening to at the time.
It’s All Been Done Before
I’ve always loved songs that contradict themselves. The music of this song is quite melancholic and unsure of itself, while the lyrics are just pure love. It’s kind of fitting that the relationship I was writing about didn’t work out in the end; I was singing something that I didn’t believe, and that’s evident in the song. Musically, this is the most “alt-rock” we’ve ever been; it’s romantic, desperate and boastful.
Flat Party’s EP ‘It’s All Been Done Before’ is out now.
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