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Interview: LICE | LOUD Bristol Issue Three

Posted on: 28 Dec 2021

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This article was first published in the third issue of LOUD Bristol, 365Bristol's dedicated music magazine. Read LOUD Issue Three and browse our first two editions here.

LICE

 

LOUD meets with the growing Bristol band to discuss their journey from pestering promoters to releasing their debut concept album, Wasteland: What Ails Our People Is Clear.

 

Speaking via video link from the South of France following a run of gigs across the channel, Alastair Shuttleworth (vocals), Silas Dilkes (guitar), Gareth Johnson (bass), and Bruce Bardsley (drums) are in good spirits. LICE have only done a few standing shows since their debut album, Wasteland: What Ails Our People Is Clear was released in January 2021, but they’re pretty sure they’ve been their best. “People have been going bananas,” Alastair says. “It was fucking mental. We would turn around and the promoters were there shirtless!”

 

For the band, it’s a sign of their evolution as a live act. Not so long ago, they were carrying pedals in a Sainsbury’s bag, playing with broken gear, and getting their asses kicked to be better by whoever was headlining. Described by fellow Bristol-based band Squid as sounding ‘like Mad Max at an EBM metal rave’, LICE’s debut album is further evidence of growth. It’s the culmination of a five-year gestation period that’s seen them journey from blagging their way into gigs, becoming disillusioned with lazy labels, and growing apart from their early material to releasing a cohesive, well-realised and original concept record.

 

LICE formed in 2016, when Silas posted an intriguing ad in a University of Bristol Facebook group that read, simply: ‘looking for people willing to do and say horrible shit’. Wasting no time, the band began writing tracks influenced by 80s post-punk reference points listed by Silas, such as The Birthday Party and The Jesus Lizard.

 

Quickly, they turned their attention to booking gigs. Knowing Fat White Family were coming to town, Alastair launched a brazen phone and email campaign targeting the band’s manager to get on the bill, eventually pestering him into submission, earning them an unofficial 20-minute slot. “The early days of LICE is this charming saga of nobody knowing what they were doing and just very scrappily and shamelessly grovelling to get opportunities,” he explains. “In hindsight, we were huge chancers,” Silas laughs.

 

 

“Like Mad Max at an EBM metal rave”

- Squid on LICE’s new album, Wasteland

 

During their 20 minutes, LICE caught the attention of Shame (an official support act), who subsequently brought them to Brixton, where they played the iconic Windmill. Here, the band impressed a friend of Mark E. Smith, who convinced the inimitable frontman to book them as support for a Bristol gig. Alastair’s audacious manoeuvring had paid off in a big way. In no time, they were playing slots they considered endgame when starting out.

 

Heavily informed by Silas’ early tastemakers and the punk world they found themselves living in, the band released their first EP, It All Worked Out Great in 2018. Soon, however, the initial rewards that came with existing in that space lost their lustre, and a feeling of disillusionment towards their early material and the deluge of punk comparisons attached to them in their early days crept in, Alastair recalls. “We’d hit a point where you’re just surrounded by punk music all of the time and it becomes a little …”

 

“Boring,” Gareth interjects.

 

“Yeah. You start yearning for more.”

 

LICE wound up in a dichotomy between living in Punkland and not wanting to exist there sonically. “We’ve always naturally been curious. Inevitably our interests shifted on, but we were lumped with this association,” Silas says. It’s this disunion that their debut full-length album is rooted in, Alastair adds: “I think that underpinned a lot of what Wasteland is about and a lot of what Wasteland deals with thematically.” Wanting to unsettle the prevailing tropes in popular politicised music that the band argue are insufficient to the task of confronting society’s ills in a constructive way and persuading reactionary voices, they decided to write a concept album designed to challenge these inadequacies.

 

“A lot of punk music amounts to sloganeering; confronting people with a morally correct attitude. It says, this is right, and this is what you should think. It’s not conversational. It doesn’t do anything for anyone that doesn’t already subscribe to that,” Alastair says. “The idea was to have a record where people are constantly undergoing some kind of experience of change, where their moral attitudes are changing, articulated through whimsical stories.”

LICE with band member Gareth's handmade intonarumori, the final piece of the Wasteland puzzle.

 

Following a period spent devouring essays and correspondences written by the Italian Futurists and the Nazarenes, he approached the record wanting to create a lyrical set piece. This manifested in a standalone piece of science fiction that accompanies the record, also informing its lyrics and themes. ‘DEATH BLOW TO PREVAILING INADEQUACIES IN SATIRE/LYRICS’, the cover boldly asserts, reflecting the parallels he drew between the aggressive manifesto-based outlooks of the two artistic movements and the band’s feelings of disillusionment towards the punk world.

 

The pamphlet explores ‘the hidden iniquities of the heart’ and presents its transformation through the outlandish and oddball tales of Dr Coehn and his encounters with a sentient penis on a murderous rampage, a scientist orchestrating humanity’s downfall and the friendship between a giant spider and a robot, to name a few. Delivered via Alastair’s rhythmic drawls, Wasteland’s flamboyant, theatrical, and madcap themes play out on top of sharp basslines, flurrying drums, distorted guitar and the clamour of an experimental industrial noise instrument.

     

With the album just a couple of tracks shy of completion, the pandemic suspended production. Gareth’s freelance work dried up as Covid hit, and he was forced to move in with his parents. Taking full advantage of his father’s woodshop, he hand-built an intonarumori - designed by Italian Futurist, Luigi Russolo - working out the design from pictures. It was the piece of the puzzle the band weren’t aware Wasteland was missing and as studios re-opened, Alastair tells me they got busy peppering the intonarumori across the record. “It just became this wonderful unifying thing. I don’t think it’s something we would have been ready to do if we’d finished the album on time. It’s one of those happy accidents.”

 

Nearly a year on, their sense of pride in Wasteland remains deep - their grandiose debut still feels authentically LICE. “When we talk about It All Worked Out Great, we always talk in terms of our old reference points and in terms of the milieu they existed in,” Alastair says. “Wasteland feels like us. It’s ambitious.”

 

“Everyone is prouder of it because it’s a more realised, well-thought-out piece where the songs complement each other and are sat in the same space,” Gareth adds. LICE have grown more literally than just through evolution, too - they’re a five-piece now. Needing an extra pair of hands to play the new sounds live, Natalie, a long-time friend of the band, has been roped in as a permanent fixture. “I’ve known the boys since uni so I’ve been with them on the journey,” she says. “It’s been absolutely incredible to play.”

 

To her right, the rest of the band break out into thunderous applause. This is Natalie’s first media appearance. What’s more, LICE have kept their focus for our entire hour together - further cause for celebration as Alistair gives his bandmates a pat on the back. “For us this is pretty good,” Silas says. “We’ve got a horrible tendency to spiral into whimsy.”

 

“Lucky the chickens didn’t come through,” Alastair laughs. “That would have been endgame.”

 

Photos: Rowan Allen

 

Head to Issuu to read the full third issue of LOUD Bristol, featuring an array of interviews with renowned artists, venues, labels and more.

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