Fans of indie music will have spotted a recent trend for bands abandoning singing with lead vocalists instead speaking their lyrics.
Dry Cleaning, Yard Act and Black Country New Road are among those adopting sprechgesang – speak-singing – Kraftwerk perhaps the most obvious modern-day example of what originates in late 18th century Wagnerian opera.
Something which Art Brut frontman Eddie Argos would appreciate, although his own vocal style comes with an accent that’s less teutonic and more Dorset via South London.
Now, aptly, Argos – who has been delivering his pithy half-sung observations on the human condition for nigh on two decades – releases a compilation entitled ‘And Yes, This Is My Singing Voice!’
It takes us through the Art Brut story from the band’s formation and early flirtation with success, featuring indie disco classics such as debut ‘Formed A Band’, which was, like other early hit ‘Emily Kane’ a staple of indie discos in the mid-noughties.
The band had a seven-year hiatus until 2018 but reissued debut album ‘Bang Bang Rock and Roll ‘on its 15-year anniversary, and of which Argos said: “It is a teenager! If it was a person it would be drinking cider down the park and trying to sneak in to bed without its parents realising that it is drunk.”
The band also reissued single ‘Modern Art’ in 202o for Record Store Day, with members of Pixies, Idles, Human League and bis creating custom artwork, while the video for 2020’s ‘Your Enemies Are My Enemies Too’ featured Irish comic Michael Legge and indie music star Helen Love, as well as veteran comic / Eddie Argos lookalike Tony Slattery.
And Argos, and Ian Catskilkin, Freddy Feedback, Charlie Layton, and Toby Macfarlaine, aren’t the only Art Brut on the go – they operate a ‘franchise’ system where bands can sign up to, in the case of a French act, perform covers of the band, while LA heroes We Are Scientists, as well as collaborating with the band, run as ‘AB47’.
This mix of creativity and longevity has made for a considerable back catalogue, now it’s gathered as a sprawling 5xCD / double vinyl set with another fan, Ezra Furman, supplying sleeve notes. “It’s nice to feel proud, isn’t it?” says Argos. “And be like, ‘Ah, I made all of these songs’.
‘A Record Collection, Reduced To A Mixtape’ double compilation LP and ‘And Yes, This Is My Singing Voice!’ 5 CD box set are out now.
More at www.artbrut.org.uk
This article originally appeared in the Blackpool Gazette.