Drawing on a shared love of conceptual art, the two halves of Be Kind Cadaver are visual artist Leroy Brown (guitars, percussion) and performance artist Distant Animals (vocals, synthesis, percussion), who together focus on “an exploration of sound as a social process than a set genre or form.”
Be Kind Cadaver’s intriguing doom pop-laden debut EP ‘Postpartum’, released by Difficult Art and Music in 2020, brought together a collection of evolving, multi-part songs which combined a noise punk aesthetic with progressive elements.
Citing Self-defence family, The Birthday Party, Yeasayer, Jello Biafra and The Knife among some of their inspirations, Be Kind Cadaver’s diverse range of influences are used to produce a highly personal form of electronic post-punk.
Listen out for it in Be Kind Cadaver’s music and you will also hear: the lyrical wit and whimsy of Bowie and Byrne, Ugandan rhythms and psychedelic improv, slowcore and jangle, sad-eyed balladry and mournful Scott Walker’s absurdity, plus Jesus Lizard noise matched with a big shiny pop chorus.
‘Lights Out on the Reservation’ not only kicks off volume 3 of MEANS’ fundraising album ‘Living Within Our Means’, it is also the band’s next revealed step in premiering tracks from their highly anticipated second EP ‘The World’s Greatest Mind’. Its title track was released back in February and was praised by Backseat Mafia as having “a shimmering, rock anthem grandeur” with a darker story to be told “lurking under the epic electro-orchestral motifs.”
On Postpartum, Be Kind Cadaver created a shifting sound world in order to present a lyrical commentary on the contemporary political landscape through the prism of male postpartum and the trials of fatherhood – exploring issues as diverse as childbirth, gender, anxiety and existentialism.
In their latest work, the band have moved slightly away from the personal to the political, highlighted by a particular engagement in the impotence of cultural and political dogmas and “framing the complexities of contemporary Britain through the prism of the everyday, the mundane, and the pedestrian”.
Lights Out on the Reservation is a soaring 12-minute epic, but one which never overstays its welcome. Be Kind Cadaver have a real knack at giving their songs enough time to breath, allowing them to grow organically across varied vocal passages and connecting instrumental passages.
The track begins with an ominous drone and a spluttering sigh of bubbling electronics. From out of this emerges an insistent buzz and then a surprising driving rhythm, which is soon followed by jangly guitar work, rising string stings, elegiac vignettes and earnest, thought-provoking lyrics: “Do you need light? Do you need love?”
Dramatic, catchy, epic, cathartic, poetic, political, domestic, insular, horizon-spanning – Lights Out on the Reservation is an encapsulation of everything the band can be in one track. Doom rock meets a dance with despair, a seamless evolution of moods and thinking, a regretful lament, a rush of liberated energy – progressive music melting and shapeshifting beneath the desert sun.
Lights Out on the Reservation is available to listen to and purchase as part of
Living Within Our Means: Volume 3.
Ryan Hooper
meansmagazine.com 