For a conglomerate of art outsiders and aesthetes, Vital Idles are primitive, whimsically brutal. Sculpting a skeleton from a body already lean, there’s a thrilling minimalism that runs through every beat and strum, a sparseness that feeds Jessica Higgins’s surreal, oblique vocal delivery all the nourishment it needs.
Along with the announcement of their debut album, Left Hand, on 1st June via Upset The Rhythm, the band have shared new single ‘A Premise’.
Following two self-released demos and a sold out debut 7”, Vital Idles arrive on Upset The Rhythm with ‘Left Hand’, a bare manifesto layered with meaning and non-meaning. The group can conceivably be called artists, or Artists, but in approaching their debut album Vital Idles have stripped away all extraneous ornamentation to sculpt an incredibly life-like, vibrant pop music completely détourned and re-thought.
‘A Premise’ lingers somewhere between Velvet Underground and the more experimental moments of The Pixies, with the jangling guitars layered over a slightly discordant bassline. Higgins’ vocals are the focal point though, like a slightly more friendly Ian Curtis cooing in your vicinity. It’s a very hard to pin down sound, which makes it all the more interesting.
Vital Idles will be touring the UK in March and April with No Age, and Jeffrey Lewis & Los Bolts. Dates are as follows:
30 March – Liverpool – The Buyer’s Club ^
31 March – Manchester – Soup Kitchen ^
1 April – Glasgow – Mono ^
3 April – Birmingham – Hare & Hounds ^
4 April – London – Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club ^
6 April – York – The Crescent Community Venue $
^ with No Age
$ with Jeffrey Lewis & Los Bolts
