aaamusic | On 27, Feb 2013

Album released on Monday 8th April via Heist Or Hit Records Featuring the single “Breakfast at Sylvia’s” (Monday 25th March)

Abbott is genuinely the best indie lyricist to surface in recent years.” – AAAmusic
“Wakefield’s most articulate (and can we say handsome?) street poet finds the romance beneath the realism…. He’ll have you feeling better in no time” – NME

When asked to try and summarise the history of Skint & Demoralised to date, you’d be forgiven for scratching your head and wondering where to start. From surfacing on MySpace in late 2006 as the stage name of a teenage punk poet to gracing the Radio 1 playlist less than 3 years later, it’s safe to say that the band have had a rather eventful journey so far. But through linking arms with Pixie Lott at the Brit Awards to stacking her CDs in HMV six months later, there’s one reason why the Yorkshire duo of Matt Abbott and MiNI dOG continue to work together: music.

As a performance poet first and foremost, crafting his trade in front of spellbound audiences at local indie gigs and club nights in homage to his idol John Cooper Clarke, it is Abbott’s development as a lyricist that has seen Skint & Demoralised really come of age and craft a record that is as accomplished as it is fresh and exciting. Despite having just turned 24, the Wakefield-born frontman has a wealth of experience under his belt, and a keen knack for painting poignancy in the grimmest of settings and framing the particular with universal understanding. It is the vivid and compelling nature of his stories and lyrical vignettes on “The Bit Between The Teeth” that give it such impact and resonance, and with Sheffield-based producer MiNI dOG providing the musical accompaniment, the act once described as a “match made in musical heaven” by Sunday Times Culture editor Dan Cairns have once again documented a strangely upbeat snapshot of recession-struck Britain.

After deciding to take a singing approach on second album “This Sporting Life”, Abbott has reverted back to his spoken word routes for a third of the tracks on “The Bit Between The Teeth”; none more striking than the epic eight-minute opener “Amores Perros” that depicts a harrowing and excruciatingly personal tale. Named after one of Abbott’s favourite films, it kicks the album off with a quote from Leeds United legend Billy Bremner and serves up a healthy portion of sex, alcohol abuse, lust and violence before we’ve even had the comfort of a chorus or a jangly guitar to remind us that this is in fact an indie record.

Musically the songs tap in to that great vein of lo-fi and wonderfully simplistic indie acts such as Orange Juice, The Go-Betweens, The Smiths and Arab Strap; a development of the sound that saw Q Magazine describe S&D’s previous release as “defiantly rough and ready” and close in some respects to contemporary records such as Baxter Dury’s “Happy Soup” or Jamie T’s “Panic Prevention”.

The songs are mostly set where they were written on the Northumbrian coast, with many of the focal points referenced in the opening track, and from maudlin ballad “Broadway Circle” (which spends a day in the world of a young woman who loathes life working in the local launderette) to fist-pumping Sky Sports favourite “When Saturday Comes” (which expresses a love for an afternoon at the football whilst managing to avoid being a loutish anthem), it’s almost as if you’re speed-dating with nine different Northern bards, and each has their own unique story to tell. Think Arab Strap meets Art Brut, with a pinch of Squeeze and Arctic Monkeys.