Middle Class Guilt: Recent Musical Breakthroughs, Fresh Single ‘Edinburgh’ and Upcoming Release ‘Their King of Comedy’ (interview)

Combining cavernous, negative-space recording techniques with exclamatory jam-oriented live sessions, Glasgow-based Middle Class Guilt is the sort of band that continually evades any signpost that may be pinned onto their back.

Despite their partiality to post-punk, their negotiable and expansive approach to performance keeps them from clean categorization. For instance, it could be argued that the band possesses all of the raw ingredients imperative for consideration as an erratic funk project: a prowling yet jolted sound built from each member’s individualist conviction in their musicianship, a kinship cemented just firmly enough to override their differences, and at least one bandmate hailing the evergreen King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard as inspiration.

While Middle Class Guilt has been immersed in various subsets of Glasgow’s music scene for several years (frequenters of The Rum Shack may already be familiar with the band), the two founding members of Middle Class Guilt originated from the Shetlands.

‘I played bass, Joseph played drums – Joseph is a very good drummer – so I followed Joseph to Glasgow for uni, and that’s pretty much how Middle Class Guilt got started’, cofounder and keyboardist Joanne clarified of their origins in a recent interview.

I also spoke with the collective about the six-piece’s recent single, ‘Edinburgh’, their experience breaking into the Glasgow scene, and soon-to-be-released ‘Their King of Comedy’.

You recently came out with the single ‘Edinburgh’ and are about to release your second full record. What qualities about the finished product turned out differently than you originally anticipated?

Declan: Joseph kind of spearheaded the sound, but I would say the album coming out now is probably the most collaborative one. Joseph is still the sort of filter or quality control of that and steers what it sounds like. “I think it’s a much more cohesive and collaborative sound.

Not to dumb it all down, but Joanne is a drum-and-bass jazzhead.  We all listen to very different stuff, and I think the latest album reflects that quite well.

Joseph: It has gradually become more and more collaborative.

People would come with ideas and we would play them individually, but now the ideas all blend into one song by song, if that makes sense. We also like to shock people even more than before, and that marks a change from our first record for sure.

Declan: Instead of bashing our individual ideas on the head and hoping it works, we’ve all become more open to trying stuff out than we used to be. 

There have been a couple of times when I had a predetermined set idea. One of the songs on the new album started as a metal song, and now it’s a disco-type style.

You have been working through a load of material recently, which is soon to crystallize with upcoming release ‘Their King of Comedy’. What would you say are the most tangible breakthroughs in your recent work?

Joseph: The single ‘Edinburgh’ was a breakthrough for me personally. There were a couple of stories within the lyrics, and one of them I had been sitting on for years – I had wanted to get the tail end of the song right, and then Kieran sent me a demo for a separate song.

It was such a breakthrough because I was like, ‘That’s it, I am never hearing these ideas separately again.’

Would you say the overall sonic pallette of ‘Edinburgh’ is generally quite representative of the direction you took in ‘Their King of Comedy’?

Declan: We picked it out because we thought it was a nice crossover from still having elements from the first album while also progressing toward the second one quite well. I think that’s why we picked it as the first single; for people that have listened to us it’s still familiar enough to warm them up a bit.

While you don’t identify exclusively with any musical category, are there any ‘genre clichés’ that you avoid?

Joseph: We always say post-punk when people ask, but I think the albums have come out more folk-y than what we play live.I’d like to think that we don’t go for the moody or too-cool-for-school thing. We’re not very cool ourselves, so it wouldn’t work.

Joanne: I suppose we don’t have any fiddles on the melody line, which you couldn’t say of a lot of folkish music.

If production budget and time pressure were nonexistent factors, what would your dream record sound like?

Frasier: I’d want to take the time to Astral project first.

Joseph: I think we would hire loads of other musicians to play on our record. And having more time to work on it would be cool. We would release as many albums as possible, and at least one of them would have a full orchestra.

Declan: I would want to call King Gizzard out and just release albums with them every year.

Patrick: I’d call out Eminem and see if he would be open to ruining my career.

What was the most difficult aspect of trying to permeate into the Glasgow music scene?

Joseph: Glasgow was actually quite easy to get gigs in and start off a band. Any hurdles have been completely self-inflicted; for the most part, Glasgow is quite welcoming.

Patrick: Yeah, I feel like when people see our name they’re like, ‘These people must be pure dickheads.’

Joseph: In terms of a scene, it’s a weird one because I don’t think we’re automatically associated with any of the scenes. We’ve always been focused on doing our own thing, but there are lots of little communities in Glasgow that you draw inspiration from.

Joanne: I would say the hardest part is getting the budget so you can actually go produce; we had played loads and loads of shows before we even recorded any music.

What sonic risk did you take in your new record that ended up paying off?

Frasier (guitarist): Ooh, plenty. On the last album, there’s a song called ‘Do You ever feel like nothing?’, which we hadn’t – really – rehearsed.

Joanne: Yeah, we basically just recorded a jam and put it on the album.

Joseph: Another is that there was a song with a fiddle on it, and we didn’t have it in tune. People seemed to like that.

Declan (bass): No, Joseph – it was in tune, you just didn’t play it right.

So the risk that paid off was making an in-tune fiddle sound like it was out of tune?

Joseph: I was trying my best! I think it’s difficult to describe the new album too much because people haven’t heard it yet. But yeah, we tried a song that wasn’t necessarily ‘ready’, but it ultimately worked out.

On the next album, the way that things are played is pretty much just smashing things together. They kind of jump about a lot. In terms of getting creative fulfillment from it at least, you could say it paid off.

Which track are you each the most proud of for your performance on?

Joanne: Probably ‘Safe’. I like the wee arpeggios that I do.

Frasier (guitar): I think it’s one on the next album called ‘Park’ because I play quite a strange guitar riff on it that I don’t remember how it came about. And the second half of it, I just sort of make noise. That’s always really quite fun to play.

Patrick (guitar): I quite like the last song, Stomach Sunk. I had the rhythm of it in my head for absolute ages and it took me so long to figure out how to play guitar on it, I just kind of had the beat for it. That’s quite a fun song for me to play because I noodled about on the second half. A lot is going on guitar-wise in that one.

Kieran (drums): I think mine would be ‘Edinburgh’ because it felt very validating to scale up the song and for that to develop where it would be released as a single. It can be really easy as a creative to doubt your own capabilities or value, so getting it to that point.

Joseph (lead singer): I would say, recently anyway, I’m quite happy with my lyrics on Edinburgh, and I really like on ‘Stomach Sunk’ – the one Patrick was talking about with the rhythm. I’m really happy with how the lyrics turned out.

Declan (bass): I think the opening part of ‘Stomach Sunk”, too. I quite like the bass on that, because it takes you in a different direction from where one would think it would go. There were a lot of ideas I had with that one that ultimately morphed into something else.

Listen to ‘Their King of Comedy’ releasing on on 8th May from Etna Records.