Middle-Class Guilt Release ‘Their King of Comedy’ (Album Review)

I first became aware of Middle Class Guilt at a Rum Shack showcase in early February: a pretty blonde clad in an emerald Stevie-Nicks blouse held down the front while the lead singer belted in a Tux, and the other four members rocked just about every stylistic variation in between. Considering the cavernous illusions cast upon the venue from The Rum Shack’s lighting, the setup looked like a scene out of Fraggle Rock. Maybe the venue itself ought to be credited for providing such a relaxed space, or perhaps their presentation style is meant to impress something upon the audience: the band is defined more by individual dimensionality than solidarity.

This suspicion was confirmed to me in an interview in anticipation of their latest record; as Declan on bass attributed to the record’s sense of unceasing genre-negotiation inside of coherent vision, ‘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.’ While I held the interview before hearing anything but lead single ‘Edinburgh’, both of these hallmarks – ‘shocking’ and ‘individually-informed’ clicked into place after a listen to their sophomore release, Their King of Comedy.

Middle Class Guilt has already built a reputation for evading orthodoxy: their first record, The Committee, juggled provincial folk, feuding jam band, 70s moog-synth optimism, and the butthurt comedown emblematic to 80s post-punk (after realizing not even the most outfitted of moogtubes could deliver the transcendence they were looking for). While not sanding down their grittier edges in Their King of Comedy, the band sank into a more integrated approach to their genre-agnostic jam sessions. While carrying itself with a similar drunken incaution to previous works, the 12-track record sounds more like a band comfortable with fitting infectious funk-enthusiasm inside of industrial grayscale.

Opening track ‘Glory of Failure’ – immediately reminiscent of the pavement-cracking thump of ‘Seven Nation Army’ – and ‘Park’ writhe with a more definitively post-punk hopelessness. Their pre-teased goth instincts are leaned into in a more self-aware, dramatic style in later tracks; draconian-style ‘Skald’ brings on a stampede of drums to stab around Joseph’s voice, while theoretical successor ‘The Golden Tiger’ rocks an equally prosecutorial tone (albeit trading the intentionally ominous feel for a brassier, lightheaded disorientation.) Post-punk trooper ‘Safe’ has a similar moxie to it, though this time running on the back of unspooling rusted-metallic guitar and dark-night-of-the-soul funk vocalics agony.

While the rusted, slushy guitars characteristic of post-punk are rarely too far away throughout the record, recurring elements – Joseph’s flailing sense of humor, the upward-shooting mysticism of ‘Edinburgh’, and the knotty folk of ‘Mowa Meadow’ – prevent an overtly terminally ill feel from fully taking over. Furthermore, each track’s indulgent detours – thrills of arpeggiated keyboards running over the underlying barebones scaffolding, Joseph’s love of ‘making in-tune fiddle sound out of tune’, and estranged rhythms lend themselves to an undeniably maximalist-funk lightheartedness. 

Though I’m avoiding using the word ‘psychedelic’ as a descriptor, Their King of Comedy is almost ‘accidentally psychedelic’, leaning directly upon almost no conventions of the description while managing to capture the ‘morbid but tongue-in-cheek’ mood of more on-the-nose experimental music. Some sync The Dark Side of the Moon with The Wizard of Oz when tripping; perhaps the best description of the record I can offer is that one could comfortably pair this record with the back half of The Princess Bride.

Their King of Comedy is out 8th May on Etna